First off, I can neither confirm nor deny the historical accuracy of any event presented in Tour of Duty (Operations 31). Any similarity between events presented in the game and actual events is completely coincidental. That said, I confidently recommend this game as the most accurate simulation of modern fleet life available today.

Everyone's experience in the Navy is unique. I know fighter pilots who just shake their heads when I describe what happened during my time in USS Barney (DDG-6). I know other SWO's who are equally incredulous. I've talked to officers I served with in Barney, ten years down the road. They still can't believe what went on aboard that ship.

I've told my share of sea stories to Dean, Dave and Fred. Those stories were the genesis of this game. Fred brought the essential format to Homer about almost two years ago. We laughed until we couldn't stand it anymore and Dean agreed to let us publish it in Operations. Here's the real story. I reported aboard USS Barney in the summer of 1987. After a couple of months stashed on board, I reported to Surface Warfare Officer School (SWOS) in Newport, RI and then Steam Engineering Officer of the Watch (Steam EOOW) School. After that, I was off to the fleet.

Barney was deployed when I left Newport. I took a pass on the thirty days leave I was entitled to. Like John Paul Jones, I intended to go into harm's way. In the end, I got in the way of much harm and in ways Jones couldn't have anticipated.

My first job was First Lieutenant. I lead a division of about thirty deck seamen and was not enthusiastic about the job. It wasn't engineering, certainly. The men were untrained. They weren't there because they wanted to be there. At first glance, the job looked dull: painting, cleaning, more painting, chipping paint, grinding decks, priming, more painting, polishing, painting... As time went on, the job got a little better. The decks started to look good. Some of the guys managed to work their way out of the division into rates where they could grow a little. I learned a lot about seamanship, ship handling and deck evolutions, stuff that helped out a lot when it was time for my qualification as a SWO. In the end it was probably a net zero, but I can look back on it and know I did what I could without much.

I got my shot at Engineering in Auxiliaries. They'd had some personnel problems there and I'd fixed a lot of those kinds of things in First Division, so I was the guy. It was the best job I ever had in the Navy. We fixed everything; my men were the best I ever worked with. It was full throttle fun. I got qualified as a Surface Warfare Officer during that time. But it didn't last long...

Any time things got tough on the ship, I could always say, "at least I'm not the Boilers Officer." Maybe eight or ten months into the Auxiliaries job, they put me in Boilers and things got bad. Fast. No matter how badly I did any other job on the ship, the chance of us failing to sail because of my performance was, essentially, zero. Now I was the guy most likely to cause a failure to sail. And the Chief Engineer? The overwhelming majority of the people I served with in the fleet were stand-up guys. The Chief Engineer wasn't one of them. He made my life and the lives of my men a living Hell on Earth for no reason whatsoever. He, of course, saw this as a necessity of the job and a demonstration of his commitment to, I don't know, something. He knew some stuff about steam plants, but he had absolutely no aptitude for leadership, the kind of guy who could consistently coax a C+ performance out of the A Team. That job lasted a year or so. The Main Propulsion Assistant, who had been the Boilers Officer before me, eventually left the ship, leaving an opening. I got his job and got to keep my old one too. I steamed around in that job until the end in December 1990.

During my time aboard, I made two Mediterranean Deployments -- once with USS Coral Sea and once with USS Forrestal. I did two Law Enforcement Operations (LEO) with the Coast Guard in the Caribbean. We were in the shipyard at Bethlehem Steel in Baltimore for a little while. We did all the stuff ships and crews do: INSURV, REFTRA, OPPE and the rest of the Navy's alphabet soup of headaches. Overall, I'd call it a fairly typical operational schedule. I stood a lot of watches, my favorites being Officer of the Deck and Engineering Officer of the Watch.

The Charles F. Adams Class was on the list for decommissioning at the end of 1990, but we thought we'd be called out for the Gulf War, so things were a little confused for a while. (We were briefly on 24-hour standby to steam.) Eventually, we were sent to the mothball fleet. My service during the war consisted of being towed around Norfolk, offloading 5" rounds into ships steaming off to war. I sealed up the main spaces, watched the sailors move on to other ships and watched the Navy secure the watch aboard the Greyhound of the Fleet and Cutting Edge of the Sword of Freedom. I wasn't supposed to, but as I walked down the pier, I turned around and gave Barney a good long look. It was the last I was going to see of the ship and the service. I left the Navy that day.

I was dead tired when I left the ship. I couldn't imagine another sea tour on top of the one I'd just finished. And I'd done a fair amount of grumbling during my time aboard Barney. Friends have told me other ships were different, but that one was the only one I knew. But, as they say, shore duty heals all wounds and it's healed mine to some extent. When the Navy is good, it's the best. When it's bad, it's the worst thing you can imagine. I'm glad I did it and, if it ever came to it, I'd do it again. I'd recommend it to anyone. And so I recommend Tour of Duty to anyone who wants to know what it's like to steam around in a largely obsolescent guided missile destroyer. I'd like to think I won the game in real life -- or at least didn't lose it. Assume the watch and see how you do.