Gues Post from Jay Yurth. BAD SAILOR

Bad Sailor:


I got in real trouble just once in the Navy over 21 years. Had to go to Captain’s Mast. That is such a long story that it won’t be reflected upon right now. But, I did have to do “Extra Duty” for 10 days while I was “restricted” to the ship ( they took my ID card) for 10 days as part of the punishment. (They also took $100 for one month)

So, for the “bad” sailors that had to report to the aft hanger bay for extra duty, it was a mini nightmare. First you had to get into your inspection dungarees ( this mean clean, sharp, shoes shined, etc.) and stand in ranks with all the other bad Sailor and get inspected by a Chief to see if your uniform was clean enough to get … dirty? You had to go change out of those before starting your extra duty because you were definitely going to get dirty. Then a long line of, always very junior, seamen stood in line to get their “slaves” for the prescribed 2 hours of dirty work. When I was doing my extra duty they had just changed the rules. For the worse. Previously, if you had to do extra duty, someone from your shop or division that knew you would go up to the Chief in charge and request you, and the Chief would oblige. Wink wink, nod nod. They would then take you back to your own shop and you really didn’t do any extra duty work, but your penance was paid.

BUT NOOOO ! Not any longer. Now a line formed and you got the next bad Sailor in line as they came up, no picks. So, if you got handed over to an E-3 and you were an E-5 like myself, you HAD to do whatever (within decency and Navy lawfulness) this junior ranking guy said he needed done. This is to bring a huge amount of humility to the sailor that got into trouble and I suppose to ensure that you wouldn’t want to get into trouble again. Damn straight!! It really worked well.

Here are a few examples of what I was required to do.

I did only 7 days of extra duty because no one did it on Sundays and my punishment fell over 2 Sundays and 1 holiday.

So, 4 times I had to strip, mop and wax someone else’s passageway. Easy enough.

But once I was taken down to a room on the carrier known as “aft steering”. I had to take some bent up pieces of metal from the room that was used to steer the Aircraft Carrier if the bridge was blown up, to the dumpster. Now that doesn’t sound so bad except that the room was covered ceiling to floor with hydraulic fluid. Walking was a problem. Carrying bent metal was harder for me but quite entertaining to the seaman as he barked orders at me to hurry up. Seems I was being too careful as I was climbing up the ladder with my hands full and feet lubricated and he had a few other things he needed me to do.

Another time I had to go to the laundry area where I pulled clean wet sheets from a huge cart into a very, very hot rolling steam press and as they came out we (me and another bad Sailor) folded them quickly before our hands burnt. That was pretty hot and nasty but not too bad.

Now for the interesting one. This time a Chief came to get 4 of us and we went down to some big, below deck, nasty “head”. (Navy term for bathroom) All we had to do was mop the head. Easy we all thought. BUT NOOOOO ! Someone had taken all the fluid out of a huge supply of chemical lights (the plastic tubes you break and they stay lit for a while. The Airedales needed them on the flight deck at night) and poured it in a bucket and distributed it onto the floor of the head.

When the Chief told us about this, we didn’t really care much nor understand the situation. Then he flipped the lights out. And that is when we knew this was going to be a very hard task. We could see the glowing chemicals all over the floor, but only when the lights were out. With the lights out it was dark, except for the floor which was well lit. It was hard to see the bucket of water to wring out the chemicals into and all, so it was a bit comical. I mean it was really dark, we just had to laugh as we bumped into the toilet, sinks, walls, showers and each other, until all the glowing stuff was off the floor. It took the entire two hours to do it and the Chief could easily see when we were done.

And the lesson I learned from this was… Be a good Sailor not a bad Sailor!!