Sea story: Looking for an Engineer in all the wrong places

June 30, 2011 by · 4 Comments

Sea story? Sure, it’s been a month. However this one has morals about financial independence, early retirement, and knowing your true values. But it has a happy ending, too!

Now that my daughter has finished a year of NROTC, we’ve started some interesting conversations about work/life balance. Submariners aren’t very good at the “life” part of that ratio, let alone the “balance”. Looking back on my career, today I realize that I’d been campaigning for more “life” even during my first sea tour. Over the next decade it cost me several professional goals and at least one promotion, but I’ve never regretted it.

The 1980s Cold War was especially brutal on personnel– you were expected to be ready to go anywhere and do anything for as long as it took to complete the mission against the Evil Empire. Retention was awful and submarine warfare was hot, so short shore tours were common and even back-to-back sea-duty tours were not unheard of. You might have had some flexibility in duty preference, but if you managed to luck into a “cushy job” then the assignment officer would hold it against you for the rest of your career.

Back in 1986, I’d finished two years in my submarine’s Engineering Department with fascinating duties like “Chemistry and Radiological Controls Assistant”, “Damage Control Assistant”, and “Quality Assurance Officer”. They’d been incredibly complex (and paperwork-intensive) jobs with long hours and (very) short liberty. If any of your gear broke in any of those billets, your division was immediately highly visible at all levels of the command. Submariners are not exactly surprised to learn that their mean ol’ Executive Officer is a tough, heartless taskmaster. But if the young CRA clumsily spills some radioactive coolant or the inexperienced DCA accidentally breaks all the crew’s toilets at the same time, there’s absolutely no sympathy. The fatigue and the stress was unbelievable.  25 years later I still have occasional nightmares.

But back then I’d also finished four years of commissioned service and had just been promoted to full lieutenant (with a big honkin’ pay raise). In the previous year I’d qualified all my officer watchstations aboard my submarine and earned my gold dolphins. (Yes, I’m saving my “lucky” dolphins in case my daughter wants them. Heaven help her.) I’d topped that by finishing six weeks of hell 14-hour days of studying for the rigorous Naval Reactors engineer’s exam, and then I’d passed the five-hour essay exam plus the three oral interviews. I was now considered capable qualified to be an Engineer Officer on any U.S. Navy submarine’s nuclear reactor system. On the other hand my formerly gung-ho attitude had gunged beyond “burnout” to “crispy critter”.

Oh, and because life wasn’t busy enough, my wife and I had just married. As in “the ceremony was on Saturday, he deployed on Sunday, and we’ll honeymoon next year”. She was a Navy officer too, and we’d spent the last four years at duty stations separated by thousands of miles. (That particular month my submarine was in Scotland and her anti-submarine warfare command was in the Azores.) Our wedding logistics are a whole ‘nother sea story, but let’s just say that it was the most intense week of my life. Now I was back on the submarine, staring at that gold band on my finger, and wondering what marriage would be like when we actually started living together.

The future was bright. After my final deterrent patrol on my ballistic missile submarine, I had orders to the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA. I was the only submariner in the entire Navy that year to get those orders, and I’d fought the assignment officer tooth and nail to escape the traditional “black hole” of instructor duty at Nuclear Power School. I had threatened to resign from active duty. My wife and I had even gotten married to ensure that we’d be stationed together. The assignment officer kept grumbling about “needs of the Navy”. I felt that I’d earned the good deal.

After my master’s degree, I’d go back to sea as a department head with a 1-out-of-3 chance to be the Engineer Officer on any of over 100 submarines. Not only was it the “best” department head job, it was also the highest-paying one. Naval Reactors had convinced BUPERS that submarine Engs were worthy of a “spot promotion” to O-4, so I’d be getting gold oak leaves (plus another 25% pay raise) a good two years ahead of the selection board. It would be a brutal tour, but a few years later I’d be assured of a permanent promotion back to lieutenant commander and almost certainly selected for my own XO billet.

No time to daydream, though, because we had to get ready for sea. Since I’d qualified Engineer, I had to “step aside” from the Engineering Department to let other eager junior officers get their own beatings experience. As my reward, I had just become the ship’s Communicator and Radio Division Officer. I was handling stacks of highly classified material, but the job was nowhere near as intense or treacherous as Engineering. I was barely hanging on after the last few months, but I was at the highest rung of the junior-officer ladder– the top dog among seven JOs. Life was good!

A few days before we got underway, we heard that the Engineer Officer of another submarine had broken his leg. He’d fallen down a ladder, but the joke was that he’d thrown himself down it out of desperation to get off his boat. It was the oldest sub of our class and it was long overdue for a nuclear refueling overhaul. It was worn out, broken down, and filthy from all the leaky piping. It was a horrible job to keep it running and we were all happy that we’d managed to avoid it.

The next morning my commanding officer invited me up to his stateroom to “have a talk”. (Ruh-roh.) The commodore had just told his COs to find a volunteer to take over for the old submarine’s Eng. They’d gone through the squadron’s list of newly qualified engineers, and my name was at the top.  He said that the job was mine if I wanted it.

It was an incredible opportunity. This once-in-a-career offer would never be repeated.  It was the unrefusable offer.  If When I accepted, I’d finish my division officer tour nearly four months early with a fantastic fitness report and a medal. I’d get to be a submarine department head three years ahead of schedule. Not only that, but I’d be in an O-4 spot-promote billet so I’d be wearing gold oak leaves nearly five years before I’d even be up for that promotion. (I’d be the first in my year group to have that rank.) I’d have to revert to lieutenant when I left the billet, but wait there’s more! Because the job had come up at such short notice, the BUPERS assignment officer was willing to sweeten the offer by letting the me stay in the billet for 24 months– long enough to get credit for a full Engineer Officer department-head tour. I’d be so far ahead of the career track that I’d probably be selected for O-4 a year early.  “Even better”, I was taking over an engineroom in terrible condition and I hadn’t even been to Submarine Department Head School.  No one would expect much of me for the first six months and I could hardly do wrong. It was the same class of submarine, too, so I wouldn’t even have to learn any new gear. I could jump right in. I couldn’t help but look good. With hard work and a little luck I’d be winning “top nuke” awards.

My CO hated to lose me after investing two years of training, however he could only wish that he’d had a chance like this at my age. I was already just a few months from the end of my tour and he had no excuse to keep me on board. The older submarine’s CO was his friend and “a good guy”. The older sub had the higher priority, and my CO could put anyone else into my Communicator/Radio billet. All I really had to do was pack my seabag and pick up my orders at the squadron personnel office.

