You Are Free

by Matthew Montague

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  The next day you get up at reveille and get your shitty old dungarees on, and pull on your socks, and reach into your coffin locker and get your nasty dungaree shirt on over your head, and stand up and get ready for another day of this shit, and you hit the head and watch the ocean go by while you take a really serious dump, and then go up to the mess decks and get your chow and some bug juice and you sit there sort of with a group of guys, but not really with them, and then you drag your ass up to the hangar bay for muster, and stand there in a line and call out here when they call your name, and then are dismissed and you head up the AIMD passageway to your paint locker when you hear the Bo’sun call you name and you walk over to him and he says Kieffer and he looks at you for a long time.

  And you say what’s up Bo’sun and he says you know I been in the Navy for a long time, and you say yessir and he says and I thought I’d seen some shit, and you say yessir and he says you get your ass back in the deck office and get the muster filled out, then I got some supply chits for you to fill out, you remember how to do that shit, and you say yessir and he says good and he says next week we get you back down to the supply office I worked it out with the senior chief, and you say yessir and he says get the fuck out of here, and you say yessir and he says you call me sir one more fucking time and I will stick a red hot poker up your ass and you say yes, Bo’sun.

  So you pull out of Rota, which was no big deal since you spent the whole liberty sitting on the boat and pulling your extra duty, and you get through Rota and you cross the Atlantic with the quiet waves shushing the ship on its way home, and then the last night before Morehead, the boat is off Hatteras and you get some big waves coming down the bow and lifting the ship and you creep up to the fo’csle all by yourself.

  And it’s quiet in the passageway, and the red night lights make you all peaceful like you’re the only one awake on the whole ship, and you can smell cold damp metal and warm electrical cables and the unburned fuel oil, and you creep into the fo’csle and walk up to the very front of the boat, and you wait until a wave lifts the bow and just before the crest you push off and you are free.

  [1] Formally spelled forecastle, this is the space furthest forward on a ship through which run the anchor chains and in which are the mechanisms for raising and lowering the anchors. It’s a special space to deck seamen, who keep it clean and painted.

  [2] The ship in this story is based on my ship, the USS Guadalcanal, a 602-foot, 20,000 ton amphibious assault carrier with about 25 to 28 helicopters, 650 crewmen, and about 1,800 Marines. The Guad was commissioned in 1963 and decommissioned in 1995, about 15 years past it proposed service life. It was a piece of shit and we loved it.

  [3] A large space below the fo’c’s’le where the massive, 75-pound links of the anchor chain are stored. Interesting note: the anchor chains are not secured to the ship because the links have massive momentum and if they were to come to the end of the chain (the “bitter end”) that momentum would tear the chain locker out of the ship. One night off Virginia Beach, we dropped anchor and the windlass motor failed and the entire chain ran out. We took a lot of grief for coming back to port with just one anchor.

  [4] A geared shaft rising vertically from the deck and responsible for pulling in or carefully letting out the anchor chain.

  [5] Basically, big vertical guides for the anchor chain.

  [6] The keel of a large ship is not all of one piece; it is several pieces. Otherwise, the constant twisting of the hull would finally fatigue the metal and snap it.

  [7] Although there are many Bo’sun Mates, there is only one Bos’un. A very experienced, very senior chief petty officer or warrant officer, the Bos’un is in charge of the Deck Department. Our Bo’sun was a mean bastard who could swear like a poet.

  [8] Door.

  [9] All rooms on a ship are called spaces.

  [10] Stairs.

  [11] Aircraft repair shop.

  [12] Technically a CH-46 Sea Knight; we called it a Frog.

  [13] Aqueous Firefighting Foam.

  [14] Only squids, or sailors, and other Marines can call them Jarheads, and only Jarheads can call us squids. The two services only get along when the Zoomies (Air Force) or the Grunts (Army) are around, and then just barely. We think they’re stupid; they think we’re pussies.

  [15] I knew a guy who got sick when he heard the word “underway” on the 1MC (general announcing system)

  [16] Someone who plans to make the Navy his or her career.

  [17] Navy non-commissioned officers (E-4 to E-9, like sergeants in the other services), have six ranks – petty officer third, second, and first class, then chief, senior chief, and master chief.

  [18] The ship’s throttle.

  [19] AH-1 Cobra attack helicopter, a two-man aircraft with rockets and a mean-ass 25 mm Gatling gun steered by the gunner’s helmet.

  [20] A flight deck crewman, doing the world’s most dangerous job.

