None of us could have possibly fathomed what happened next. After anticipating a one-year break before another deployment, all hell broke loose in Iraq and we got some pretty intense news.
Full on war with Iraq, and so begins Operation Desert Storm. We were immediately called back to the gulf. All resources were needed underway, including FLINT.
All crew members were recalled back to the ship and we deployed again, less than a month after returning home, and with 72 hours notice. My heart broke for my shipmates, it was awful watching them trod one by one up the pier, sad and deflated.
Full on war with Iraq, and so begins Operation Desert Storm. We were immediately called back to the gulf. All resources were needed underway, including FLINT.
All crew members were recalled back to the ship and we deployed again, less than a month after returning home, and with 72 hours notice. My heart broke for my shipmates, it was awful watching them trod one by one up the pier, sad and deflated.
Morale was LOW. We were in shock. But we had orders in hand and steamed right back to the gulf, and got there in record time. The ship wasn't ready. We needed repairs, we had low food supply, and we were badly undermanned until we got to Hawaii. Not everybody could be reached in that 72 hours and many people were left behind. Those onboard had to take up that slack for the 12 day trip to Hawaii. They were a site for sore eyes when we pulled up pier side. We got a few days in Hawaii to properly load up and get a few repairs done, then we were off to the Philippines again to load up on weapons. And then the cycle started all over again. UNREP, sleep, repeat. But this time, it was even more intense. There were UNREPS in the middle of the night. UNREPS that weren't scheduled. And there were underwater mines. And lots of them. And I was scared for the first time. I had finally matured enough to know that hey, this might be sort of scary. Sleeping with a gas mask and chemical weapons kit strapped to your hip wasn't exactly fun times for a 20 year old. I grew up mentally very quickly. I remember very vividly the day we pulled through the Strait of Hormuz as we were headed directly into the Persian Gulf. It was February of 1991, and as we were pulling into the gulf, we crossed paths with the USS TRIPOLI. She was being towed out of the gulf, with a gaping hole in her hull from hitting an underwater mine.
Things just got real. I will never forget the silence, the solemn faces, and the look of concern of those around us on the bridge while we watched the TRIPOLI pass by us, crippled and broken.
The air was full of smoke, and it was hazy. It was difficult to see very far ahead, and the air was difficult to breathe. Oil platforms burned all around us, and made it difficult for the aircraft to visualize anything. It was hard for us to see anything in the water.
Things were also very different for me this time around.
Things just got real. I will never forget the silence, the solemn faces, and the look of concern of those around us on the bridge while we watched the TRIPOLI pass by us, crippled and broken.
The air was full of smoke, and it was hazy. It was difficult to see very far ahead, and the air was difficult to breathe. Oil platforms burned all around us, and made it difficult for the aircraft to visualize anything. It was hard for us to see anything in the water.
Things were also very different for me this time around.
I was no longer in Deck Department. My sentence in hell was up and I was able to parole out to a "real job". I finally got to pick that career path that the recruiter told me about when I joined. Sort of. The way it works is that you get to pick from what jobs are available on the ship at the time your "sentence" is up. My choices were Mess Specialist (cook), or Quartermaster (navigation). You may wonder why I didn't choose cook. Because the food sucked, that's why. Quartermaster was an easy choice. I was up on the bridge, charting our course, computing sunrise and sunset, and determining exactly where we were located in the Gulf. And that was VERY important, considering what we had just seen with TRIPOLI.
Our charts were classified because they had locations of known mines on them. The navigation team had to plot our courses around these mines. If we were even off in the slightest and hit a mine...
All of the sudden, Deck Department didn't seem so bad. It wasn't until I had a "real" job that I realized that I actually had it made that first time around. Luckily for me, we had a great NAV team, and we worked hard to make sure we didn't blow the Persian Gulf off the map by hitting a mine.
Our Skipper told us that if we hit a mine, it would take three minutes for the water in the ocean to fill in the hole the explosion would make in the ocean. We were carrying so much ammunition, including specials, that we would blow the Gulf wide open. I actually took solace in that. It would be quick, I reasoned to myself.
