Ward Being a section leader and all—I can’t say as I go breaking the rules—by the book, a straight shooter, that’s me. [Wild laughter, and three people punching, choking, and generally attacking Ward.] Hey, everybody thinks section leaders go around yelling and being big dogs, but we keep getting dropped for stuff the other guys do. It’s not that great a job, trying to keep this crowd in line. [More laughter.]
Broders I think it must be hard for the ASMOs who came in. I mean, we’ve got a lifestyle that we’ve started in this division. If I hear one more guy say, “That ain’t what we did in my last division,” I’ll choke him. But it must be hard for them to adjust to us, because we’ve got little teams together, and we know everybody and stuff.
Caldeira Yeah, and when they come in, they have an attitude, because they all were ahead of us, so they down us.
Broders They throw us off our beat. We’ve got a pattern going, and they throw us off rhythm, and they disrupt it and all. We’ve got, like, what, six or seven ASMOs since we got here. We had, like, what, Ward, four of ’em arrive the night before last, right?
Shelton Yeah. And another thing is brother division. It’s different with them because they aren’t here all the time, and they have different RDCs, and their RDCs are more strict than ours. They don’t have to pitch in and clean up our house, they clean the house upstairs where our girls are.
Ward Well, you will see them on head crew with Gildersleeve, every once in a while. And I do see them down on my section, because I’m near the back of our end of the house, and . . .
Caldeira And we get in trouble because of them too, sometimes. We get dropped for stuff that they do. We got in trouble for them about our bunks, one time, too; we were done, and they were still doing theirs. And we all got dropped for it. We get dropped for stuff that they do, but I don’t think they get dropped as much as we do, you know?
Shelton Like, the other night, we usually wait till the lights go out, but those guys didn’t know that we still had Chief Zeller up in the office, and they started cutting up, so we all had to get back out of our racks, put our tennis shoes on, and we all got dropped.
Broders Reveille around here is crazy, too. It all depends on who wakes you up. Chief Zeller, I don’t mind waking up to him, but Petty Officer Russell [laughter and imitations of DC1 (SW) Lela Russell]: “Reveille! Reveille! Get out of those racks, Recruits, before I come down there and beat you! You gonna get me a captain’s mast yet, Recruits!” [More laughter.]
Caldeira I remember the first day, I was the last person left in the rack! You guys remember—I was sleeping, with my head down, and I opened my eyes, and she was, like two inches from my face! “Recruit! You think you’re special or something?” And I see her, and she’s screaming at the top of her lungs. I forgot where I was, and then I realized, and I got out of that bunk, quick.
*Chief Youell is a chief gunner’s mate (E7), with surface warfare qualifications.
**Chief Wagner is a chief electronics technician (E7), with submarine warfare qualifications.
7
A Sailor’s Life for Me
So far, the recruits had spent most of their training day in the classroom or drill hall. Most of the classroom training had concerned academic or life-skill topics: the history of the Navy, customs and courtesies, rank and rate, or personal finance. Now, finally, they would get a chance to learn the sailor’s trade.
Petty Officer Russell had strong opinions on the subject. “I’ve been in the Navy for eleven years, and, except for some shore duty in Italy, most of that time has been spent at sea. I can’t think of anything worse than a sailor who can’t pitch in when necessary. It doesn’t matter if you’re a boatswain, a yeoman, or a storekeeper; there are basic things that every sailor ought to know. Basic knots and splices, what to do and not to do on deck, even real simple things like how to navigate around their ship. Not navigate the ship—that’s the quartermaster’s job—but how to find where things are stowed, and how to get from one place to another in a hurry. Big ships like the carriers—they have thousands of small compartments. You can imagine how lost you could be if you didn’t know the basics of port and starboard, fore and aft, and how decks and compartments are numbered.”
The recruits welcomed the change.
Rasco I was afraid I’d get caught sleeping in class every time we went into the schoolhouse building. I’m twenty-four—do they really think I need classes on things like writing checks, and setting up a personal budget? Hey—at least in this job, the paycheck is steady. They ought to try budgeting a waitress’s tips sometime, huh?
