The Time I Went Off-Script While Briefing Congressional Staffers

This quote from The Atlantic online article “Two Young Officers on How the Country Let the Military Down, and Vice Versa” really struck a chord with me:

Military leaders often (privately) complain about congressional visits as a waste of time and an insult to their competence. They would prefer to be taken at their word and be left alone. But I have witnessed professional HASC [House Armed Services Committee] staff incisively tear apart the rosy picture that generals and their staffers try to paint.

So here’s my sea story.

Shortly after 9/11, as I’ve previously written about, I was re-assigned from my billet as Administrative Officer to be the Force Protection Officer (FPO) at Naval Station Everett (Wash.). There was no actual FPO job, but the commanding officer (CO) felt the revised circumstances called for having someone fairly senior overseeing security and anti-terrorism operations.

Gassing in the night …

Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Billy Ho aboard the cruiser USS Monterey (CG 61) caught this scene of an SH-60 of Helicopter Anti-Submarine Squadron Light (HSL) 48 about to lift off into an Arabian Gulf night on July 21, 2013.

One warm night while conducting exercises in the Caribbean Sea, USS Arleigh Burke (DDG 51) became involved in a Search and Rescue operation conducted by the U.S. Coast Guard. All these years later I remember only that a small boat was missing, and the Coasties had air and sea assets looking for it.

Our role in the operation was relatively small: first, while carrying on with our orders we used our eyes and electronic sensors to look for the boat, and secondly, as we were handily located in the middle of the action, Burke served as a gas station for those searching helicopters.

The Navy lost some money on that deal, I can tell you.

Rocks and Shoals

I really don’t get the fascination with televised trials. As I write this in Florida the Zimmerman murder trial is going on, and every cable news channel is running “gavel-to-gavel” coverage. I’ve been on a civilian jury, and in the Navy I chaired a disciplinary board. To me, sitting in judgment of another person isn’t something to take lightly. It isn’t entertainment.

There is Zero Tolerance for drug use in the military, and has been for many years. I’ve written before (“A Sailor Looks Back Over Twenty Years”) about how as a young seaman some of the senior enlisted Sailors I served with told me sea stories from their early days when things were very different.

Just like registering to vote puts someone in the civilian potential juror pool, once I was promoted to Lieutenant Commander (equivalent rank is Major in the Army, Air Force or Marines) I became eligible to chair administrative boards (below from the Navy Military Personnel Manual (MILPERSMAN):

 1. Definitions. For the purpose of administrative separation processing only, the following phrases and terms are explained.

a. Administrative Board: A board appointed to determine the facts in a case; to recommend retention in the Naval Service, separation, or suspension of separation; the reason for separation; and the characterization of service or description of separation

I just love her, sir.

For a while, officers departing USS Arleigh Burke (DDG 51) received a very special farewell gift from their peers in the wardroom. It was a coffee mug decorated with the ship’s crest and a photo of the Sailor who had been the departing officer’s biggest leadership challenge.

I never got one of the mugs because the practice of bestowing them died out as time passed after  commissioning and the ship’s operational tempo picked up. But I know which of my Sailors would be on the mug; in fact, I’d probably need a few mugs to cover them all.

One of my good friends on Arleigh Burke was the First Lieutenant, who was in charge of the Boatswain’s Mates of Deck Division. Deck was responsible for deck equipment, mooring lines and anchors, operating the ship’s small boast and upkeep of the ship’s exterior surfaces. That last part’s a fancy way of saying the Bosuns oversaw chipping and painting the weather decks — salt water and the metal surfaces of a ship don’t exactly get along so removing old paint and/or rust and applying a fresh coat of paint is a never-ending job. Never. Ending.

Cold-blooded

A few days ago a friend I met playing Call of Duty: Black Ops online suggested I check out a video showing two U.S. Army Apache helicopters attacking a group of Taliban fighters in Afghanistan who, the video’s label tells us, were maneuvering to attack a U.S. Special Forces patrol.

The video, included below, doesn’t break any new ground for anyone who has seen this type of footage before, but all the same this particular entry in the canon of combat videography evoked a strong reaction from me.

There is an appropriate warning before getting to watch it, but the truth is the violence is detached, with an almost video-game like quality to it. The glowing white figures that represent the bad guys are recognizable as men — armed men, with rocket launchers and assault rifles — as are the unfortunate donkeys grazing around them, but there are no faces to look at or into, no blood to see.

At one point during the attack, one of the glowing white figures is prone on the ground, rolling back and forth and evidently injured. Meanwhile, above him, the crews of the helicopters calmly discuss repairs to a broken gun while one of the Apaches carefully maneuvers into position for another round of cannon fire. “Oh yeah, got him,” says the airborne American after white blooms of explosions finish off the man below.

It is that calm, dispassionate voice, discussing weapons status and relaying the information of the man’s violent death with the detachment of a casual comment on the weather, that cold-blooded voice that sent me back in time.

