Join The Navy And See The World

I graduated high school in June of 1981. I had no real focus or goal to aim for, no idea what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. After working on and off for the next year, I ultimately decided to join the Navy. I never even considered the other branches of service; I knew I didn't have the physical stamina to become a Marine or soldier, and I really had no interest at all in the Air Force. Besides, I came from a Navy oriented family. My father and two of his three brothers joined the Navy. One was an officer and went career, the other started out as enlisted then eventually got his warrant. The third brother went Air Force, but we love him anyway.

I left for boot camp in June of 1982, almost one year to the date I graduated high school. I reported to the Naval Recruit Training Center, Great Lakes, Illinois. This was the same boot camp my father had attended. At the time I enlisted there were three Navy boot camps in operation; Great Lakes, San Diego, and Orlando, which is where female sailors trained. Today, Great Lakes is the only one still operating. The most challenging part for me was the physical fitness portion. I was never very athletic or active; fortunately, even before I joined I had been jogging laps at the high school track with a friend of mine. I started out jogging only 1/2 mile, but after a couple of months, I had worked my way up to a mile and a half. Before leaving for boot camp I had taught myself rank recognition and some basic nautical terms. Overall it wasn't too awfully hard; the worst part was "Service Week." This is a one week period where recruits take a break from their training routine to work at supporting the operation of the base. Most recruits worked in the mess hall (dining room, to you civvies out there). Some helped the mess cooks, some worked the dining room itself, keeping the bug juice (kool-aid) flowing and the drink machines continuously refilled, and some, like myself, worked in the scullery (the dishwashing room.) The work itself was not hard, it was the hours that killed us.

Bear in mind that at any one time, there are thousands of recruits in training. As a result, the mess hall was open from about 5:oo am until about 7:30pm. From the minute we opened until the minute we closed, there were recruits waiting to be fed. In order to cook enough food to open for breakfast at 5:30, we had to wake up around 2am, get dressed and report for work around 2:30 or so. Around 4:30am we would be allowed to eat our breakfast, then back to work. Breakfast ran until about 9am or so, then we would "secure" (close down-I really need to publish a glossary with this post) from breakfast in order to clean up. I was in the scullery, and when a sailor finished his breakfast he would drop his tray and silverware through the window, where we would load everything up in the "dragon" (a huge commercial dishwasher, about 30 feet long. The dishes would get loaded on trays, which were put on a conveyor belt which ran the length of the dragon and were delivered, clean, out the other end). Once we secured from breakfast, we would remove every component possible (other than the actual machinery) and clean and dry that beast from stem to stern. This process took so long, that by the time we finished, we had maybe a 5 minute break before it was time to eat lunch (around 10am). Once we had our lunch, it was time to open up the mess hall again and repeat the process. Lunch was served until around 1 or so, then we secured from lunch and cleaned the dragon all over again. Once more, we would finish just in time to eat supper (around 4pm). We would then open for supper and work until about 7 or 7:30, clean up and get back to the barracks by 9pm, just enough time to shower before taps (lights out) at 9:30. Then back up at 2am to do it all over again, for seven straight days.

Despite the rough service week and my struggle with passing the physical fitness tests, I persevered and graduated boot camp in August. I immediately reported for duty to the Fleet Combat Training Center, Dam Neck, Virginia for class "A" school. "A" school is where sailors learn their primary job duties, such as Electronics Technician, Gunner's Mate, etc. More about my school in a later post. By the way, the photo accompanying this post is my ship, the USS California, a nuclear powered guided missile cruiser (CGN36).