But. (I had a lot of “buts”.) I had just gotten married and I already had a great set of orders! I’d just survived the toughest few months of my life to get to this final patrol. I was really looking forward to shore duty, let alone to actually living with my spouse after all these years. I couldn’t even imagine how I’d break the news to her. I could probably put through an international phone call, and I’d certainly write a letter, but we wouldn’t be able to get together until after the 90-day patrol– and “getting together for good” would be another two years. How in the world would I explain that my career had a higher priority over our life together?

Well, the last question had a pretty simple answer– there was no way to explain that. My career didn’t have (and never would have) priority over my spouse.

Today, I know that I should have asked my CO’s advice and then requested a few hours’ personal time to come up with my “Yes, sir!!” However a crisis has a way of immediately and involuntarily forcing you to show your true values, and this time they were written all over my face. My CO could already tell that I wasn’t the volunteer they were seeking. I mumbled some platitudes about being very happy where I was, but the damage had been done. The “opportunity” went to somebody else.

Work (and life) went on.  (I’m also pretty sure that BUPERS put a little note in my file.)  I had a great patrol as Communicator. Monterey was better than we’d even fantasized, but I still managed to finish my thesis and get my degree. My spouse and I were (mostly) stationed together for the rest of our careers (which is a whole ‘nother sea story too), we raised a wonderful daughter, and we’re about to celebrate our 25th anniversary. The glory of that 1980s Engineer Officer’s job can’t hold a candle to any of my life since then. I may not have done much coherent thinking about it, but I made the right work/life choice.

Years later I ran into a fellow USNA alum who’d been a year behind me in my company. As we renewed our acquaintance I learned that he’d been on that old boat back then, and I mentioned my part of the story. His response? “Oh, really?!? Hey, thanks a bunch, good buddy.” It turned out that BUPERS couldn’t find anyone able (or willing) to take that job on such short notice, and he was the next-senior officer in that boat’s engineering department. Unfortunately he was so junior that he hadn’t even started studying for his Engineer Officer exam yet. He’d been “promoted” to “Assistant Engineer” but he had to do the Engineer Officer job under the XO’s supervision. He only had it for the 90-day patrol, and he had to give it up when they returned to port. Perhaps he gained valuable experience. However he got no credit for a department head tour, no spot promotion to O-4, no extra pay, nothing. To add insult to injury, the admiral’s staff had randomly selected that boat for a surprise nuclear inspection. It went so badly that they should have failed, but the inspectors appreciated that they didn’t have a “real” Eng and that the boat was overdue for overhaul.

I told him about my work/life priorities, and he understood.

It’s one thing to dodge a bullet.  It’s quite another thing to have someone empty the entire clip at you and still not score a hit.

One day my daughter will slam head-first into a similar work/life choice, and I hope she’s ready for it!

Related articles:
Sea story: “If I was in the Air Force”…
Sea story: “Hang on!!”
Sea story: Blowing the job interview of the decade
Sea story: “Secure blowing sanitaries!!!”
Sea story: “Battle Stations Missile”

Does this post help? Sign up for more free military retirement tips via e-mail, Facebook, or Twitter!

Filed Under: Sea stories · Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Sea story: “If I was in the Air Force”…

May 12, 2011 by · 3 Comments

When I was at my military training commands, our instructors would naturally gravitate toward college classes. If they were on shore duty for long enough, they’d get their bachelor’s and sometimes even their master’s degrees. If they were enlisted when this happened, then their thoughts would even more naturally gravitate toward getting a commission. (The alternatives were going straight back to sea duty or leaving active duty. To a submariner, even being an officer seemed like a better deal.) In a department of 50 instructors, 4-5 per year would get themselves selected for commissioning. We were running an officer assembly line, and we were proud of it.

Ironically, the submarine force’s aggressive commissioning program gave the Air Force three of the best submariners I’d ever served with. (I don’t know which service’s reputation is damaged more by the fact that Navy submariners would rather run the Air Force.) A few weeks ago, less than a decade after he was selected for commissioning, one of our submariners was notified that he made major. So in his honor, I’m going to tell this sea story for the last time. No, really.

My ballistic missile submarine was subject to regular inspections to ensure that we were doing our share for the Cold War’s policy of Mutual Assured Destruction. One of the programs, the Defense Nuclear Surety Inspection, actually sent members of the Air Force and Army onto submarines to watch how our weaponeers handled and launched ICBMs. They didn’t know the details of executing a submerged launch, but they could spot a safety violation with their eyes closed. Because of the inspector’s wide range of experience, coupled with a few glaring instances of blissful ignorance, they were treated with a mixture of fear and genial contempt. I’m sure it’s the same way the Navy’s DNSI inspectors were treated when they went down into missile silos or out into the field with the other services.

During one of these inspections, an Air Force major sat in a corner of the Missile Command Center observing as the submarine crew ran through a launch drill. It was the third day of the inspection and the itinerary was just about finished. Our Weapons Officer (the aforementioned affectionately nicknamed “Mad Dog”) was in charge of the show. However, as every submariner already knows, the show is really run by the chiefs. In this case it was Senior Chief (Submarine Qualified) Fire Control Technician (Ballistic) Martin. Of exceptionally long and meritorious submarine service, he had probably shown Noah how to properly stow the Ark for sea. As the department’s enlisted leader, he was widely respected for his team-building leadership and also revered for taking care of his people. Mad Dog may have had his finger on the trigger of the launch key, but the Senior Chief was giving the orders and taking the reports from his crew. He’d let Mad Dog know when it was time to squeeze the trigger– or to make a coffee run.

In the true spirit of interservice rivalry, we were going to show those Air Force guys how the real nuclear weaponeers did business. The inspection had gone well up to that point, perhaps enhanced by Mad Dog’s take-charge attitude of “I dare you to find anything wrong with our performance.” His reputation had preceded him, and by this time the inspectors had relaxed to the point of shifting their mission from “finding deficiencies” to “sharing training tips”. Instead of stern looks and scribbling pens, an evolution was likely to generate a discussion on the relative merits of the different ways that the services did their business.

In the middle of this warm (and rare) collegial atmosphere, the launch drill had progressed to the point where a POSEIDON ICBM refused to leave the tube. (This was just a drill, not an actual launch.) Mad Dog was required to go to the tube to help troubleshoot and perhaps override some interlocks, so a substitute had to actually squeeze the launch trigger while Mad Dog was at the scene. Mad Dog turned the launch key over to the Senior Chief, said “You have control of the countdown and may launch when ready”, and left MCC.

