Postcards from Deployment: A Sailor’s Thoughts

As promised here are some deep thoughts from myself about some things in general while I have been out here. The hardest thing about trying to document what is going on is trying to maintain OPSEC all the while I am writing these emails back to you or even my significant other. That conveniently takes me in to my first deep thought.

Mail- I know as a kid and I am sure you know being a Cold War Sailor. Mail is precious thing. A bunch of the junior folks (I don’t want to say kids because I just had a new airman check in who is 4yrs older then I am) gripe moan and complain when they don’t have a chance to access a computer and check their email. For as much as I enjoy email, I also enjoy watching the good ol’ COD land and watching something close to 40,000 lbs of mail being delivered. Then you hear the 1MC (general announcing system) pipe up with the best call “Mail Call”. Then a few hours afterwards going by your maintenance box or getting a phone call asking for people to come down to admin to pick up your mail. I can’t explain it but for a sailor out to sea and receive something physically connecting you back to the shore is awesome and gives you the best feeling in the world. It really doesn’t matter what it is, whether it is a letter from home, a bill for something, a magazine, or the best of all a care package from someone at home. You never know exactly what they are sending when you get a care package. For example I received one from my mother and she found some little wind up dollar store toy. It was a dog holding a bone that would walk a little bit and then flip. I don’t know why, but for the better part of 3 hours while waiting for jets eight grown men spent playing around with that. We tried to see how high it could jump, how far it would waddle on how many turns of the knob. Then when the jets hit the deck we got busy and I lost it someplace. No big worries but, I wonder when it comes time to offload if I will find it.

Entertainment-Just thinking about that little dog has me thinking about what we do for entertainment. Currently the TV in my little berthing space is out; otherwise I would be up watching some movie or even trying to catch some TV show on AFRTS. So instead I depend on a load of books that I shipped out here in the squadron pack out. Currently I am working on a book about Frank Jack Fletcher by John Lundstrom. This book only covers Fletcher’s life from the start of World War 2 up to a couple of years after the end of the war. So far I progressed from Fletcher being part of the escort group to try and relieve the Wake Island Marines, him leading task force 17 in Coral Sea, and now I am at the opening launches of Midway. If you have never read a book by Lundstrom and are a serious naval historian, I would recommend you start with this one. He has also written a couple of other good books titled “First Team” and “First Team at Guadalcanal.” Both of which cover the opening two years of the war as viewed primarily of the fighter squadrons, but also talks about the VT/VS/VB outfits as well. I would again seriously recommend one buy these. I also have sitting in my collection of books that I brought with me the classic about American style Democracy titled “Democracy in America” by Alexander De Tocqueville. To go along with that I brought a copy of “1776” to read as well. To keep myself from going completely crazy with all the deep learning I brought book by Raymond Chandler that is a collection of all his short works before he struck it big with his Philip Marlow stories. I also brought James Webb’s “Field of Fire” and a couple of other action adventure novels from a used book store near my home back on the beach.

Reading for me is the best way that I escape from the four gray walls around me and it is usually how I wind myself down at the end of the day. I reach in for my MP3 music player, which is in my rack, I then turn around and read till I fall asleep or can’t stay awake anymore. I am a voracious reader, every time I have come on a cruise I always take a small library of 10-15 books and somehow by the half way point or three quarter I have finished nearly all of them. So when I pull in someplace I am usually scrounging for a book to waste my time. It is also funny because I will also get on these themes when I have books around me. For example it seems this year; I am on an early US history and government kick. Except for a couple of my books nearly all of them are relating to the early days of this nation or of how the ideals of the USA are thought off.

Food- I am very sure you remember the food being pretty good onboard (Don’t be so sure – we still remember the days of square fish, round pig and fired seagull, boxed milk and time between fresh salads measured in weeks… – SJS). On the flip side of that some how some way those of us deployed also talk of food in the same way those old MGM or Loony Toon cartoons talked of food. Even though we are well fed, some time in the week there will be a discussion about our favorite food or restaurant that we miss back home on the beach. The descriptions cover everything from how one guy loves the way his wife makes up some fried catfish and green beans; to another guy just wants to get ashore and taste a burger from White Castle. This again is one of those discussions that gets started and just rolls for a long while. The funniest thing though is how we aren’t hungry, but as I said we seem to be acting like people who haven’t seen food for over two months. This is one of those discussions that will pop up from time to time and I really don’t think it matters for pay grades either, because I have heard some of the officers talking the same way.

(VAQ-130’s table in the sandbox)

Well SJS, that is about all I have for deep thoughts right now. It is time to retire to my little phone box of a sleeping area and relax for the night. I hope you all back there where ever you are enjoy these deep thoughts from an American Sailor deployed out in the Gulf.

Sincerely,

Southern

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Below is part of a subsequent email re. shipboard entertainment wherein we had allowed as how the VCR (and later, DVD) player had turned this generation of JO’s into techincal entertainment drones and that if faced with a reel-to-reel projector, they’d be lost as to set up and running it. (and heaven forbid if a Cinema-Scope was involved). His response? – SJS

Also you are completely right, the JO’s that I have don’t even know how to set up a surround sound stereo system to work with the big-eye projector that the Officers use for Roll’em or for power point briefs. The Coffee Mess Officer had to call us (AT’s) over to actually get it all set up for them I think the last time I saw a reel-to-reel movie projector was on the USS Enterprise, I found it sitting in a store room near a ready room that was going to be assigned to the VAW bubbas. My father remembers movie nights onboard the Connie at the height of the Vietnam War, the biggest thing that the squadrons use to fight for when they use to pull into either Japan or the Philippines was the game films from either MLB or from NFL.