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August 14th, 1945 was the day that Japan surrendered. The footage below of the spontaneous celebration that broke out was shot on the main street in Honolulu, Hawaii.
THE LAWS OF THE NAVY
by Adm. R. A. Hopwood, RN
Now these are the laws of the Navy,
Unwritten and varied they be;
And he who is wise will observe them,
Going down in his ship to the sea.
… … …
The Laws of the Navy was written more than one hundred years ago. Excerpted above, the entire poem has 27 verses. At one point in my life I was to have had them all memorized. While I could no longer recite it in its entirety, I was reminded of the first verse last night while watching the Memorial Day concert on the Mall in Washington, DC.
At one point in the program they had a tribute to Pearl Harbor survivors. Seven decades later, amazingly, several were present in the audience. Looking in the faces of the elderly men I was reminded of the number of times I have been to the Arizona Memorial.
My first duty station after training was in Hawaii. As a division officer, I was frequently asked to be the re-enlisting officer for Sailors of mine who had decided to sign up for another hitch. Many of them chose to have their re-enlistment ceremony on the Arizona Memorial. Taking the first boat out in the mornings on several occasions, I made trips out there before the madding crowds of tourists showed up.
It was a rare privilege to have the memorial to myself, or shared only among the folks who were also participating in the ceremonies of the day. To be present at a time when it is quiet and uncrowded gives you time to read the posted information; to watch the ebb and flow of the barely perceptible sheen resulting from oil still leaking from the hull below; to scour the list of names on the memorial wall.
The names of all 1177 men who were killed on board are inscribed on the wall in the shrine room. Among those listed are several who share a surname; father and son, or brothers, perhaps. New names are added in a separate section for those survivors who have chosen, decades later, to be interred with their shipmates in that watery grave. Even more of those survivor surnames match ones listed in among those who never left this mooring; at long last a reunion.
The Captain of the Arizona was a man named Van Valkenburg. I would never have known that, though, despite my many trips to the Memorial. He is listed, although his rank is inscribed if I had been paying closer attention, like every other name on the wall; alphabetically.
The reason I know his name is because, while wandering through work centers on my ship shortly before a port call in Hawaii, one of my young petty officers asked if I had ever been to the memorial. Was it hard to get there? Did she need tickets? Did it cost to get in?
I had been planning to revisit the memorial anyway and offered to help.
I stood beside as she looked at the wall in the shrine room.
“That’s my great-grandfather”, she said. The Captain of the ship, Medal of Honor winner.
A man she never met, but whom she came to remember.
I looked at the now more than 1200 names on the wall in front of me; men I never met, but whom I also came to remember.
If you are familiar with any of the project management tools available today, you probably already know that workflow is the term used to describe the relationships between all the elemental steps that make up a project from start to finish. Even if you have never managed a project professionally, I am sure you have, at one time or another, made yourself a list of stuff to do and the order it needs to be done in order to accomplish some household task.
We’ve all done that, on some scale, I am sure.
It just so happens that in my previous life, the one in uniform, I did that for a living. In my early days, my daily workflow exercise centered on 13 aircraft and a daily flight schedule. Later on, it became the sheer numbers game of component repair; balancing the efficiency of repairing a lot of the same item at once with the diverse needs of the air wing; shifting resources among product lines; and weighing cost-to-repair with cost-to-replace.
One summer following a six month deployment, my ship went into a yard period. I was selected for (saddled with) the job as second in command of the department coordinating the work to be done during that yard period. I learned a lot, and I gained a huge appreciation for what Public Works Departments do all the time.
From within the ship’s company we had over 800 folks assigned to teams to do everything from stand fire watches for jobs like welding and cutting, to laying tile, to cleaning ductwork. We coordinated work being done by 20 different entities in spaces throughout the 12 levels of the ship.
We didn’t always get it right. There are no 3-D electronic schematics of the ship that can help you determine which two projects might interfere with each other. It takes a lot of legwork.
Not all of the contract work had complete descriptions of what services would be needed and what services they were going to have to take down while they worked. Periodically folks found themselves quite literally and unexpectedly, in the dark. Sure if you know that the compartment on the main deck starting at frame 43 is a Hangar Bay (which goes up three floors) you might predict that a welding project on the main deck could bubble the freshly laid tile 3 floors up. We didn’t catch that.
