ALL BACK FULL

I arrived aboard my ship via airplane because it was an aircraft carrier in the Atlantic undergoing flight operations at the time. It's a good thing for the Navy that we were very far out to sea when I got there, otherwise I would have kept my bags packed and headed home since I decided within minutes that I didn't like shipboard duty.

On my second or third day there the ship entered into underway refueling exercises with a merchant ship called the S.S. Missessinowa (I'm sure the spelling on the side of that ship was different than it is here - I'm spelling it phonetically).

UNREF as the Navy likes to call it, is where two huge iron vessels in the middle of the ocean sail side by side with hoses stretched across and one ship gives fuel to the other.

It was very interesting to sit in the computer room two decks below sea level and listen to the intercom as the seamen topside lined up the ships and then shot lines over. Each step of the process was detailed by the orders being given over the loud speaker system. After an hour or so the ships finally got into position with hoses draped across and it was decided that they should begin pumping fuel.

Right about then a very calm professional voice came over the intercom and said, "S.S. Missessinowa this is U.S.S. Saratoga, Stand away".

Just moments later that voice boomed out once again. This time it seemed a little more urgent than before, "S.S. Missessinowa this is U.S.S. Saratoga, All Back full".

Since I had never been on a ship before, I had no idea that something wasn't quite right with those announcements. I busied myself with learning how to do nothing while acting busy (the Navy way to do things). I didn't really pay attention to the loud and increasingly nervous voice until it came back on the intercom once again. And this time there was a real strain in it, "S.S. Missessinowa this is U.S.S. Saratoga, ALL BACK FULL".

Then the floor where I was sitting moved. At one second it was a perfectly flat floor as floors are supposed to be, but then moments later the whole thing tilted at such an extreme angle that machines around the room began moving.

Again the voice, and this time I don't remember what was said. I was deer-shocked. Squirrel-in-the-road type of stuff. And again the ship listed. This time things on shelves began to fall and people's eyes began to grow and some machines slammed loudly as they slid across the room and then crashed against the bulkheads.

I was perfectly calm myself until I looked into the face of a very experienced seaman who had been indoctrinating me. He was clearly surprised by what was going on and he even seemed a bit nervous. I asked him, "Is it supposed to do this?" as I clung to the keypunch machine where I was sitting. Luckily for us the keypunches were already against the wall on the down side, so we didn't go banging into walls like the other machines were doing.

He hung on and said "No". The voice bothered with it no more. Now we heard that metal sound, sort of a clanging, and sort of an electronic bell, CLANK CLANK CLANK, GENERAL QUARTERS, GENERAL QUARTERS, ALL HANDS MAN YOUR BATTLE STATIONS.

And everyone, including me, was up and running. They were all running to the places they were assigned to be during emergencies. I had not yet been assigned such a place but I did remember, from earlier in the day, that there was a stack of liberty boats just two decks above me in the hangar bay. I went there. If anyone was going to leave the ship, I wanted to be one of the first. By the time I got there the whole thing had settled down and people were returning to normal.

We found out later that the S.S. Missessinewa had moved too close to the Saratoga and had actually caused a collision. The decks sticking out from our ship slid across some decks of their ship and this caused a lot of damage and fires. General quarters was called because sailors like to deal with fires just as quickly as possible when they're out at sea.

The remaining three years, five months and six days I lived on that ship went just about the same way. Days and days of boredom broken by short spurts of extreme fear and excitement. I got out of the navy at my first opportunity, because it's not just a job, it's an adventure.