Thoughts from others on the Navy

I thought I'd share the thoughts of some other people who had something to say about sailors and the Navy.

No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned... a man in a jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company.

Samuel Johnson

The Ancient Mariner would not have taken so well if it had been called The Old Sailor.

Samuel Butler

The Marine Corps is the Navy's police force and as long as I am President that is what it will remain. They have a propaganda machine that is almost equal to Stalin's.

Harry S. Truman

The five “S”es: Shower, You-know-what, Shave and Shine AND Stress!

No matter who you are, unless you have achieved a higher level of Zen, you probably endure stress every single day. Civilian or military, wealthy or poor, man or woman – the chances that your life is surrounded by stress are good. It doesn’t matter which country you live in or what your native language is, stress is common.

Live in a large city? Traffic!
Live in a tiny rural town? Distance from everything!
Live in the suburbs and have to choose which coffee shop has the fastest WiFi? Unthinkable!

Unemployed? Underemployed? Have a job? Not the job you want? How’s that boss of yours? Do you make enough money? Will you ever make enough money? Can you pay your rent or your mortgage this month without juggling your bills? Can you pay your bills? Money is a major source of every day stress.

In a relationship? Married? Divorced? Wish you could be in a different situation, different location, different relationship? Good or bad, relationships all come with drama and stress.

Do you have children? Maybe you want to but can’t. When they are small, they step on your feet. When they are older, they step on your heart and it’s all accidental. A mother is only as happy as her least happy child – talk about stress!

Even dogs have fleas from time to time. That’s stressful, too!

Every person in the world has some source of stress to deal with – and every person in the world has a different way to cope with that stress. There is something else every person in the world has. According to my grandmother, everybody has two things in common - opinions and - well, it’s the body part you use for one of those first four “S”es and it’s not a shower, a shave or a shine. According to my grandmother, those two things are good to only the possessor and, she said, “Ninety-nine percent of the time, they both stink.”

The military personnel are expected to perform their four “S”es expeditiously and their fifth “S” has to be stored away until they are off duty. Deployed men and women don’t have the privilege of downloading their stress through smelly or other opinions and venting to friends or spouses. Their stresses build up and quite often, relationships that were already straining will break once the deployed return home to a “normal” life.

While on deployment, relief often comes only in the sense of the body’s natural functions. We all do it. We all understand the pain of holding back a burp or those other things that polite people don’t discuss in public – you know those great four-letter words sailors are famous for spouting. One of the four “S”es.

Imagine you are far away from the comforts of home, dealing with a spouse who can’t seem to cope without you nearby or an aging grandparent, an ill friend, a dog you’ve had since childhood that had to be put down without you there to say goodbye. Imagine you are in an unfriendly country without the porcelain god we’ve all come to rely on for “doing our business,” and you know that back home, your world is going places in a hand basket – places only talked about in church or screamed out in fury. Imagine how you would take care of your body’s basic needs, the two things babies do in diapers and there is no where to do it.

On land, you make do. You find a bush or dig a hole, you dig a latrine if you can. On the world’s most expensive aircraft carrier, when the plumbing fails, you hold it – and hold it – and hold it. You can’t just hang over the edge, because that not only causes damage to the ship, it can cost your life. Survivors get in trouble, to say the least.

Talk about stress! The one thing you used to count on for relief and a moment to meditate is broken or behind locked doors – thankfully the locks now have a common decode sequence, but dance around while you punch 1-2-3 and hope once you get in, the person just ahead of you didn’t cause another problem.

Deployed personnel onboard a ship must deal with the stress of being away from home, away from loved ones. They also deal with the stress of performing their daily duties on the ocean. Anyone who has ever been on a luxury cruise ship for more than a few hours knows how it feels to “get your sea legs” and how much adjustment is required to walk on solid ground again. Imagine six months of that!

The deployment does not end when the ship docks at its home port. There is still a great deal of adjustment necessary and a different kind of stress. Let’s hope a plumbing problem isn’t one of those stresses.

Veteran's Day 2011

As noble as it can be to honor our fallen veterans, it's also honorable to protect and speak out for those who are actively serving our country today. The men and women of our armed forces sacrifice much so that we can enjoy the American Way of Life.

As children, we learn to follow the leader, become links the family chain of command and to do as we are told. We grow up and find jobs where we must do as requested by our supervisors, colleagues and associates. The orders trickle down from the boss and the boss receives instructions from shareholders or partners. In the military, the chain of command is a bit more literal. Officers and enlisted personnel all must adhere to the chain of command. There are certain ways to do things and protocol to follow. This chain of command is instilled in the service men and women early in their training. Their A schools, where they learn to do their military jobs ensures they understand completely what the chain of command is. Career soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen (and women) know more than anyone, the value of this chain.

