Postcards From Deployment: 24/7

So after leaving my home away from home Dubai yet again, I was shifted to night check. Primarily because the other night check supervisor was letting some things slip and then just needed a new sheriff in to town. So it has been about a week since I have started this and I have managed to get some things changed around for the better. The only downside that I have is there are certain things that I have to either get up very early in the day to accomplish or wait up later at the end of the day to get accomplished. Anyone that works a night shift or a swing shift knows exactly what I am talking about. It is worst out to sea though because you just have the ship. That being said I am making the best of it.

I am sure that most of your readers know that we (as in the US Navy) fly around the clock. Doing it at night is extra special mainly because you can’t really see what the heck is going on. The only lighting we have out there on the deck is some yellow sodium lights off the island and small deck edge lights that cast all sorts of eerie shadows. Being out to sea and letting the sun go down lets you see a whole bunch of things that one normally doesn’t see. The biggest one is the constellations that ships of old use to navigate by and get around the world with. There are also times if you get yourself in a good dark corner of the flight deck and stare up at the night sky you can see some of the jets flying around, but also at times I have caught the trails of meteors and low earth orbit satellites. Now I am sure you know being the Naval Aviator that night carrier landings are some of the fun times while on deployment. I haven’t taken any pictures of any yet, but I am sure you have some floating around someplace. It is fun to stand on the finger of the flight deck and watch from just behind the LSO’s shoulder as you see a set of lights make the turn on to final. Hear the air boss go “Prowler, 500, Bravo, 4 miles” and then sit there and watch. I have done that a few times and lost my depth perception until all of a sudden the roar becomes huge and the lights become huge. Out of the inky blackness of night comes this multi-million dollar airplane it lands and then begins to taxi out of the way. Or as it was a couple of nights ago for one of the poor Hawkeye pilots, it became a shower of sparks and back into the air to try again. He didn’t get it until his third try down. I have a family friend who use to fly RA-5C’s and then A-6’s comment to me that a good bowel movement, a good orgasm, and a good sweat (exercise wise) was the way to get through life; with a night carrier landing you are able to achieve all three at once.

The kid that broke his collar bone went to a hospital ashore in country and they operated on him. Gave him about two weeks to recover and then stuck him on a COD back out to us. The ship’s senior medical officer is annoyed to put it mildly. Basically I now have a paperwork/admin person, but even that is so-so at times because of some of the pain killers and the various times for physically therapy. To explain it to your readers. Even though an aircraft carrier is pretty big and we have a very adequate medical department. The medical facilities onboard are really like a hospital’s emergency room. We have enough onboard to stabilize a patient, but not really any space nor facilities to do long term care. So most often depending on the severity of the injury they will either keep the member onboard until they are capable to going back to work. If that doesn’t work then they will be stabilized and sent ashore for long term treatment and care at a major military hospital ashore someplace.

I don’t know if you remember me talking about jonesing for food a few postcards back, but one of the guys got a package the other day that had Girl Scout cookies. So as we sat around to wait for the last jet to recovery and gorging ourselves on Thin Mints, the conversation went over to what sort of cookies we love. Myself personally if a Girl Scout stand is up, then I will buy the cookies that come in the purple box. They are a caramel and chocolate cookie with coconut sprinkles on them. I don’t know for the life of me what they are called, but those are my favorite Girl Scout cookies. There was another guy that loved the girl scouts short bread cookies and given a chance would spend all day watching hockey eating a tri-wall full of those. We then started to talk about various after school projects. One of the girls that works with me she use to be a girl scout and a couple of the guys that work with me made it as far as Eagle Scouts before going on to bigger and more adult things in their lives. As for myself, I never did scouting, but my folks always made sure that I was busy with sports of some sort. (ed: OK gang – there’s your hint, may be a care pkg or two for our deployed correspondent ? – SJS)

We are also past the halfway mark. So a big scream of yes has come up. Basically we are on the downward side of this adventure. The funny thing is we are now in that time frame were cabin fever really starts to hit everyone. It is funny and sad at the same time. You might have a best friend and have gotten very use to the way he spends five minutes every morning in the cube putting skin lotion on himself. But now at the halfway mark and the closer we get to home, it seems as if simple things like that or even just the way that someone looks at you gets you angry. I can’t explain it beyond the fact that we all have had cabin fever. I was sitting at mid-rats last night talking about this with a friend of mine from another squadron. We came up with how it will go the closer we get a chance to get home. Simple things get someone angry, then it will be just looks getting someone angry, from there it will be fights just to get on the buses to take us to the planes. If the cargo guys on the planes start to tell us the freedom bird is down, everyone will stand up and start to look at each other going “I’ll fix if you CDI (ed: Collateral Duty Inspector -SJS) it, don’t worry an airplane is an airplane.” Heck we will be pushing the planes down the runway if needed to get the plane airborne. Heck I remember one time coming home that because the airplane we were suppose to go home with was having issues, guys were pulling out credit cards and trying to figure out what the cost of an ticket from Norfolk to Seattle would cost. It was funny.