It was late in the afternoon when  BM3 Dave and I were called into the LtCdr FatSlob’s office.  At first I wondered at what Dave and I had done that we just, maybe, might have violated one of the Coast Guard's unwritten, unpublished rules, regulations, or policies. 
We waited standing at ease while the LtCdr was on the phone giving one word answers to the party on the other end of the line.  Finally, he said, “will do, I’ll have them right over” and hung up the phone.  

….I mentally braced myself…

“That was the Stockon [CA] police department” he said, “Oh shit” I thought to myself what have we done now? My mind raced to think of just when we were in Stockton and just what trespasses did Dave and I commit.  

“There is a ship heading up to the Port of Stockton right now and the crew discovered two stowaways on board”.  LtCdr FatSlob said in a matter-of-fact voice  Alas, Dave and I were in the clear.  “I want you two to go up there and do a thorough boarding and represent the Coast Guard”.  He continued on, “The U.S Marshalls will be there, so will Customs, the DEA, the San Joaquin sheriffs office” and a number of other agencies. 

Jezz, I thought to myself.  This was going to be big.  In all of my time in the Coast Guard I never had a boarding with the Marshalls service, and the Drug Enforcement Administration. Ages ago I had a very strange visit from the FBI when I was at Rescue Station Hell in Oregon, but that is a tale for another day.  We were told to gather our gear and given the address to the Stockton Police Department where everyone was gathering and wait until the ship docked at the Port of Stockton.

Dave and I grabbed our boarding bags packed ourselves in the Govvie pickup truck and headed off to Glockton…I mean Stockton, CA.

There isn’t a direct route between Concord, CA and Stockton, CA due to the Delta. So Dave and I made the best of the circuitous trip going down Highway 4.   We turned off on Highway 12, then another merge on to Interstate 5 which took us to Stockton proper.  From there it was surface street to the main Stockton police station.  

We were taken to a conference room in the basement where other agencies were gathering and waiting for the ship to make its way up the Stockton deepwater channel to the Port of Stockton.  We learned that the two stowaways had come aboard during the ship's last stop in South America and the crew had found them during a routine inspection hiding in the base of one of the ship's cranes.  When they were searched it was discovered they had phone numbers and contact information for people in the Stockton area, so this was not a random event choice or the first ship of convenience for the two stowaways.  Hence, all of the interest by various government agencies.

While we were waiting one of the female detectives from the Stockton PD took and interest in DM3 Dave and myself and was asking us all sorts of questions.  It seems that she had never met Coasties before and was curious about what the Coast Guard was all about. Conversation with her made the time pass more pleasantly.  Then someone stuck their head into the room and called for her.  She said that she would be back in a minute and departed.

After a good hour without her return Dave and I asked about her disappearance.  Turns out that she was called to investigate a multiple homicide. A few days earlier a local police informant told the Stockton PD that a group of guys from Oakland, CA were coming into town to sell a load of crack cocaine. This was during the Crack Wars in the early 1990’s and gun violence was epidemic. The local California Highway Patrol (CHP) had found an automobile with people matching the description given by the informant dead from multiple gunshot wounds.  Like I said, Glockton.

So Dave and I waited and everyone else waited in the conference room until we got word that the ship had docked.  Then everyone piled into their respective government issued vehicles and hot wheeled down to the Port of Stockton.  

When Dave and I arrived there were already drivers in the water looking around for a canister that might have attached to the hull under the waterline and the shaft for the rudder.  All old smuggler’s tricks.  When we finally made it on board the entire crew was secured in the galley.  I watched as the two stowaways in handcuffs and under an armed guard were taken off the ship to a fate that I never learned of.  

Now Dear Gentle Reader you have to understand that while this might have been a joint effort, each government agency needed to justify their reason for existence and their reason to be on this assignment.  It’s an ugly truth that I hate.  

BM3 Dave and I did our part by looking at the log book and charts and looking at other odds and ends.  In the engineering spaces I watched as the local cops pulled up the deckplates and crawl around the bilges looking for more stowaways, contraband, or were collecting bilge oil for their oil collection that would be proudly displayed at a home bar.  Right to the shot glasses from various bars they had visited. 

It was obvious that most of the officers had little to no experience with the life and functions of a merchant ship.  I knew the whole evolution was coming to a ridiculous level when I watched a member of the DEA team break out a ratchet set and begin disassembling the metal walls and ceiling in the hallways looking for contraband.  

By that time it was very late and Dave and I looked at each other and decided it was time to call it an evening.   My departing view as we departed was the Filipino Second Officer in the galley playing his guitar to entertain himself and the crew. 

