Pipedragger's weekly navy story (Episode 3: Old School)
Disclaimer:
This is overly long, it rambles, and I am still not completely convinced it makes good sense. But, by golly, I finally finished it. Seriously folks, only squids and ex-squids ought to read this. All y'all others are just gonna wish you hadn't. And if you're one of those "yes-man" squids, you might ought to skip this too.
As you read my ranting and rambling, shipmates, go ahead and extrapolate this out to it's illogical conclusion. That's where this stuff either is, or is headed, anyway. I just couldn't get it all down for you.
I guess I am old school. An unrepentant dinosaur of a time passed. But that's me. The navy as I learned it is all upside down. You can wear tennis shoes and white socks in uniform. You can wear a backpack in uniform. You can wear a backpack in a MATERNITY uniform. In tennis shoes.
There's overseas billets going unfilled because you cannot order someone to go if they don't wanna. And if they do go, you pay them extra. I grew up having the opportunity to seek to decline any particular set of orders. But there was one difference. If there wasn't someone else available who might take the billet, and it was going to leave a hole in an operational unit to not fill it, I got handed the orders anyway. It was called "needs of the navy" and it trumped "what Ed wants" every time. But those were the rules, they applied to everybody, and you sucked it up and moved on. But...that's not the story for today. That was just a little "bonus bitching" I threw in as a freebie.
I served in five ships of the line. We would often pull into a port away from home. That's pretty much why we all joined the navy instead of the Chair Force, I mean Air Force. There would be "busy work" for us to hold us until knock off. No need for any town to have drunken sailors blowing off steam at 2 PM on a weekday, and trust me, that's what would happen without the busy work. Busy work was never very difficult nor very critical, which is good because a lot of it wasn't getting done anyway. We were all thinking about liberty call. When liberty call went down, they pointed to the brow and said, "Be back for your duty day. Ship sails on Thursday." And that was that.
We didn't have a lot of liberty incidents then like we do now. Mainly because the definition of "incident" was more stringent and included only things that were truely incidents. For instance, if you got thrown in jail and the cops were pissed off; or if a foreign national was injured by you, well, those were incidents. And rightly so. But... If you got thrown in jail and the cops were laughing at your stupid ass or if you was injured by you, then those were more properly defined as "lessons learned". There were a lot of lessons learned back in the day.
When we used to have a base in Subic Bay, Philippines we didn't think life could get any better. A big difference between there and stateside bases was that rather than normal 20 year old Marines doing gate duty, they had these big, burly, relatively unfriendly Provost Masrhal's guarding the gate. If they spoke to you, the response was "Yes, sir". If they were feeling particularly forgiving that day, you may could get by with, "OK." No other response was expected nor accepted. Unacceptable responses were met with a crack upside the head, your face in the concrete wall and a handcuffed ride back to the ship. They had heard it all before and didn't feel like hearing it again, especially from some skinny, loudmouthed drunk kid who was thinking he was gonna explain what he thought he wasn't going to do and why he wasn't going to do it. That was another of those lessons learned scenarios.
And we had this one young electrician who must have been going for a doctorate or something because a couple of San Miguels and some mojo and it was 1) Stumble to the gate broke, but smiling; 2) Forget the "Yes, sir" rule when responding to the OPM guard; 3) forget the "Yes, sir" rule again as he tries to correct you while proceeding to attempt to correct his rude, brutish self; 4) WHAP-CRACK. Lesson learned. Return to ship bloody and explaining to anybody who will listen, "I didn't do anything. He just hit me for no reason". But we all knew. Only one thing leaves you looking like that, and that's forgetting the "Yes, sir" rule at the gate.
By the way, these were not incidents because they happened on base. They were merely lessons. And they needed to be learned. The hard way.
And maybe the thing that pisses me off the most nowadays, there were no "incidents" on the ship. Assuming you made it back, regardless of how ugly it was to watch you coming down the pier, and you reported back onboard (in English or some semblence thereof) without throwing any punches at the watchstanders, then you were good to go. Mission accomplished. Strike below and crash out, shipmate. You play hard, you snore hard.
Now they call everything an incident. Our sailors have to go out with buddies and be back by dark. Everything is "off limits" from rental scooters, to jet skis, to parasailing to hiring a boat. They say find something to do besides drink, then put everything but the bars off limits. But it's so we don't hurt ourselves or get in an argument over price and cause an "incident".