As a Navy Mom, I know what civilians must give up when a loved one is deployed. We miss our sons, daughters, husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, nephews, nieces, mothers, fathers and friends. We feel a void in our day-to-day lives when the one we counted on is no longer there. We write letters, mail cards, send emails, find jokes to lighten the day and we send care packages - because we do care. We miss our military men and women when they are not home.

They miss us more. We are still sleeping in our beds while they must deal with cots or the hard ground. We have the luxury of air conditioning and heat while our military are exposed to the elements. We eat fast food; they deal with MREs or cold food and don't mind crumbly cookies in our poorly packed boxes.

Every day, while we are complaining about our jobs or school, our deployed loved ones work without complaint in hostile environments - some are dealing with munitions and others are dealing with the indignity of having to search for a working toilet on a ship where the doors to toilets that do work are  -  -  - locked!

The USS George H.W. Bush is on its maiden deployment and many things can go wrong the first time ships cruise. No one could have expected the technological marvels of the Vacuum Collection, Holding and Transfer system to have failed as miserably as it has. Toilets are clogged, overflowing, simply not working. Cipher locks have been installed on the ones that do work and sailors dare not relieve themselves into the ocean, for fear of serious repercussions. Sailors are afraid to eat or drink in an effort not to feel the urge to void - then have to search for up to an hour to find a useable toilet.

Unlike the family sedan, aircraft carriers cannot just pull off the road when mechanical failure sets in. There is no "seaside service" that can fix this problem. The only solution I see is to airlift to the ship, experts from the company that manufactured and installed the system. The sailors still have a long time at sea. Depending on the world political climate, the deployment can be extended, but even if they come home as scheduled, they will be there much too long without working toilets. The months they have already endured with this failed system is far too long. 


Treat our military men and women like the heroes they are!

Chamber Pots and the Space Age

When the United States Navy was first formed, hundreds of years ago, sailors did not have space-age, vacuum toilets on their ships, but this is not then.  Our nation boasts of  the most modern military power on the planet. There are literally no countries that can rival our military might on the ground, in the air or on the seas. We have an elite, all-volunteer force of power that not only ensures our safety, but that of many weaker countries throughout the world. We ARE the United States of America and we stand united against our foes.

I stand united with my son, a career sailor currently deployed on the USS George H.W. Bush. His concerns are my concerns. His deployment is my deployment and it has been that way from the moment he left my home to become a sailor. His job for the Navy is that of an aviation mechanic. I can't name all the aircraft he has been involved in keeping in the air or all the pilots who became angry with him when they wanted to fly a bird that he knew was unsafe - even at the last minute, during the pre-flight walk-through. He knows his prop jobs, his helicopters and his jets. He knows how to keep them flying, how to keep the pilots safe and how to ensure the Navy does not lose any at sea.

So, when, after more than five months at sea, during a casual email exchange with him, I discover that the toilet-failure problem on board the ship has not yet been resolved, I reacted just like a mother bear whose cub is being poked with a stick.  Some mornings are good for meditation  - this was such a morning and then it occurred to me that I can still voice my opinion, even if my opinion may smell as bad as the clogged toilets on the USS George H.W. Bush.

On 13 October 1775, first ship of the United States Navy, then the Continental Navy, was named Alfred in honor of Alfred the Great. The sailors on board the Alfred likely had chamber pots that were probably simply dumped over the edge of the ship. I was not there, so I don't know. Email was not even a concept at that point. People wrote letters by hand, using feathers (quills) dipped in inkwells. Chances are the conscripted sailors on board the Alfred could not read or write. Whatever happened on board the Alfred most likely stayed right there if it wasn't written in the Captain's Log. That was 236 years ago.

Once we become accustomed to a modern convenience, we consider it a necessity. Many who grew up in large families with only one bathroom know how hard it can be to stand in the hall, shouting "Mom, she's hogging the bathroom and I gotta go!" I grew up in such a family and we scheduled our alarms to allow for adequate bathroom time before going to school each morning. When more than 5,000 sailors are on board one aircraft carrier, they also have to share the toilets - when 10% or more of those toilets are out of order, the integrity of this sharing is jeopardized. Even more so when locks are placed on some of the doors to the toilets that do work.

As children, we all learn to follow a chain of command and for years, that chain brings about the results we expect. As employees, we still follow chains of command in in the military, that chain is paramount. Enlisted personnel learn in boot camp that to try to circumvent that chain is not a good thing.

But when that chain no longer functions, we either call for help or find the crazy glue.  Some people have called ME the crazy glue that holds my office together.