We were dealing with spaces belonging to 23 different departments. For each of the hundreds of thousands of job we accomplished, we had to clear services like; high-pressure air, low-pressure air, air conditioning, ventilation, 60-hertz power, 400-hertz power, secure internet, unclassified internet, potable water, firemain, sprinklers, grey water, waste water, oxygen, nitrogen, telephone, sound-powered phone. Many jobs listed only one space when, in actuality, they spanned multiple spaces. Wiring repairs, for example, could run the length of the ship and between levels. Given the complexity of the project, I think we did OK.
It was actually a really good experience (don’t tell my XO).
In its wake, however, I am forced to ask why the Department of Transportation, when faced with deconflicting (1) close two lanes of traffic for months on end, tear up road to repair sidewalk and (2) close two lanes of traffic for months on end to repair road does not do those two things (a) simultaneously or, (b) at a minimum, in that order.
They might also have thought about the fact that the road that they now have narrowed to half of its capacity for the second summer in a row is also the detour route being used to handle the traffic from yet another road work project.
How is it, when the NY state government is involved “work” and “flow” are mutually exclusive?
The beast, as much as I love her, can be a handful.
Before our very first obedience class, I filled out a questionnaire about my puppy’s behavior. From every-day behaviors in different situations, I sorted out the “sometimes, never, always” traits. The scoring system was devised to determine the strongest drives in the beast; pack drive, prey drive, defense (flight) and defense (fight).
I don’t remember the exact numbers, but for the beast, her prey drive numbers were about three times higher than any other category. I should say that the beast is a sweet girl. She doesn’t have a mean bone in her body. But she is a hunter, a leader, an investigator. Her instinct is to go see, go do, go get…
Her idea of playing fetch involves a lot of racing me for the object in play and then fighting me for it.
She bounds to the window to woof, despite my assurance that it is just the neighbors arriving home late at night. She howls at newly arranged deck furniture, hoping to growl them back into their familiar places.
My foster pup is entirely different.
The woman who was instrumental in helping me train the beast (and who objects strongly to my reference to my darling girl as “the beast”), stopped by to meet Dryfus this afternoon. As I was playing with the new guy, admittedly bewildered by what I was seeing, she identified him as being in pack drive. Having never seen it before (or maybe just since it is not the beast’s natural inclination), I just thought him strange.
While the beast leaps up to investigate every new sound and all the streets comings and goings, Dryfus lays motionless curled up beside me. While Schiffer stayed outside hoping for a little more action, the new guy followed me inside just to be near.
It turns out he is just happy to do his part for the team.
“Dash Two” is used in aviation as the call sign for the first plane behind the lead plane in a formation. Combat missions, though, are not merely a game of follow-the-leader. Dash Two needs to be prepared to take over the lead should disaster fall. In that sense, he needs to be every bit as knowledgeable and every bit as capable of leading, but until that point his primary job is to follow; to be exactly where he is supposed to be and to always have the leader’s back.
Readers have suggested nicknames for my new friend. Since I already have a beast, “Beauty and the Beast” was nominated for the pair. Alas, while he is, indeed, quite handsome, I cannot call him a “beauty”. Beast Number One and Beast Number Two also came up, but the new guy, while he has some issues, is no beast. I, myself, had started to call him my shadow; unshakeable and incapable of surviving even a few minutes out of sight.
While the beast can be counted on for frequently choosing to steam independently, the new guy is my Dash Two.
Who has time to wait anymore??? Who waits for businesses to open? I bank online. I shop online at 2 a.m. and have packages shipped overnight. I never wait until I get home to call someone. I have gotten disused to even holding a thought for very long.
With the coming of every generation, faster seems to remain a prime goal; in life, in earning, in eating, in the basics of getting from point A to B.
From the invention of the wheel to the horse-drawn carriage maybe there were not huge advances in speed, but at least with ease of travel. With the turn of the 19th century came the invention of the internal combustion engine. At the turn of the 20th century, Henry Ford brought mass-produced cars to the people and the Wright Brothers conquered a third dimension in travel.
Since that time we have begun travel faster than the sound barrier and higher than the earth’s atmosphere.
Most recently we have conquered time and distance in new ways. A virtual presence counts as attending a meeting, or sitting in a classroom. In this information age our communications are instant. Distance is irrelevant and nothing should require more than a nano-second. This is setting a new standard for “I want it now”.
Some things remain unresolvable, though, even in this age.
