So far, the recruits had spent most of their training day in the classroom or drill hall. Most of the classroom training had concerned academic or life-skill topics: the history of the Navy, customs and courtesies, rank and rate, or personal finance. Now, finally, they would get a chance to learn the sailor’s trade.
Petty Officer Russell had strong opinions on the subject. “I’ve been in the Navy for eleven years, and, except for some shore duty in Italy, most of that time has been spent at sea. I can’t think of anything worse than a sailor who can’t pitch in when necessary. It doesn’t matter if you’re a boatswain, a yeoman, or a storekeeper; there are basic things that every sailor ought to know. Basic knots and splices, what to do and not to do on deck, even real simple things like how to navigate around their ship. Not navigate the ship—that’s the quartermaster’s job—but how to find where things are stowed, and how to get from one place to another in a hurry. Big ships like the carriers—they have thousands of small compartments. You can imagine how lost you could be if you didn’t know the basics of port and starboard, fore and aft, and how decks and compartments are numbered.”
The recruits welcomed the change.
Rasco I was afraid I’d get caught sleeping in class every time we went into the schoolhouse building. I’m twenty-four—do they really think I need classes on things like writing checks, and setting up a personal budget? Hey—at least in this job, the paycheck is steady. They ought to try budgeting a waitress’s tips sometime, huh?
It was likely that few recruits would fall asleep during hands-on training. They’d spend most of their time at the seamanship training division, a series of small buildings on the southeast corner of the base that housed, among other things, the USS Marlinespike. Marlinespike, a quarter-sized replica of a fleet auxiliary, could easily accommodate a complete division of recruits, manning various action stations on pier, deck, or bridge.
AOC(AW)* Mike Lucas is a nine-push RDC, who led the most recent division to win the coveted chief of naval operations (CNO) award for merit. He related, “I got to talking to an old sailor here, one day. This guy had gone through here in the mid-1960s, and I showed him around the Marlinespike. Back when he was here as a recruit, seamanship training mainly meant standing around an old World War II drill hall over where Building 1405 is now. An instructor would stand in front of a hundred recruits and demonstrate how to tie simple knots and bends, using “small stuff”—pieces of cotton line that looked a lot like your grandma’s clothesline.
The recruits would practice all day, tying knots around one-inch pipe rails that extended out from the bulkheads of the drill hall. There was also a painted outline of a ship in the middle of the floor, and the instructor would stride up and down the silhouette, saying things like, “This is the fantail” or “This is the port side of the forecastle.” There were large, cardboard-mounted pictures on the bulkheads, showing bits, chocks, cleats, and other deck fittings. Every now and then, a couple signalmen would wander out, coffee cups in hand, and demonstrate flag signals, using a rusty hoist fastened to the overhead. They’d do a quick demonstration of semaphore, using hand flags, and pull a couple likely recruits from the sidelines and teach them a few elementary signals. If you could make heads or tails out of what they were trying to teach you, you’d probably wind up in signalman’s school on mainside after you graduated.
“Surprisingly, things weren’t much different until the early 1990s. I know when I went through boot camp down in Orlando, we didn’t have any kind of shipboard trainer, although by then the cardboard-mounted pictures had been replaced by real hardware. Things weren’t much better over at San Diego. Guys would go to sea right after boot camp, and be of no use to anyone for a couple weeks till they got their bearings.
“Along about 1990, though, operating commanders finally convinced Recruit Training Command that we had to do a better job. Something had to change, and Marlinespike became part of the solution.
“As usual, though, training dollars were in short supply. So the company commanders [RDCs of their day] and instructors pitched in and did much of the design and construction work. There were a lot of ships being decommissioned around that time; guys would wrangle TAD orders to the decommissioning sites and come back with all kinds of equipment for the mockup. If you look closely, you’ll see little black tags at the base of the binnacle, on the sound-powered phones, and on the watertight doors and hatches. Each one lists the name of the ship from which it was cumshawed. There are a couple dozen tags up there, I bet.
“There are a few other things you might not notice at first glance. Down below, inside the trainer, there’s a sample berthing space, copied exactly from a Burke-class destroyer. Seeing that is often the first time that recruits realize exactly how cramped things are aboard ship. The Marlinespike is designed as a generic ship—everything on board is common to every ship from a yard tug to a cruiser. Recruits really enjoy the Marlinespike; it’s the first thing they do that is really ‘Navy.’”
