Lieutenant Commander Marcus Aurelius Arnheiter Testifies Before Congress

“The Caine is an old, tired ship,” explained Navy Lieutenant Commander William De Vriess to Ensign Willie Keith in the novel, The Caine Mutiny. Those same words would have been an accurate description of the USS Vance an Escort Destroyer, on December 22, 1965, when the US Navy sent one of its up-and-coming officers with a stellar record, to take command of the Vance (DE-387). Who was that officer?  His name was Lieutenant Commander Marcus Aurelius Arnheiter, a graduate of the United States Navay Academy who had been promoted to Lieutenant Commander ahead of his peers in July of 1962 based on his outstanding record. He was considered a strong contender for another “below the zone” or early promotion to Commander after his tour as the skipper of the USS Vance. Arnheiter enjoyed a reputation as being “intelligent, well-spoken and full of energy.” He had been previously praised for his outstanding service as an officer aboard the battleship, USS Iowa. After his stint on the Iowa, Arnheiter provided intelligence briefings and analysis to the Navy’s top leadership at the Pentagon- a plum staff assignment reserved for high performing officers. Arnheiter had caught the eye of more than one Admiral in this assignment and on his last Officer Fitness Report (NAVPERS 310) was considered one who showed the potential to serve at the “highest echelons of the US Navy’s command structure.”  

That “old, tired ship” the USS Vance, was an underperforming vessel with morale problems. It wasn’t that the crew was bad. As is most often the case, the morale problems aboard the USS Vance stemmed from a lack of strong leadership. The Navy’s top brass thought sending in an officer of Anteiter’s high caliber would retore morale and high-performance levels on the Vance. On the eve of his taking command of the Vance, Arnheiter received a congratulatory telegram from Navy Chief of Operations, Admiral David L. McDonald.

After assuming command of the USS Vance, Arnheiter noticed as he was warned, that the destroyer was in lackluster shape- The aging WWII vintage ship was viewed by many of the enlisted crew as an outdated “beaten-up old tub.” The previous lack of proper leadership had caused discipline on the Vance to become lax, and the ship had deteriorated into a messy, cluttered heap with patches of rust. The old destroyer seemed to be in constant need of repair. Many of the Vance’s officers appeared to have a lackadaisical attitude toward their duties.  Shortly after the official Change of Command ceremony onboard the Vance, Arnheiter met with his officers in the destroyer’s wardroom and informed those junior officers that significant changes needed to be made right away. It all made sense- right? A new captain comes aboard a troubled, floundering ship and insists on making changes. For Lieutenant Commander Marcus Aurelius Arnheiter, this is where his problems would begin.

Of the Vance’s fifteen officers among the crew of over 100 men, Arnheiter was the only Regular Navy Officer. The rest held Navy reserve Commissions and most seemed to have done ROTC in college to avoid eventually being drafted into the Army. By and large, they were not career offices as Arnheiter was. The Vance was one of the destroyers to participate in Operation Market Time, the Navy’s effort to prevent seaborne infiltration from the Viet Cong along the South Vietnamese coast as well as the interdiction of maritime vessels carrying weapons and military supplies for the same. Most of the officers on the Vance seemed to be just marking time and appeared to lack enthusiasm for their important mission. Many of these junior officers aboard the Vance set a poor example for the rated enlisted sailors who comprised the crew. Arnheiter put his foot down and insisted that his officers be clean shaven and that they be in the proper uniform while the destroyer was underway. Arnheiter demanded that his officers set the proper example for the enlisted sailors in their charge.

The grumbling and disdain these officers held for Arnheiter began shortly after they were told to clean up. Arnheiter would conduct meetings with his officers geared toward improving morale aboard the Vance. They were pep talks in a way, and all Captains of ships in the Navy did them and still do. Arnheiter would sometimes open these meetings with his junior officers by reading a prayer from the United States Naval Institute’s book, Prayer’s at Sea. The recitation of such prayers was not uncommon in the 1960s US Navy. He would also use examples of famous American fighting men from history to motivate his mostly unenthusiastic officers to improve and set high personal standards. This was customary for a Captain to do at the time. Some of his liberal officers took offense over Arnheiter’s daring to recite prayers from the Navel institute book and took their grievances to a handpicked and wild-eyed, liberal Navy Chaplin in a letter of complaint.  The Chaplin, a Roman Catholic seemed more interested in what we might call today “woke social justice,” than in promulgating the Gospel of Jesus Christ or for that matter, the mission of the military.