  [21] Where everyone E-3 and below are mustered to do a big, crappy job, like haul meat aboard and down to the freezers for two days running.

  [22] The deck apes did this one year when I was on the Guad.

  [23] A North Caroline port near the Marines’ base where they load on to the ships for Atlantic deployments.

  [24] A Landing Ship Tank, a shallow-bottomed ship with a big ramp on the bow built to run up on beaches and unload tanks. They roll like crazy.

  [25] A medium-sized ship with a flight deck for two helos and a well deck where small boats and the hovercraft LCACs can load before heading to the beach.

  [26] Flies signal flags from the masts and uses semaphore to send messages.

  [27] Shipboard Information Training and Entertainment. One of my jobs was to run this system.

  [28] A special team of sailors, each trained for a specific job for getting the ship in and out of port.

  [29] Much fun: whenever the officer of the deck can’t see (snow, rain, sleet, hail, high waves), he calls this detail away. Two guys on each side of the bow and two more guys on the fantail all listen and peer into the nasty weather for other ships.

  [30] Or “battle stations.”

  [31] Using sound-powered phones to send reports to Damage Control Central and other repair lockers.

  [32] There were six repair lockers on the Guad, basically walk-in closets stuffed with firefighting and repair gear.

  [33] Sailors can only leave the ship on “liberty,” which is a privilege, not a right. Enlisted men ask permission to go ashore; officers report that they are going ashore. For some reason, this used to really tick me off.

  [34] The sailors are broken into duty sections, each section has sufficient men to get the ship underway. The number of sections is up to the captain and makes a difference. If you are on four-section duty, you can go ashore three nights out of four; on three section duty, it’s two nights out of three.

  [35] Filipinos were once restricted to mess duty, basically being waiters for the officers. They took advantage of this relegation, however, and now own the supply corps in the Navy.

  [36] A platform at the read of the ship below the flightdeck where all the mooring gear was kept along with two .50 caliber machine guns.

  [37] The Filipino language.

  [38] Refrigeration decks, where there are a series of massive freezers. On the Guad, one was known as the “Dead Iranian Freezer,” because that’s where they put the guy they fished out of the Persian Gulf in 1987.

  [39] I’m not making fun; this is really how the chief I worked for spoke. I can hear him now: “Mon-ta-goo, where the fack is my gadddam white bread?” He was a good guy, nonetheless. Okay, maybe I am making a little fun, but I think that the chief would be okay with it.

  [40] The idea is to keep everyone tired for the first four to five days so that the Company Commanders can weed out the psychos and drug addicts. Guys come in to boot camp on crack, really.

  [41] Really Great Lakes, of
course, but I never heard it called that.

  [42] Yup, really happened. All the boot camp stories are true.

  [43] A land based sailor, usually a pretty good gig, but not in this case as my company commander found out…

  [44] Wikipedia says: The Battle of Khe Sanh was conducted in northwestern Quang Tri Province, Republic of Vietnam, between 21 January and 8 April 1968 during the Vietnam War. During a series of desperate actions that lasted 77 days, Khe Sanh Combat Base (KSCB) and the hilltop outposts around it were under constant North Vietnamese ground and artillery attacks.

  [45] The Douglas A-1 Skyraider, the last propeller-driven combat aircraft.

  [46] This happens, but not as often as sailors say.

  [47] This is not say that all sailor’s wives are like this, but the divorce rate is pretty high.

  [48] Roosevelt Roads Naval Station, now shut down.

  [49] They sell them on the road leading out of Norfolk Naval Base, “E-1 and up, E-Z financing,”

  [50] Wikipedia says: Rota, Spain is a town of approximately 27,000 people in the Andalusia region of Spain, located in Cadiz province, across the Bay of Cadiz from the city of the same name. Rota is also the location of a joint Spanish Naval base and U.S. Naval base, opened in 1955 (which also hosts U.S. Marine and Air Force units). It is also the entrance point of U.S. Naval Vessels entering the Mediterranean Sea.

  [51] Sponsons are decks that stick out of the ship below the flight deck. There are sponsons for fueling, boats, and the CIWS.

  [52] Wikipedia says: A Close-in weapon system (CIWS) is a naval shipboard weapon system for detecting and destroying incoming anti-ship missiles and enemy aircraft at short range (the threat(s) having penetrated the ship's available outer defences). Typically, the acronym is pronounced "Sea-whiz". A CIWS usually consists of a combination of radars, computers, and multiple rapid-fire medium-caliber guns placed on a rotating gun mount.

