The Gundecker

Navy is often revered (or reviled) for their customs and traditions. Most of them revolve around doing something arduous in order to be accepted by the rest of the crew. This has historically included some humiliating acts and, at times, down right sexual and physical assault. I’m not saying you should physically abuse or single out people. Hell, my dad (also a sailor) told me stories where he watched a couple of AOs take a bout of hazing waaaay too far and caused a junior sailor to basically almost go full Private Pyle, and a couple of my chief’s on my first ship in 2009 gave me some absolute horror stories when they did their “vintage” Shellback ceremony. There’s a line we can easily cross between enduring struggle into sexual deviancy that just doesn’t need to be ventured. However, the correction we have had in the pass couple of decades has essentially turned the Shellback ceremony into a Disney ride.

Really, Shellback was the Navy’s BIGGEST right of passage. You did have sailors who took it too far, and it had to be heavily regulated. While a lot of our hazing during our Shellback ceremony was pretty tame and tongue-in-cheek humor, some oldheads may yearn for the days where they could watch a bunch of young, supple men try to bob for a cherry out of some Crisco-laden behemoth or get beaten (within an inch of mortality) with a piece of fire hose.

Rights of Passage appear in just about every culture. Muslims have the Hajj and travel to Mecca, the Satere-Mawe tribe of Brazil put gloves with bullet ants in them on 12 year old boys as a right to manhood, and Sailors used to have the Shellback ceremony. It’s not to say crossing the line isn’t insignificant for celebratory services, but comparing it to a right of passage has been dampened due to safeguards against hazing.

There is hope though, and you don’t even have to go on deployment for it. I am talking about take a generous heaping of oleoresin capsicum(OC) to the face. Colloquially known as the OC spray test, and it should be applied to every sailor on the ship to test their mettle.

For those of you unfamiliar, OC spray is just the correct, Department of Defense term for pepper spray. It’s a 18-20% capsaicin and water blend that will turn your entire afternoon into a fucking nightmare on the peripheral nervous system. Most surface ships carry OC spray for watch standers and usually Master at Arms (MA) also carry it with them. The idea is that since you have to carry a non-lethal deterrent, you had to experience that non-lethal deterrent so you knew what you were doing to somebody else AND so you knew what getting a flame-throwing weed whacker to the face felt like in case you got some on yourself. Fun fact though, my ship carried this shit but never issued it out to ANYBODY. We kept it in the armory and it never left EXCEPT to do the OC spray test. I fully believe every person on that ship (including the engineers and non-watchstanders) deserved to go through that to be considered United States Sailors. Everyone needs a mutual horror to bond over.

The test includes getting sprayed in face and running around to five different stations performing arbitrary security tasks (baton strikes, taking down an opponent, writing in the log book, fist fighting an armored opponent, ringing the CO aboard, etc.) and then spending the rest of the day regretting the choice to join the Navy in any capacity. I have watched full grown men hit the ground and cry for their mothers, and kick their feet like they were a four-year old having a tantrum because of this shit. I watched one female immediately drop to the deck and start screaming and colnvulsing. It’ll remove your pride and hubris and bring you back to what you truly are as a human: a confused ghost piloting a beefy, flesh puppet with an alcohol problem and childhood trauma.

(DISCLAIMER: I see you in the comments. “DuDe It WaSn’T tHaT bAd. YoU aRe BeInG a PuSsY.” Alright, try-hard, go ask your local policeman or MA to pepperspray you for no other incentive than to prove me wrong…I rest my case.)

Anyone who hasn’t done the OC test, let me explain to you how miserable an event this is: the command is normally required to send you home for the rest of the day. That’s how shitty it is. You’re such a quivering boob they let you take work off directly afterwards (unless your chief is an incredible dick). I separated my collarbone from my AC joint (the part that connects to the shoulder), and my ship STILL made me go on a three week underway before going to a hospital.