The reward for standing on your head

“I can do it standing on my head.”

There is no telling how many times I said or heard that statement in my Navy career (1982-2003), but the conversation where these words appeared was almost always the same: a discussion about time — the time remaining on watch, at a duty station, in an enlistment or until retirement.

Service members in the U.S. military are eligible for retirement after twenty years, an almost magical number that gains in significance the closer one gets to it. There are perks to being retired, for sure — a pension, health care, shopping privileges at the tax-free Exchange and low-cost commissary — but don’t for a moment fool yourself: The benefits are slimmer than promised and the upfront cost is quite high.

The Shooter by Phil Bronstein is an article about the SEAL Team 6 man who killed Osama Bin Laden;  a hero by any measure but also a man whose decision to leave the Navy after sixteen years resulted in no pension and no medical benefits for himself or his wife and children.

I’ve heard this situation, a service member leaving within sight of retirement with nothing to show for it but the scars, called: Do not pass Go, do not collect $200. The first thought that came to my mind was this: Why didn’t you just suck it up or transfer to a training command, teach other SEAL candidates — do those four years standing on your head if you had to?

Reflections on “my war”

For a time, I thought of the 1990s conflict in the Balkans between the Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks as “my war.” Having recently read and reviewed Sean M. Chandler’s novel The Notice, a captivating look at the fear and violence from the inside, I remembered how much I thought that war might be the last great conflict my generation would see.

Foolish and naive of me, of course, but then who in the post-Desert Storm euphoria imagined 9/11, Afghanistan and Iraq? Or for that matter, Rwanda, Kosovo, Chechnya, and Darfur?

I missed Desert Shield/Storm, sitting out the conflict in Maine as a member of the pre-commissioning crew USS Arleigh Burke (DDG 51). At one point a call went out for volunteer supply officers to augment the logistics build-up and I eagerly sought the permission of my chain of command. The ship’s captain denied my request and I, like most everyone else, watched the war unfold on television.

An admission

admission [ədˈmɪʃən] noun
…
5. A voluntary acknowledgment of truth.

A few months ago I went to the eye doctor, and something that happened during that visit got me to thinking about doing this blog. I decided then to drop it — honestly I’ve gone back and forth on writing this one for quite some time — but then today I read an article in Time Magazine, and suddenly it seemed like the time was right.

I’ve never been much for going to the doctor and will try to avoid it as much as possible, even to the point of suffering through something that could probably be cleared up with a few pills. This drives my wife a bit crazy, but I suppose others have worse vices.

After retiring from the military in 2003 we enrolled in the medical plan offered at the base clinic; my wife works on base and it is very convenient for her for appointments and prescriptions. I avoid the doctor as much as possible, so it didn’t matter to me: I could avoid military docs as easily as civilians. But there have been times when going to the doctor was unavoidable, like my visit to the eye doctor, and there is a moment in those unavoidable visits that I have had a problem with. 

Thoughts on Memorial Day

Memorial Day 2012, and I’m scrolling through my Twitter feed reading the various posts thanking those who gave their lives while serving in the military.

From ordinary people, from actors, from politicians, from athletes, from mothers and fathers, sons and daughters. I very much want to feel good about these exclamations of support and solidarity with those who serve, and those who have served, but at the same time I’m struggling with my feelings.

Those who know me know I am uncomfortable with being thanked for my military service, even when I know the sentiments are sincerely expressed. I didn’t join the Navy for patriotic reasons, I want to say to the thanker, I didn’t enlist to protect you, or your family.

I also didn’t re-enlist twice, or become an officer, or serve 20 years until retirement in 2003 for you. I suppose it could be argued that the public benefited from my service, and therefore I should be lauded even if my intentions were less than altruistic.

Perhaps, but it still doesn’t sit well with me.

The Secretary of the Navy takes pleasure in …

Rummaging through the closet the other day, I came across a brown padded envelope that emitted a small tinkling sound when picked up. Inside were my large medals, mounted and ready to be worn on an appropriate ceremonial uniform. The medals were not up-to-date; there is some expense involved with getting medals mounted so I did not bother having them redone every time a new one was added.

Ribbons representing the medals, as well as those of awards which only come with ribbons, are worn on service dress and daily uniforms, but not on working uniforms. Perhaps the first thing any officer or Sailor does when meeting another for the first time is to glance at their ribbons; much can be learned about where the other person has been and what level of performance they accomplished.

In 1984 as a second class petty officer, I encountered U.S. Marine Corps Lieutenant General Alfred M. Gray, who would go on to earn a fourth star and serve as Commandant of the Marine Corps a few years later. General Gray’s ribbon “rack” extended from the top of the pocket on his starched class C shirt to the top of his shoulder; I’m not sure I ever saw that many ribbons on another individual.