It gets more ridiculous. I have witnessed the following things referred to in disciplinary proceedings as incidents. And yes, these things made it into at least the preliminary stages of disciplinary proceedings:
1. Walking down the boardwalk in a beach resort city shirtless (male).
2. Dancing on a picnic table in a beach bar (alongside civilian tourists and bar employees). The civilains were having fun, but the young sailor was having "an incident". And of course, since he had had a beer, it was an "alcohol related incident" to boot.
3. Walking across the quarterdeck and the Officer of the Deck smelled alcohol. Never mind he was dropped off by a taxi, never mind that he showed no discernable signs of being impaired, no matter that he showed proper military protocols and courtesies upon his return, and no matter that IT ISN'T ILLEGAL OR AGAINST THE UCMJ for a 29 year old E-5 in the military to have a few drinks...he was considered an incident. Because the Ensign (That's an O-1 with 6 months experience. Most aren't even shaving yet) smelled alcohol.
In this old goat's mind, if you made it home...you were home. You were safe. Incidents only occured off base and had to include one of the following: Blood, stitches or police. Even if you fell off the brow coming aboard, at this point the public was not witness to it, so it COULD NOT POSSIBLY be an "incident".
We ran rampant in The Philippines, Thailand, Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, China, Honolulu, Malaysia and a few other places too. We were having fun. We were spending money. And while probably nobody wanted to see their daughters bring us home, they just shook their heads and left us be. Yeah, because we were laughing and spending money. And in 4 days we'd be gone, but our money would stay behind.
We would get 3 or 4 ports on the way out and then the same coming home. It was enough adventure to make the long hours and tedious watches worth it. But now, there are hardly any ports. One, maybe two. And often they are less than ideal. Anchor at a Thai navy base with on base liberty only. Pull into Hong Kong, but it's Cinderella liberty and only with a buddy. And if you want to come home at 7 PM and your buddy wants to come home at 11 PM one of you has to give in. Because if you come home alone, both of you don't get any more liberty because you had a liberty incident. Yeah, there's that loose interpretation of the word again.
My biggest problem with this is two fold. One, it is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Secondly, it inflates the numbers.
It is self-fulfilling because the youngins want to experience the liberty ports. They want to wander around, eat stuff, shop and sample the night life. If they only get 6 or 7 hours to do that, they often skip the wandering, a lot of the shopping and a lot of the eating and go straight to the nightlife. They don't really feel they have the time to just kick back all leisure like and sip beers because they gotta get back to the ship. So they drink them pretty fast. Then, after a few, a pretty painted lady extends an offer that includes hugging and kissing, so they go for it. They end up rushing home, some making it in time, some not. Those that are not on time have just had a "liberty incident". And it's all because of the imposed situation. So the same guy next time, in order to not be late again, starts drinking earlier, which means he's drunk earlier, which makes him do stupid stuff again like be late. Or worse start yelling at a cab driver to hurry up, thereby causing an "international incident". Just give them the time off to enjoy themselves more normally and more of you "incidents" will go away.
The numbers are inflated because something as trivial as having to be told to put your shirt back on is considered an incident. It gets reported as such. Four sets of bare man boobs and a fight with a shopkeep equals five "incidents". Admiral Stickupthebutt, sees these five "incidents", yells at the Commanding Officers to get this unacceptable behavior under control, the CO's impose even more stringent liberty restrictions, the youngins, who are still attempting to have a good time in a liberty port try to squeeze 8 hours worth of drinking, hugging, and painted lady kissing into 3 hours. You know where it goes from there. The madness feeds on itself. This is today's navy.
When we had liberty in Cartagena, Colombia I spent the week at a hotel. I came on the ship one day to check on things, make sure the radar was still there and stuff. A worried young Fire Control Officer asked to talk to me privately, so we headed to the fantail. "Chief", he said, "FC3 _____ and GM3 ______ had an incident last night and I don't know what I should do." "Well, sir, what happened?" "They were trying to get into that disco with all the chicks in it, but the doorman said it was full and wouldn't let them in. So they went around back, climbed over some stuff and tried to jimmy a second floor window open to get in. Some Colombian police trained their machine guns on them and made them come down and then brought them back to the ship. They were pretty shook up." "Well....that'll teach 'em", I said matter of factly, "Who else knows this?" "Just me and the Petty Officer of the Watch, Chief." "OK, then screw it. That's how the knuckleheads learn. Just tell them I was fit to be tied and bound and determined to chew their ass, but you got me calmed down some. They'll be careful now anyway. I'm headed back to the hotel. Is there anything else?" "Nope. Thanks, Chief. Somehow I knew you'd say something like that." Word.
