This is one from the heart. Not that anyone probably gives a damn or has a reason to, but it is the 'two cents worth' of an old ex-bluejacket who was once afforded membership in what he considers the finest organization ever assembled: The United States Naval Submarine Force. It gave me love and a respect for heritage and tradition, that allowed me to recognize that I have a place in the continuous chain that is the history of the U.S. Navy. I was a part of that history.

When I joined, every incoming raghat was given a book: This is Your Navy, by Theodore Roscoe. The same gentleman who wrote Submarine Operations of World War II and Destroyer Operations of World War II (Later published in popular paperback form as Pigboats and Tin Cans).

This is Your Navy was published by the U.S. Naval Institute to provide each incoming prospective bluejacket a single volume history of the Navy. It was written in the style of a yarn, a salty language adventure: It was great. Any young man who failed to be ignited by that book would have to be one 'soul dead', sonuvabitch. It is my all-time favorite book.

The first time I read it, I was on a bus going from Great Lakes to a receiving station; stayed up all night reading it. Any book that keeps an eighteen-year-old idiot up until dawn reading by the overhead light on a Trailways bus is one damn great book. Over the years the book fell apart and after that I don't have any idea what happened to it. In the years since, I have haunted a lot of used book stores trying to locate a copy. They gave one to every sailor, so what the hell happened to all of them? But that doesn't have a damn thing to do with the intent of this piece.

The history of the Navy is our legacy. It was passed to us and it is up to us to keep it intact and pass it undiminished to future generations. That is our obligation! No, more like a sacred duty.

Take our uniform: The one the uninitiated refer to as the 'Crackerjack suit'. That uniform in an earlier form, but easily recognized by my generation of sailor, was worn by Civil War sailors, and every succeeding generation of seagoing enlisted sailor since. The U.S. Navy uniform is unique. First, no other service has maintained the continuity of their dress uniform. Your low-neck jumper blues. Those thirteen-button low-neck jumper blues predate anything worn by our sister services. It has within its seams a valiant history of sacrifice and devotion. It is a symbol both recognized and respected by every seagoing sailor in the world. For well over a hundred years, it has been the hallmark of the protector of freedom of the seas.

Good men have been proud to have been buried in it and gallant souls have died wearing it in service to their country. It is a uniform that lends itself to individual expression. In a world of regulation and the application of strict standards, the powers that be, turned a blind eye to the eccentric liberties taken with the beloved 'dress canvas' uniform. It has always belonged to the bluejacket and has been accepted as his expression of the pride he has in himself and the fleet he served.

Roy Ator, an officer who was a first rate submariner, once was a bluejacket. He rolled his raghat. Men who wore a rolled hat would gently roll the rim and stuff it under the front of their jumper in a chow line. Guys who preferred 'wings' in their white hats tucked the edges under then folded it in the middle, then took it and stuffed it in the back of their jumper collar.

Nobody taught you to do it. You just did it, because sailors had always done it. Some sailors meticulously took a dime and painstakingly rolled their neckerchiefs until they looked like a yard's worth of garden hose. Other lazy bastards (like myself) would take their neckerchief to some gal at a naval tailors and have her turn out what was known as a 'greasy snake': You could get two 'snakes' out of a regulation neckerchief. Pressed flat, they looked great and were light enough to blow all over hell and half Georgia in a light breeze.

Some tied their knot at the bottom of the 'V' of their jumper collar. Others liked a high knot a couple of inches above the 'V'. Sure, the old barnacle butt CPOs would rag you...

"Dex you look like a gahdam Pogey Bait Fennolly Hopper."

Never knew what a Fennolly Hopper was, only know I looked like one so Stuke must have looked like one too. Only old heavy gut-ballasted Chief Petty Officers had actually seen whatever Pogey Bait Fennolly Hoppers were 'cause the last one died before Abe Lincoln was born. SUBRON Six had a couple of old bastards that had dated Abe's mother when she had all her own teeth.

The trou: The old stand-by thirteen-button blue bellbottoms had a pocket for a pocket watch. By 1959, it had become a 'Zippo lighter' pocket. You tucked your pack of whatever you smoked in your sock. Your wallet got folded clam shell style and got folded over the top of the waist of your trou (trousers) and you pulled your jumper down to cover it. Every barmaid and hooker knew the exact location. You never put anything in your jumper pocket except your I.D. and liberty card. Anything else looked like hell and if you were wearing whites, reaching in your pocket for stuff would get it dirty.

A good set of tailor made, seafarer whites had a patch pocket instead of the weird slit pocket that came on regulation whites. A real set of thirteen-button blues or whites had no belt loops. Instead there were a series of eyelets right above the terminal point of your ass crack called 'gussets' and you had a mate lace them up and square knot them to your size. It was 'Navy'; Old Navy.

Back then, being 'Old Navy' was damned important. So you decked yourself out in dress canvas, rolled across your quarterdeck, popped a snappy salute to the colors aft. The Topside Watch hollered, "Hey Dex, if you get laid twice, bring me back one."

"Sure horsefly, you bet." And you were off to terrorize the civilian population, you were in Arliegh Burke's Navy and you looked like an American bluejacket because that was exactly what you were. It is what every saltwater, deep-diving sonuvabitch who came before you was and in 1959, we all knew deep down in our hearts that would always be the way it was. Nobody would ever be so gahdam stupid as to let go of that uniform. Hell, we all knew that our sons and grandsons would someday wear that wonderful symbol of the finest Navy that God ever assembled.