I was feeling an immense amount of pressure. On the last deployment, I was striving to ensure the rigs were safe during UNREP. This deployment, I was actually driving the ship during UNREP. I had recently become qualified as a Master Helmsman, which meant I was qualified to drive the ship during special details. Pulling in and out of port, through difficult to navigate waters, or during UNREP. It took a considerable amount of concentration to figure out the sea state and concentrate for hours at a time to make sure you kept the appropriate distance between the ships alongside during UNREP. You remember the pictures of the fuel lines and wires running between the ships? Just a tiny over or under correction of course at the helm and people could get hurt and equipment would get damaged.
Look at this picture, and imagine me driving the ship in the middle.
I remember once when I was in Deck Department, a submarine was off course and surfaced directly in front of us during UNREP. We were forced to conduct an "Emergency Breakaway" but the fuel seat didn't shut off quickly enough and the entire main deck was sprayed with fuel. Everyone and everything was covered. The UNREP crews up forward (me) suffered burns and blisters from the fuel and the hot gulf sun. It was a mess and it took days to clean up.
Anyhow, I was scared to death throughout that entire deployment. I was glad when it was over. Tensions were extremely high. The married Sailors were struggling being away from home so long. We had several suicide attempts. I recall a young kid jumped off the side of the ship in the Indian Ocean, at night. Luckily we had an absolutely amazing Search and Rescue crew, and they found him and he was recovered alive and all right. One of my friends from boot camp overdosed on pills. She was also all right, but both were transferred home for separation processing for failure to adapt to the military.
I had no regrets though. I was having the absolute experience of a lifetime.
Another thing that was difficult for us was that we had absolutely no real knowledge of what was going on in the outside world. There was no internet, no email, no cell phones, no TV, no nothing. All we had were letters from home, and phone calls on a pay phone when we pulled into port.
Living accommodations were tight. Even those of us that lived onboard were getting tired of seeing each other every single day. We had to fit everything we had into the space below our mattresses and one small locker.
My rack. I was on the bottom, and the racks were stacked three-high. Notice the Polaroid film on my rack. And a cassette tape.
In this picture you can see how the storage system works in the middle rack. Her rack is "triced up" and she can reach the inner compartment. You can also see the small lockers we were each issued.
My memory is not that sharp of those days. I cannot recall what deployment we pulled into what particular ports, but we pulled into less ports on the second deployment than the first. We wanted to go home. We skipped a couple of ports just to get home earlier. That was fine by me, I was tired of Mojo and rude locals. I was tired of dealing with the hookers and the sorry men that were patronizing them constantly. I was tired of all of it, and I wanted to go home. I had thought long and hard about what my plans were going to be for the Navy, and what I thought would make me happy. By the time we came home from the second deployment, I knew I didn't want to be in Navigation any longer. If I continued in that career path, I would spend six out of every eight years onboard a ship. Out of a 20 year career, I could expect to spend about five years on shore duty. I knew I eventually wanted children and a family, and that wasn't going to work for me. But that is another story for another time. I remained a Quartermaster throughout my first tour, and was able to change career paths upon my first reenlistment.
Because one thing I knew for certain, and that was that I was going to reenlist. Through the fear, the sleepless nights, the hanging over the side painting the anchor, the splicing of lines and the endless sweeping, the Navy had crept into my blood, and it rooted itself deeply into my character. While I hated it, I loved it. I loved the stars, the sound of the ocean that I feared so badly, the dolphins swimming alongside us. I loved the history of the Navy, and the folklore. I knew, even throughout the sexual harassment and the Master Chief that called me "son" because he refused to believe I existed in all my feminine glory onboard "his" ship, that I belonged in the Navy.
It wasn't "his" Navy any longer. It was my Navy too, and I worked hard to claim it as my own. There was no way I was going to walk away from it after all of that. I felt a sense of duty to continue the fight for equal rights, to continue the quest that my Great Aunt Mildred started so many years before me. It takes an incredible amount of time and hard work to set the wheels in motion for change, but when they are moving, you can't walk away.
And I was not about to walk away.
Our charts were classified because they had locations of known mines on them. The navigation team had to plot our courses around these mines. If we were even off in the slightest and hit a mine...
