The Volunteer Sailor

The long days of training, including the morning Khaki Call (E-7 and above) at 0545 and the Hot Wash (training wrap up meeting for the same said group) at 1730, have kept my blogging at bay. I intend to catch up, in a sense, by capturing some of the highlights of the last several weeks.

I am now completing my first week in country and can finally reveal my location: Camp Arifjan, Kuwait. My turnover (the process of taking responsibility and accountability from my predecessor) is going well and should be complete within a few more days. More on my scope of responsibility will follow. Needless to say, I have been fairly busy since landing here last week, as well. It is a combination of learning a new a location, way of living, job, and people with whom I will be working with and for.

I apologize for the great delay, but hope that the following entries will suffice.

As the assistant officer-in-charge of Team 3, I have had the opportunity to work with an incredible group of people from around the country. A newly-wed teacher from Long Beach. A cop/mom from Dorasville, GA. A truck mechanic from San Diego. And many others. A diverse group, to say the least, but one forged by circumstances of a mission that called them away from their families and their homes to congregate at this staging area in Virginia.

We have been fairly inundated with scary tales of previous customs missions that have been rife with problems.  Some of these previous battalions have had major problems, from officers relieved of command and senior-enlisted members fired, to junior-enlisted members disciplined and reduced-in-rate to a lesser grade. In short, careers ruined. These are generally not incompetence issues, but rather a problem with long separation from the familiar world and from family supplanted by a bleak desert and a mind-numbing monotony. Given enough length of time, along with enough free-time, trouble seeps its way into the mission. Fraternization and sexual issues top the list of the major mission detractors. It’s a sad fact.

With all of that stated, I don’t believe that we are resigned to the same fate of others that have gone before us. The previous battalion—the one we are relieving—has had a very successful mission. This is in stark contrast to the battalion that they relieved. These missions can be completed successfully! But it starts here, when the group is storming and forming during our training. I believe that we are accomplishing that.
Team 3 has begun to change. A sense of pride is developing with regards to our ability to operate efficiently and in a military manner. I have seen the sailors interested in the performance of the team more and more, as opposed to their individual performance. I have seen them become more comfortable with each other, and with us, the leadership. We have a lot of work ahead of us, but we are off to a great start.

Now, as to the superlatives. Our Deputy Commander has a penchant for saying “AWESOME” when addressing the battalion. The Officer-in-Charge of Team 3 can’t finish a sentence without “OUTSTANDING.” Mix in the ever-present, “HOORAH.” You have a superlative soup that is generously ladled over us all. Our chief came up to me the other day and said that the team was considering a name: The Outstanding Awesome’s. While goofy, and certainly tongue-in-cheek, I like it. I think it characterizes the morale at our current stage, and the burgeoning optimism that we can affect our outcome through planning, poise, and discipline.

I had not planned on writing an entry today. Much of the day I have been engaged in nothing more than learning about Iraq using a computer-based cultural curriculum—a project from the Office of Naval Research that I volunteered to take part in. That training, and reading Peter Mansfield’s, A History of the Middle East, have kept me occupied. Although fascinating to me, neither of these activities constitutes an engaging blog entry.

However, tonight the wardroom (officers) of NAVELSG went to dinner at a local Mexican restaurant in Norfolk. Apparently, as we engaged in conversation, we attracted the attention of another patron who asked if we were all in the Navy. He then generously offered to buy dinner for all twelve of us. We graciously accepted the kind offer, and as he was leaving the restaurant I caught him as he was paying. I wanted to get his address so that I could send him a thank you and one of our command’s coins. It turns out that his son-in-law is in the Navy battling pirates, presumably in the waters off of Somalia.

Honestly, I was quite shocked by this gesture. This is something I could see happening back home in Tennessee, where a naval presence is, well, practically non-existent and therefore somewhat of a novelty. Here, right outside the gate of the largest naval presence in the world, we were thanked by a gentleman that most likely lives and interacts among Sailors on a daily basis. Thank you, Dr. Ramsey.

Suck in, exhale. Suck in, exhale. Suck in, exhale. A slight fog appears within my left eye’s field of vision as I exhale. It rapidly disappears as I suck air in; cool, safe, sustaining. A clear plastic hood encompasses my torso like a bubble. In fact, I feel like the boy in the bubble. I’m surreally aware of my surrounding while at the same time not really part of it; distanced. Wearing the gas mask forces an acute awareness of my every breath.