PS: Pipedragger. This is a lot of typing. Hope you're enjoying them, shipmate.
Shofar (shogood), out
Travelin' Ed
This is overly long, it rambles, and I am still not completely convinced it makes good sense. But, by golly, I finally finished it. Seriously folks, only squids and ex-squids ought to read this. All y'all others are just gonna wish you hadn't. And if you're one of those "yes-man" squids, you might ought to skip this too.
As you read my ranting and rambling, shipmates, go ahead and extrapolate this out to it's illogical conclusion. That's where this stuff either is, or is headed, anyway. I just couldn't get it all down for you.
I guess I am old school. An unrepentant dinosaur of a time passed. But that's me. The navy as I learned it is all upside down. You can wear tennis shoes and white socks in uniform. You can wear a backpack in uniform. You can wear a backpack in a MATERNITY uniform. In tennis shoes.
There's overseas billets going unfilled because you cannot order someone to go if they don't wanna. And if they do go, you pay them extra. I grew up having the opportunity to seek to decline any particular set of orders. But there was one difference. If there wasn't someone else available who might take the billet, and it was going to leave a hole in an operational unit to not fill it, I got handed the orders anyway. It was called "needs of the navy" and it trumped "what Ed wants" every time. But those were the rules, they applied to everybody, and you sucked it up and moved on. But...that's not the story for today. That was just a little "bonus bitching" I threw in as a freebie.
I served in five ships of the line. We would often pull into a port away from home. That's pretty much why we all joined the navy instead of the Chair Force, I mean Air Force. There would be "busy work" for us to hold us until knock off. No need for any town to have drunken sailors blowing off steam at 2 PM on a weekday, and trust me, that's what would happen without the busy work. Busy work was never very difficult nor very critical, which is good because a lot of it wasn't getting done anyway. We were all thinking about liberty call. When liberty call went down, they pointed to the brow and said, "Be back for your duty day. Ship sails on Thursday." And that was that.
We didn't have a lot of liberty incidents then like we do now. Mainly because the definition of "incident" was more stringent and included only things that were truely incidents. For instance, if you got thrown in jail and the cops were pissed off; or if a foreign national was injured by you, well, those were incidents. And rightly so. But... If you got thrown in jail and the cops were laughing at your stupid ass or if you was injured by you, then those were more properly defined as "lessons learned". There were a lot of lessons learned back in the day.
When we used to have a base in Subic Bay, Philippines we didn't think life could get any better. A big difference between there and stateside bases was that rather than normal 20 year old Marines doing gate duty, they had these big, burly, relatively unfriendly Provost Masrhal's guarding the gate. If they spoke to you, the response was "Yes, sir". If they were feeling particularly forgiving that day, you may could get by with, "OK." No other response was expected nor accepted. Unacceptable responses were met with a crack upside the head, your face in the concrete wall and a handcuffed ride back to the ship. They had heard it all before and didn't feel like hearing it again, especially from some skinny, loudmouthed drunk kid who was thinking he was gonna explain what he thought he wasn't going to do and why he wasn't going to do it. That was another of those lessons learned scenarios.
And we had this one young electrician who must have been going for a doctorate or something because a couple of San Miguels and some mojo and it was 1) Stumble to the gate broke, but smiling; 2) Forget the "Yes, sir" rule when responding to the OPM guard; 3) forget the "Yes, sir" rule again as he tries to correct you while proceeding to attempt to correct his rude, brutish self; 4) WHAP-CRACK. Lesson learned. Return to ship bloody and explaining to anybody who will listen, "I didn't do anything. He just hit me for no reason". But we all knew. Only one thing leaves you looking like that, and that's forgetting the "Yes, sir" rule at the gate.
By the way, these were not incidents because they happened on base. They were merely lessons. And they needed to be learned. The hard way.
