Naval Discourse
Later in my naval career of 4 years, I was transferred to a destroyer that was already deployed to the Mediterranean. I caught up with the ship in Toulon France. This was my first time on a ship so things were quite different than what I was used to. My first day on board, we had been serving fried chicken and fries. After the meal I was cleaning the fryer and was told specifically which drain to pour the used grease into. The guy who had told me where to dump the grease, however, was fairly new on the ship as well and the drain he told me about was the one to use when out to sea. It was only an hour later when the Master Chief came up to me with this look on his face as if he was ready to kill but was forcing himself to be calm because I was new on board. I could actually see the conflict in his eyes. I knew I had done something wrong but had no idea what it was. He carefully explained to me that the grease I poured down the drain was, now, floating next to the pier on top of the water in a foreign port and the French weren't happy. What I wanted to say was "If you look at them like you're looking at me, they'll just run away and we'll be good." But instead I asked what he wanted me to do about it. So basically to make a short story long, the person who told me where to dump the grease and I, spent the next 6 hours, with nets, scraping the grease off the top of the water. Hence, after the laughter died down from my shipmates, we were awarded "The Scum Skimmer Award" from King Neptunes Rex.
Then there's the time, in Barcelona, when a shipmate tried to smuggle 7 keys of hash on board so we could make brownies. And the time when a shipmate jumped overboard in the Caribbeans because we were playing war games and not going to pull into port. He did this twice. They ended up handcuffing him to the ship until we were far enough out in the ocean that if he wanted to jump, he would be shark food, but i digress....
Labels: Navy