An End to Innocence

By:  John Petersen

Ahh…those were the days…
Freedom at last! You’re North of the ‘Gate’.
The evening is early, your night in the hands of fate.
Made your first stop for a few primers and grub,
After politely excusing your lap warmer, it’s off to the next pub.
As you look down this avenue, full of people, traffic signs, and lights,
things seem overwhelming, overbearing, your brain cells in constant fights.
“Which way do I go? Which door do I enter”?
Seems every establishment is slightly off center.
Chief laid the order, to my LPO in charge of my first night,
“Bring him back in one piece, free of the clap and without a fight.
For if this young booter, who’s life you are entrusted,
Comes back spoiled or soiled, your ass is busted”!
Let him sweat bullets, you think, as this is your night to explore.
‘Omaha ain’t nothing like this, oh God gimme more’!
One after another gotta try each dimly lit and noisy place,
If you could put them all in alphabetical order, it would only slow your pace.
Olongapo, the Barrio, amazingly the choices are endless, yet so many treats,
But cross the line into Subic City young and wise Cherry Boy,
And you’ll find an adult Disneyland, for before your eyes a deviated feast!
The debauchery, the deviousness, the seemingly endless show of skin,
The more San MaGoo’s you plow down, the more of the Peso’s in that stack you put in!
The night goes on, everything happens so fast, time flies like the wind,
And somehow, some way, you’ve made your way back to where it all seemed to begin.
You’ve tried just about everything from Mojo to Bullfrog both red and green,
And the bet is on that no one back home will believe anything you’ve seen.
Heading unsteadily back to the gate, it’s very dark, LPO got lost, but wait, hold up!
Food! Oh God, how you need it, something to fill the gut is required, Ayup!
Your prayers are answered, river queens replaced by BBQ carts, the smell is commanding,
You haven’t had a thing to eat in hours, the body is demanding.
Sustenance is needed and no question to that fact,
You’ve still got a pocket full of coin, and now is the time to act.
Absolutely no idea as to the origin of this meat,
All you know is it hits the spot, fills the void that the night has demanded to defeat.
Made it through the gate, no strip searches this time around,
You’ve made it back to the ship oh heroic one, your rack you actually found!
As you pour yourself into your private place of slumber, oh inebriated one,
Don’t forget the alarm clock as quarters are soon to come!

Louis L’Amour Shitkickers and Skin Books

By:  Garland Davis

I know all of you will remember reading just to pass the time.  There were Louis L’Amour shitkickers, Shell Scott, and Travis McGee adventures along with semi-pornographic literature with titles like Swamp Woman, Boarding School Babes, or Dixie Darlings that set one looking for an odd sock after taps.  Those of us in the Asia Fleet were hooked on a series of “Kill Me in ______” detailing the Japanese exploits of Karate Master Burns Bannion.

I’ll tell you that no one ever ran into a John Steinbeck or Herman Melville novel that was in as much demand as Showdown at Laredo, The Running Gun, or Pink Pussycats.

The Chaplain had pocket-size New Testaments available.  Anyone could get one. You would see one or two before Easter or Christmas and on Sunday mornings when Divine Services were conducted aboard.   I’m sure some guys read them regularly, but they didn’t berth with the cooks or snipes.

Let’s face it, we read worthless “no literary merit” paperback trash.  At sea, U.S. currency had little value except as counters in the various games of chance.  Horse trading took place in a barter system involving smokes, razor blades, and fuck books.

How many of you have ever started a book and discovered the last dozen or so pages were missing?  Some guys tore books in half so they could pass on the first half to some other idiot waiting for it while they finished the second half.  I still have no idea how some books I started ended.

I remember a book that was making the rounds on one ship.  Don’t remember the title, if I ever knew it. It had been well read; some of the pages were even stuck together for some reason.  It was about a Navy pilot who was shot down by the Japanese and bailed out over an unknown South Sea island.  When he landed, a tribe of two hundred beautiful sex-starved Amazons with perfect large bust development captured and subjected him to a myriad of sexual perversions.  By the time he was rescued by some Baptist missionaries in 1948, he was down to eighty-five pounds, was blind and had been promoted to Commander with six years back pay accumulated.  We always figured that it took the plastic surgeons at least a year to get the smile off his face.

Sailors will read anything just to fill time.  I was being facetious when I said it was just shitkickers and fuck books. I served in one ship where Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire was passed around and read by many of us.

It sometimes got to the point where we found ourselves reading the printing on cereal boxes at breakfast or the labels on the catsup bottles.  You hit the high point of desperation for something to read when you resorted to reading the dry cleaning instructions sewn in your peacoat.

Ships contain miniature societies.  Little municipal jurisdictions afloat on the seas.  Libraries of books were stored under mattresses, in lockers, bunk bags, and in overhead nooks and crannies.  You didn’t need a library card.  All you had to do to scare up a trade was yell, “Anybody want to read Snow White and the Horney Dwarf or Goldilocks and the Sailor?

Heavy Rolls and Horsecock Sandwiches

By:  Garland Davis

Everyone who reads the crap I write may not have had the absolute pleasure of riding out a typhoon in the South China Sea in an Ocean Going Tug, A Forrest Sherman class destroyer, or a top heavy Fast Frigate.  This sort of paints a picture of the way it was.

There is not an amusement park ride that comes anywhere close to riding into the seas with swells breaking over the signal bridge.  If you like a pitching gyration insane motion, you get it big time riding out a typhoon.  Unlike the thrill park rides, it doesn’t cost a lot and lasts a long, long, long time.

There are foam-capped swells the size of skyscrapers that bounce a ship around like a flea on the ass of a belly dancer.  The pleasure of being damn near beat to death by bouncing from bulkhead to bulkhead trying to dodge valve wheels, valve stems and each other is one that airdales and bubbleheads seldom experience.

There is majesty to heavy seas.  It is almost impossible to witness the raw power of heavy seas and not wonder if there is a greater power controlling everything.  Only a Deity should wield and control that much power.

One minute you are climbing an enormous swell with bow pointed skyward and the next the bow is submerging and the water is smashing over the bridge.  “Ride ‘em Cowboy.  Put another quarter in Mama, I want to ride it again.” It repeats and repeats, accompanied by lateral motions, figure eight stern gyrations, and little jerks and vibrations thrown in by the Devil just for the hell of it.

Inside the ship, grown men are tossed and stagger around like drunks, forgotten booty falls out of overhead hiding places and the meals become an endless succession of fucking Horsecock sandwiches and coffee or bug juice.

The lyrics of an old song tell it well: “Oh, it’s roll and toss, And pound and pitch, And creak and groan, You rusty son of a bitch. Oh, boy, it’s a hell of a life on a destroyer.”

Your God Damn fillings get loose in your teeth, you lose your watch, your smokes go flying, guys shoot their lunch, roaches do flips out of the overhead, the cooks are cussing, and guys in their racks dying to take a piss ask themselves, “Do I really want to work my way to the head to watch some son of a bitch puke while I attempt to piss in a moving target?”

Suddenly, over the 1MC comes, “Now stand by for heavy rolls to port.”

Do we really have a fuckin’ choice?  Are heavy rolls to port different from what we have experienced for the last day and a half?  Did I miss something?  Is there still shit in the overhead that needs to hit me in the head?

Actually, all that “Heavy Rolls to port” means that all the stuff that flew by you in one direction will be coming back and putting knots on your head from the other side.

“Supper for the crew.  Watch reliefs to the head of the line.”

“Hey Bill, do you think it is Horsecock and cheese sandwiches again?”

“Does a hobbyhorse have a wooden dick?”

“Hey you guys, you ought to go back to after steering and listen to the rudder slamming.  Son of a bitch is going nuts.  Who has the helm?”

“I got it next watch.”

“Not me, I am going to strike for Mess Deck Master at Arms and sit in the Mess Deck eating Horsecock and cheese sandwiches.”

“How the fuck did I end up in the Navy?  Nobody said anything about a seagoing puke barge.”

“You know you love it Davy, where else could a hillbilly like you from North Carolina with an IQ of a cockroach get rich baking bread for horsecock and cheese sandwiches and throwing the leftovers in the Pacific Ocean for a living.

And so it went, on and on.  Stuff banging around in lockers, water sloshing around in the galley and heads, dishes and mess gear rattling around, the acrid smell of gastric juices and puked up horsecock and cheese mixed with last night’s coffee and bug juice.

Sailors stumbling around bouncing off bulkheads, stumbling over watertight doorsills.  Already eighteen years old and finding out that the guy at the recruiting office who promised a life of wonder and adventure was a lying, airdale, shore duty son of a bitch.

Thumbing Rides

By Robert “Okie Bob” Layton

There was a time, oh, 30-40 years ago when being in the Navy was fun you just had to know how to work it!
We worked hard and long hours at sea most of the time 12-18 hour days. Pulling into port one would try and maximize every hour of liberty that was available.

While on rest and recreation the professional “Liberty Hounds” were the masters of this and from them grew the legends of uninhibited escapades, Antics of drunken debauchery, close calls with the shore patrol, brushes with the local law, conquest of the opposite sex, outlandish wanton sex, minimal monetary expenditures, and endless in port parties and of course escape from punishment. This was the formula for the best sea stories the fleet could produce.

I was one of those “Liberty Hounds”, one of the pack, if there was a pecking order in our pack place me about the middle for being senior enlisted I had an image to represent [military bearing] and a reputation to uphold [Liberty Hound].

I was a well-balanced yin-yang sailor, but not the top dog! Now along about this time in 1980 I happened to have a sailor who worked for me who was the “A-number-one” party animal I had ever served with.

AMECS Joe Creapo

No one could get as much fun on liberty as Joe. He just had the knack for getting the most out of the least amount of liberty. Tuff as nails, Joe could handle himself in any bar fight, out drink all the rookies, and always managed to go home with the best-looking girl in the bar. Beer drinking, Harley riding, you could count on Joe to empty his wallet in any stripper club in record time. I would get to know Joe from the time he was a Happy 2nd class petty officer until he was a super Senior Chief petty officer.

And so it happened, on USS Coral Sea 1980, a few days out of pulling into Subic Bay Philippines, a First Class Joe approached me with this proposal.

“Senior Chief Let me go into the beach early”

“What for Joe,” I ask

“If you let me go in early I’ll set up a party for the Detachment”

Joes volunteering did have some merit for we had just completed a long at sea period and everyone was ready for some good old “PI” liberty

“Joe if you can catch a ride into Cubi Point its OK with me”

“No shit!” he exclaimed
My yes to his request somewhat shocked him!

“Joe you promise to have everything ready?” I told him

“No problem Okie I can handle it”

Joe was really excited for he had never got to fly off the ship early just for the sole reason of liberty.

“You know Okie I really appreciate getting to fly off early,” He said

“Do you know what to do to get off,” I ask

“Well kind-of” he replied

“Joe you’ll need to go up and see if you can Hitchhike you a ride in on a Mail COD [mail airplane Carrier On-board Delivery]” I informed him

“Don’t worry Okie I’ll have the beer iced down and waiting on the pier when the ship ties up” He boasted

The Mail COD’s flew out of NAS Cubi Point Philippines and were used for the purpose of shuttling people, parts, and mail to and from the ship. You needed a set of orders to fly off the ship- something Joe did not have. I assumed Joe was going to see our Administrative go to guy YN3 Manny Jasso and have him type up a set of dummy no-cost orders to the CVW-14 beach Detachment. So when my guys came down from the flight deck and told me Joe had caught a ride on a C-1 into the beach I thought everything was OK.

Things were not OK, for Joe had departed the ship without any orders which made him AWOL and to top it off he was entering a foreign country illegally without permission.

Two days later we pulled into Subic Bay and tied up to Leyte Carrier pier Cubi Point. I’m out on the cat walk gazing down on the pier looking for Joe.

No Joe!… No iced down beer!… No nothing…bummer!
I come to the conclusion something had gone wrong with Joe. I organize a liberty search party and depart the ship searching for Joe. I was in some deep shit if something had happened to Joe for I had not told my Officer in charge that I had let him leave the ship!

First stop was Gordon street “Po city” Olongapo the Marmont club after a quick check with one of his old Honeyko’s it was reviled he had been there the day before and left word he was heading out to Subic City.

Acting like true shipmates [the search party consisting of Red Lahe, Scotty Stockard, George Dahms, and myself] we go down and each rent a Trike [A two-cycle motorcycle with a sidecar] for a race out to Subic city!

We had a chilling race out to Subic City in which Scotty almost got flattened by a bus when his Trike wouldn’t go uphill fast enough. The local Bus decided to push him. For you thrill-seekers out there it was quite a rush to take a Trike ride back then. With the two cycle Ring-Ding-ding. Ring-Ding-ding under powered engine, bumpy ass sidecar and the little buzzer of a horn going full blast you could be standing still and it felt like you were riding down the road!

But, when you got that thing really moving down a heavily trafficked road, darting in and out of traffic with a race wager riding on top of it, buddy it was like an amusement ride minus the safety features—it was the real deal folks what a blast!

We arrive in Subic City and go bar hopping looking for Joe no luck. We end up at the Broadway Bar asking if any of the girls had seen him. They did not recognize his name but when we described him they all went “Oh Oh Ga Goo Americano” [Crazy American] they said he had left with Max. We all wondered who the hell Max was!

Consensus was to wait, go upstairs, settle down and to have a few cold ones.
I’m sitting between Scotty and Red inside the Bar away from the balcony when we hear a ruckus outside I get up and look over the railing in the street below.

Down the street comes Creapo beer in hand, naked, riding a 600lb Pig! Joe is just a whooping and hollering waving his cap in the air he looked like Slim Pickens riding an “A” bomb. A drunk ass girl is walking next to him topless smiling and waving. You would have thought they were in a 4th of July parade!

I holler down “Joe”

Joe looks up smiles and says, “Hey Senior how you like my ride his name is Harley”

“Joe where the hell was ya?” I ask referring to him not being on the pier

“Let me park my Bike and I’ll be right up” he replied

Scotty, Red, and George never moved. This was all normal for them- so natural, for they thought and why wouldn’t he!

Joe gets on a shirt, shorts, and flip-flops and comes upstairs.
“Joe what the hell” I exclaimed

“Hey I always wanted to ride my motorcycle into Subic City I figured this is about as close as I can get—It’s a Hog” he grinned

About that time his girlfriend walks in, still topless and commences to give everyone at the table a motorboat ride!

Joe introduces his Girl “This here is my new biker chick her name is Max short for Maxed-out”

I inquire “Ok Joe why didn’t you meet the boat at the pier”

“Well I have been hiding out?” he said

“We could tell that”

“After I left you on the boat I go upstairs and they were fixing to load up a COD to shoot to the beach. I ask one of the crew members if I could catch a ride into Cubi he said yes. I had my white flight deck jersey on, he must have thought I was part of the Transfer and receiving crew and It was OK so I go down pack a quick AWOL bag go back up and launch off to the PI”

“So?” I quizzed

“Well, when we landed at Cubi they asked me for my orders. You didn’t tell me I was supposed to have orders.” he sternly said

“I thought you knew” I shrugged

“Well let me tell you the Philippine customs officer knew!” he barked

“When we landed, he put my ass under arrest”

“How did you get out of it” we ask

“As he was waiting for a truck to pick me up and take me to jail. I managed to talk him out of a Head call”

“Once I got in the head I went out the bathroom window, flagged a sailor down driving down the street paid him to take me to the main gate changed into civvies on the way and made it out the main gate before anyone was alerted”

“Your one lucky fucker” I noted

As if to square things up he offered “Well Okie I’m sorry about not meeting you on the pier Let me buy you a beer and a motorboat ride!”

Our concern for his safety had now turned into annoyance for once again he had come thru unscathed and turned a failed liberty into a success!

AFCM Robert “Okie Bob” Layton

Cockroaches

By:  Garland Davis

Note: The photo above and this statement on FaceBook by my shipmate and an excellent photographer Dick Hanover reminded me of this one:

“AIMD berthing, starboard side aft, 3rd deck. Strips of tape were stuck to the bulkhead with the ends folded over so the strip was sticky-side-up. The roaches would run across it on their way from the bilges to the Officer’s Mess directly above on the second deck and their big rear feet would stick. Each night we’d count the day’s catch and note on the Roach Calendar. I ended up with a prime rack when the Air Wing departed but inherited the Roach Calendar in the process.”

End Note

Having been assigned as the Chief Cook in seven ships, the ship’s corpsman and I have been held responsible for cockroach infestations on four of the seven.  The XO had to lay the blame on someone; the cockroaches hung out around the Galley and mess decks; I was in charge of those spaces; Doc was responsible for pest control; ergo we must be the cause of the cockroach infestation.

The ATA that I served in didn’t have cockroaches.  The son of a bitch rolled so bad sitting alongside the pier that any cockroaches that did get aboard became seasick and immediately went ashore. The two FF’s I rode out of Yokosuka never really had a roach problem.  We figured the cockroaches hated the top-heavy mothers as much as we did.