It was likely that few recruits would fall asleep during hands-on training. They’d spend most of their time at the seamanship training division, a series of small buildings on the southeast corner of the base that housed, among other things, the USS Marlinespike. Marlinespike, a quarter-sized replica of a fleet auxiliary, could easily accommodate a complete division of recruits, manning various action stations on pier, deck, or bridge.
AOC(AW)* Mike Lucas is a nine-push RDC, who led the most recent division to win the coveted chief of naval operations (CNO) award for merit. He related, “I got to talking to an old sailor here, one day. This guy had gone through here in the mid-1960s, and I showed him around the Marlinespike. Back when he was here as a recruit, seamanship training mainly meant standing around an old World War II drill hall over where Building 1405 is now. An instructor would stand in front of a hundred recruits and demonstrate how to tie simple knots and bends, using “small stuff”—pieces of cotton line that looked a lot like your grandma’s clothesline.
The recruits would practice all day, tying knots around one-inch pipe rails that extended out from the bulkheads of the drill hall. There was also a painted outline of a ship in the middle of the floor, and the instructor would stride up and down the silhouette, saying things like, “This is the fantail” or “This is the port side of the forecastle.” There were large, cardboard-mounted pictures on the bulkheads, showing bits, chocks, cleats, and other deck fittings. Every now and then, a couple signalmen would wander out, coffee cups in hand, and demonstrate flag signals, using a rusty hoist fastened to the overhead. They’d do a quick demonstration of semaphore, using hand flags, and pull a couple likely recruits from the sidelines and teach them a few elementary signals. If you could make heads or tails out of what they were trying to teach you, you’d probably wind up in signalman’s school on mainside after you graduated.
“Surprisingly, things weren’t much different until the early 1990s. I know when I went through boot camp down in Orlando, we didn’t have any kind of shipboard trainer, although by then the cardboard-mounted pictures had been replaced by real hardware. Things weren’t much better over at San Diego. Guys would go to sea right after boot camp, and be of no use to anyone for a couple weeks till they got their bearings.
“Along about 1990, though, operating commanders finally convinced Recruit Training Command that we had to do a better job. Something had to change, and Marlinespike became part of the solution.
“As usual, though, training dollars were in short supply. So the company commanders [RDCs of their day] and instructors pitched in and did much of the design and construction work. There were a lot of ships being decommissioned around that time; guys would wrangle TAD orders to the decommissioning sites and come back with all kinds of equipment for the mockup. If you look closely, you’ll see little black tags at the base of the binnacle, on the sound-powered phones, and on the watertight doors and hatches. Each one lists the name of the ship from which it was cumshawed. There are a couple dozen tags up there, I bet.
“There are a few other things you might not notice at first glance. Down below, inside the trainer, there’s a sample berthing space, copied exactly from a Burke-class destroyer. Seeing that is often the first time that recruits realize exactly how cramped things are aboard ship. The Marlinespike is designed as a generic ship—everything on board is common to every ship from a yard tug to a cruiser. Recru
its really enjoy the Marlinespike; it’s the first thing they do that is really ‘Navy.’”
There was a palpable sense of excitement after noon chow on 1 November, when the recruits crossed Indiana Street from Galley 928, and turned south to the Marlinespike. Taking their place on bleachers in an adjacent classroom, they listened while SM2 Fines Stevenson explained the various types of natural and artificial line and steel cable they might encounter aboard ship. They learned the safety precautions necessary to avoid being injured by a line that could part under strain. The recruits learned the standard shipboard precautions: never stand in the bight of a line, never kneel or sit on the deck, and never handle fiber lines without heavy protective work gloves. They learned basic knots and bends, just like the sailors of the 1960s, and practiced for several hours, using lengths of “small stuff” provided in the classroom/laboratory. Finally, it was time to “go to sea.” Petty Officer Stevenson opened a set of double doors, and the recruits of Division 005 got their first glimpse of the stationary trainer.