Arnheiter was singled mindedly driven to turn the Vance around. Most of the enlisted sailors were happy to see higher standards and discipline being enforced. Sailors, like all other servicemen desire to serve in an organization or on a ship that they can take pride in and reflects highly upon them and their work.

Among most of the Vance’s junior officers, the story seemed to be quite different. These individuals were serving their time in a relatively safe and comfortable environment compared the Marines and Army soldiers fighting in Vietnam. The junior officers onboard the Vance were simply biding their time until they were released back into the civilian world where they could pursue their intended careers or professions. They seemed to have no problem with the slack ship.  In short a rebellion was forming onboard the Vance. A mutiny of sorts. History shows us that almost all mutinies on naval ships are from “below deck.” This meaning that it is almost always the enlisted sailors who rebel against their Captain and the other officers. Here, however it seems this cowardly if not strangely passive aggressive mutiny, was the product of the rebellious atheistic liberal streak among a number of the Vance’s junior officers who seemed to have other places they would rather be than serving their country in a war zone.

These rebellious officers created a “Mad Marcus” logbook to write down their collective complaints against and jokes about their accomplished commander. It should be noted that this act alone was sufficient to have these men charged with military Non-Judicial Punishment or even a Courts Martial for both disrespect to a superior officer as well as insubordinate conduct unbecoming a Naval officer. Article 89 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice dictates that “Any person…who behaves with disrespect toward his superior commissioned officer shall be punished as a court martial shall direct. This cabal of disgruntled officers made it their new life’s mission to take their Captain down for no other reason that he wanted to clean up the USS Vance.

The letter written by some of the officers serving on the Vance was acted upon by the liberal Chaplin stationed in Pearl Harbor.  This Catholic Chaplin stubbornly hounded the chain of command until finally they relented and decided to send another Chaplin handpicked by the liberal Catholic Chaplin, to visit the USS Vance to take a sensing of the command climate.

This very liberal Protestant Chaplin with under six months of Navy service and who was the choice of the liberal catholic Chaplin, first met with the group of disgruntled junior officers onboard the Vance. One must keep in mind that at this point, nobody was denying that drastic and positive changes were happening on the USS Vance. Standards were restored. Morale was up. The destroyer no longer “looked like a heap” and the enlisted crew members were performing well and once again took pride in their ship.

Despite the positive turnaround, the disgruntled junior officers leveled complaint after complaint against Arnheiter to the young investigating Chaplin- most of which amounted to a subjective analysis of the job their Captain was doing. Finally, when the rookie Chaplin asked them to file written charges against Arnheiter they all, to a man, balked. How odd. Later, several senior Petty Officers (NCOs) where interviewed by the investigating Chaplin. Those Petty Officers expressed admiration for the work Arnheiter was doing in turning the ship around and reported no major disgruntlement among the enlisted sailors.  The Chaplin later issued his report. Case over. Issue resolved. Right?

Unfortunately, no. In his report, the young investigating Chaplin took the information provided by the mutinous officers and he ran with it. He added his own ill-informed, progressive 1960s esque opinions of the overall situation. He then took a bizarre step further and compared the junior officer’s refusal to obey Arnheiter’s orders as akin to the duty of refusal imputed the defendants at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials. Yes, really. “I was only following orders” would be no excuse for obeying the evil tyrant Arnheiter.