  [53] Firecontrolmen, or missile techs. They maintain and operate missile systems and the CIWS, and then go to work for the contractor after they are discharged.

  [54] Operations Specialists, used to be called radarmen.

  [55] Yup, really happened, except we were in port in Norfolk before we deployed and I was walking upper deck security patrol. A quick word about Tom Clancy. Most squids thought he was a little bit scary, an insurance guy who looooved the Navy, but apparently never thought to actually join it, like the guys who would come on the ship’s tours wearing a flight jacket with squadron patches on it and knowing more about your ship than you did. But still, we all read his books, even though all the enlisted guy characters were obsequious to the max. When I was in boot camp, I smuggled in “Red Storm Rising” just to have something to read and asked a submariner how accurate Clancy was; he laughed and said that he was about ten years behind.

  [56] The Captain of the ship, the last true dictator. It was a fact that the Skipper had the power to stand you up on the fantail and have you shot. I had four skippers, each of whom made admiral (which was my job). One was a true Captain and the crew revered him; one was a party animal and we all liked him; one was an intolerable prick and got the two balls from “The Caine Mutiny;” and the last one was “Joe Navy” who tried too hard to be our friend.

  [57] Ship’s general announcements circuit. There is a 1MC speaker in every space, or room, on a ship.

  [58] Catwalks are the little walkways that run around the ship just below the flight deck.

  [59] A direct quote from an esteemed colleague.

  [60] Gotta love the crack; we would sit outboard and watch the ocean go by while taking a dump. Very restful.

  [61] Wikipedia says: USS Stark (FFG-31), a guided-missile frigate, was struck on May 17, 1987, by two Exocet antiship missiles fired from an Iraqi fighter during the Iran-Iraq War. The frigate did not detect the missiles, and both struck without warning. The first penetrated the port-side hull; it failed to detonate, but spewed flaming rocket fuel in its path. The second entered at almost the same point, and left a 3-by-4-meter gash—then exploded in crew quarters. Thirty-seven sailors were killed and twenty-one were injured. The guys on the Guad watched the Stark go home with a big hole in its side as they steamed into the Gulf that same year (before I got aboard).

  [62] Damage Control Assistant, in charge of coordinating the firefighting and repair teams on the ship.

  [63] General quarters, or battle stations. A GQ is a drill emulating some sort of major emergency, such as an enemy attack or a major fire or accident.

  [64] Or “fell up the stairs,” a generic term for “got the crap beaten out of him for good cause.”

  [65] The official policy is “don’t ask, don’t tell;” the actual practice is “don’t touch me or I’ll fucking kill you.”

  [66] Advanced Training Division, an “advanced boot camp” for people going straight to the fleet.

  [67] Called Mess Specialists, or MS. They used to call them “cooks.”

  [68] The unofficial economy aboard ship. Say I needed some paint: I could either fill out about ten forms and run all over the boat getting them signed or I could go find the Bo’sun’s Mate who runs the paint locker and trade him the movie of his choice on TV that night for a couple of gallons of paint.

  [69] One of the best perks on the boat – you go to the front of any line, anywhere.

  [70] Damage Control Center, a room in the center of the ship above the engine rooms where the DCA takes reports and plots how to respond to and repair damage.

  [71] Oxygen Breathing Apparatus, uses a special candle in a tank to generate oxygen into a over-the-face mask.

  [72] This is done to prevent flash burns.

  [73] 3-inch, fifty caliber rapid fire rifles in twin mounts. WWII vintage, developed to shoot down Kamikazes.

  [74] The old fifty caliber machine guns, like the ones you see in the WWII movies.

  [75] A generic term for any ship assigned to amphibious operations; the cheapest, crappiest ships in the fleet.

  [76] There are four kinds of fires: an Alpha fire burns wood or paper; a Bravo fire is a fuel fire; a Charlie fire is electrical, and a Delta fire is anything that won’t go out and needs to be pushed over the side, like white phosphorus.

  [77] The ship’s lateral frames are numbered and used to identify spaces. Every space has a number – for instance, I worked in 02-99-4, SITE TV. 02 – second deck above the main deck (the hangar bay, at frame 99, and the second space outboard from the center line.

  [78] Pump out.

  [79] Mediterranean Sea. (Don’t know if that really called for a footnote).

  [80] Patrick Swayze plays a bouncer in a rough bar, features many large-breasted women in tight shirts. A perennial favorite with the squids; I once got to fire 100 rounds from a .50-caliber machine gun just for running this movie “one more time.”