Breathe normally. Those are the first instructions. What about this is normal? An aerosol being pumped by a TDA 99M, respirator function tester, collects in the plastic hood that rests over my head and shoulders. I suck in, then exhale. A small hose connected to my drinking tube takes air samples from inside my gas mask. Suck, exhale. The idea being that if there is a leak the aerosol will show up inside my mask and be detected by the TDA 99M through the tube, which draws a small amount of the air from outside my mouth. Suck, exhale. Breathe normally, and continuously turn your head from side to side—all the way to your shoulders. Those are the second instructions. I wonder what it will be like when I wear this during training, when the temperature is in the teens. Will my saliva or the condensation inside the mask freeze? Suck, exhale. Breathe normally, and continuously nod up and down. Now I think about wearing this thing in the desert, where it purportedly gets to around one hundred and forty degrees in the summer. Will the seal keep when the rubber is slick with moisture? Will my eyes sting with salt as my brow releases into them a river of perspiration? Suck, exhale. Breathe normally, and pretend to chew gum. Those are the final instructions. I think about how I have to wear eyeglass inserts in this thing. I’m wearing contacts now; a luxury I won’t be afforded in the future. Would I actually be able to aim a weapon and shoot while wearing this? Suck, exhale. Ten minutes pass, and the humming of the TDA 99M stops. The hood comes off, and I am told that the mask is good to go. It’s tagged, and bagged, and in my possession. For the duration.

The author "sucks rubber."

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A NAVELSG Sailor has his gas mask tested.

Two dollars and thirty cents. That’s the cost for a full breakfast in the Navy—not bad in today’s economy. The Ship’s Cabin, as the galley is named here in Norfolk, stands along the main thoroughfare on base—a long and straight vein of base traffic called Gilbert Street. My life consists mostly of Gilbert Street. At one end of my world rests Wall Manor, and at the other, approximately a half-mile away, is Building J-50. About two-thirds of the distance to J-50, on the right, is The Ship’s Cabin. Located, interestingly, next to one of the buildings where gas-masks are fitted.

Galleys in the Navy are always named. I’m not sure about the tradition there, but it may be an effort to instill pride in the CS’s that run them. My old galley on the USS Greeneville was called The Davy Crockett Café, and the Sub Base galley at Pearl Harbor was called The Silver Dolphin Café.

CS stands for Culinary Specialist, and is the new name given to what was once called MS, or Mess Cook. They are the Santoku- and spatula-wielding purveyors of fine Navy chow. Culinary Specialists run all the aspects of a Navy galley, from menu development, nutrition, and meal preparation, to facility and personnel administration within the food service areas. They also used to run the barracks, but that may not be the case these days.
Culinary Specialists, just as with any Navy rate (or job), attracts a wide variety of people and backgrounds. Some are motivated and talented, and work their craft accordingly, while other are, well, not. I always appreciate the former. There are few people onboard a Navy ship, outside of your chain-of-command, that can have as great an effect on crew morale. Nobody likes terrible food, or worse, a cook that doesn’t care that it’s terrible. I have seen the difference that attentive, hard-working, creative, and eager-to-learn cooks can have on a crew. It’s amazing, actually. I pay homage to those CS’s working to make their Sailors satiated, happy, and healthy.

Back to The Ship’s Cabin. It’s average, at best, in relation to other galleys. No glaring deficiencies, particularly with regard to the facility itself. But the food and the service aren’t anything to write home about, or in this case, blog about. The building is new, the furnishings more than adequate. A long serving line area broken into two main parts: the fast line (for ready-made, quick meals), and the regular line (for the main course, or made-to-order food).  Intersecting this area perpendicularly are two long lines accommodate Sailors with the latest beverage machines: milk, juices, coffee, and latte’s of the machined variety. Also in this line are a salad bar, soup, and various condiments that aren’t necessarily found on each dining table. Each eating area, distributed into bays with shoulder high, wooden partitioning walls, is equipped with a flat-screen TV. There is a separate room for officers and chiefs (the senior enlisted, E-7 and above).  These consist of wooden and laminate tables that accommodate between two and four people each. The décor is modern, yet warm.  Toward the exit of the galley is the scullery, the area where trays and dishes are dropped off. This galley is a self-bussing establishment.  The galley is open continuously from 0600 to 1730. Aboard ship, it may be open 24 hours, or intermittently during meal hours, with a fourth meal called Midrats (Midnight Rations) occurring around Midnight. This accommodates watch standers that may have missed a meal earlier.

I typically eat breakfast, and possibly lunch at the galley. Due mostly to a matter of convenience, as well as to the fact that it is hardest to mess breakfast up. This morning I ate a cheese and vegetable omelet, a piece of bacon, hash browns, fruit, a bowl of oatmeal, orange juice, milk, and coffee. Not bad for $2.30, right? I will probably only eat two squares today, because of the large breakfast. The service was tolerable, but I did have a CS who got a little too animated in his re-telling of last night’s 3-D gaming conquest. The other CS, who was the target of his colleague’s excited show, looked distressed at having a customer before him and having to decide toward whom he should devote his attention. I won out, eventually.

With a full belly, I stopped by the coat rack, retrieved my hat, gloves, and jacket, and headed out into the blustery day and onto Gilbert Street for the walk back to Wall Manor.