Wirsch I thought that was just awesome! I mean, it’s so big, and it really looks like a ship. They have it painted gray, just like a real Navy ship, and they even painted the decks under the brow to look like sea water. I’ve never seen a real Navy ship. But I bet this one looks just like a real one.
Ward I thought, well, we’re going to sea at last. It’s going to be hard to sink a fake ship, but I bet this division can do it . . .
Stevenson and his assisting boatswain mates divided the division into teams, which would rotate tasks during the exercise. While some remained pierside as line captains or line handlers, others would work the main deck area, as signalmen, talkers, or deck hands. Still others would man the bridge and act as watch officers, messengers, and talkers. Each station was connected via sound-power telephones, and one of the first lessons the recruits learned was proper shipboard communication. Chief Zeller, as a fire controlman, understands that clear, concise shipboard communication is vital. He explains, “You have sailors from all over the U.S., and some were even born in other countries. Accents become a real problem, especially on sound-powered telephones. So the recruits learn standardized pronunciation of letters and numbers, as well as the phonetic alphabet. They really get a kick out of practicing that, saying ‘niner’ for the number nine, and ‘Kay-bec’ for the phonetic word for the letter ‘Q.’ You’ll hear them joking around with it when they get back to the compartment after class. But it’s important, and it’s something that a sailor has to know when he straps on a pair of sound-power phones and becomes a telephone talker at sea.”
The seamanship instructors also used the Marlinespike to reinforce traditions and courtesies taught in the classroom. As sailors have done since the founding of the republic, the recruits would climb the brow, display their ID cards, face aft, salute the national ensign, turn and salute the junior officer of the deck (JOOD), and formally request permission to come aboard. “There’s no sense turning a recruit loose in the fleet, if the first thing he does when he reports on board is screw up,” Stevenson noted with a chuckle.
Petty Officer Dan Kent stood just aft of the quarterdeck, as the recruits prepared to board. “There’s a story here,” he remarked, “and it tells you a lot about the Navy and about the people who care about these recruits. As you probably know, in the fleet, you’d normally be met by both the officer of the deck [OOD] and the JOOD. Did you wonder why the Marlinspike’s watch is manned by a JOOD only? Watch what Stevenson is doing now.”
Very quietly, as the recruits were being organized on the pier, Petty Officer Stevenson stepped behind the superstructure and retrieved a framed, glass-covered corkboard. Silently, he placed it on an easel between the U.S. and Navy flags, just behind the JOOD’s station. Dan Kent continued with his story.
“As Chief Lucas said, a lot of sailors pitched in to bring the Marlinespike on line. One old boatswain’s mate, in particular, was a real sparkplug in making all of this happen. He’d been scheduled to retire before Marlinespike was commissioned, but he extended to see the job through, and the command honored him by asking him to stand here on the quarterdeck to welcome the commissioning party aboard. After the ship was up and running to his satisfaction, he put in his papers, and the skipper allowed him to have his retirement ceremony on board. With his family and friends gathered around him, he was piped over the side, and the guys from the seamanship training division acted as his sideboys, just as they would have done had this been a real ship.
“There’s more to the story, though. A very short time later, he suffered a massive heart attack, and died before he reached the hospital. His shipmates were devastated. And so ....” Kent pointed to the corkboard in its polished frame. On it hung the red rope and “cookie” of an RDC, an instructor’s nametag, a photograph, and a plank owner’s certificate for the USS Marlinespike. Below them all, a gold plaque read simply:
To the memory of BMC Calvin Herring
Eternal Officer of the Deck
USS Marlinespike
28 March 1991
“The recruits don’t seem to notice it,” Kent continued. “And to be honest with you, we really don’t bother to tell them. But you see, since that day, well, the first time these kids climb aboard a Navy ship, about a half-million new sailors have saluted Chief Herring’s memory. Kind of special, don’t you think?” And it is, indeed.