All of the sudden, Deck Department didn't seem so bad. It wasn't until I had a "real" job that I realized that I actually had it made that first time around. Luckily for me, we had a great NAV team, and we worked hard to make sure we didn't blow the Persian Gulf off the map by hitting a mine.
Our Skipper told us that if we hit a mine, it would take three minutes for the water in the ocean to fill in the hole the explosion would make in the ocean. We were carrying so much ammunition, including specials, that we would blow the Gulf wide open. I actually took solace in that. It would be quick, I reasoned to myself.
I was feeling an immense amount of pressure. On the last deployment, I was striving to ensure the rigs were safe during UNREP. This deployment, I was actually driving the ship during UNREP. I had recently become qualified as a Master Helmsman, which meant I was qualified to drive the ship during special details. Pulling in and out of port, through difficult to navigate waters, or during UNREP. It took a considerable amount of concentration to figure out the sea state and concentrate for hours at a time to make sure you kept the appropriate distance between the ships alongside during UNREP. You remember the pictures of the fuel lines and wires running between the ships? Just a tiny over or under correction of course at the helm and people could get hurt and equipment would get damaged.
Look at this picture, and imagine me driving the ship in the middle.
Anyhow, I was scared to death throughout that entire deployment. I was glad when it was over. Tensions were extremely high. The married Sailors were struggling being away from home so long. We had several suicide attempts. I recall a young kid jumped off the side of the ship in the Indian Ocean, at night. Luckily we had an absolutely amazing Search and Rescue crew, and they found him and he was recovered alive and all right. One of my friends from boot camp overdosed on pills. She was also all right, but both were transferred home for separation processing for failure to adapt to the military.
I had no regrets though. I was having the absolute experience of a lifetime.
Another thing that was difficult for us was that we had absolutely no real knowledge of what was going on in the outside world. There was no internet, no email, no cell phones, no TV, no nothing. All we had were letters from home, and phone calls on a pay phone when we pulled into port.
Living accommodations were tight. Even those of us that lived onboard were getting tired of seeing each other every single day. We had to fit everything we had into the space below our mattresses and one small locker.
My rack. I was on the bottom, and the racks were stacked three-high. Notice the Polaroid film on my rack. And a cassette tape.
In this picture you can see how the storage system works in the middle rack. Her rack is "triced up" and she can reach the inner compartment. You can also see the small lockers we were each issued.
My memory is not that sharp of those days. I cannot recall what deployment we pulled into what particular ports, but we pulled into less ports on the second deployment than the first. We wanted to go home. We skipped a couple of ports just to get home earlier. That was fine by me, I was tired of Mojo and rude locals. I was tired of dealing with the hookers and the sorry men that were patronizing them constantly. I was tired of all of it, and I wanted to go home. I had thought long and hard about what my plans were going to be for the Navy, and what I thought would make me happy. By the time we came home from the second deployment, I knew I didn't want to be in Navigation any longer. If I continued in that career path, I would spend six out of every eight years onboard a ship. Out of a 20 year career, I could expect to spend about five years on shore duty. I knew I eventually wanted children and a family, and that wasn't going to work for me. But that is another story for another time. I remained a Quartermaster throughout my first tour, and was able to change career paths upon my first reenlistment.
Because one thing I knew for certain, and that was that I was going to reenlist. Through the fear, the sleepless nights, the hanging over the side painting the anchor, the splicing of lines and the endless sweeping, the Navy had crept into my blood, and it rooted itself deeply into my character. While I hated it, I loved it. I loved the stars, the sound of the ocean that I feared so badly, the dolphins swimming alongside us. I loved the history of the Navy, and the folklore. I knew, even throughout the sexual harassment and the Master Chief that called me "son" because he refused to believe I existed in all my feminine glory onboard "his" ship, that I belonged in the Navy.
It wasn't "his" Navy any longer. It was my Navy too, and I worked hard to claim it as my own. There was no way I was going to walk away from it after all of that. I felt a sense of duty to continue the fight for equal rights, to continue the quest that my Great Aunt Mildred started so many years before me. It takes an incredible amount of time and hard work to set the wheels in motion for change, but when they are moving, you can't walk away.
And I was not about to walk away.
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