The major hadn’t seen this before, and it was clear that he hadn’t expected it. Even worse, he wasn’t sure whether it was standard procedure or a flagrant safety violation requiring his prompt intervention. After a few seconds of uncomfortable silence, he decided to confront the issue:
“Senior Chief, did he just put you in charge of launching the missile?”
“Yes sir, he did.”
“Is that standard procedure for this sort of emergency?”
“Yes sir, it is.”
“It isn’t considered a nuclear weapons safety violation to turn the launch key over to an enlisted man?”

(Senior Chief had to pause for a few seconds to remind himself that perhaps these Air Force majors weren’t aware of the regard in which chief petty officers are held.)
“No sir, it’s not a safety violation.”

The major, unaware of the professional transgression he’d just committed, decided to carry on with a little interservice training on how things ought to be done:
“You know, Senior Chief, in the Air Force that launch key would only be handled by a major.”

Senior Chief had been patient for far longer than usual, but he’d finally had enough:
“Sir, if I was in the Air Force, I’d be a major.”

The launch drill was completed in silence. Our submarine passed with flying colors. Senior Chief was eventually awarded yet another medal for his sustained superior leadership, especially the part where he put the Air Force in its proper submariner perspective.

So congratulations, Jack! We knew it was only a matter of time until a submariner finally carried out the Senior Chief’s threat…

Does this post help? Sign up for more free military retirement tips via e-mail, Facebook, or Twitter!

Filed Under: Sea stories · Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Sea story: “Hang on!!”

April 7, 2011 by · 13 Comments

I’d like to dedicate this very long post to a certain NROTC midshipman who’s considering joining the submarine force. You have… no idea. You can still make a different choice!

The subtitle of this story is “Why we didn’t let Jethro go up to the bridge any more.”

20 years after the Cold War ended, it’s hard to explain the era’s tension and intensity to someone who wasn’t there. If you crouched under your school desk for a nuclear-attack drill, or if you watched Sputnik humiliate every rocket scientist in the U.S., or if you heard Ronald Reagan’s “Evil Empire” speeches, then you understand the nihilism. Those who feel that today’s terrorism alerts are a little hyperbolic would think we 1986 boomer sailors were nuts straight out of “Dr. Strangelove”. Maybe we were, but we were one of America’s finest products of our pressure-cooker environment.

Our LAFAYETTE-class ballistic missile submarine carried enough POSEIDON ICBMs to obliterate a country, and we worked hard at it. We practiced endlessly to convince the Soviets that we were a bunch of deadly stone-hearted steely-eyed killers of the deep, ever-vigilant in our covert patrols and with our fingers itchin’ on our hair triggers to carry out the American threat of mutual assured destruction. Those of you in today’s submarine force may find it difficult to believe that our missiles were targeted on Soviet real estate as soon as we got out to sea– and we didn’t have to put up with any of those wussy “permissive action links” like the bombers and the silos. This was serious war business. We were the pointy end of the free world’s spear and we stayed undetected for 90-day patrols as if our lives depended on it… because they did. If not for our Cold-War paranoia, we certainly never would have attempted the evolution that led to this story.

When you take over 120 sailors to sea for 90 consecutive days of submerged operations, someone (or their family) is inevitably going to have a problem. It might be a serious accident or a loved one’s medical crisis, but the sailor has to leave the sub. If our admiral decided that an evacuation was necessary, then sending one of us home early meant taking a Cold War asset off the front lines (perhaps jerking some other unit around to cover their assignments) to move to a transfer point where the submariner could be sent ashore to begin the trip home. It could take several transit days just to transfer the crewmember and get back on station. It would disrupt war plans for a month and cost thousands of dollars.

It was even more tricky if the submarine was patrolling the North Atlantic in winter. High waves, freezing weather, blasting winds, and savage storms were the norm. Even if the submarine could get close to land, a transfer boat couldn’t leave the safety of the coastline. This meant going pierside or, if the unthinkable were considered, using a helicopter. We’d rather jeopardize the lives of the helo crew (and our crewmember) than risk running a submarine onto the rocks.

When we were directed to transfer one of our crew, no other submarines were available to cover our target assignments. We submariners weren’t going to humiliate ourselves by begging the Air Force to cover for us, so the admiral ordered us to stay on missile-launch alert for the entire transfer. None of us had even heard of such a thing, let alone had to make it happen, but somehow we did. (I remember that our Weapons Officer, affectionately nicknamed “Mad Dog”, was awake for nearly two days straight and spinning almost as fast as his missile gyroscopes.) Tensions were running high and we were starting to fray with fatigue, but we headed for the rendezvous to get this over with.

The day before we arrived at the surfacing point, our squadron informed us that we’d be doing a helo transfer.  The “rules” forbid launch-alert submarines from coming pierside, and the unspoken message was that the weather was way too rough for a small boat. There was a crazed scramble to find all of our helo-transfer gear (buried in various lockers for nearly two decades) and then figure out how to use it. I’d only been commissioned for four years, but I was serving with 20-year chief petty officers who’d never even heard of a submarine helo transfer– let alone supervised one.

The next day we surfaced and headed for the transfer point. As the most-experienced junior officer I was the surface Officer of the Deck (which gives you an idea of how shaky our lineup was). I was accompanied on the bridge by a lookout and the commanding officer. As soon as we surfaced we started taking 20-degree rolls. I don’t remember the weather parameters but it was solidly overcast (great flying weather!), freakin’ freezin’, and with wind & waves everywhere. The wind chill froze your nasal snot as soon as you poked your head above the hatch. The waves occasionally splashed up to the bridge cockpit in the sail, 25 feet above the surface. I was wearing an international-orange exposure suit (insulated, buoyant, and highly visible if I fell overboard) with thick rubber-soled boots (to minimize heat loss) and huge ski mittens (I’d been on the bridge in winter before). I’d wrapped a towel around my neck in a futile attempt to keep my torso dry from the water dripping off my face, and I was wearing a thick wool watch cap. These two articles just gave the freezing spray something to build on until we looked like bright-orange abominable snowmen. For you old-timers, think back to the bridge scenes in the movie “Das Boot”. You younger whippersnappers can recall Ashton Kutcher hanging out of the helo in “The Guardian”.

