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Navy Commander Maurice "Mo" Kaprow was stunned to watch then Commander Holly Graf in action. He saw her for the first time after arriving aboard her ship, the destroyer U.S.S. Winston S. Churchill, in Italy just before the Iraq war began in 2003. A Jewish rabbi and a Navy chaplain, he'd been sent to the Churchill on temporary assignment as the vessel readied for war. Usually pulling out of port is a methodical and precise process. But as Kaprow recalled on Friday, "I never in my life saw such chaos as there was on that bridge - Holly Graf began...
Kaprow left the Navy last month after a 20-year career and visits to some 200 ships. Morale aboard the Churchill, he said, was the worst he ever saw - even on the eve of war with Saddam Hussein, when the Churchill launched Tomahawk missiles from the eastern Mediterranean toward Iraq. "I think the lady is mentally unbalanced," Kaprow said. "I don't believe she ever should have had command." (See more about the rise and fall of Holly Graf...
...known as the "combat rabbi" aboard the Churchill found the environment aboard the ship to be "weird, absolutely weird." Graf would talk to some of her officers but not to others. She would show up at the daily morning intelligence briefing in apparel that Kaprow had never seen on a Navy warship before. "She'd be wearing black slippers," he said, "with one fuzzy ball on each one." Then there were the tirades. "She would argue with the briefers, belittling them," Kaprow said. "Just absolute vile stuff that I had never heard from a C.O. before." (See pictures of crime...
After about 10 days aboard the Churchill, concerned about poor morale on the eve of war, Kaprow visited Graf in her stateroom. "I told her, 'I'm getting some vibes - you're a nice lady and you have a hard job' - I'm telling her some of the junior officers are concerned and are really upset," Kaprow recalled. "I'm giving her the spiel, and she just goes bonkers and cuts me off. She said she didn't want to talk about it." (See the best pictures...
Other variables beyond the question of time played important roles too. The Lusitania's passengers may have been more prone to stampede than those aboard the Titanic because they were traveling in wartime and were aware that they could come under attack at any moment. The very nature of the attack that sank the Lusitania - the sudden concussion of a torpedo, compared to the slow grinding of an iceberg - would also be likelier to spark panic. Finally, there was the simple fact that everyone aboard the Lusitania was aware of what had happened to the Titanic just three years earlier...