I will never forget the events that led to my enlistment in the Navy. I was miserable at home, living in a small town and going absolutely nowhere fast. I was attending a community college and I hated it. My grades sucked and I was working part time at Dairy Queen. I had a serious boyfriend, but that relationship was about to run its course. I was miserable. My parents were also miserable, and their patience with me was running thin. My Dad thought it would be an awesome idea to "scare me" straight by threatening me with either joining the Navy or leaving the house with nothing but the clothes on my back. He arranged to take me to see the scariest female recruiter he could find to try and scare me into behaving and being a better student and all around kid. I will never ever forget that day. I remember exactly what I was wearing, what my Dad was wearing, and I remember the scary female bodybuilder recruiter with the butch haircut and tattoos. I also remember the video she showed me. I'm pretty sure she had been prepped by my Dad to tell me the bad things, because what recruiter spends the entire visit scaring you out of joining the military? NONE of them! I sat there watching the video of sunsets, ships, beaches and foreign countries I'd never ever heard of and suddenly the recruiter sounded like Charlie Brown's teacher to me. After the video was over, I was a little scared but by the time we had reached home I knew that the Navy was my way out of it all. Out of school, out of Dairy Queen, out of the relationship that had run its course, and out from under my parents wing. And I ran fast and hard. I ran all the way to our local and not scary recruiter and signed my enlistment papers within two weeks, and shipped out less than 8 weeks later.
Turns out, the recruiter was right. The Navy was a scary place to be if you were a female Sailor in 1989. I was so proud and excited to check on board my first command, the USS FLINT (AE-32), an ammunition ship home-ported in Concord, CA. I was wearing my dress blue uniform, and climbed the brow to report onboard. The Petty Officer at the quarterdeck immediately told me "you must be on the wrong ship, WE DON'T HAVE ANY WOMEN ONBOARD THIS SHIP". Well, how embarrassing is that? I was mortified, how did I get the wrong ship? I climbed back down the brow, looked at my orders, then up at the giant "32" painted on the ship. Nope, I was on the right ship. So back up I went, and this time showed the Petty Officer my orders. He was confused, but made a couple of phone calls and then acknowledged that I was "the first one" to check in. (I found out later I was not the first, but the Senior Chief that had checked in earlier had gone on leave immediately so no one really knew she was there). The Petty Officer had the Messenger of the Watch show me to the female berthing once they figured out where it was, and I was so scared I spent the entire weekend in it with no food. No one came to check on me until Monday morning when rumor had spread that a female was onboard, and by then I was good and pissed off. Things didn't start out well at all. Over the next few weeks and months, more females joined the crew, and we started to feel more comfortable with one another and there is safety in numbers. Turns out the scary recruiter was dead on about how awful it was. But it didn't take me long to figure out that I was really good at doing the stuff they assigned me to do. Before long I could splice line and wire rope better than any of the male Sailors, and I organized and painted the Canvas Shop (because the men had it nasty), and put a fresh coat of paint on every surface I could find. I learned very quickly that nobody wanted to go aloft or over the side to paint the anchor for the 30th time that month, but if I stayed busy and did what they said, I was left alone. So I went aloft for the solitude, and I went over the side so I didn't have to listen to the old grumpy Boatswain's Mate holler at me and call me "son" out of habit every time he opened his mouth. I qualified to be a Rig Captain for Underway Replenishments in a record time, and before I knew it I had gotten out of the hell hole called First Division and worked as a Quartermaster (navigation) on the bridge. I learned how to use a sextant and how to "shoot stars" and a zillion other cool things. And just as I started getting comfortable, all hell broke loose. I will never forget it, we were headed back home from our first deployment in the Persian Gulf, and suddenly the ship made a very distinct and FAST and HARD turn around. It didn't need to happen like that, I assume the skipper did it for the shock value of what was happening. A few moments later when our course had steadied, he announced that we were at war, and Operation Desert Storm had started and we were not headed home, but right back to the Gulf. I didn't give it a lot of thought, I didn't care. I was young and single and had no spouse or kids at home to worry about. So we steamed the Gulf for a while, doing what ammunition ships do, and then returned back home to port in California for what we thought was 18 months.
72 hours after coming home, we were given the order to return back to the Gulf. This time, things were different. We were in Condition III steaming, which meant we had three hours sleep a night if we were lucky, and manned the ship at wartime conditions. Everyone slept with gas masks strapped to their hips, and it was scary. Very scary. When we finally reached the Gulf, we were entering and the USS TRIPOLI was leaving. They were being towed out of the gulf with a gaping hole in the hull from hitting an underwater mine. Again, scary. The only solace I had was that I was serving onboard an ammunition ship and the skipper said if we hit a mine we would blow up so hard that it would take three minutes to fill the hole in the ocean back up with water. It would be quick, at least.
