“Uniform Flap-Doodle”

I’ve been told being a Navy Master Chief is a complicated form of hedonistic cannibalism! Your sorry ol’ up-tight ass becomes embittered on black oiled coffee only to make meals outta your own kind.

Just the other day as I was checking out of the Navy Base Gym when an ol’ Master Chief stops me while somewhat agitated,

“Hey Shipmate, you know you’re not supposed to be wearing those blue undershirts in the Gym. It’s against uniform regs!”

At first I didn’t acknowledge beings I’m retired, as though my haircut didn’t give it away. After his second heed I replied,

 “Well Master Chief, I’m retired so I don’t think those rules apply to me anymore.”

His response,

“Well if you were a true shipmate then you’d lead by example and wear a more appropriate T-shirt!”

Hmmmm, I just couldn’t help myself at this point!

“Well Master Chief, if the Navy is so full of real shipmates then maybe I wouldn’t have had to buy  this damn blue T-shirt three months before I retired!”

He looked a bit puzzled as I walked off and that was the end of our dialogue. Just another “no shitter” to throw out there… What really chaps my ass about the whole gaudamn thing is that so called blue undershirt wasn’t even an authorized uniform item. Under the guidance of our glorious Uniform Exchange many a sailor bought these blue undershirts for the new Navy Working Uniform (NWU’s)!!! When the Uniform Exchange put them on sale they failed to follow the guidance of the new uniform regulations and sold the wrong kind of undershirt. Apparently the threading of the undergarment is too gaudamned comfortable for our sailors to be wearing so they forced our boys and girls to buy new ones. A waste of money that few young crackerjacks can afford to part with.

Then if that wasn’t enough I read a publication in the Navy Times called “Uniform Outrage” that really got me think’n!! What the hell is the Navy doing anyway? Apparently while the Navy was handing out huge uniform allowances for our sailors to afford this new uniform change, our young recruits in Bootcamp were gett’n the shaft. Yep, you heard it right. Big Navy didn’t have the uniforms to supply the young’ns in their early stages of Naval Indoctrination so they issued the older utilities… kind of a cross between the old style dungarees and a Puddle Jump’n Dress Uniform! To make matters worse, they had no intentions of reimbursing these young’ns and expected them to suck it up… that’s until the Navy’s Big Boss (CNO) got wind of it. Thankfully he set things right.

But I gotta say, why so many damn changes with the Navy Uniform anyway. I must’ve went through a gaudamned gazillion changes over the years and it never made a lick of sense. We already had two different sets of summer & winter uniforms… not to include our dungaroos and coveralls. Now the Navy’s tell tale symbol of the American Sailor is endanger of being phased out. When I joined this canoe club the ball cap was the distinction that made you different from one vessel to the next. Now the ball caps are all but gone. And the Dixie-cup… the internationally recognized symbol of freedom, womanizing, and heavy drinking in far away foreign seaports will soon be found only in the bottom of some archaic footlocker in the back of Grandpa’s dusty ol’ attic… Okay, so you might argue with my moral values… but tell me this, when is naval leadership gonna quite monkeying around in this world of silly fashion bullshit and get the hell back to swashbuckling sailoring?

Is the Navy brass so embarrassed about our uniform they have to change it every damn ten years? Hell, you can’t even wear the new NWUs in public! “Cause it’s a Working Uniform,” they say! If you want to instill pride in these young ladies then you need to empower them and make’m feel good about that uniform they wear. 

Personally I prefer the ol’ white hat cocked down over the brow with that ‘lock up your mothers & daughters’ look about e’m!! If you go to Washington D.C. you’ll find the ‘Lone Sailor’ in honor of our sea going countrymen!! But in the near future you might not recognize his rebellious stance with his hands tucked in his pockets and his pea-coat collar standing straight up in defiance of uniform regs… It’s like the punch line of that ol’ joke with the Admiral and the three generals and the sailor tells the Admiral to kiss his ass and the Admiral says…

“Now that takes Balls!!!”