Being an island in a fairly chaotic part of the world, U.S. naval ships visit Cyprus sometimes. At the end of February, we received a visit by the USS Mount Whitney, the flagship of the U.S. Navy’s Sixth Fleet (which Severin says, not jokingly, is capable of destroying the world several times over).
The Mount Whitney is a command and control ship, and as it was explained to me this is ship is meant to be a floating headquarters for the whole fleet. As such, it’s full of all sorts of antennae so it is able to communicate securely with other ships in the fleet and even directly with Washington.
When the ship is in port, they fly the flag of the country they are visiting. (I told Severin, thank god they used the Republic of Cyprus flag and not the flag of the unrecognized “Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus”!) The flag on the right means the vice admiral is on board.
We were told everything on this deck is an antennae except for the short tubes on the middle left of the photo below, which are for missile defense. The crew giving us the tour made sure to point out the AFN (Armed Forces Network) receiver, the most important antennae of them all, obvi. We only toured the bridge and the deck, because the ship was involved in an exercise, and we didn’t get to see any living quarters or anything.
After 9/11, the Navy apparently reinstall the use of this revolutionary era “DON’T TREAD ON ME” flag. Why did we ever stop?
When you are overseas, there is something profoundly emotional about seeing the American flag. When I drive into work in the morning and see the flag flying over the Embassy, I do feel a tremendous sense of pride and gratitude to be an American. It’s just so distinct and unmistakably American. When we saw this one flying off the back of the ship, we couldn’t help ourselves but to ask for a picture together. Also, for those of you wondering, Severin is dressed up for a reception later that evening. I had come directly from the horse show, having replaced white breeches for jeans in the backseat of my car. I went to the reception too, but changed into business attire in my car in some swanky parking garage in the middle of Limassol!
When we arrived back at the ship that evening for the reception, they made Severin and I walk down the red carpet lined flanked by 6-7 sailors on each side. When we saw the setup we tried to evade and walk around, but we were forced. The Navy did a great job organizing the reception, but unfortunately many of the Cypriots we invited didn’t show up, so I mostly spent my evening talking to military officers.