At the time it was called Indo-China, nobody knew where it was: Or cared. Nobody had ever heard of Elmo Zumwalt, the forward thinker who invented saltwater mediocrity. And somewhere, somebody decided thirteen button blues were outdated and that the history of the United States Navy was not enough to excite young men so they created compensation and education bribes and quit handing young lads copies of This is Your Navy by Theodore Roscoe. They trashed the dear and meaningful for a bunch of superficial, meaningless horseshit and called it progress. Shame on the bastards!

“Pigboat” Ramblings

As I sit here ruminating over my seventy some odd years moved my life-clock toward relief, I find little vignettes of my years in "the boats" passing in front of my minds eye and thought I'd kick them down the line to maybe nudge your memory locker door open.

The very first time I went out on a school boat in New London and my first dive station was in the pump room and, unbeknownst to me I was hunkered right next to the muffler on negative tank inboard vent when they pulled the plug. "Green board",

"Blow negative to the mark",

"Negative blown to the mark, permission to vent negative"

PSSSSHHHHHH, at this point I nearly jumped out of my skin and damned near soiled my laundry!! Relieved from the mid watch underway, waiting for the good ships baker to put out the oven-hot bread and sticky buns with a bowl of cold butter (before we knew how to spell arteriolosclerosis). Having the duty on New Years Eve and in recompense the Old Man let us put number one air bank on line and blew the crap out of the ships whistle at midnight.

As a boot chief we were on a mine plant forward and aft and for reasons known only to God and the old man, I was put in charge of the forward reload party, me, a Chief Engineman, and I'd never even seen a mine before. I can remember standing in the pits in water up to my knees and we were ramming home mines like clockwork, thank God for the TM1 who was coaching me, but, that was what it was all about, wasn't it, get the job done.

Remember when you were swinging throttles and nobody came to visit us in that auditory hellhole except in the North Atlantic in midwinter when the engines were covered with wet foul weather gear and near-frozen lookouts were caressing those thundering diesels. It seems like every time we got to the best part of the after battery movie there was a battery charge in progress and the aux electrician would turn on the mess deck lights to take ICV's.

Remember your first hurricane at sea, standing high-scope watch, or, like me during Carol off the east coast in '53. I never left the aft engine room for 3 days, lying in that water-soaked deck mat with my head wedged between the walking deck and the engine liner-deck, trying to heave up the bottom of my stomach. Now I hear chow call and like all good sailors I'm out of here for the mess deck....keep your feet dry!

EDITOR NOTE – JOE BURGES (605-A/LIFE-1988) explained ‘High Scope’ watch to us and it sounds like punishment. He’d sit at the extended periscope, scanning in all directions while the boat ran on the surface. Doesn’t sound too bad until you remember that the boat and your body are rolling as one, but your eye (through the ‘scope) is perhaps thirty feet higher than the boat and your body, and is rolling at a much greater speed and angle than your brain thinks necessary. JOE said they could only stand ‘High Scope Watch’ for a very short time before being relieved, or the sailor would just get too sick to continue.

Deck Ape to Cook, & “Sailor Speak”

Well let's see - Deck Ape - the lowest of the low.... can't embellish that much. You no doubt tutored under Gunner (GM2) Ludwig. That's a high hurdle to get over, by itself... Learned how to paint, chip paint, paint again, throw a heaving line, single-up, and other menial no-brainer tasks. Now if you learned how to make up a monkey's fist and tie a bow line, then maybe there is something good to be said of that.... Nah.... can't think of anything... Stew burner from deck ape.... not much of a leap there, is there?

I remember one day when cook Steven LeBeau (you gotta love that guy) came back too hung over to make up the evening meal. I was mess cooking and took over. It was easy, no training required, anyone can burn a steak. Why do they pay stew burners so much? Jezzz, you even get to shower every day! Got lotsa 'atta-boys' from a generous crew who were afraid you'd poison them if they didn't say something nice to ya.

But the night cook, well, he was a different breed of cat! I mess cooked for him too. These specialists could usually turn out something smelling so good it would wake up the guys sleeping in the after battery who'd come and raid the warm bread, gooey buns and cakes cooling on the tables. They had to be sneaky, though, ‘cuz night cook was there with a large frying pan in hand to keep em away. Even so, Mess Cook got to scarf up the crumbs and choice bits! OK, Sully, how's that? Not much to work with, you know! Now if you had converted to RADIOMAN.... well then... that's really something to crow about!

A Language All Their Own

Mariners had a language of their own. Me and Willy were lollygagging by the scuttlebutt after being aloft to boy butter up the antennas and were just perched on a bollard eyeballing a couple of bilge rats and flangeheads using crescent hammers to pack monkey shit around a fitting on a handybilly. All of a sudden the dicksmith started hard-assing one of the deck apes for lifting his pogey bait. The pecker-checker was a sewer pipe sailor and the deckape was a gator. Maybe being blackshoes on a bird farm surrounded by a gaggle of cans didn't set right with either of those gobs. The deck ape ran through the nearest hatch and dogged it tight because he knew the penis machinist was going to lay below, catch him between decks and punch him in the snot locker. He'd probably wind up on the binnacle list but Doc would find a way to gundeck the paper or give it the deep six to keep himself above board. We heard the skivvywaver announce over the bitch box that the breadburners had creamed foreskins on toast (SOS) ready on the mess decks so we cut and run to avoid the fustercluck when the twidgets and cannon cockers knew chow was on.

We were balls to the wall for the barn and everyone was preparing to hit the beach as soon as we doubled-up and threw over the brow. I had a ditty bag full of fufu juice that I was gonna spread on thick for the bar hogs with those sweet bosnias. Sure beats the hell out of brown bagging. Might even hit the acey-duecy club and try to hook up with a westpac widow. They were always leaving snail trails on the dance floor on amateur night………HUH?