  [81] 1.150779 miles per hour, so 18 knots would be 21 miles per hour, fast enough to waterski.

  [82] Young clueless sailor, fresh from boot camp, who requires a lot of training before he or she can become useful.

  [83] Happened to USS Wasp in 1992 while we were sailing with her, though it was in the North Atlantic and the guy was on the fantail, the low deck at the stern, or back, of the ship. Even though I bet it was a hard letter to write, it was the right thing to do. And it beat writing five more letters.

  [84] I know, no one wants to hear about whacking off. But you are at sea without women for six months. You either admit to doing it or you are a liar.

  [85] I just changed this from “over” to “up” remembering that the admin office was on the 02 level, just below the flight deck and therefore up from the Deck office. Sometimes I have trouble picturing the layout of the boat; I never have any trouble remembering how tired we all were, or what it smelled like, or how the guys talked.

  [86] We drank a lot of coffee, usually black with a couple spoons of sugar. I owned a 16-ounce mug that was an extension of my left hand.

  [87]
Tetris – a computer game invented in 1985 by a Russian and omnipresent on the ship’s computers. The joke was that it was invented to reduce productivity on US Navy ships; it did.

  [88] We lost five guys on each of the deployments I went on. Shit happens.

  [89] First night I was in boot camp, a guy curled up in the corner and cried all night. It was an eerie way to start a new career.

  [90] I had a friend from journalism school desperate to get out of the Navy and who was assigned to a carrier. The first night he was on the ship, he went up to the flight deck and jumped off. They fished him out of the water and he went back up and jumped off again. They fished him out and he jumped again. He had to do it one more time before they let him go home.

  [91] Damage Controlmen, specialists in fighting fires, repairing damage, and welding.

  [92] Wall.

  [93] The space at the very bottom of the hull. Since it is impossible to make the hull completely watertight, there is always water coming in and being pumped out of the ship.

  [94] All watertight doors are oval in shape, and the bottom of the door is about a foot above the deck, and when new guys go through them, they tend to bang their knees on the bottom part and their foreheads on the top, until they get the rhythm.

  [95] In the old days, guys would get drafted and sent to boot camp and thrown in with guys from all walks of life and from all over the country; the volunteer service ended that for more Americans and is a loss.

  [96] The pilot is a local seaman with a lot of experience getting large ships in and out of tight harbors. The Captain is still in charge, but would have to be an idiot to ignore the pilot. Like a cruiser captain on the Yorktown River; we saw the big dent in the dock when we pulled in there to load ammo.

  [97] “I am in charge of directing the ship.” The officer of the deck is responsible for the whole ship.

  [98] When I took on this job, it was impressed on me that I was making the legal record of the ship’s activities.

  [99] Aircraft fuel.

  [100] I was a “fuck-off JO,” a Navy journalist. There were only about 600 of us in the whole Navy. We ran SITE-TV and the radio stations (WGBC – the Guadalcanal broadcasting company), published a daily paper, and served as the ship’s public relations guys. It was a pretty skate (easy) job, but we stood watches, did working parties, and mess-cranked just like everyone else. Our motto was “choose your rate (your job), choose your fate” and “it’s not my fault you were too stupid to get into journalism school.”

  [101] “Hook ups,” like having a friend on the mess decks, are key to a comfortable life in the service. One of my friends was the Captain’s cook and for about two years, I ate in the Captain’s galley.

  [102] Saddam did have a super gun, designed, and built by a Canadian engineer who was obsessed with long-range artillery. It never really worked.

  [103] This is something I told myself while sitting on the patio of a bar in France while my high-school buddy was leading a company of troops in Kuwait. You join the service knowing that you might go to war and hoping that you don’t, but when the war comes and you aren’t sent to it, you feel a curious disappointment.

  [104] Master at Arms, the ship’s policemen.

  [105] Landing signal officer, a senior petty officer who is charge of launching and landing helicopters.

  [106] Green water over the bow means that you are really in the big seas. All the same, when my boat had green water over the bow, the smaller ships, like the LSTs and the destroyers were submarining – over one wave, under two.

  [107] They did.

  [108] “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” by Lord AlfredTennyson, 1870

  Verse Two

  "Forward, the Light Brigade!"

  Was there a man dismay'd?

  Not tho' the soldier knew

  Someone had blunder'd:

  Their's not to make reply,

  Their's not to reason why,

  Their's but to do and die:

  Into the valley of Death

  Rode the six hundred.