Our stylin’ bridge team also wore the latest in 1980s foul-weather fashion: full-body safety harnesses. These were attached to various bridge fittings by a six-foot nylon lanyard with a carabiner locking clip and a euphemistically-named “shock cord”. Shock cords were just 10 feet of 2″-wide webbing loosely stitched into a tight stack of material attached to the lanyard. The concept was that if you fell off your perch then the lanyard would let you go six feet and jerk taut, popping the stitches and unraveling the shock cord to slow your fall without injuring you or breaking the lanyard. What shock cords mainly managed to do was get in our way and annoy us.

So, there we were. “Head to the transfer point”?!? We couldn’t even see the transfer point. We just kept plotting NAVSAT fixes (a primitive ancestor of GPS) and crabbing through the waves in what we hoped was the correct direction. Both radio antennae and periscopes were raised to try to talk to the helo, let alone see the helo. By some miracle we finally raised the helo and vectored in on each other.

As we approached the transfer point we lowered the scopes and antenna so that the helo pilot wouldn’t accidentally slice a rotor into them. We had our gear ready with the nervous honored guest waiting in the cockpit. The lookout (who was also the phonetalker) crouched down inside the bridge hatch to give more room to the three of us in the cockpit while he relayed orders & updates to the control room. As the helo arrived we got ready to hoist our man out the back of the cockpit onto the top of the sail. We stayed steady on course at eight knots so the helo could approach.

The helo hovered overhead to lower their rescue swimmer on his cable. (“Rescue swimmer”? In that weather the job description would have been “corpsicle retriever”.)  Timing the rolls, the winch operator landed him on top of the sail.  The swimmer got the second horse collar under our man’s arms, clutched him in a four-limbed deathgrip, timed the rolls again, and signaled the hoist operator. As the hoist lifted, the pilot also jerked the helo up and sideways to clear our sail in case the wind shifted. I was suddenly glad that I was merely freezing my butt off in the bridge instead of swinging it under that helo. The winch operator reeled them in, safe & secure.

We’d flawlessly accomplished the first half of our mission, but we still had to transfer two pieces of baggage. This was going to be easy– the helo would stay higher overhead, lower the line, and hover while we clipped the line to the handles. However the baggage was bulky enough that we couldn’t do it in the cockpit or even put it up on top of the sail. After extensive discussion at our planning session, we’d decided to put a man (fully suited and harnessed and clipped to a bridge fitting) on the port sail plane. He’d hold on to the baggage as we wrestled it up out of the hatch and passed it to him, and then he’d clip the helo line through the handles. Piece of cake after what we’d just accomplished. Send up the baggage!

Our baggage handler was a man nicknamed “Jethro”. (Google Images “Beverly Hillbillies”.) He was over six feet and 225 pounds of rock-hard muscles, but even he acknowledged that he was not the crew’s sharpest sailor. Unfortunately during our planning sessions he also failed to share with us his concern that his six-foot lanyard and shock cord wouldn’t give him enough range of motion to do his baggage-handling duties. On his own initiative he’d decided to connect TWO lanyards (with their 10-foot shock cords) so that he could move around. (Start adding those numbers together. We’ll come back to this soon.) When we called for him then he scampered up the hatch, clipped on to the bridge fitting, and climbed over the port side to the sail plane. Ready!

We passed him both pieces of baggage. One of them was the sailor’s 90-day seabag and the other was stuffed with 40 pounds of family mail. We lowered both periscopes and radio antennae. We steadied on course & speed again. The helo began its approach from the aft starboard quarter and we all faced aft to watch it.

Submarine commanding officers have a keenly-developed sixth sense for danger, or at least for those times when things seem to be going just a little too smoothly. Our CO’s spidey-sense started tingling, so instead of watching the helo like Jethro and me he began to look around. A couple seconds later he startled me by shouting “Hang ON!!!!”

I turned around.  Straight off the bow I saw a wave. “Saw” isn’t quite the right word– I looked up 45 degrees of elevation at a wave that was 20 feet over my head, and we were already 25 feet above the water. My CO started to shout another inaudible order, something about “Oh, s…”, and then the wave hit.

My last look at Jethro showed him crouched on the port sail plane. Instead of “hanging on” to the bridge or his lanyard(s), he’d interpreted the CO’s order to mean “hang on to the baggage”. He had a piece under each arm, he was squared off against the wave, and he was ready to do him some bodysurfin’. The wave hit the sail and he disappeared.

We bridge team had our hands full with another problem. Imagine a four-foot-square toilet bowl with a 21″-diameter bridge hatch drain in the middle. Now put two people in there with a third crouched in the drain line. Just for fun, clip them to the rim of the toilet bowl but dress them in buoyant exposure suits. Now pull the flushing lever and dump a couple thousand gallons of 35-degree seawater on them.

When the freezing wave hit we all gave an immediate involuntary gasp reflex, which of course meant our lungs were out of air. The wave slammed us down into the bridge cockpit. Our buoyant suits began to float us out of the cockpit while we scrabbled to grab onto something, but we couldn’t breathe. We couldn’t rise to the surface, either, because our lanyards were attached to the sub. In retrospect I’m sure the wave punched our bow down into a depth excursion that nearly dragged us under the surface, let alone under that wave.

Undoubtedly it was only 10 or 20 seconds before the wave rolled by and the sub righted itself. I remember my head briefly breaking above the surface to grab a mouthful of air just before my lanyard jerked me back down into the (still submerged) cockpit, and I barely kept from being tossed out of the cockpit by the turbulence.

Once the wave passed, our problems got even worse. The cockpit was full of water poised over a 21″ drain hole down to the control room. As the water swirled down the hatch, suddenly we were all being sucked down with it, still coughing and gasping for air, and scrabbling for holds all over again. (Ski mittens are really bad for this.) The phonetalker ended up with 400 pounds of wet officer piled on top of him, but eventually the water drained off and we Three Stooges scrambled to our feet.  Banged & bruised, still gasping for breath, but no serious injuries.

I took a quick look around. No more waves, but no more Jethro either. I saw his lanyard (still clipped to the bridge) and tugged on it– no resistance, completely slack. I know I’ve told this story with submariner black humor and snark, but at that moment I realized my mistake had killed a man. I’d never thought something like this would happen and I wasn’t ready to help when it did.  The feeling of failure is indescribable.