There was a palpable sense of excitement after noon chow on 1 November, when the recruits crossed Indiana Street from Galley 928, and turned south to the Marlinespike. Taking their place on bleachers in an adjacent classroom, they listened while SM2 Fines Stevenson explained the various types of natural and artificial line and steel cable they might encounter aboard ship. They learned the safety precautions necessary to avoid being injured by a line that could part under strain. The recruits learned the standard shipboard precautions: never stand in the bight of a line, never kneel or sit on the deck, and never handle fiber lines without heavy protective work gloves. They learned basic knots and bends, just like the sailors of the 1960s, and practiced for several hours, using lengths of “small stuff” provided in the classroom/laboratory. Finally, it was time to “go to sea.” Petty Officer Stevenson opened a set of double doors, and the recruits of Division 005 got their first glimpse of the stationary trainer.
Wirsch I thought that was just awesome! I mean, it’s so big, and it really looks like a ship. They have it painted gray, just like a real Navy ship, and they even painted the decks under the brow to look like sea water. I’ve never seen a real Navy ship. But I bet this one looks just like a real one.
Ward I thought, well, we’re going to sea at last. It’s going to be hard to sink a fake ship, but I bet this division can do it . . .
Stevenson and his assisting boatswain mates divided the division into teams, which would rotate tasks during the exercise. While some remained pierside as line captains or line handlers, others would work the main deck area, as signalmen, talkers, or deck hands. Still others would man the bridge and act as watch officers, messengers, and talkers. Each station was connected via sound-power telephones, and one of the first lessons the recruits learned was proper shipboard communication. Chief Zeller, as a fire controlman, understands that clear, concise shipboard communication is vital. He explains, “You have sailors from all over the U.S., and some were even born in other countries. Accents become a real problem, especially on sound-powered telephones. So the recruits learn standardized pronunciation of letters and numbers, as well as the phonetic alphabet. They really get a kick out of practicing that, saying ‘niner’ for the number nine, and ‘Kay-bec’ for the phonetic word for the letter ‘Q.’ You’ll hear them joking around with it when they get back to the compartment after class. But it’s important, and it’s something that a sailor has to know when he straps on a pair of sound-power phones and becomes a telephone talker at sea.”
The seamanship instructors also used the Marlinespike to reinforce traditions and courtesies taught in the classroom. As sailors have done since the founding of the republic, the recruits would climb the brow, display their ID cards, face aft, salute the national ensign, turn and salute the junior officer of the deck (JOOD), and formally request permission to come aboard. “There’s no sense turning a recruit loose in the fleet, if the first thing he does when he reports on board is screw up,” Stevenson noted with a chuckle.
Petty Officer Dan Kent stood just aft of the quarterdeck, as the recruits prepared to board. “There’s a story here,” he remarked, “and it tells you a lot about the Navy and about the people who care about these recruits. As you probably know, in the fleet, you’d normally be met by both the officer of the deck [OOD] and the JOOD. Did you wonder why the Marlinspike’s watch is manned by a JOOD only? Watch what Stevenson is doing now.”
Very quietly, as the recruits were being organized on the pier, Petty Officer Stevenson stepped behind the superstructure and retrieved a framed, glass-covered corkboard. Silently, he placed it on an easel between the U.S. and Navy flags, just behind the JOOD’s station. Dan Kent continued with his story.
“As Chief Lucas said, a lot of sailors pitched in to bring the Marlinespike on line. One old boatswain’s mate, in particular, was a real sparkplug in making all of this happen. He’d been scheduled to retire before Marlinespike was commissioned, but he extended to see the job through, and the command honored him by asking him to stand here on the quarterdeck to welcome the commissioning party aboard. After the ship was up and running to his satisfaction, he put in his papers, and the skipper allowed him to have his retirement ceremony on board. With his family and friends gathered around him, he was piped over the side, and the guys from the seamanship training division acted as his sideboys, just as they would have done had this been a real ship.
“There’s more to the story, though. A very short time later, he suffered a massive heart attack, and died before he reached the hospital. His shipmates were devastated. And so ....” Kent pointed to the corkboard in its polished frame. On it hung the red rope and “cookie” of an RDC, an instructor’s nametag, a photograph, and a plank owner’s certificate for the USS Marlinespike. Below them all, a gold plaque read simply:
To the memory of BMC Calvin Herring
Eternal Officer of the Deck
USS Marlinespike
28 March 1991
“The recruits don’t seem to notice it,” Kent continued. “And to be honest with you, we really don’t bother to tell them. But you see, since that day, well, the first time these kids climb aboard a Navy ship, about a half-million new sailors have saluted Chief Herring’s memory. Kind of special, don’t you think?” And it is, indeed.
