Hell, looking back at the age of the Cold War some might remember the ol’ Slim Pickens’ Major King Kong from 'Doctor Stranglove' riding a thermonuclear bomb to his death in a blaze of glory!!! Others might remember hiding under the damn school desk for atomic bomb drills or in rare cases a few may even had a bomb shelter rooted away somewhere in their backyard… I was always suspicious of my neighbors re-enforced, steel walled wine cellar!!!
To my kids I might seem old… but I’m not that old!! What I do remember was Reagan standing up to those Commie Bastards after four years of wimpy behavior and tell’n them sons-a-bitches to tear down that gaudamned wall!!!
I also remember once I put on the ‘Crackerjack’ uniform it wasn’t all as serious as people made it out to be… not that thermonuclear catastrophe is something to scoff at… but I remember things like relieving the Director watch after the son-of-a-bitch before me ate three or four hard boiled eggs and drank UHT milk prior to his six hours of releas’n lethal amounts of gas that should’a been banned by the Geneva Convention… the whole damned director was permeated for hours!!!
I also remember relieving the ASROC Security Rover Watch and missing a bullet out of the .45 calibur magazine. Nobody really counted bullets... Hell, we just took the piece, wrote "Relieved the Watch. Received one 45 cal. weapon and 16 rounds of 45 cal. ammunition" in the log. Nobody figured out there were only 15 rounds until Chief checked. You have no idea how much commotion one bullet can cause... we spent too gaudamned much time drawing cartoons in the pages of the logs…Hell, most of the time we used the weapons belt magazine holder to hide cigarettes and candy bars.
I remember being involved in PACEX 89’ which was supposed to be the largest Naval exercise since WWII… don’t know if that record still holds but had three carriers, two battleships and a whole damned slew of foreign ships from across the Pacific Rim including an abundance of other ships from the third and seventh fleets!!! I think the Army, Air Force & Marines were also involved somehow if memory serves correctly… one thing I do remember was a photo shoot with a ship Armada covering as far out as the eye can see!! I think one of the big ships had the theme song to Star Wars blaring over the water!!! It was definitely a once in a lifetime moment… and I got to be there…
I also remember tracking Russian TU-95 ‘Bear’ Bombers with our fire control radar as they buzzed over the top of the ship… though someone told us it could be construed as an act of war light’n up adversaries with fire control like that!!! I remember ‘Weps’ say’n,
“Let me enlighten you boys in the fact the damned Director is not a seagoing tree house created for your personal amusement!”
Still don’t know if that’s true… don’t rightfully care either… it was all in fun!!!
And another thing that I’ve always pondered over was the fact we had a six hundred fleet Navy… greatest the world has ever known… yet we ended up spending over a month in the God forsaken port of Subic Bay while waiting for some busted boiler parts to be flown in from stateside!!! I’m talk’n about a whole month of San Migoo, Mojo, and the little LBFMs’ too!!! A stack of ‘Goodyear’ tire tread condoms on the Quarterdeck and there was still a line at the binnacle a mile long… NGU and the Gonorrhea too!?!?
For a high-tech Navy with such whizbangs and zappity doo-dah weapons that’ll make your head spin we were about as thermodynamic as Mchale’s Navy!!! We had leaks, fires, and bad food with smelly crackerjacks smothered in ol’ spice who were all about every gal in every wild port while gett’n loaded on the local brew!!!
In the Cold War game of Cat-n-Mouse the Navy launched thousands of secret missions against the Kremlin and visited the most salacious of moral looseness that any third world country could offer yet it wasn’t war or communism that took away our fun…
Should’a known the Cold War was just about over when the damned Russkies pulled into San Diego trad’n uniform parts and third world cathouse secrets for high quality nudie books and unfiltered Camel Cigarettes… some of them poor fellas should’ve traded them in for some gaudamn dental work… their grills looked like something hellish right outta the medieval times…
Then the Navy took away our boys club and now we gotta stop tell’n jokes about nekkit women in Olongapo or we might just offend those of a more so called righteous path…
In the coming future I ended up longing for the days of the Cold War… cause you know… the Russkies were so much more fun!!!
The Navy of the 70's and 80's were more fun. As a female I spent 3 years in Subic Bay and loved every moment. And I still don't get offended by the stories.
ReplyDeleteExactly. You aren't easily triggered by people who don't act, think or chose to live little sheltered lives.
DeleteI tell all my friends I was in the fun navy back before all the political correctness ruined it. I'd never enlist now.
ReplyDeleteMe neither!
DeleteWe snuck up on the Slabs in the Med, making like a merchant all night. 16 knots, no radars or comma, deceptive lighting. In the morning, we came over the horizon and lit up everything. It was a sight to see, then getting caught with skivvies around their ankles. Yep, good times. And we had GSMC nicknamed 'Fire plug' due to a protruding beer belly. He could clear out CCS with his own combustions.
ReplyDeleteSlava, damn auto correct.
DeleteI was in the Navy from 1973-93 I was in during the end of the Vietnam Nam war and the ramping up of the Cold War. It was interesting times. My first ship was an old Destroyer Escort that when the Navy spooks embarked onboard we would go way up the North Pacific and follow the Russian ships. I remember standing lookout watches in freezing weather
ReplyDeleteI had to chuckle about the comment on commotion caused by a missing .45 bullet. I was in an Air Force HH-1H (Air Force "Huey" with twin engines. We had door gunners on each side, on a practice search and rescue op, flying out of Myrtle Beach AFB, South Carolina. The door guns were M-60s, with 100 round belts of 7.62mm BLANK cartridges. A door gunner was reloading a belt, and lost his grip, and the belt fell into a swamp below. We had to write down the exact geo-coordinates of the incident, and had to swear that the belt of blanks was "un-recoverable." Just about as bad as a "Broken Arrow" drill when a nuke is lost.
ReplyDeleteI was on a destroyer in the IO we had a Russian frigate following us and the CO came over the 1mc and told everybody to quit mooning the Russians
ReplyDelete