A thousand years ago when sailors first took to the seas, they set off on journeys of a lifetime…literally. Setting sail for parts unknown, it might be months, or years before they would return. Some never did; having perished at sea, or become so lost that a return to home was impossible, or stranded or safely settled elsewhere; unwilling to make or unable to endure the return trip.
There was, for them, no quick trip back again.
Even twenty years ago, when I first went to sea, we seemed hopelessly tangled up in time and distance. That we simply could not get someplace in time was not a new but, somehow, a newly unfamiliar concept. With access to good interstate highways and air travel, I had forgotten everything I ever learned about such problems as; if an aircraft carrier leaves Jakarta at 9 a.m. on a Tuesday how long will it take before I can have a bath, a beer and a pedicure?
The answer is weeks.
Weeks???!!
What was a girl to do???
The answer is enjoy the journey; relish the last few days together with your crew, clean out the inbox so shore leave could be enjoyed to the fullest, maybe even enjoy the anticipation.
That not everything we want can be had in an instant was an important lesson to re-learn.
You would think that the routines of life at sea would get old, I suppose, especially during a 6-month deployment.
Day and night can blur together. Weeks would string on without any real break. Keeping something as simply as the day of the week straight could be difficult. A friend of mine, whenever asked the day, would tell you it was Tuesday. With no new tales from the weekend and the next day off no where in sight, as far as he was concerned, every day at sea was Tuesday.
Others have likened life at sea to the movie Groundhog Day, where we collectively relive the same day ad nauseum.
As if the unchanging landscape, unending tasks and bottomless inbox were not enough to dull our senses, common activities have strict checklists. Disasters have to be practiced (or practiced for)…over and over again. Even most announcements are scripted.
You would think that I would be numb to it all.
I was looking for some qualification and training info on one of the Navy websites the other day, though, and found an audio file that gave me chills. Good chills.
It was the pre-flight announcement made before engine starts on the flight deck of aircraft carriers around the world.
I was speaking several weeks ago to a dog friend – that is to say someone I know through dog training and therapy dog work. The Navy, even the sea, is far from her experience. I expected shock when I confessed that there has never been experience that felt more like coming home to me than hauling my duffel on board yet another aircraft carrier.
I have written a little bit before about my experiences in my old life – to give some sense…
In Home away from Home, I talked about what little it takes for me to feel at home. And in a piece about the evening prayer at sea, I spoke of some of the, maybe incongruous, comforts on board a warship. In a post about my de-evolution to a lower life form, I laughed about some of the challenges, and in power in the wires I wrote of one of the many life-lesson to be found out on the bounding main.
Still, it isn’t what most people think of as a welcoming, nurturing environment.
While my friend didn’t happen to know much about a sea-going life, she knew enough to understand that home “just is”; that you find it where you find it, and that what is “home” for one person can be a prison for others. She didn’t bat an eyelash.
Another friend, whose high-rise apartment in a busy port city has a stunning water view, was watching the solemn, silent movement of a large container ship last night. She asked today if I could share a sense of night at sea.
I’m not sure I can do it justice. Finding “night” can be a bit daunting, on a ship that never sleeps. Passageways except in berthing areas are lit around the clock. My office lights glowed for, generally, far too many hours of the day. The sound of catapults firing and arresting gear clanging and aircraft engines turning are not bound by 9 to 5 hours, or daylight or anything else.
Sunset from hangar Bay One
Even during a break in the flight schedule the ship is far from quiet. The ship hums. Always. People’s voices, footsteps on steel, the chatter of constant vibration, the whoosh of ventilation, the buzz of electronics, distant equipment are all part of the background.
Occasionally, though, there are bits of tranquility to be had amidst the din. It takes some purposeful wandering to find them but there are few blissful unlit shadows to be found; a few safe but untraveled places to step outside the skin of the ship, away from the noise and bright lights. There are these rare oases where you can for a moment feel the sea breeze and look past steel to nothing but water and sky. I “owned” one of those parts of the ship; the fantail.
After flight operations were done for the day, jet engine mechanics working for me, would use the wide deck at the back of the ship, the fantail, to test engines. When they were testing engines, the place was far from blissfully quiet.
We think of airplanes as being loud. You should try to imagine, then, how loud the engine is when it doesn’t have an airplane cocooned around it; loud enough to rattle your clothes against your skin, so loud that you keep your mouth shut to prevent your tonsils from bruising from the vibrations.