After a successful combat operations off the coast of South Vietnam, the USS Vance arrived in Subic Bay, The Philippines. At exactly 8:00 PM that evening, a Navy Commadore boarded the USS Vance, located Lieutenant Commander Arnheiter and informed him that he had been relieved of command pending an investigation. Arnheiter, the destroyer Captain with an impeccable military record now out of the blue, faced a ruined career and professional humiliation over the malicious accusations of a faction of disgruntled and indolent junior officers who resented the discipline and high standards enforced by the Captain who they referred to as a “lifer,” a derogatory name for a career officer. Arnheiter had been Captain of the Vance for only 99 days.

Shortly after Arnheiter left the Vance, some of the disgruntled officers began circulating against Navy regulations, spurious documents and drawings mocking their former skipper. Many of the Petty Officers aboard the Vance where appalled by the sophomoric antics of these junior Commissioned Officers. This bound collection of vulgar descriptions and vile caricatures of Arnheiter took on the very trappings up of stateside subversive hippie style counterculture magazines peddled in 1960s San Francisco. This alone should have had these young impudent officers placed before a courts martial.

There were initial concerns over the way Arnheiter was relieved of command given that Navy regulations called for such accusations like those made by some of his junior officers to be delivered in writing to the Captain while affording him an opportunity to respond. Instead, a brief hearing was conducted after Arnheiter was relived. Witnesses were called who were both favorable and unfavorable toward Arnheiter. In the end, the single senior officer presiding over the hearing for some inexplicable reason, sided with the junior officers over the objections of the NCOs and the decision to relive Lieutenant Commander Arnheiter was sustained. Arnheiter faced a rush to judgment, and this perfunctory and brief hearing constituted a denial of his right to due process.

The hearing officer forwarded his findings of this hastily conducted proceeding to the commander of the Pacific Cruiser-Destroyer Force Rear Admiral Walter H. Baumberger, for his approval. Baumberger was shocked over the entire proceeding which he believed amounted to trivial and unfounded charges by a group of disgruntled and unprofessional junior officers. He dismissed all of the numerous charges against Arnheiter save three which he marked as “insignificant or frivolous.” Further, Admiral Baumberger wanted answers as to why this superb naval officer with an impeccable record was subjected to the humiliating act of being whisked away from his ship and run through what amounted to an “improper, non-regulation kangaroo court.”  Baumberger saw the rebellious attitudes of 1960s American university students seeping into the minds of certain junior officers who were themselves, recent college graduates.

Again, for some unexplained reason, the Navy Department of Personal overruled Admiral Baumberger and reinstated the relieve for cause order against Arnheiter. For his part, Arnheiter didn’t give up. With more information having been provided to him by the mostly loyal enlisted crew, Arnheiter was able to present a complete picture through this additional evidence, of the concerted effort on the part of a faction of junior officers to subvert his authority on the ship and thwart his efforts to retore discipline and high standards of conduct aboard the Vance. The picture painted indicated that the wrong man had been punished.  The documented evidence of these junior officer’s attempts to “covertly sabotage” Arnheiter’s efforts to rehabilitate the USS Vance, were provided to the Secretary of the Navy.

Perhaps the gist of the situation was best explained by one of the Vance’s senior Petty Officers in his declaration, “The trouble was that people (junior officers) had been too used to being lazy and didn’t want to change. As soon as he (Arnheiter) left, everything slumped again.”

The Commander of the Battleship USS New Jersey, Captain Alexander had read the charges against Arnheiter and sent a letter to the Secretary of the Navy in support of Arnheiter. Soon, the issue reached the hallowed halls of the US Congress. The House Armed Services Committee took up Arnheiter’s cause, and five days of hearings were held which essentially lambasted the Navy’s actions in summarily relieving Arnheiter. The Committee Chairman and other members of congress sent a letter to the Secretary of the Navy demanding Arnheiter’s reinstatement and disciplinary action against the mutinous junior officers abord the USS Vance. In all, 88 members of the United States Congress signed a petition to the Secretary of the Navy asking for Arnheiter to be reinstated and for the unseemly blot on his otherwise impeccable career to be removed. Yet, no action was taken.

Perhaps this talented and dedicated naval officer was the first unjustly persecuted victim in what today is known as the “cancel culture.”