At first, most of the audience concentrated ft on the preliminary pageantry in the bullring, showing a polite indifference to the hundreds of blue-uniformed, white-hatted American sailors who were picking their way upward through the crowd. For our part, we were on our best behavior. We had been cautioned in a message from the admiral: "Each of you is an ambassador of good will. Our country is judged by how you act ashore. Don't let her down."
The Sixth Fleet was in Lisbon on this sunny summer afternoon in 1954 and a special bullfight was being staged in our honor. My shipmates and I arrived to find long lines of Lisboans waiting to enter a corrida that was already packed with Portuguese. From these fun-loving people's viewpoint, it would be an exciting afternoon if the matadors were daring and the bulls aggressive. Those of us who had never seen a bullfight, however, didn't quite know what to expect.
We had been told that, unlike the fights in neighboring Spain, Portuguese bulls are never killed in the ring. And, in the hope that the same can always be said of Portuguese matadors, the bulls' horns are sheathed in leather, making them no less dangerous, of course, but far less likely to draw blood. Or so we thought.
We watched in tense silence as, in the first fight of the day, a handsome young toureiro was slammed against the wall and mauled viciously. When the maddened bull was finally lured away from him, he was carried out on a stretcher that trailed small red splashes on the ground.
Shortly afterward, a cavalerio-one who fights on horseback-went flying. His mount, a mare, was hoisted on the horns of a huge yellow bull and was seemingly held aloft momentarily for the crowd to see before being dashed to the ground by the enraged brute. She died in spasms and convulsions in a pool of her own blood.
By then, many of the Portuguese seemed more interested in looking at the pale-faced Americans - who, in turn, seemed more interested in looking for a convenient exit - than in what was happening below.
I could feel the eyes boring into me, and from behind, I could hear the snickers of some young fellows. "Maybe they are seaseeck," one voice stage-whispered. It looked as though we Americans were, indeed, on trial and, thus far, the jury seemed downright hostile.
Then, as the final event of the day approached, I sensed a growing air of expectancy all around me in the crowd. Knowing looks were exchanged. Amused glances were cast. Something was about to happen.
A blare of trumpets hushed the crowd. An announcement boomed and echoed over the loudspeakers in halting English:
Ladeez and gennulmen. We are pleezed to offer - thee prize of a case of shampain - to annee person in the audience - who cares to fight a booll.
A preposterous idea popped into my mind. Could this be an international practical joke? Were the bullfight's impressarios inviting American sailors to fight a bull? Insane!
It would be like halting a World Series game in the last half of the ninth with two out and a three-two count on the batter with the hometown team trailing by one run and having the P.A. announcer ask if there was anybody in the stands who would like to pinch-hit. Crazy!
Yet, if that was not the management's intention, there were those in the stands who apparently liked the idea. My loud-mouthed neighbor jeered to his companion, “Perhaps theez Yankee tourists weel fight only cows - or greezed peegs!”
I looked up at the colorful flags fluttering in the breeze around the rim of the stands, and I could almost see the prestige of American fighting men floating up out of that ring and wafting away in the wind.
Then, suddenly, I glimpsed a flash of white that sailed over my head. It was a sailor's hat - a droll, dinky little sailor's hat - and it landed with an absurd little puff of dust near the center of the ring. Every head in the arena turned to see who had thrown it. Not far up behind me, standing stiffly erect, was a lanky red-headed gunner's mate from my ship. I knew him only as "Red."
Red seemed oblivious to the burst of applause that came, mostly from the Americans. But, as the clapping subsided, titters of laughter rippled around the stands and Red's freckled face flushed. His face usually wore a grin but he wasn't grinning now.
Now, Shorty Cook, the ship's baker, with a round, cherubic face like one of his own hot cross buns, was standing up beside Red. Shorty, who generally smiled when his mates called him "Short-cake" or "Short-order," wasn't smiling now, either. Together, they edged out to the aisle, hesitated, then started their descent to the ring.
"Show'em, Red," urged a grizzled, old chief as the pair passed.
Across the corrida, another blue uniform stood up; and then two more sailors were on their feet high up on my left. Soon a dozen sailors and one big, shiny-buttoned Marine were picking their way downward through the crowd to the bottom of the steps. They vaulted over the wall to the hard-packed earth of the empty ring. I recognized the Marine as the admiral's orderly from the cruiser flagship. He wore a Silver Star he had won in Korea. He was tall, as were all except Shorty Cook, with the chest and shoulders of a middle linebacker.