And maybe the thing that pisses me off the most nowadays, there were no "incidents" on the ship. Assuming you made it back, regardless of how ugly it was to watch you coming down the pier, and you reported back onboard (in English or some semblence thereof) without throwing any punches at the watchstanders, then you were good to go. Mission accomplished. Strike below and crash out, shipmate. You play hard, you snore hard.
Now they call everything an incident. Our sailors have to go out with buddies and be back by dark. Everything is "off limits" from rental scooters, to jet skis, to parasailing to hiring a boat. They say find something to do besides drink, then put everything but the bars off limits. But it's so we don't hurt ourselves or get in an argument over price and cause an "incident".
It gets more ridiculous. I have witnessed the following things referred to in disciplinary proceedings as incidents. And yes, these things made it into at least the preliminary stages of disciplinary proceedings:
1. Walking down the boardwalk in a beach resort city shirtless (male).
2. Dancing on a picnic table in a beach bar (alongside civilian tourists and bar employees). The civilains were having fun, but the young sailor was having "an incident". And of course, since he had had a beer, it was an "alcohol related incident" to boot.
3. Walking across the quarterdeck and the Officer of the Deck smelled alcohol. Never mind he was dropped off by a taxi, never mind that he showed no discernable signs of being impaired, no matter that he showed proper military protocols and courtesies upon his return, and no matter that IT ISN'T ILLEGAL OR AGAINST THE UCMJ for a 29 year old E-5 in the military to have a few drinks...he was considered an incident. Because the Ensign (That's an O-1 with 6 months experience. Most aren't even shaving yet) smelled alcohol.
In this old goat's mind, if you made it home...you were home. You were safe. Incidents only occured off base and had to include one of the following: Blood, stitches or police. Even if you fell off the brow coming aboard, at this point the public was not witness to it, so it COULD NOT POSSIBLY be an "incident".
We ran rampant in The Philippines, Thailand, Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, China, Honolulu, Malaysia and a few other places too. We were having fun. We were spending money. And while probably nobody wanted to see their daughters bring us home, they just shook their heads and left us be. Yeah, because we were laughing and spending money. And in 4 days we'd be gone, but our money would stay behind.
We would get 3 or 4 ports on the way out and then the same coming home. It was enough adventure to make the long hours and tedious watches worth it. But now, there are hardly any ports. One, maybe two. And often they are less than ideal. Anchor at a Thai navy base with on base liberty only. Pull into Hong Kong, but it's Cinderella liberty and only with a buddy. And if you want to come home at 7 PM and your buddy wants to come home at 11 PM one of you has to give in. Because if you come home alone, both of you don't get any more liberty because you had a liberty incident. Yeah, there's that loose interpretation of the word again.
My biggest problem with this is two fold. One, it is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Secondly, it inflates the numbers.
It is self-fulfilling because the youngins want to experience the liberty ports. They want to wander around, eat stuff, shop and sample the night life. If they only get 6 or 7 hours to do that, they often skip the wandering, a lot of the shopping and a lot of the eating and go straight to the nightlife. They don't really feel they have the time to just kick back all leisure like and sip beers because they gotta get back to the ship. So they drink them pretty fast. Then, after a few, a pretty painted lady extends an offer that includes hugging and kissing, so they go for it. They end up rushing home, some making it in time, some not. Those that are not on time have just had a "liberty incident". And it's all because of the imposed situation. So the same guy next time, in order to not be late again, starts drinking earlier, which means he's drunk earlier, which makes him do stupid stuff again like be late. Or worse start yelling at a cab driver to hurry up, thereby causing an "international incident". Just give them the time off to enjoy themselves more normally and more of you "incidents" will go away.
The numbers are inflated because something as trivial as having to be told to put your shirt back on is considered an incident. It gets reported as such. Four sets of bare man boobs and a fight with a shopkeep equals five "incidents". Admiral Stickupthebutt, sees these five "incidents", yells at the Commanding Officers to get this unacceptable behavior under control, the CO's impose even more stringent liberty restrictions, the youngins, who are still attempting to have a good time in a liberty port try to squeeze 8 hours worth of drinking, hugging, and painted lady kissing into 3 hours. You know where it goes from there. The madness feeds on itself. This is today's navy.
