"Recruiting Ain't No Shore-Duty"

 

Any Seagoing crackerjack worth his salt knows that Recruiting Duty ain’t got nothing to do with Shore Duty. Boy did I find that out the hard way. I thought I’d at least have the weekends to spend time at my kid's soccer games, or coach some little league baseball. Well, I was in for one hell of a surprise.

As a Navy Recruiter fresh out of Pensacola’s finest Recruiting Indoctrination school, I headed to Tulsa, Oklahoma where it was quickly expressed how my wife did not come in my Seabag. Let it be a lesson to you folks… when your Rinc says this, and you try to reach across the desk to give him a good chokehold, you’re probably going to see the psychotherapist. No harm, no foul. The Air Force shrink was on my side once I delivered my story and wrote it off as a part of independent duty. Little did I know, that after telling the Miss's what had happened, she actually emptied one of my old Seabags and stuffed herself inside just to prove a point. To this day she brags about how she fit just fine.

Needless to say, our whole damned crew belonged in an asylum. It seemed like one thing after another and enough to start chain-smoking… When on the bag, as we used to call it, we had to stay clear of young ladies contending as prospects for the underway club. One afternoon, our station’s superstar recruiter asked me if I could do body measurements on one of his prospects trying to lose weight while he went out for an interview. As a good shipmate, I obliged him… Little did I know she was a rather busty young thing. It got even better as she went in the back to get ready for her weigh-in and the measuring tape. She told me she was ready as I walked in and she was down to her pink Fredericks of Hollywood pop-up brazier and g-string ready for me to wrap that ol’ tape around her. This required touching, and a lot of uncomfortable feelings steaming out from my direction. My sweat pumps were on overdrive and I was hot enough to cause global warming to go up another six degrees. I have to say, looking at her was never disagreeable, but it was a bad situation to be in as a married man and no one else in the office in case of the “he-said-she-said” kind of horse manure that gets slung around from time to time. At least she didn’t have half the black forest hanging from her armpits… don’t laugh, they come through the door in droves like that.

Now imagine being an eighteenth-century Pirate with a gaudy parrot that shrieked obscenities every five seconds. As a Navy Recruiter, we were to represent the finest this here Canoe Club had to offer. But that wasn’t always the case. When cold calling young high school prospects, a fella decided to get nasty on the phone for calling his son about enlisting in our fine Navy. He offered to come down to the station and stick my head where the “sun don’t shine” as we got in somewhat of a pissing match over the phone. I called the guy the “Bixby Butthole” beings he was from Bixby, Ok and all. Needless to say, he never showed up, but I got an earful from the Chief.

“Swing, you can’t be talking to people like that! It gives us recruiters a bad name.”

I specifically remember heading off in my Government Jalopy like a bat outta hell, parking in some alley and smoking half a pack of smokes until I was calm enough to get back and do two hours of cold calling “Phone Power.” Those were the days.

Luckily I was smart enough to hang out at some of the college campuses like Tulsa Community College, Oral Roberts University, or Spartan School of Aeronautics to name a few. Recruiting out of these places, you’ve got to play the numbers and be ready for copious amounts of rejection. Some middle-class college kid barely off his momma’s tit would say…

“But the military is fascist and I heard most of you guys are warmongers.”

“Listen ‘Terry,’ you’ve probably been spoon-fed that idea by some middle-aged ex-Vietnam war hippy protestor turned college professor. Next, he’ll probably tell you that we eat babies and are leading some big conspiracy to enslave the world and force them to work for Ford or Boeing or something…”

My observation wasn’t far off the mark. that’s for damned sure. Though needless to say, I put some quality recruits in from the college campuses. I earned Nuclear Recruiter of the Year for NRD Kansas City thanks to those campuses.

Then of course were the ones with major dental or hygiene problems. You could only hope that the freckled kid from Muskogee could make it past medical when he got to MEPS. What about that guy who kept bringing up criminal charges from his past? Those came a dime a dozen. Then there was the kid from the Spartan School of Aeronautics who scored a whopping 26 on his practice ASVAB. I had him come back two weeks later only to take the same test and scored a 10 the second time around… and that ain’t no shit.

In recruiting I'd seen sides of the Navy I never knew had existed. I learned a lot, especially about myself. At times it was organized chaos while at other times it was damned hard work! I was glad to leave it behind and wouldn’t have wished that shit on anybody. I never thought I'd miss the midwatch drinking coffee that could float a brick at 0400 in the morning. I’d rather live with the snipes and smell like bilge piss while going through some bullshit inspection to check some meaningless log on the exact time of colors or what time the Skipper crossed the patio than get stuck recruiting again. At least at sea, I had control of my own destiny. But I went back to the fleet as a fouled anchored, foul-mouthed Chief!

Go figure…