Every eye was on the men in blue as they gathered in a football huddle at one side of the ring. Red, like a center who has heard the signal and isn’t interested in what pass patterns the reveivers will run, was the first to break from the huddle. He walked out, picked up his hat and casually dusted it off. Following his cue, the others took off their hats and put them in a row on the high corrida wall. They stripped off their blue jumpers, folded them neatly, and lifted them up beside their hats. Then, T-shirts catching the brightness of the sun, bell-bottom trousers flapping, they ambled – no, make that rolled – out to the center of the ring as the crowd roared with laughter.
There was a delay while some attendants came out to spread sawdust over the pool of the mare's blood. The laughter grew strained, faltered, and gave way to a rustle of nervous whispering: "Are they drunk?" "What do they know about fighting bulls?" "Fools!" "Do they want to be killed?" The joke was no longer funny.
As I looked at them - Red, Shorty, the big Marine - they looked alike despite their differences in height, build, and coloring. What was it? Then it hit me. Every last one of them was bowlegged! They looked like men who had spent a lot of time in a saddle. Had they grown up in Wyoming or Montana or Texas? If so, they probably knew something about handling cattle. But, a bull? A bull that had been bred to fight and kill in the ring?
Suddenly, with a roll of drums and a blare of trumpets, the bullpen gate flew open. Out charged the biggest, blackest bull in the history of bulldom. Instantly, the crowd was on its feet. "Toro!" they screamed. "Ole!Ole!" "Torrro!"
Then, all eyes turned back to the ragged knot of sailors standing stiff-legged and wary in the center of the ring and it was as if someone had switched a radio's dial from blaring rock-and-roll music to church services. In the ominous stillness that followed, the monstrous animal saw the men and pulled up short to size them up. The muscles of his neck rippled and twitched, as he swung his head in jerking movements to look first at one and then at another man.
I noticed for the first time the leather shields on his immense horns- thoughtful, these Portuguese-but it seemed to me they would just make bigger, uglier wounds.
Now the great beast snorted his contempt. His head was high, his hooves pounded the earth, his tail lashed like a blacksnake whip. A dour, old Portuguese gentleman sitting in front of me groaned and shook his head. His wife pressed her hands tightly over her eyes.
The bull wheeled in a cloud of dust and stood glaring at the sailors, who looked as fragile as a clump of tumbleweeds that a fickle breeze had suddenly blown together. Then, he thundered toward them, hooves clattering on the hard ground, big horns like baseball bats thrashing the air, eyes glowing like hot coals.
There was a chorus of gasps as the dust cleared and we saw that Shorty was down. The bull turned to get him and Shorty suddenly seemed I’d recall an important appointment elsewhere. He leaped to his· feet and started to run, the bull pounding hard on his heels and closing the gap fast.
But, though the bull had the speed on Shorty, a skinny sailor had the angle on the bull and, like a desperate defensive safety, he made a diving tackle and, catching the bull's tail, he hung on. Obviously amazed at this impertinence, the bull skidded to a halt and spun around. He shouldn't have.
Before the dumb brute - the bull, that is - could recover, Red had leaped on its back and straddled its neck and, as quickly, three more sailors were astride behind Red, the last riding backwards.
"Yeeeeeaaah-whooooo!" yelled Red, perched on the bull's bow, so to speak. "Yeeeee-hih-heeeee!" responded the voice from the bull's stern. The crowd shrieked with relief and delight. "Ride, Red, ride!" roared the sailors in the stands.
The bull, bucking and twisting to throw off his tormentors, bellowed his rage. Still, with nothing to hold onto but each other, the hurtling hitchhikers somehow managed to stay aboard the bucking bull.
Now, the big Marine came circling around from the side - as Marines are wont to do - watching for his opening. With a roar that could be heard on the not-too-distant Shores of Tripoli, he pounced on the animal and, hammerlocking a foreleg, twisted hard.
The bull staggered momentarily and then went down and, as he did so, he was buried beneath an avalanche of bell-bottomed trousers and filthy skivvy shirts.
It was all over. The crowd went wild, yelling and stamping their feet until the whole corrida shook. The dour, old Portuguese doubled up on his seat and laughed until he cried.
The people of Lisbon that day may have learned something new about bullfighting that they wouldn't have in a lifetime of watching the poised, skilled, 8-men teams of professional forcadors who tackle a bull in barehanded struggle and immobilize it. They certainly learned something new about Americans and, in particular, about American sailors. As for us Sixth Fleeters, we strutted out of that bull ring as proud as if we had just built, or bought, the place. But, we couldn't buy anything then or that night. There wasn't a bar in Lisbon where an American bluejacket could pay for the drinks.
Thanks to a dozen bowlegged bluejackets and a bandy-legged bell-hop, all of whom knew what a hat in the ring meant, American prestige in Lisbon had never glistened more brightly.