The Forrest Sherman class can that I rode was cockroach heaven.  I think that when cockroaches were killed anywhere in the fleet, instead of going to heaven, they came to the Morton.  Either that or we had the horniest cockroaches in the fleet.  I think it was a combination of both.  We got back two for everyone we killed.   The XO made the Doc come onto the pier and spray boxes when we were loading stores to prevent getting cockroaches aboard.  It was akin to turning off the faucet to the sink when the bathtub was overflowing.  We cleaned, we sprayed and nothing seemed to help.  I found that a live steam hose was more effective than any poison.

The crew was so used to the cockroach infestation that comments like this were heard: “Fuck man, there’s a cockroach in my salad.”  “Don’t worry he won’t eat much.” or “Fuck, I didn’t get one.”

A cockroach is strolling across the deck.  A crewmember tells it, “If you walk on this tile, I am going to stomp your ass.”  And lets it live if it avoids the tile.

During GQ while on the gun line, to amuse themselves, the members of Repair II capture a half dozen roaches and paint different colors on their backs. They put them in an empty can, draw a circle on the deck, bet on the colors, dump the roaches in the center of the circle; the first one out of the circle won the bet.

The largest infestation in Midway was in the after Bakeshop.  The lagging was ripped and torn and the bugs had worked their way in and were impossible to eradicate.  The only solution was to rip out the lagging and replace it.  Fortunately, we had two bakeshops.  We secured the aft shop, formed a tiger team of cooks and mess cooks and ripped out the lagging, preserved and repainted the bulkheads, laid down a spray of residual cockroach poison and lagged the space.  That solved our cockroach problem.  During the ’82 Ney Award inspection, the inspector from BuMed was surprised that he was unable to find any cockroaches, especially on a ship as old as Midway.  He mentioned this to Captain Owens during the de-brief.  Owens blew out a mouthful of cigar smoke and said, “You want to see cockroaches? Come on back to my pantry.”

Archeologists have found fossils of cockroaches over sixty-six million years old.  Cockroaches survived the calamity that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs, numerous ice ages, floods, volcanoes, wars, and even nuclear explosions.  A cook with a steam hose and a corpsman with a spray can did not stand a fucking chance.

But in perspective, the cockroaches aboard our ships were midgets compared to some I have seen in the tropics.  There are cockroaches in the PI large enough to stand flat-footed and fuck a Chihuahua.

Once There Were Heroes

By:  Garland Davis

During my first four or five years in the Navy, career sailors from 1941 through 1946 were completing their twenty and retiring.  Most were combat veterans of WWII and Korea.  I remember a second class Commissaryman who, when we fell in for Personnel Inspection, was wearing a medal I hadn’t seen before.  When I asked what it was, he replied, “I don’t know, just some Geedunk they give us.”  Someone later told me it was the Silver Star.  He was serving in a destroyer that was hit by a Kamikaze and he rallied the Cooks and Stewards to fight the fire when the fire party was killed and was credited with being a factor in saving the ship.

The Galley Chief at NAS Lemoore was a submarine sailor.  He wore a combat patrol pin with three stars.  When I asked him which boats he was on, he said, “I was on so many different ones, that I don’t remember.

I saw many medals for heroic acts and numerous Purple Heart ribbons and medals in those days.  Unlike today, most career sailors had four or five ribbons at the most and only wore them for inspections or official ceremonies.

I was serving in an Ammunition Ship.  There was a BM2 aboard who as a BM3 had survived the attack on Pearl harbor. He wouldn’t talk about it.  He and many other survivors had been advanced one pay grade by Act of Congress.  Which meant that it would take an act of Congress to bust him.  A good man, happy with his place in the Navy.

One Captain of Vesuvius was an aviator who had been one of three survivors from Torpedo Squadron Three at the Battle of Midway.  An impressive officer.

I was serving in an Ocean Going Tug in the mid-sixties when a W-1 Bosun reported aboard.  He was wearing the Navy Cross and Purple Heart.  As a PO1 commander of a River Patrol Boat in the Mekong Delta of South Vietnam, he had taken his boat to the aid and rescue of other boats that were caught in an ambush and saved the boats and lives of his shipmates.  He retired as a Captain.

In the mid-seventies, I was on shore duty in Pearl Harbor.  There I met a First Class Gunner’s Mate.  During a personnel inspection and awards ceremony, he was presented the Navy Cross for an incident that had happened in early seventy-two while he was serving as an advisor with a Vietnamese PBR crew.  He had gone to Viet Nam as an eighteen-year-old GMGSN and, due to numerous extensions in country Viet Nam, four years later left there as a twenty-two-year-old GMG1.

