THE ARNHEITER AFFAIR. This item is unavailable.THE ARNHEITER AFFAIR

In March 1966, off the coast of Viet Nam, Lieutenant Commander Marcus Aurelius Arnheiter was relieved of command of the destroyer escort USS Vance. He had been her captain for ninety nine days. As the officers and crew of the Vance tell it, the script of their voyage reveals a real life story as fascinating as The Caine Mutiny or Mister Roberts. They tell of a captain who exhibited strange quirks and ran his ship with tyrannical whimsy. They say he enforced discipline with a martinet’s fetish for shined belt buckles and shoes. Officers were required to give three minute talks on subjects they found under their dinner plates – such as the proper use of a finger bowl or how to deport oneself in an opera box. There were witnesses who said he violated navy regulations and the orders of his superiors whenever it suited him, and tried to run a private war. Off Viet Nam he came close to gunning refugees fleeting the shoreline, insisting they were the enemy; he almost ran his ship aground, and disobeying instructions, shelled the coast until finally ordered off by an irate commander of another ship. Captain Arnheiter not only denied the accusations but waged an aggressive public campaign to clear himself – charging that in the course of molding the Vance into taut, combat ready warship his subordinate officers conspired against him with false and clandestine complaints to his superiors – and that these superiors relieved him without prior notice in violation of naval regulations. The whole, almost incredible story is now told by the journalist who covered it at the time.