Now, I loved to be out there when my guys were testing engines, but I loved it more on nights when they weren’t. Dark and quiet with a 180 degree view, it was spectacular. On clear nights, there are more stars than you could possible see anywhere else on earth. The sky is big and you are by comparison incredibly small. There is peace in that perspective. I am small. My worries are small. There is a whole grand universe out there.
Stormy nights are smaller, but still beautiful. As skies close in, the horizon is obscured, the dim shadows of cloud and ocean mingle, and only the sense of your sturdy ship beneath your feet orients up from down. You learn to have faith in the steel and the crew around you; faith enough to weather the approaching storm.
On any night at sea, though, the propellers of the ship churn the sea beneath the fantail. Below you, while looking aft, you can see the white rumbling waters settle back in place again, as if you had never been there at all…almost.
It is not only the water that gets churned up. The propellers also energize microscopic creatures, creating bio-luminescence. A strange green glow lights the wake for miles.
If you can find night-time on a ship that never sleeps, it’s mystical.
I’ve not done much decorating this year, but I did haul a few old favorites up from the basement. Some are just pretty items that make me smile. Others are on the “essential list”; stockings, must, of course, be hung by the chimney with care. Still others are simply practical; a holder for Christmas cards, my bright red serving tray.
One of my perennial favorites is the product of another less than wholly joyful Christmas.
Years ago I was stationed on USS NIMITZ while it was based in Bremerton, Washington. I loved the ship, and am particularly fond of the Pacific Northwest, but frankly, while we were in our home port and business was slowed for the holidays, that wasn’t where I particularly wanted to spend the my Christmas.
I had put in for leave, and it had been denied. Although things were slow over the holidays, the ship was not shut down, and there was the requirement to keep a skeleton crew of all the relevant skills and experience levels. Within my rank, experience and skill-set, the choice of who got to go home for Christmas came down to myself and a colleague. My colleague had chosen not to move his family with him when he joined the ship’s crew. He had a 6-year old son and wife living elsewhere.
I get the fact that families should be together for the holidays, but I remained adamant that he had been given the option to move his family at the Navy’s expense, while I had not. I felt I should have been given leave. I was further aggravated by the fact that I had foregone leave earlier in the year because I had the more demanding position within the department. We had recently swapped places and I was now doing the admin job, while he had the job that was more likely to have tasking over the holiday.
Of course, I was also predisposed to be annoyed because, while considered equally skilled, he was paid hundreds of dollars more than me each month because he had a “family” and I did not.
Now I say all this not to be on some political soapbox or garner sympathy for long-ago grumpiness. I only mention it because this was my frame of mind.
And so, while preparing to spend Christmas alone in my tiny basement apartment, nestled in the most industrial part of Bremerton (my nearest neighbors in my charming neighborhood were a bar, a tattoo parlor and a parking garage), I was hardly in mistletoe and holly mood. Feeling compelled to make a statement with my Christmas decorations that year I decided upon a theme; one not really polite enough to mention.
Both my apartment and my heart seemed too small for a tree of any kind, but I did manage to construct a chicken-wire cone. My decorations were to consist of white lights and barbed wire.
That was the plan anyway. 
To my dismay, and utterly in keeping with how the rest of my Christmas plans had gone that year, I found my efforts thwarted upon my arrival at the farm supply store. It seems that barbed wire can be purchased in several quantities; the smallest of which is something 500 yards on a spool weighing upwards of 100 pounds; of which I need about 10 feet.
It simply wasn’t to be.
Instead of barbed wire I settled for white lights and a strand of spiky garland. Over the years the tree has acquired a strand of red berries. It is still highly non-traditional, but it has a at least morphed into something slightly more festive than its original form.
The picture is a bit older (from the beast’s puppydom), but you can see for yourself.
This morning I received an email from a friend of mine from a previous tour, asking me for a favor.
S. was the IT expert at my last command. She not only kept our system running, but managed all our information when we moved aboard ship. Then she tested and evaluated the systems of every deploying strike group for robustness against weird shipboard power and for vulnerability to everything from hackers to nuclear attack.
The woman is brilliant. She is also tougher than nails.
Do you know what favor she asked for on the eve of her own deployment to Afghanistan?
This is what she said:
One of my shipmates, Clayton Kendrick-Holmes, who is deploying to Afghanistan is a football coach for a Division III team. He has been nominated as “Coach of the Year.” With this title the winner is given $50K to donate to a charity. He said if he wins he plans to give it to “The Wounded Warrior Project.”
It does take a few minutes to sign up, but I’d like to ask you all to vote early and vote often by clicking here.
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