He called me one evening and asked if he could stop by my house.  He said he had something important he wanted my advice on.  I said yes and he arrived a short time late with a twelve pack.  The Warrant Officer he worked for was encouraging him to apply for the Warrant program.  He asked me what I thought. I told him that with the Navy Cross, he was a shoo-in for selection.  I told him, “You can go for it, do the job the way it is supposed to be done, knowing you did your best or you can skate along on the Navy Cross for twenty years.  It is up to you.  You are a good sailor; you’ll do the right thing.  He retired at twenty-two years as a LCDR.

I once met a Special Forces Colonel who was wearing the ribbon for the Medal of Honor.  I was the Bachelor Quarters Officer at SubBase Pearl Harbor.  The BOQ had two suites that were reserved exclusively for Flag Officers.  The Captain insisted that submarine admirals be given preference.  I met with him each Friday to go over the message requests for the suites.  Only he could decide if a suite was to be assigned.

I stopped by the base one Saturday, as was my habit.  When I went into the BOQ lobby, the MS2 desk clerk was explaining to a Colonel and his wife and daughter that no quarters were available.

I identified myself to the Colonel and asked if I could help.  He told me they were overnighting in Honolulu to catch a flight the next morning and needed a place for the night.  He said he had tried the Army, Air Force, and numerous hotels.  Everything seemed to be filled up because of a convention and a RimPac Exercise.

I told the Petty Officer to assign them Suite Bravo.  She said, “But Chief, what will the Captain say?”

I told her, “I’ll talk with the Captain. Just get them into the suite.”

I called the C.O.’s home phone number.  I told him that I was assigning an Army Colonel to the flag suite.  Before I could explain why he broke in vehemently, “Negative, Negative, get them out of there!”

I said, “Captain, he is wearing the ribbon for the Medal of Honor.”

“By all means Chief.  By all means. You did the right thing.  Pay my respects to the Colonel and ask if there is anything the SubBase can do for him or his family.”

I went and passed the Captain’s respects to the Colonel.  All he required was the room.  He thanked me, shook my hand, and that was my meeting with a holder of the Medal of Honor.

These were some of the heroes I worked with and came to know during my Navy career.  Ordinary, everyday men, who when the situation called for it, rose above themselves. I served with heroes! Where are today’s heroes?  They must all be in the Seal Teams.  Those guys rock!

Now I look at the above photo of American sailors kneeling on the deck crying while being held captive, after surrendering their boats and weapons without any resistance. They gave in to a bunch of unintelligent sand apes. I grieve for the Navy that I knew.  The only reaction to the situation that I have read is a few people were relieved and the sailors were probably sent to a therapist to ensure they have no permanent mental trauma from the experience.

According to the reports their electronic navigation equipment and some of their communications gear was inoperable, as well as personnel lacking proper training.  I believe one of the boats experienced an engineering casualty and was being towed.   What has happened to take care of your gear and equipment?  Someone probably missed maintenance training for a diversity workshop. A total cluster fuck.

I almost daily read of Officers and Senior Enlisted leaders being relieved because someone “Lost confidence in their ability to lead.”  Just what does that mean.  Let’s break it down!

With today’s kinder gentler touchy-feely Navy, shipboard leaders are no longer permitted to enforce discipline to get the job done.  Deck plate discipline, fan room counseling, XO’s “I”, and CO’s Mast have been replaced by a Chief or Officer wasting time with one-on-one counseling and Discipline Review Boards. I guess instead of handing out Achievement Medals for wearing the proper uniform they hand out frowny face stickers.

Those CO’s, XO’s, officers and Chiefs that try to enforce discipline and carry out a mandated routine are at the mercy of the crew when higher authority conducts a Command Assessment which gives the malcontents and those with a perceived personal slight a chance to wreak revenge on the command or the Chief.

Another frequent topic is the number of ships that are “Broke Dick” because of a lack of maintenance training, rate training, and operational errors on the part of the crew.  This resulted in a ship aground on a reef in the Philippine Islands and another rusting away in Singapore waiting for a replacement part.

I could continue this, but I am getting more and more depressed as I write.  I’ll just leave it here and maybe someday I will write the rest of this story.  That is if I can keep from gagging.