So in despair I yelled down the hatch the words I’d been trained to use since my plebe year: “Man overboard, port side!!” Then I leaned back over the top of the sail, over the opening for #2 periscope, while the CO did the same on the starboard side over #1 scope, to see if I could spot Jethro. We could see the helo hovering over the baggage bobbing on the surface, but there was no Jethro bobbing there with it.

**************************

Meanwhile, down in the control room under the bridge access trunk, the Executive Officer and the watchstanders had a few problems of their own. The XO had heard the CO’s yell and walked over to look up the bridge trunk… just as a huge slug of seawater came down to greet his upturned face. He scrambled back out of the deluge as it hit the deck and splashed in all directions, startling everyone and soaking everything with water. The spray got into a number of “spray-proofed” electronic cabinets, causing many systems to ground out… or catch fire.  Sirens & buzzers blared while the lights flickered and electronics exploded or flamed.  As the smoke and spray mist cleared, the soaked and freezing watchstanders attempted to avoid electrocution while extinguishing several small fires and restarting their systems. Then the XO heard the words he’d been dreading: “Man overboard!”

If you’re in the control room for this emergency, the first thing you do is use a periscope (and its high-powered optics) to look for the man overboard and help the OOD conn the sub back to rescue him. Unfortunately the helo transfer procedure had directed that both scopes be lowered into their wells. No problem for the XO: “Raise both scopes!!”

**************************

Back up on the bridge, I was just beginning to run my eyes along Jethro’s lanyard. As I lay back over the sail, #2 periscope rose smartly out of its well (boosted by 3000 psi hydraulics) to smack me in the gut and begin raising me, too– but my harness’ six-foot lanyard was still clipped to the bridge fitting. I heard the CO’s startled “Oof!” as he began a similar journey with #1 scope.  Painfully aware that this was going to end badly, I used my command voice to issue an order to the phonetalker that was heard all the way down in the control room: “LOWER THE DAMN SCOPES.” After a brief pause (at about 5’11″ elevation), we both descended smoothly back onto the sail. Once we’d moved clear we told the control room that they could now raise the scopes.

Still no sight of Jethro. As I gave the rudder & engine orders to retrace our track toward Jethro’s presumed position, we hauled in his lanyard– and it pulled taut! By leaning way over the bridge’s port side we could just spot his exposure suit lying on top of the missile deck.

It turned out that when the wave was bouncing us around in the bridge cockpit, it wiped Jethro (and the baggage) completely off the sail plane. As it carried him down and aft, both of his lanyards hit their six-foot limits and popped their ten-foot shock cords. Jethro lost his baggage and was bodysurfing down the port side on a 32-foot tow rope– from a 25-foot sail. He’d submerged and eventually popped to the surface where he bounced around in the freezing swell as he was towed at eight knots and banged against the hull in the submariner’s version of “crack the whip”. In an unbelievable burst of fear-boosted adrenaline-enhanced strength he had hauled his waterlogged body on the line to bat-walk up the side of the hull until the swell washed him onto the missile deck. By the time we’d finished our excitement up on the bridge he was beginning to think about climbing back up the sail ladder, but he was worried that we’d yell at him for losing the baggage.

If Jethro had worn just one lanyard & shock cord (as required by the safety procedures) then his journey would have ended at 16 feet. He would have been dangling in his harness from the bridge just below the sail plane, but he’d be hanging well above the water and we would have been able to haul him in. He was lucky not to be knocked unconscious and drowned (or strangled) on his towline.

By the time things settled down on the bridge and in the control room, the helo’s rescue swimmer had plucked both pieces of baggage from the water and the helo had headed back to land. (The crewmember was home a day later to help his family.) We hauled Jethro back up to the sail where he was thankful that he hadn’t been killed. As Jethro descended into the control room, the XO informed him that he was also glad Jethro hadn’t been killed: the XO was angry enough about the safety violation to look forward to the privilege of administering the execution on his own terms. Discretion directs that I draw the curtains on this scene, but the XO eventually calmed down and Jethro was happy to be banned from bridge liberty for the rest of his tour. Still on alert missile-launch status, we headed back out to sea (coping with a couple other mishaps that I’ll save for another sea-story post) and eventually submerged in deep water. I resolved to be more vigilant about surprises and safety precautions while “Mad Dog” caught up on his sleep.

The CO signed my command-qualification requirement for helo transfers, and we were both happy to avoid that evolution for the rest of our careers. I was teased for the rest of my tour about my forceful command presence and high-decibel orders.

I haven’t heard from Jethro in 25 years. If you know how he’s doing, please post a comment!

Related articles:
Sea story: “Battle Stations Missile”
Sea story: “Secure blowing sanitaries!!!”

Does this post help? Sign up for more free military retirement tips via e-mail, Facebook, or Twitter!

Filed Under: Sea stories · Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Sea story: Blowing the job interview of the decade

February 23, 2011 by · 3 Comments

I’ve finished blogging about the main text of the book. Of course I’ve left out a few things that you’ll want to read in the book itself– the chapter checklists, the personal stories, and other goodies. Impact Publications says that the book should show up at Amazon.com in May and in the exchange bookstores by August.

Before I blog about financial material from the appendices, I thought this would be a good time to recount how I was enjoying early retirement so thoroughly that I couldn’t even recognize a job interview– let alone take part in it.

Several years ago, about the time I started writing the book, an alumni group was having their 55th reunion in our city. My spouse and I volunteered (on a weekday morning) to staff the hospitality suite to talk story and hand out luau tickets. We expected a rare opportunity to see a snapshot of the lives of those who’d gone before us. To travel to our town these alumni would have to be sentient, at least somewhat mobile, and affluent. What a great chance to see veterans and long-term retirees in action, and to learn from the experts!

We met veterans whom we’d only read about in history books– heroes of the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and decades of Cold War battles. Many had gone on to successful civilian careers. We also met their spouses and families and heard dozens of fascinating unpublished (sea) stories. It was wonderful to get to know these harbingers of our own aging, and an inspiration for reflecting on our own lives.

My spouse and I, in our 40s, were asked by several of those alumni how we found the time to volunteer.   Why weren’t we at work? We explained our military careers and our early retirement. Our plans were met with the usual disbelief and warnings of certain boredom and lack of fulfillment. We soon dropped the subject– this demographic was not the right audience for an ER discussion.