After reporting aboard, the recruits simulated getting the ship under way, using the skills they had already learned. Various commands were relayed from bridge to crew, heaving lines tossed from deck to pier, hawsers recovered and faked down on deck, and colors shifted, just as if the Marlinespike were ready to pull out of Norfolk and head out to the North Atlantic. Recruits traded position, and bells sounded as the Marlinespike “came alongside” and moored yet again. By the end of the training period, most recruits had had exposure to several positions, and all had practiced the sailors trade. Tired from the physical effort of manhandling hawsers and lines, the recruits requested permission of the JOOD and, when it was granted, happily left the ship for “liberty”—or, at the very least, a well-deserved head call.
Chief Zeller comments, “I always think that the day aboard Marlinespike is the day that you can see them stop being ‘civilians in utilities’ and start seeing something that looks as though it might be a sailor, someday. I’m not alone in thinking that; lots of RDCs will tell you that it’s in their third or fourth week that recruits begin to ‘get it.’”
After returning to the compartment, several of the female recruits gathered to discuss their impressions of their training thus far.
Mary Smith That was really fun. That’s what I thought the Navy would be like. It was fun watching the males react to females as line captains and JOODs! I think most of them sort of wish we’d just go away, and they hate it when an instructor puts one of us in charge.
Demitrus (Mimi) Starks, 18, Chicago, Illinois
Yeah, but we have just as much trouble when we’re alone up here in the female compartment, too. All the backbiting and bickering and everything.
Wirsch The biggest problem is attitude! [Agreement from the others.] If people could just drop all their little remarks and comments and suck it up! Start folding and stowing something, and don’t talk! That would solve so many issues, I can’t even begin to explain.
Starks It’s like in the showers. When I got made the female MAA [master-at-arms], I had to force people to take showers two at a time, one to wash up, and the other one to soap up. It’s hard with forty-two females, with six showerheads, in fifteen minutes; it’s always crowded. But they just have to get used to it.
Jennifer Hattrich, 19, Fort Mill, South Carolina
It’s really hard to share with the other division, too, because it’s their house, and they get to do things first. And then they tell us that we’re taking too long, but it’s their fault, because they take more than half of the time, and we have to hurry and rush so fast.
Starks The males don’t
understand it, but we have it harder than they do, because we have six RDCs jumping on us, because we have our own, and then we have Division 006’s, because we’re really living in their house. That’s the worst thing about being an integrated division—the unfairness of the other RDCs.
Cari Williams, 19, Lake Charles, Louisiana
There are good things, though. We get to bond more with each other than we do with the males. I mean, we argue a lot, but we bond with each other a little bit, and it helps a lot. Look how good the forward team did today.*
Hattrich Except those big ropes were heavy!
Starks It made me feel happy on the Marlinespike, when I saw the girls coming together. It was like that time, on our best morning, when we wanted to make DC 1 Russell proud of us, and we all got up thirty minutes ahead of time. We went to the head, five girls at a time, and we had to be very, very quiet, because we didn’t want to wake brother division. We wanted to be the only division doing it, and we wanted it to be a surprise. And we got our bunks made, we stripped our bunks and brushed our teeth and made head calls, and then everyone woke someone else up to do the same thing. There was so much teamwork, because we wanted to do something right. And as soon as “Reveille, reveille” came on, we were all standing at GQ, and it was so cool.
Wirsch Of course, we got in trouble, because we found out that we weren’t allowed to do that, but it was so empowering.
Williams That’s a good word. We’re like all seventeen or older, up to twenty-five or more, and sometimes it’s like kindergarten, we’re treated like little kids, told what to do and when to do it and how to do it—we’re even told how to write, just like in kindergarten. I’m a married women with a baby, and it’s, like, weird, you know?
Wirsch I actually came here for some of that, though. I have, like, a real problem making decisions, so I’m learning by people telling me what to do and when and how, and it’s all laid out for me, and I don’t have to figure anything out, although I’m gaining those skills with the division yeoman job and all.
Honor, Courage, Commitment Page 10