After reporting aboard, the recruits simulated getting the ship under way, using the skills they had already learned. Various commands were relayed from bridge to crew, heaving lines tossed from deck to pier, hawsers recovered and faked down on deck, and colors shifted, just as if the Marlinespike were ready to pull out of Norfolk and head out to the North Atlantic. Recruits traded position, and bells sounded as the Marlinespike “came alongside” and moored yet again. By the end of the training period, most recruits had had exposure to several positions, and all had practiced the sailors trade. Tired from the physical effort of manhandling hawsers and lines, the recruits requested permission of the JOOD and, when it was granted, happily left the ship for “liberty”—or, at the very least, a well-deserved head call.
Chief Zeller comments, “I always think that the day aboard Marlinespike is the day that you can see them stop being ‘civilians in utilities’ and start seeing something that looks as though it might be a sailor, someday. I’m not alone in thinking that; lots of RDCs will tell you that it’s in their third or fourth week that recruits begin to ‘get it.’”
After returning to the compartment, several of the female recruits gathered to discuss their impressions of their training thus far.
Mary Smith That was really fun. That’s what I thought the Navy would be like. It was fun watching the males react to females as line captains and JOODs! I think most of them sort of wish we’d just go away, and they hate it when an instructor puts one of us in charge.
Demitrus (Mimi) Starks, 18, Chicago, Illinois
Yeah, but we have just as much trouble when we’re alone up here in the female compartment, too. All the backbiting and bickering and everything.
Wirsch The biggest problem is attitude! [Agreement from the others.] If people could just drop all their little remarks and comments and suck it up! Start folding and stowing something, and don’t talk! That would solve so many issues, I can’t even begin to explain.
Starks It’s like in the showers. When I got made the female MAA [master-at-arms], I had to force people to take showers two at a time, one to wash up, and the other one to soap up. It’s hard with forty-two females, with six showerheads, in fifteen minutes; it’s always crowded. But they just have to get used to it.
Jennifer Hattrich, 19, Fort Mill, South Carolina
It’s really hard to share with the other division, too, because it’s their house, and they get to do things first. And then they tell us that we’re taking too long, but it’s their fault, because they take more than half of the time, and we have to hurry and rush so fast.
Starks The males don’t understand it, but we have it harder than they do, because we have six RDCs jumping on us, because we have our own, and then we have Division 006’s, because we’re really living in their house. That’s the worst thing about being an integrated division—the unfairness of the other RDCs.
Cari Williams, 19, Lake Charles, Louisiana
There are good things, though. We get to bond more with each other than we do with the males. I mean, we argue a lot, but we bond with each other a little bit, and it helps a lot. Look how good the forward team did today.*
Hattrich Except those big ropes were heavy!
Starks It made me feel happy on the Marlinespike, when I saw the girls coming together. It was like that time, on our best morning, when we wanted to make DC 1 Russell proud of us, and we all got up thirty minutes ahead of time. We went to the head, five girls at a time, and we had to be very, very quiet, because we didn’t want to wake brother division. We wanted to be the only division doing it, and we wanted it to be a surprise. And we got our bunks made, we stripped our bunks and brushed our teeth and made head calls, and then everyone woke someone else up to do the same thing. There was so much teamwork, because we wanted to do something right. And as soon as “Reveille, reveille” came on, we were all standing at GQ, and it was so cool.
Wirsch Of course, we got in trouble, because we found out that we weren’t allowed to do that, but it was so empowering.
Williams That’s a good word. We’re like all seventeen or older, up to twenty-five or more, and sometimes it’s like kindergarten, we’re treated like little kids, told what to do and when to do it and how to do it—we’re even told how to write, just like in kindergarten. I’m a married women with a baby, and it’s, like, weird, you know?
Wirsch I actually came here for some of that, though. I have, like, a real problem making decisions, so I’m learning by people telling me what to do and when and how, and it’s all laid out for me, and I don’t have to figure anything out, although I’m gaining those skills with the division yeoman job and all.
Williams I know I’ve changed since I’ve been here. Back home you can do whatever you want, but here you have to follow the routine. I think that’s why we did so good today, the guys were all figuring out ways to beat the system, and we just did what we were told.