On a sad note, one spouse of a retired flag officer quietly took aside my spouse to ask her how we could afford early retirement. My spouse explained our savings and our investments and living off our military pensions. She shook her head sadly and said “Oh, his pension’s not big enough, and we don’t have any savings or investments.” Later I looked up her spouse’s military pension– he had retired in the late 1970s and his payments was adjusted for inflation, so in today’s dollars he was receiving over $100,000/year plus Social Security. Yet their expenses were still too high to live without working. They have a very nice home in a very nice neighborhood, and probably a very big mortgage to go with it.  Back then he was over 75 years old.

During the morning, one alumnus stood out even from among the other more flamboyant and voluble attendees. He was of modest stature and seemed reserved, even shy; but he possessed a room-commanding presence. He had the martial “look of eagles”. His voice had the timbre and echo of professional speech training, and his words were full of credibility and experience. He mentioned that he’d flown cross-country to spend this time with his classmates, even as it took him away from a ceremony at our alma mater. When pressed he admitted that he’d just been honored as one of its distinguished graduates.

He seemed familiar but I’m embarrassed to admit that his name didn’t trigger our limited memories. (We certainly weren’t part of his social or professional networks.) Later we read much more about his impressive military career and his even more outstanding accomplishments in the corporate and non-profit worlds. He had accumulated much recognition and many awards. He was certainly financially independent and was thoroughly enjoying serving on corporate boards and volunteering with non-profit organizations. His legacy would be reflected in history books, museums, and monuments. His contacts and recommendations would open doors of opportunity across the nation in military and corporate circles. To be blunt, he was the job-seeker’s employment reference of a lifetime– a fantastic networking contact!

While he’d been talking with the group, he’d also been observing my ponytailed enthusiasm about surfing and our stories about our family’s ER lifestyle. During a late-morning lull when my spouse and I were alone with him he asked me “So, Doug, who are you with?”

My reflex response was “Why, I’m here with my spouse.” (My spouse thought he wanted to know which alumnus brought us to the reunion.) As my confusion showed, he clarified “No, no, with what company are you working?” I quickly assured him that I was delighted with early retirement and not seeking employment. After a few skeptical questions he accepted my opinions (without understanding them) and moved on to other topics.

Later that night, as my spouse and I learned his biography and discussed our conversation, it became clear that I’d stumbled into the job interview of my life– and totally blown it. I was absolutely oblivious to the rare opportunity he’d offered and blissfully ignorant of its significance.

It was the clearest sign yet of how thoroughly I’m enjoying early retirement.

I retired at age 41, and by the time the book is published I’ll have only been early retired for nine years. According to the actuarial tables I can expect to live to at least age 67. (I’m looking for triple digits, but that’s another story.) It’s quite possible during the next two decades or so that I’ll find my avocation– service with a non-profit, private philanthropy, or maybe even a real job with a paycheck. However I’m enjoying writing, surfing, taekwondo, reading, home improvement, and everything else in my life too much right now to even think about searching for an avocation. It’s quite possible that ER is my avocation.

I hope the book helps you achieve financial independence and lets you feel free to retire on your terms.


Related articles:
Book update: printed by March 2011
Myths of military retirement and early retirement
Start saving early
Simple ways to start saving
Where to put your savings while you’re in the military
How many years does it take to become financially independent?

Does this post help? Sign up for more free military retirement tips via e-mail, Facebook, or Twitter!

Filed Under: Sea stories · Tagged With: , , , ,

Sea story: “Secure blowing sanitaries!!!”

January 10, 2011 by · 7 Comments

Let’s take a break. The last couple weeks of posts have covered some pretty heavy topics, with some pretty intricate HTML formatting, and maybe it’s time for a little levity around here.

To many submariners, “levity” means “potty jokes”. In fact, about the only unclassified sea stories we’re allowed to tell are the ones involving toilet mishaps. When you spend your time on submariner websites and discussion boards, you begin to wonder if there’s a rule requiring every sea story to begin with the sober affirmation “I was there and this is a no-sh!tter.”

Well, I wasn’t exactly right there on the scene for this one– thank goodness. Unlike other sea stories this one was definitely full of fecal matter, and I felt pretty fortunate to be outside of what we weaponeers refer to as the “blast radius”.

Those of you aboard USS NEW YORK CITY (SSN 696) in early 1990 will recognize the participants. I may have forgotten a name or two in the ensuing years, but let me just mention up front that the commanding officer at that time was a legendary yet extremely forceful and somewhat intimidating character with a fiercely bristling mustache. Whenever he was angry (which was a dozen times a day) his face used to clench up in a squinty-eyed glare with a clenched out-thrust jaw that made you instinctively take a step back out of karate range. His upper lip would be literally trembling with rage and those mustache hairs would seem to be moving all by themselves. His mustache wasn’t as flamboyant as the cartoon character Yosemite Sam, but this CO was at least as explosive. A few of my shipmates are reliving the nightmare memories right now, but the rest of you should just try to hold on to this image– we’ll get back to it in a few paragraphs.

We were returning to Pearl Harbor one early morning after a long 55 days of “extended operations at sea in international waters for crew training” (yet another classified mission), we had kicked some major submariner butts, and spirits were running high. I had just surfaced the sub as Officer of the Deck and the final 40 miles to Oahu were lookin’ mighty fine. I was standing on the bridge (which is actually a two-person cockpit at the top of the sail with a chest-high coaming) and enjoying my first fresh air in nearly two months. I’d ordered a standard bell but the throttleman had probably added a few extra “liberty turns” so a brisk 20-knot tropical tradewind was blowing in my face. The rest of the crew was too wired to sleep and everyone was getting a head start on the hundred-and-one things to take care of before entering port. People were dashing enthusiastically to & fro taking care of the housekeeping while sharing their liberty plans with each other.

One of those housekeeping details is to empty all of the sub’s sanitary tanks before getting close to land. By “sanitary” tanks, I mean the ones containing the most unsanitary of substances– the holding tanks from the toilets. Federal regulations allow the Navy to discharge these tanks directly to sea while outside certain limits (the fish love it), but once you’re in the harbor you have to connect discharge hoses and avoid spilling a single drop. Or chunk. Or whatever’s been composting away in there. It’s much easier to take care of it at sea, so you try to get rid of every last gallon before returning to port.

