The Gundecker

As a total “Sailout” (as my name suggests), it is entirely my duty to preface every Navy story with “when I was in” as I am no longer an active sailor. It is also my duty to report tales of wayward souls and lunatics. I do this by talking about all the crazy shit we used to get into that may include borderline felonies (at times actual felonies) that resulted in a fuck-ton of paperwork for everyone involved. I will change names and titles to protect those sailors who may still be in, but one instance will always stand front and center of my mind and that is the paradoxically named “Week of Awesome”.

Before I tell this tale, first we need to examine recurring time periods in every ships’s normal operations. NORMAL operations, not including being in the yards because of some crash or anything like that. For those of you unfamiliar with how shitty certain time periods in the Navy can be, let me help you understand starting with the least shittiest:

You have leave cause obviously nothing is better than getting time off unless your soon-to-be ex-wife is there to serve you papers on the pier (seen that happen).

Next is just being in-port. Hopefully, you don’t anything less than five section duty. Four section or less and you are pretty much chomping at the bit to get your DD-214. A normal in-port day should just be “Aw, I wanna go home” and chief says “No, you need dust this P-way arbitrarily for the sixth time today. What if the admiral of third fleet decides to come to our space, unannounced, with no warning” and you go “Aw, I guess I’ll be sad while dusting”.

At the end of the day, though, you at least get to lay in a mattress that isn’t made of Styrofoam, gravel and ennui.

Normal underway that doesn’t have a giant specific agenda attached to it that concerns you: You’re out to sea but you do normal underway workday nonsense. Hopefully, you are not attached to the flying squad or air recovery, otherwise guess what fuckstick? You’re gonna be doing another evolution again at 4am for the fourth day in a row.

Next is Deployment. You’re mentally prepared to be jobbing for months on end. It ends up dampening your austere reality, because you already knew it was going to kind of suck. You at least (hopefully) get to visit foreign ports with three section duty, and you get to spend your liberty with a bunch of hormonally charged seamen who are totally not going to go out of their way to find whatever deviancy that the CMC told them not to go find after liberty call.

Obviously next comes, The River Styx. Look, you’re dead, you are floating in an abysmal ebb with other souls for all eternity. It’s not the fate we wanted but yet here we are. Just take these things in stride.

The shittiest part is what we call Work Ups. For those of you who aren’t Navy savvy, work ups mean the period of underways which you are “working up” to the deployment. Usually infinitely worse than the deployment themselves.

Everyone has some part in qualifying the ship to do its job (according to Uncle Sam). No one is glad to be there. This is easily the shittiest part. Everyone is elbow deep in the proverbial muck of stress and cannot wait to get back to take their pent up frustrations out on a bottle of alcohol, a bottle of poor relationship advice, or a bottle of please-don’t-drug-test-me. We were like a clan of brain-damaged chimpanzees that could not wait to cannibalize the supple flesh of an unattended newborn.

This particular story happened after a pretty intense 5-week work up leading into the Thanksgiving holiday. We ported the Friday before. As we moored at the pier and were waiting to go home, we have our mandatory Captain’s Call before announcing liberty. Our ship had passed all its assessment, inspections, and training. We had another month and a half before we deployed. The CO and XO wanted to give us a reward for all of the hard work.

“Hey, you guys killed it. We’re proud of you,” exclaimed the Captain. “We are calling this week ‘The Week of Awesome.’ The XO and I have been talking, if you are not on duty then we don’t want you at work for the entirety of next week. Spend time with your families and have fun!”

Pretty stellar idea especially for a morale boost after a shit-tastic underway. Essentially, we started liberty Friday afternoon the week before Thanksgiving, and we didn’t have to come back until the Monday after Thanksgiving.

We had six section duty so there was ample amount of time to spend it with family and friends or the police for a couple of congratulatory courtesy turnovers. I mean I KNEW someone would fuck it up, but maybe like one or two ARIs (alcohol-related incidents).

“Hey, we’re happy to award this to you guys,” the XO piggybacks (as is tradition), “but stay safe and behave yourself. If ANYBODY gets in trouble, we will never do anything like this again.”