  A surprising number of squids know this poem; but perhaps it’s not surprising at all.

  [109] Everyone on the boat has a green qualification book where respon-sible parties sign off that you are capable of handling a fire hose nozzle or a M-16 or a .50 caliber machine gun or a nuclear weapon. I can neither confirm nor deny that there were nuclear weapons on the Guad.

  [110] Not to brag or nothing, but out of the four and a half years I was on the Guad, three and a half were spent at sea.

  [111] A mythical moment that comes when a ship has been at sea for 180 days and the Skipper can authorize two beers a man. The Brits get beer every damn day at sea. Not that I am bitter.

  [112] One of my favorite vulgarities; no one knew what the hell we meant by this, but we said it all the time.

  [113] It’s amazing how much stuff you can store in your socks – pens, smokes, ID cards, keys. It’s also useful to stuff things, like books, into the hollow between your pants and the small of your back.

  [114] All the LPHs were built on the cheap; our power plant was scavenged from a World War II battleship and behaved accordingly. Still, we were ridiculously proud of our engineers’ ability to make the thing run. We never missed a sailing date.

  [115] In which you and your duty section went to a four-story building built like a ship and wired to catch on fire at will. Very scary at first, but excellent training.

  [116] “Choose your rate, choose your fate.” It’s not my fault I got the good job and your job sucks, so stop bitching about it. A quick note about the Navy ranks and rates – your rank is your rank, or level of authority; your rate is your job. I was a JO2 when I got out – a Journalist (job) Second Class (rank – petty officer second class, E-5, equivalent to a sergeant in the other services.

  [117] Striking is the process wherein deck seaman can apply for a better job and train on-the-job rather than going through the specific school for that job.

  [118] SK is a storekeeper, a pretty generic rate for a supply guy.

  [119] Forms.

  [120] This story comes from a weatherman I knew who told us this story back in the balloon room one night. He was a former SEAL and had medals that he wasn’t allowed to wear. The ones he could display took up rows and rows and rows, up to his shoulder. And yet, he was an E-6, just one rank above me. He had also been a cop in LA and in NYC.

  [121] Underway replenishment, in which two ships steam side-by-side 120 feet apart, and fuel and stores are transferred from one to the other. I believe that the US Navy is the only Navy that does this as a matter of routine.

  [122] I did not see this, only heard about it.

  [123] Again, the man was a poet and I can only approximate his command of this particular vernacular.

  [124] Again true story, and a drill just evil enough so that you had to admire it.

  [125] We had an Intel officer come out of the Pentagon, never having been to a ship, and I had to explain this to him one day.

  [126] Still have mine. Love them. Old school.

  [127] The part of the bow that meets the water.

  [128] Senior officer in the Deck Department. Ours was a good guy, unlike this fictional bastard.

  [129] Fucker. I’m sorry Mom, but he was. A quick word about profanity – the classic line comes from World War II where a sergeant told his officer (referring to his jeep) that “the fucking fucker’s fucked.” Yes, we had filthy mouths and it has taken 15 years for me to finally clean it up, but this was just vocabulary; the true profanity was inherent in the life.

  [130] The brow is the gangplank, the little bridge from the ship to the pier.

  [131] Also known as “panini.”

  [132] Shit On a Shingle, ground beef and gravy on toast.

  [133] You know who you are, Mr. P. You were all right.

  [134] Machinist Mates, generally in charge of the turbines.

  [135] Boiler Tech
nicians, in charge of the boilers.

  [136] Executive Officer, the shittiest job on the boat. The Skipper is the hero, makes all the good announcements, and gets credit for everything; the XO is the jerk who makes all the bad announcements and gets credit for nothing. My favorite XO had a surrealistic side and I could get him laughing by quoting Navalese to him, but never in front of anyone else.

  [137] Legalman, basically Navy paralegals. On the smaller boats, like mine, they take on many of the duties of a lawyer.

  [138] Standard punishment for first offenses, called 30-30-30. Thirty days restriction, 30 days extra duty, and 30 days on half pay.

  [139] Saluting is a pain in the ass, with a million rules about where and when and how. Thank God I was on an aviation ship where we didn’t wear headgear most of the time and so didn’t have to salute.

  [140] The man who has the duty has the responsibility for everything that happens on his watch, a point that seems to have evaded our current president. He likes to style himself commander-in-chief, but he knows nothing about the military.

  [141] The infamous convoy of death that was smeared on the highway to Baghdad.