At sea, submarines could empty these tanks using one of two systems– the sanitary tank discharge pump or high-pressure air. When the submarine was submerged, the discharge system would have to raise the tank’s pressure above sea pressure. At 44 pounds per square inch of pressure for every 100 feet of depth, this could easily be 100-200 PSI before the tank’s contents would exceed backpressure and depart the submarine. The NYC’s pump had a lousy mechanical reliability and was perpetually leaking into the torpedo-room bilge, so the preferred method by far was to use high-pressure air. The Auxiliaryman of the Watch, a teenage mechanic who might have been in the Navy for all of 12 months, would shut all the toilet flushing valves and then slowly bleed high-pressure air into the sanitary tank. Once the air pressure inside the tank was greater than sea pressure outside the hull, he’d open the hull isolation valve and commence blowing sanitaries. On NYC it had become the standard practice to do so at 150 feet of depth, so the Auxs of the Watch were accustomed to blasting 75-100 PSI of air into the tank. They’d whip open the hull valve and depart the vicinity to take care of other business while the tank contents were going overboard.

I should mention that on NYC the sanitary tank discharge piping exited the hull about 40 feet forward of the sail. When the submarine was on the surface, the piping was just above the waterline on the port side. You submariners have probably already figured out what’s coming next…

As I was finishing my OOD watch up on the bridge, I gave the order for the Aux of the Watch to discharge sanitaries overboard. I knew it would take him 15-20 minutes to get ready to actually be discharging, so I planned to turn that item over to the relieving OOD. I won’t reveal the name of my relief because he’s since gone on to a very successful career as a senior officer. But back then we were a little concerned about his lack of command presence and his tendency to be somewhat hesitant & inarticulate in his orders, hence his nickname “Mumbles”.

I conducted the OOD turnover with Mumbles, who responded with his usual phlegmatic absence of enthusiasm (or any other signs of life), and I got ready to go down below. As I approached the bridge hatch (about a foot away from the edge of the cockpit) the CO was coming up the bridge trunk. (His mustache wasn’t bristling so I knew it was going to be a good day.) I reported my relief as OOD and we exchanged a few pleasantries while Mumbles used the bridge public-announcing system’s microphone to order the control room to begin discharging sanitaries. A few seconds later I went down the trunk ladder– thereby avoiding the ensuing gory fate of the remaining bridge personnel. (Nice foreshadowing, huh?) As I descended into the control room the Aux of the Watch was heading forward to the sanitary discharge hull isolation valve to begin purging the tank’s contents.

Upon subsequent investigation after the casualty (Yikes, more foreshadowing!) it turned out that the Aux of the Watch had set up the discharge evolution with his brain on autopilot. It was the 40th or 50th time that he’d blown sanitaries so he knew the steps by heart. He still referred to the procedure card but he neglected to consider the fact that, for the first time in nearly eight weeks, the submarine was on the surface– not at 150 feet of depth. The pressure needed to discharge the tank would only be about 20 PSI… not the 100 PSI he’d already charged into the system to make it “go faster”.

I stayed in the control room to talk with the watchstanders. The Aux of the Watch smartly proceeded to the valve as ordered and whipped it open to start the discharge. He turned away to pick up his logsheet to record the event. As he took pen in hand, suddenly the ship’s public-address system keyed on and a loud, firm, clear voice urgently enunciated: “SECURE BLOWING SANITARIES!!!”

The entire crew’s surprised reaction was “Holy crap (no pun intended), was that Mumbles?”

The Aux of the Watch froze at the announcement like everyone else, then belatedly realized “Hey, he’s talkin’ to me!” and turned to shut the valve. It took a few seconds, and as he shut it I walked over to the base of the bridge access trunk to look upward. My timing was still perfect– just before I got there, a thin brown rain started coming down the trunk accompanied by a gosh-awful stench. As I backpedaled it occurred to me that it smelled quite a bit like the contents of a sanitary tank.

The “rain” stopped in a few seconds, and in a few more seconds the CO practically teleported down from the bridge into the control room. I’d never seen him so angry, and I never want to again. From his waist to the top of his ball cap he was covered in, well, a serious coating of sanitary-tank discharge. He saw the Aux of the Watch at the hull valve and immediately started bellowing at the top of his lungs, er, I mean, at the Aux of the Watch. The poor sailor snapped to attention, his eyes locked to the CO, and all hands within two decks of hearing knew that there was big trouble.

As I gazed upon this high-decibel leadership seminar, I noticed that a small piece of toilet paper had somehow alighted upon the CO’s mustache and was stuck there– no doubt by an all-natural “adhesive”.  As the CO warmed up to his tirade, his mustache began its famous bristling movements and the toilet paper began waving in the breeze of his fervent exhalations directed at the petrified Aux of the Watch. To my horror, the young watchstander also noticed the piece of toilet paper flapping away and began staring at it– and suddenly had to control his laughter from breaking through his frozen facial expression. He wasn’t going to make it, and I could see that his remaining lifespan would be measured in seconds.

Luckily (for everyone) another crewmember handed the CO a towel. He paused in mid-rant to wipe his face, the toilet paper disappeared, and everyone got serious again. After another 30 seconds or so of bellowing he stomped off, inviting the Engineer to his stateroom to discuss sanitary-discharge procedures. The Aux of the Watch unfroze and began to contemplate what was left of his naval career. A firehose team mustered topside to wash off the sail– and everything else that had been downwind of the sanitary discharge piping.

Later that day, “Mumbles” was complimented by the rest of the wardroom on his newfound ability to issue a clear order. He said that a few seconds after I’d left he’d heard a muted detonation and had looked forward to watch the sanitary tank’s contents absolutely explode out of the piping in a gigantic mushroom cloud and hit the 20-knot crosswind. He’d used the term “sh!tstorm” many times before without actually seeing one, and now he understood the metaphor. He said that he had ducked down below the bridge cockpit coaming to grab the announcing system microphone, so when he shouted his order the only exposed person was… the CO. The boss had been looking aft when he also unexpectedly heard Mumbles’ commanding voice, so he’d turned forward in surprise and opened his mouth to make a comment– just as the “storm” slammed into the bridge.

The CO enjoyed a long shower (which drained into another sanitary tank, but that’s a different sea story) while the Engineer personally arranged for the CO’s khakis to be cleaned. The Aux of the Watch survived his “counseling” (and remedial laundry duty) to tell the tale to thousands of admiring mechanics over many frosty beverages. Mumbles gained new respect and confidence and that day he became the submarine force’s newest steely-eyed killer of the deep.

Luckily for me, the incident was the only actual fecal storm I had to avoid during the rest of my tour. But every other time I was on the bridge while we were discharging sanitaries, I made sure to receive a report of the tank’s pressure before we started the process…

I’ve recently learned that a new generation of the Nords family is considering joining the submarine force. Hopefully she’ll check this story with her friendly Navy ROTC submarine officer before making a commitment!