I personally have had a majority of my body tattooed, broke ribs, broken my nose and later reset my nose, broken my knee cap, had a brush with poison ivy all over my body, crushed the tip of my penis with a 45lb plate (that’s a story for another time) and just got tased last month…I would rather do all of that twice over than to get the OC test again.

Some people react surprisingly better than expected, some give what you expect, and some will have a full on mental faculty shut down. I was somewhere between the latter two. Not quite a full shut down, but boy was I not having a good time. I yelled and screamed the entire test, not because the instructors told me to shout my commands, but because my brain had no choice but to make everyone aware of how uncomfortable I was with all of it. I screamed more than a gender studies major during the 2016 inauguration.

You think that hose of water at the end of it will be your salvation but only while your face is under it. The thing is OC spray is usually water-based so when you rinse it off (which you really should do) the effect of the burn comes back with a fury as soon as your face meets the air again. You have so many people try just about anything to alleviate the pain including dumping whole milk all over your face as well as baby shampoo. There is no legitimate way to get it to stop. I spread a rumor that Marshmallow Fluff was the solution, however I never really got around to seeing if that rumor caught on.

No one should ever have to do a Level 1 contamination more than once. Level 2 is wiping it maually with a rag across your forehead, and a Level 3 is just being in the vicinity or participating at a station i nthe area it is being sprayed. All of which are way more manageable than getting a full stream of the liquid agony. The previous MA on my last ship lost everyone’s cert from my Security Reaction Force – Basic (SRF-B) class. I luckily kept 20 copies of mine cause fuck doing that shit again. When heard everyone else was going to have to get sprayed again, I ACTIVELY campaigned on their behalf to make sure they didn’t get more than the Level 2. Normally, I’m a bit of schadenfreund but OC is so shitty that I didn’t want anybody else to go through it again if they didn’t have to. Luckily no one was sprayed twice.

Really, the best you can hope for is that you are like one of 2% of the population that it doesn’t seem too intense for. Rumor is the fairer your skin is, the worse the reaction tends to be. The reality in my situation is this: I ain’t exactly albino, but I’m on the cusp of it. I’m so white, you can use me as a beacon to signal that Gondor needs our help. If I take a stroll through Scottsdale, AZ, I absorb all the pigment and trustfunds of the people who surround me and become immune to police brutality or evidence of police brutality.

The feeling of OC in the face has been described as “bobbing for french fries directly out of the deep fryer” OR “like the devil himself dragged me to hell and came on my face”. I describe it as this uncomfortable scenario:

Imagine you’ve been at the office of your dream job for a full month. You’re still a little wet behind the ears, but you feel like you’re making strides. The boss calls you into his office. You shut the door and sit down on the couch. You see him staring out the window. He is a giant anthropomorphic chili pepper who has had made waves in this industry. He asks you where you see yourself in five years. As he waits for your response he casually starts closing the blinds around the office.

“Oh, I don’t know, ” You struggled to answer. “I haven’t thought that far ahead.”

He finishes closing the windows that face out to the rest of the cubicles, and then sits down on the couch adjacent to you. He lightly places his hand on your knee. “You know you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to, but you are in your probationary period so I’m worried if you are cut out for this type of work,” he implies omnimously.

You left work that day and try to forget what you had to do in that office. The shame, the guilt. You tried convincing yourself you didn’t cry but, boy, did you cry like it was the 1930’s and you found out your Italian daughter was dating an Irish immigrant. The shower later that night only reignites the burning sensation that torments your soul…and your eyes, ears, nose, and mouth.

With the information I have presented (and all the vigor of a god-tiered habanero throat fucking you for career stability) I argue that the OC Spray test is the last great right of passage that the Navy has to offer. It has physical rigor, pain, humiliation, struggle, and an experience to never be forgotten all under the guise of “required training”. It should be administered during the shellback ceremony to make a lasting effect. Furthermore, the certification should coincide with Shellback Ceremony for that proud Navy tradition carry its weight in continued significance. Take this data, and embrace the OC test as the last hurdle any sailor needs to pass in order to become one of the crew.