When we had liberty in Cartagena, Colombia I spent the week at a hotel. I came on the ship one day to check on things, make sure the radar was still there and stuff. A worried young Fire Control Officer asked to talk to me privately, so we headed to the fantail. "Chief", he said, "FC3 _____ and GM3 ______ had an incident last night and I don't know what I should do." "Well, sir, what happened?" "They were trying to get into that disco with all the chicks in it, but the doorman said it was full and wouldn't let them in. So they went around back, climbed over some stuff and tried to jimmy a second floor window open to get in. Some Colombian police trained their machine guns on them and made them come down and then brought them back to the ship. They were pretty shook up." "Well....that'll teach 'em", I said matter of factly, "Who else knows this?" "Just me and the Petty Officer of the Watch, Chief." "OK, then screw it. That's how the knuckleheads learn. Just tell them I was fit to be tied and bound and determined to chew their ass, but you got me calmed down some. They'll be careful now anyway. I'm headed back to the hotel. Is there anything else?" "Nope. Thanks, Chief. Somehow I knew you'd say something like that." Word.
PS: Pipedragger. This is a lot of typing. Hope you're enjoying them, shipmate.
Shofar (shogood), out
Travelin' Ed
That's what I'm about. Ramblin' Ed at 8:14 PM
11 comments:
Can YOU where a maternity uniform? -Jn
Maybe it's just me, but the thought of maternity combat fatigues boggles my mind.
And I'm sure you would not understand my vehement opposition to white socks. That's a navy chief thing.
Ed
Yes Senior Chief,
I do enjoy the sea stories the most. And I must say that this story saddens me as well as makes me happy.
Sad for all the sailors who still go on 6 + month deployments, away from family and friends, and are no longer compensated for this service to our country. (We all know that Navy pay is not really proper compensation) Also, simply, I am happy that I got out before it got so bad...
Thanks, Pipedragger
I think Ed would look rather silly in a maternity uniform but then he would look less silly when driving his car with the frilly pillows etc.
Oh Dang. You remember the pillows.
Ed
Ed, Army and Navy are both four letter words.
Years back when I had a grizzled "Veitnam" Ranger as a 1Sgt(E-8), I over heard him say that he did not beleive in "burning" people. You had to physicaly harm someone or still something before he would tell the Captain(O-3)to burn you. He caught one boy speeding by him on a motorcycle up I-185. He winded up being on every detail in the Battalion. For a week he got two hours sleep a night. He stopped doing over a 100MPH on motorcycles and it didn't go on his record.It didn't cost him any money.
On a more personal note...I did a NO NO and loaned my ID card to someone(long story). The guy went out and got into trouble. My 1SGT(a different one from the Grizzled old Veitnam guy) "confined" me to my room for the weekend...a terrible thing to do to a 20 year old boy. I got my ass chewed, but, it didn't go on my record or cost me money.
As a result a young enlisted man(like I was) felt like his Leadership was realy Leadership(not the fake it kind)and that they did genueinley care for him. They became more dedicated. They learn how to handle things without them being wrapped around a Beuarcratic Axle.
As a fellow NCO, I beleive your actions in the Columbia incedent were entirley correct. Those two Sailors performed a little better after that didn't they?
I'm going to link this...
Hey there AI,
You betcha. Them boys were on their best after that.
That's what I was trying to say, the stuff you did. Boys are boys and boys are stupid. Let them make the mistakes, make it NOT worth their while to keep making the same ones over and over, and don't screw them for the next 15 years over a youthful indiscretion. Good job bringing that into focus.
You're always free to link to anything of mine. But be warned, most don't find me too interesting.
Ed
Even though Chair Force, I had a Naval Lesson Learned. Do NOT try to drink Royal Australian Navy sailors under the table in Sattahip, Thailand. It can't be done! You will be fall down drunk heading for the baht bus while they are merely showing a slight buzz.
I was also a guest of the Royal New Zealand Air Force Warrant Officer and Senior NCO Mess in Wellington, NZ one time and that's another bunch you don't want to take on - alcoholically, that is.
Gunner,
First off it is foolishness to even try against the navy (of most any country). But even then, you tried and failed against another country's air force.
Where I come from, we got a name for somebody who can't out drink the Kiwi Air Force. We call 'em girls.
Travelin' Ed
Well, Edward, I've got an out. That Kiwi Chair Force Base was one of those co-located things and they shared facilities with the Royal NZ Navy folk. So, they were used to drinking at the Kiwi swab level!
Fair enough.
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