Related articles:

Sea story: “Battle Stations Missile”


Filed Under: Sea stories · Tagged With: , , ,

Sea story: “Battle Stations Missile”

October 28, 2010 by · 8 Comments

No finances or other military-retirement topics today, folks.  By popular request from my shipmate Jerome Jolly, it’s sea story time. I don’t think he’s heard this one before. Don’t worry– it’s safe for work and it’s even family-friendly.

My first assignment was the ballistic missile submarine USS JAMES MONROE (SSBN-622 BLUE), and maybe it was Jerome’s first boat too. I reported for duty in April, 1984, at the height of the Cold War. For those of you not with us at the time, President Reagan thought of the Soviet Union as the “Evil Empire” and was ramping up defense spending to force them to back away from their plans to dominate Europe and South America. Current events were tense and we were perpetually concerned that we might actually have to launch a nuclear missile to dissuade some foreign power from trying to invade another country. The situation wasn’t as bad as the Cuban Missile Crisis, but these were the most tense times that we’d known.

Ballistic missile submarines spend 70% of their time at sea making deterrent patrols by having BLUE and GOLD crews. When we took the submarine from our counterparts, we immediately began a three-week refit. We had to fix a long list of things that had broken during the GOLD crew’s patrol, we had to maintain our own gear, and we had to load an impossibly long list of supplies to help us endure the upcoming 90-day patrol. We spent 18-hour days, seven days a week, trying to put everything back together so that we could perform a week of sea trials before beginning the patrol. Fatigue accumulated, tensions were running high, and everyone was focused on just getting it over with so we could go to sea.

During sea trials you attempt to make sure that all your gear works while hoping that you don’t break anything else. Sure, you’d like to catch up on your sleep, too, but you’re kinda concerned that you missed a problem or that something new is going to break. Once you’re past that initial worry, you spend the rest of the week trying to remember how to operate the boat– it’s been nearly four months since you last stood watch at sea. Luckily we steely-eyed killers of the deep had a tried-and-true system for bringing back our proficiency: drill sets. You pretend that an emergency or a casualty has occurred, you try to control it, and then you try to recover from it. Unfortunately drills don’t allow you to catch up on your sleep.

Back then our Engineer was a crusty, grumpy curmudgeon named Sam Johnson.  He’d been in the Navy for about a thousand years.  He’s probably a good guy when he’s not exhausted, running drills, and trying to fix the gear faster than it breaks. But back then he was chronically short on sleep and that made him pretty short-tempered. I lived in fear of him and avoided him as much as possible. That tactic would have worked a lot better if he wasn’t my boss.

The ship’s newest young officer was Ray Huddleston, one of the last of the Navy’s submariners who only worked with nuclear missiles instead of nuclear reactors. Since he didn’t have to qualify on nuclear engineering systems, he started out in the weapons department (safely sequestered from Sam’s temper) and he began learning how to get a ballistic missile ready for immediate launch. It’s safe to say that Ray was not the sharpest officer in the wardroom, and he got off to a rough start. He was immature, gangly, naturally nervous, and he would frequently break down under pressure even without the stress of the Cold War. He also tended to get a little overexcited and lose control of his actions. These traits did not endear him to his boss, Don “Mad Dog” Cole, so by the time we started sea trials Ray was pretty much on a perpetual hair trigger.

The most critical drill we practiced during sea trials was “battle stations missile”. Everyone had a place to be during BSM, and you had to be there within 60 seconds. Of course that never happened during the first few days of sea trials, so the first dozen or so drills consisted mainly of announcing “Man battle stations missile!” on the ship’s public-announcing system, sounding the general alarm, and then seeing how long it took everyone to report in. It got so bad that we’d stop, reset, and start again three or four times in a row before we were fast enough. The lesson learned from this “practice” was to move quickly and smartly to your assigned space. We finally secured from the drill, but we knew that the commanding officer might announce it again at any second. By this point we were all very tired and getting quite a bit twitchy.

Apparently Ray didn’t know his way around the boat very well yet, and he’d gotten lost a couple times enroute his space. This had slowed down the entire Weapons Department’s report of being ready for BSM, so Ray’s tardiness had earned him a little chat with Mad Dog to encourage him to speed up his response time. Ray was wound up even more tightly after Mad Dog’s motivational speech.

At some point Sam had gone down to his office to prepare the next set of engineering drills. The Engineer’s office was so small that the door couldn’t open inward into the space– it opened outward into the passageway. This passageway led directly to the Missile Control Center, Ray’s space for battlestations.

Just as Ray had returned to the wardroom from Mad Dog’s counseling session, the CO’s voice came over the PA system announcing BSM. Zip! Ray leaped out the door and raced down the passageway at full speed. Mad Dog was pleasantly surprised to see Ray at his assigned station within 60 seconds. As the rest of the wardroom emptied out, we proceeded to the control room only to discover that the last person to man BSM was… Sam. Ruh-roh.

It turned out that Sam had encountered Ray. When the alarm sounded Sam had stood up in his office, picked up his (full) coffee cup, and turned to open the door into the passageway. Just as Sam started to move through the doorframe, Ray rocketed down the passageway and slammed full-force into the door before he could change direction. BLAM! The door smacked shut on Sam’s coffee cup, nose, and forehead– in about that order. By the time Sam got the door open again, Ray was gone. When Sam finally made it to the control room his shirt was soaked with coffee and blood. It would have been a lot funnier if his mustache wasn’t bristling with anger, so we had to keep our comments to ourselves and make sure he didn’t see us smirking. Of course that didn’t keep the CO from kidding Sam about his new attire. It didn’t improve Sam’s humor, either.

The drill finally ended and we headed back down to the wardroom. Sam got another cup of coffee before going back to his stateroom to clean up, grumbling loudly what he’d do if he ever found the schmuck who knocked the door into him. As he warmed up into one of his full temper tantrums, Ray entered the wardroom. Ray, not stopping to apprise the tactical situation before opening his mouth, immediately blurted out with relief: “Boy, I almost didn’t make it that time– somebody opened a door right into me and I slammed it shut just trying to get around it!”

At this point we’ll draw the curtains of discretion across the stage of this sea story. Ray stayed alive until Sam transferred a few months later, but Ray ended up leaving the submarine force shortly after that…

So, Jerome, you know you miss this stuff.  NOT.

Filed Under: Sea stories · Tagged With: , ,
Newer Posts»
%d bloggers like this: