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"Marcus Mad Log." Along with the Vance's twelve other officers, Lieut. R. S. Hardy Jr., the executive officer, wasted no love on the new skipper; he felt that Arnheiter was too zealous. Operations Officer William T. Generous, a bespectacled lieutenant who had undergone psychiatric treatment before Arnheiter's accession, resented the fantail services; a Catholic, he considered them a Protestant imposition, and at Hardy's suggestion wrote a letter of complaint to a Catholic chaplain. Gunnery Officer Luis G. Belmonte, another lieutenant, took umbrage when Arnheiter asked him to wade fully clothed into the water off Waikiki to shoot a picture of the skipper and his visiting wife in an outrigger. Belmonte began keeping a "Marcus Mad Log" of Arnheiter's actions and came up with 34 separate complaints.
Etiquette & Close Support. In the log he noted that Arnheiter once drank spiked eggnog aboard, and kept a pitcher of brandy in the officers' mess to pour over his peaches and ice cream—a blatant violation of nonalcoholic Navy Regulations. At a ship's party in Guam, the skipper ordered Generous to sit cross-legged at his feet, and had another officer roll up his trouser legs and act as a "pompom girl." He also ordered his officers to give impromptu speeches at dinner on cultural subjects (sample theme: "Opera-Box Etiquette in Milano"). But it was Arnheiter's gung-ho tactics in combat off Viet Nam that really upset the junior officers.
So eager was Arnheiter to remain "on the line" in the South China Sea that he filed false spare-parts reports, claiming to have fewer aboard than he did so that he would not have to share them with other destroyers, and thus risk having to go back to port to replenish. That, too, violated Navy Regs. On patrol duty, he was combative to a fault. In hopes of locating Communist shore batteries, Arnheiter sent the speedboat close inshore to draw their fire, meanwhile bringing the Vance and her 3-in. guns into the largely uncharted shoal waters off the coast to strike when the Reds revealed themselves. Several times, he fired his pistol at "sea snakes" near junks that his men were inspecting; often he fired warning shots across Vietnamese bows with his own M-l rifle when he felt that they were not responding swiftly enough to his heave-to orders.
During one amphibious operation off Nam Quan, Arnheiter—whose orders were to stay well at sea and cut off any Viet Cong "ex-filtration" by boat—commanded his officers to file false position reports and then took the Vance in close some 20 times to bombard the shore. On another occasion, Arnheiter brought the Vance within 250 yds. of the beach to blast a Buddhist pagoda that he suspected of being a Communist automatic-weapons position—and, according to the junior officers, avoided grounding only because Exec Hardy "relieved the skipper at the conn" and wheeled the ship to safety.