Hattrich I was getting used to being away from my family, but once we were able to make that first phone call home, I realized that I was missing it all over again. You get used to it, but it comes back.
Wirsch You know what I miss? I miss music! We haven’t heard any music since we’ve been here. [Others agreeing.] I sing in the shower when I can. I had all of these tunes going through my head when we were standing waiting to go aboard the ship. When we’re in the compartment, I’ll have all these oldies going through my mind, or I’ll be really, really tired, and I’ll just have to sit there and start singing some cheesy song, some Britney Spears song, or some Madonna song, and everybody will all start dancing and fooling around, and it wakes us up and all.
Williams I think music helps out the division everywhere. On Ricky Sunday, when the RDCs leave us alone, we’ll just get together in the corner, and sing songs, and dance to ’em and stuff. That’s a group thing that we all do, we sing. And we sing anything and everything! We sing Disney songs. We were singing “The Little Mermaid” the other day.
Hattrich It’s great. On Ricky Sunday we get a chance to take long showers, alone, and write letters, and we sing and talk and just enjoy ourselves for the morning.
Wirsch I was just thinking about that last time. After church I was ironing my clothes and shining my boots, and I thought, what a relief. But I mean—who at home would believe that doing laundry and shining shoes would be a great way to spend your Sunday morning, huh?
That evening, Petty Officer Dan Kent sat in the RDC’s office. Wirsch, Adams, and Smith-Comma-Mary were busily working on division correspondence. “Has anyone ever told you recruits the difference between a fairy tale and a sea story?” he asked. All shook their heads no. “It’s easy. Fairy tales usually begin ‘Once upon a time . ..’; sea stories always begin ‘No kiddin’, this really happened . . .’”
RDCs, especially those with a few pushes behind them, have a wealth of “sea stories” about recruit training. Some are hilarious, some bizarre, and some are tragic. But no kiddin’, these really happened ...
Petty Officer Dan Kent The oddest thing I have seen since I got here was one day after we had just finished battle stations. The division was beat; most had been awake for at least thirty-five hours. Some of them had been up for over forty-eight. We were marching back from Galley 1128, and we go to make the turn into our ship, and one recruit keeps marching straight ahead. I think to myself, what is with this knucklehead? So I catch up to him, and I scream at him, and he keeps going. So I grab him by the shoulder, and give him a shake. He had been fast asleep. Fast asleep, and marching down Illinois St. That’s how tired he was. Can you believe it?
Chief Mike Lucas I was coming into work; it was daylight, so it must have been in the fall. But it was cold outside, maybe, oh, right around freezing. Chief Hennessy catches me on the grinder, so I roll down the window, and he’s talking to me in my car. And along comes this recruit, dressed in running shorts and a tee shirt. Now, remember, it’s freezing outside. So Jim sort of does a double take and says, “Did you see that?” So I get out of the car, and we catch up with this sucker. And Jim asks what does he think he’s doing out on the grinder, dressed like that. “I’m sick of all this place, and I’m leaving.” He even had his ditty-sock tucked into the waistband of his shorts. So Jim says, “Well, where do you think you’re going?” And the kid says to the bus stop. “Do you know where the bus stop is? You’ll freeze to death before you get half way.” So Jim took the guy back to his compartment, and both of us saw him at pass-in-review a couple months later. [Shaking his head.] Recruits . . .
Senior Chief Atkinson I was LCPO at Ship Ten when we got one of those “All available RDCs, muster on the quarterdeck, ASAP!” alerts over the 1MC. So you know right away something is going down. And there’s an incident going on over at the drill hall. I take off at a run, and I see this crowd over there. And there on the roof, naked as a jaybird, is SR So-and-So. Throwing rocks, and cussing out everybody around him. It took about an hour to get him down and over to 5E [the naval hospital psychiatric ward]. Guys were ragging me for months: “Can’t control the recruits in your ship, eh, Senior Chief?”
Chief Lucas Oh, I’ve got thousands of ’em. I’m outside one day, standing on Illinois St., right by the gate, and this car with two civilians and a kid in Navy sweats pulls in. The woman driver stops right by me, saying, “We just gave this young man a ride back to the base.” So this guy gets out—he has bright red hair and glasses—and I start to ream him, because no way is a recruit ever supposed to go outside those gates. “Just what, exactly, do you think you’re doing, knucklehead?” “Oh, I just went out to Burger King. We just got here, and I didn’t know if you guys were going to feed us. The nice lady gave me a ride back to the base.” I lost it—for the only time since I’ve been here, I actually lost my military bearing. I was laughing so hard, I just took him over through the tunnel and deposited him at 1405. Now, I knew the RDC that picked him up, so, a while later I asked about him. “Oh, yeah, that kid, B.K.—that’s what we call him, B.K., for Burger King. He wound up over at REU. That kid had more problems that anybody around here was ready to deal with.”