I knew that after that stint onboard that I didn't want to mess around with that for 20+ years. Although I was miserable, I knew I had found my niche. I absolutely LOVED the Navy and everything about it. Gas masks, three hours of sleep, days without a shower, and all of it. I was also smart enough to know that I needed a new job, one that would keep me on shore more than maybe 6 years out of 20. I had grown into someone I never thought possible during that tour. I wouldn't trade my "Deck Seaman" days for anything in the world. Those days molded me into the leader I would later become, and made me stronger than I would have ever considered I could be. I loved my job. But I didn't ever love the people dying around me. I never lost a close friend in combat, and I am eternally grateful for that. But the path I took later in the Navy always was tied into work regarding deceased personnel, or families of the deceased. And it was sobering.
After my tour on the FLINT, I spent a few awesome years at a Helicopter Squadron in San Diego. What an amazing job that was, and that is where I met Joe. Then I went to a reserve center in Worcester, MA for shore duty, and presented the folded flag to the next of kin for at least 100 funerals for deceased veterans over a two year period. Some died in combat, some just elderly. It was an honor to do that job and it was another job I grew from immensely, but it was still miserable to bend on a knee, and look the spouse or mother or father or sometimes even a child of a deceased veteran in the eye and give them the canned "thank you for your service" monologue and that flag.
After that job, I transferred to a job where I worked in the field of Personnel Casualty. Again, surrounded by a job that dealt with death. I worked in this job during the USS COLE bombing, and it was a miserable experience for me. The world was shocked, and I was sleeping on the floor of my office for days waiting for the list of deceased Sailor's to come from the ship. It was agony because it took a long while to figure out how many Sailor's had even died. I eventually got the list. Do you know how hard it is to have a list in your hand with the names of Sailor's that are dead, and their parents and spouses don't even know yet? The USS COLE incident impacted me so much that Justice's middle name is Cole.
In my last job in the Navy, most folks stood watch in the Command Duty Office, which was manned 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. One of the duties of that watch was to inform the casualty office when a Sailor or Soldier was killed so that the proper people would then in turn notify the family member's of those killed. Again, a situation where you know someone's son, daughter, husband or wife is deceased before they know it. That bothered me more than anything else. And when I was doing it, it became honestly really a mundane task and you become numb to it. It's not until after you've separated yourself from the military part of your life and in my case retired that you realize the impact of what you were actually doing.
I am thankful I joined the Navy and not the Army or Marines, as a Vietnam Veteran my Dad was having NONE of me joining anything other than the Navy or the Air Force, and out of respect for him I wouldn't have ever done that. I knew it was important to him, and I had seen both the physical and mental scars he wore from that war.
None of the things I have ever done can remotely compare to those Soldier's fighting on the front lines, and I am eternally grateful for our Soldiers, Sailors and Marines that give their lives every single day for this country and for not just our freedom, but the freedom of other countries. I love and respect each and every person in the military, past and present. I have friends that have gone over to Iraq or Afghanistan and have come back emotionally scarred and broken. It breaks my heart, and I wish I could take some of that pain from them. I wish I could have the honor of presenting flags again, and really hugging the next of kin afterwards to thank them for raising such selfless children or for sending the father's of their children off to war not knowing whether they will come home.
Since the USS COLE incident, I have stayed away from Memorial Day ceremonies or anything related to it. But it has been two years since I retired, and I know that I need to "get back out there" and try and reprogram my brain to look at things a little differently. I'm trying to be the old guy with his first ships ball cap on in the crowd, and I know I will be in time. Just not yet.
This year I actually felt guilty for not doing anything for Memorial Day, and was thankful to have the opportunity to go to the National Cemetery in Memphis to help take down the 48,000 flags that were placed before Memorial Day. It was a service event for the youth at our church, and I took both boys to help out.
We entered the gate of the cemetery and I cried. I was shaken, but glad to be there. And nothing made me feel prouder than to wipe my tears, look in the rearview mirror of my car and see a tear rolling down Justice's face as well. And I worked hard today, I raced through taking the flags down to keep from being upset and sad. As I read the names of 16 year old boys that died trying to protect and gain freedom, and more "Unknown Soldier" graves than I care to count.
The youth that we brought worked reverently and quietly, and behaved extremely well. I knew that I had to get my kids out there so they would understand. I don't talk much about the Navy with them, and Jack will probably think I'm lying when he's older and I tell him I am a retiree, and I don't want that part of me to die. I thought I did, but I don't. It took me two years to figure that out, and I think that's OK. The important thing is that I did figure it out, and I know that I need to move forward from this point.
I'm so glad you wrote that post. It was a honor to hear about your experience in the military and I am so thankful that you served our country. Love you Jen!
ReplyDelete