I swear the phrase “if ANYBODY gets in trouble…” is like an ancient Pagan incantation. It was like the God of Chaos rose from the sea and immediatley declared “You know what this crew needs? A pretty good reason not to take the reins off completely ever again.”

When I left that Friday there was only one person on restriction, my unfortunate friend, formally known as Petty Officer Skippy. He had came to duty late and they breathalyzed him where he blew a .00000000000000001 BAC.

He got 45 days and half months pay times two plus a reduction in rank (most recently known as Seaman Skippy). He was the only one restricted when I left.

I had duty the following Sunday. I got to the quarterdeck and saw a mass of people checking in with the Officer of the Deck (OOD). I blew it off thinking it was maybe a working party, but as soon as I got to quarters the rumor mill had finally reached my ears.

“You guys got a working party going for something?” I asked.

A buddy of mine just side eyes me and says “Nope, that’s the restricted personnel.”

Over the course of 48hrs they had 8 people put on restriction as a result of ARIs, fraternization, hazing, coming into duty under the influence, and I believe someone may have goosed the OOD, but I’m unsure. The scuttlebutt on surface ships is at the worst of times, false, and at the best of times, wild embellishments of the truth.

There were eight extra people, NINE total, who had to muster in their dress whites twice a day that didn’t have to when I left two days before. I have no idea what the ratio of restricted-to-freemen is on a big deck; I spent all of my time on small ships. With a crew of roughly 250 give or take, having more than three people forced to stay on board because they can’t be trusted with their own autonomy is usually a concern.

Oooooh There couldn’t possibly be anymore right? I did my 24hrs for duty and then I went home.

I don’t know what caused the crew to act like deranged apes at a fucking homeport, but I returned next Saturday to the tune of 11 people now on restriction and 13 incidents.

There was a fight between some of the females on board, and one brave junior sailor who wanted to impress the ship by being the biggest inconvenience to military code of conduct in one week. In addition to all of this, someone drove their car whilst heavily intoxicated and crashed it only to wake up in the hospital to the Master at Arms (MAs) a day later. He had a severe brain injury and they made him stand duty with me anyways.

You might be asking “But Sailout, those numbers don’t add up?” How are there more incidents than restricted personnel?

Well, glad you asked, reader! One of the junior navigation dingdongs decided that he was going to go for a record of three courtesy turnovers in one week. A courtesy turnover is when the police pick you up, and turn you over to your base so the commander can fuck you till your intestines are hanging out your mouth with the powerful dick of the UCMJ.

Apparently, he had gotten a turnover the weekend prior. The OOD didn’t really have any idea what to do with him since everyone was essentially on vacation for the week, so they let him go back to his barracks to be dealt with at work the following Monday.

Shortly after that, in the same night (I swear to god), he got another courtesy turnover from the fine men and women of the base security. They kept him on the ship this time. Later that week, the OOD mistakenly let him off the ship where he preceded to go back to his barracks and write an apology because he had finally learned his lesson….just kidding. He decided to abuse prescription pain killers, cocaine, and ultimately ended up with yet another turnover.

This lunatic managed to trick the OOD into thinking he was supposed to go sick call at the base medical center, and they did let him…UNESCORTED of course. Why wouldn’t they? It’s not like he hadn’t already had a proven track record this week alone of not giving a shit for the military justice system. Honor, courage, and commitment…certainly he would apply Navy core values in this situation.

Either way, he had the courage and commitment to go AWOL. As far as I know, we never heard from him again. I don’t know how honor plays into all of this, but I have to admire this young man’s dedication to ruining his professional life with a drug-fueled week of…Awesome?

There you have it. Next week when we were back to a normal work schedule, we immediately had a Captain’s Call to address the previous week’s incidences. It’s not like a lot of them were related either, and three involved the same seaman.

I imagine our CO was just laying in bed with his wife that weekend muttering in disbelief, “I tried to do something nice. Why did it have to be this way?”

Cap, it had to be this way, because sailor culture is degeneracy in its purest, most distilled form, and the core values are just some silver sprinkles on top of this shitstorm of degenerates. The captain’s call essentially resulted in “we will never be doing anything like this ever again.”

Did you have a time where the command tried to do something thoughtful and nice, and mayhem ensued? Let us know in the comments!