Petty Officer Russell The best one recently has got to be the recruit who got fed up with the place, and snuck out of his ship one afternoon. Now, there was a civilian contractor outside, up in a bucket truck, working on the phone lines. And this recruit hops in the truck, with the guy still up in the bucket, screaming and waving his arms, and heads off base. They caught up with him over in a civilian housing area, down in some guy’s basement, holding off the cops with a trashcan lid and a toilet plunger.
Not every story that RDCs tell is quite so humorous, unfortunately.
Chief Zeller I’ve had recruits who really work hard, and get all the way through boot camp, but just can’t pass battle stations, regardless of what they do. They try and retry, and yet they can’t graduate with their division. And it happens so late in the training schedule—we give them every chance to pass that we can—that their parents get up here to see them graduate, and their kid isn’t there because he or she got set back. The RDC is usually the one who has to explain to mom and dad why their child isn’t out there on the drill deck. It’s not fun.
Petty Officer Kent We have, oh, maybe five deaths per year here. I had a recruit die in my very first division. We were running PT-2, and this guy just collapses right there in Drill Hall 1400. They started CPR immediately, and the duty corpsman was right there, but the recruit’s heart just gave out, and he died on the way to the hospital. The hardest part was taking the division back to the compartment. They kept asking what had happened, was he all right, and stuff. Now, we got a call right when we came back, but they told us not to tell the recruits till the chaplains could get over and break the news. That was a tough hour or so, waiting for the chaplains to come. The recruits wound up putting his name on their division flag, and dedicating battle stations and their cruise book to him. But it was awful.
Every RDC takes inspiration from those recruits who overcome tremendous odds and keep on fighting till they reach their goal.
Chief Zeller We had one recruit in the last division—man, this kid was lost. Just a soup-sandwich when we got him. We figured he’d be gone in a week, but he worked hard, and his section leader took him under his wing, and—what do you know?—he graduated on time. We had another one in my first division, a guy that weighed probably 240 pounds, and by the time he left here, I think he had lost 50 or 60 pounds, he became a real lean, mean fighting machine. We had to call the ambulance for him the first time we did PT, though. I thought we were going to lose that kid. And he wasn’t faking it, either. His eyes rolled back and he was huffin’ and puffin’. But he kept trying, and he was a real outstanding example of a guy who really wanted to make it. His mom came up to me at graduation and said that she was worried because she didn’t see him in the division when we marched in. Well, he was there, it’s just that he looked so good his own mother didn’t recognize him.
Petty Officer Kent The best thing is seeing a guy who, when he walks in, looks like he won’t make it past his first week, but then something happens, and he changes, and he comes up to you and shakes your hand at graduation, and tells you that you were the motivation to do it. I had a female with a broken foot, who ran battle stations with it, and who had a cast on her foot the next day. She didn’t want to let her shipmates down. And I had one who was shining his boondockers and crying—because these were the first pair of shoes that he had ever had for his very own. All his others were hand-me-downs from his brothers or whatever.
Petty Officer Russell There is one kid here who must have weighed 230 when he got here. I know he was 28 percent body fat, because I stood right next to him when they did the measurements. He’s not going to make it out of here with this division, but then, he knew that back on day one. But he’s lost a ton already, and he’ll make it out, I know he will. The others used to laugh at him when he first got here, but now they look up to him and treat him with a lot of respect. Their boot camp is hard; his is horrible. But he wants to be a sailor, and a guy with that much heart—you just know he’s going to make it.*
Petty Officer Kent The payoff in this job—even with the long hours and the frustration from the recruits—is when one of the parents comes up to you at graduation, and shakes your hand, and says, “What have you done to my Johnny? I was never able to get him to do anything I asked—he had a terrible attitude, was on his way to prison or whatever, and now he’s yes sir, no ma’am, and standing up straight and all. I just want to thank you for what you’ve done.” That’s the payoff.
*Chief Lucas is a chief aviation ordinanceman (E7), with air warfare qualifications.
*By chance, the forward line-handling party on the Marlinespike was all female.
*And he did.