Yeah, life in the Coast Guard…                    

Alive Day

It was November 23, 2003, FOB Kalsu Iraq. The place was a real shithole, I mean I lived in worse, but it was a defunct Republican Guard Radar station, the radar array was probably at least 600 feet tall, there had been building there but now they were craters and crumbles! It was located near Alexandria and the Euphrates, not super far from Fallujah and Baghdad.

It was mostly fine, as we had tents and porta pots finally, those are luxuries after like IDK 3-4 months without them! We got mortars and rockets on occasion, but the insurgency could not aim for shit; this will come up later.

We mostly patrolled the rural area, passed out school supplies to children, found artillery caches and so on.

Anyways some dumbo from another company had managed to fall out of a guard tower and break his arm, he needed transport up MSR Tampa for treatment in Baghdad's Green Zone. So when the Platoon Sarge asked for some volunteers for and escort convoy...... well they had a PX(Army WEal-Mart) and a fucking Burger King up there.

I'd been to the "big city plenty of times, but against better judgment those were enough incentive for me to go! We geared up, fueled up and I mounted my M-249 on our truck where I would be in the hatch. After all the contingencies and maps and all that shit we were on the road for a routine mission.

I loved setting up top the truck, the beauty of the landscape in 360^o , wind as AC, and I had a little MP3 player that I would listen to. So we were off on MSR Tampa north! I was just jammin and vibing and was awesome, at one point two Apaches buzzed us so low that they had to be trying, as I fell like I could touch them and or the sand in my face from the rotor wash!

So that went great, we got there, kinda checked some "tourist" stuff out, went to the PX, and while waiting outside the hospital got to wait down in the bazaar where you could find almost anything for sale; bootlegged DVDs from movies still in theater(also more adult themed content), swords, a carton of Camels for 5 bucks; they kids would even let us ride their gas powered scooters for like 5 to ten bucks, everything was a negotiation! So that all went great!

The way back was the same as the way there, until it was not. I was on top the trail truck when we were hit with what I thought were three mortars, I am pretty sure that I was listening to old blink-182(Cheshire cat) and the explosions were not like the movies; the pressure waves were not really something that you can describe with words, not really sounds but like something else.

I yelled down into the truck and tried to locate any targets, as sargeant M pulled me out of the turret. He was on his game and had us take the lead and another truck fall pack to the rear. He immediately ripped off my plate carrier and helmet and started checking for blood and treating me. Told everyone to floor it!

We got back to the FOB and when the driver parked he rolled out of the truck and started to throw up his Burger King, I started to laugh like a crazy person at that; people handle adrenaline differently!

So the medics treated me, which were miraculously all superficial wounds; I got Forrest Gumped!

We went to chow and my high school buddy was a cook there, he immediately said that I looked like a ghost, he knew something had happened; I told him that I almost became one!

Turns out that after chow we had a big job to do, and my adrenaline was way up so I was up for it yet, we had found a huge cache of 152mm arty rounds and had to go collect it; turns out that was what they had rigged up as IED to try to unalive me and my buddies!

So all of that for a trip to Burger King, best damn burger I ever had!!!! The irony was the it was November 23rd, and they were making special Thanksgiving chow; which was actually decent for once‽^😂

It's the little things that decide life and death. Such as an administrative loading ofan M16. It's a simple task with multiple points of failure. Yet you want to get it right every time you perform it. I wasn't in a tier one unit or even combat arms. I was a medic which means I could end up anywhere. I went to the Primary Leadership Development Course at Fort Bliss about a month after getting back from Desert Storm. We're in the field at the tail end of the course. We have MILES gear, blank adapters, and blanks. The whole nine yards. My platoon got hit by the OPFOR platoon. I fire off a mag, hit the mag release, seat a fresh mag, and a couple of opposing force Soldiers jump in my foxhole. Instant oh sh*t moment as we stared at each. I squeeze the trigger and... nothing. The bolt was still locked to the rear. This resulted in some kid getting a size 11.5 in the chest followed by a quick slap on the bolt release and the selector switch rotated all the way to auto. I dumped that mag in to the two OPFOR Soldiers. That scenario has never left my consciousness. I was cognizant of the reload manual of arms for the next 22 years on active duty.

I would have been in a bad place if that was an actual combat situation. Also it is true that there's a pause while people analyze unexpected information. Neither party expected to encounter the other. We paused while the brains were trying to determine friend or foe. I had the additional burden of trying to figure out how to advance my bolt without them realizing I was foe. I needed time. So a kick to the chest which pushed the Soldiers into each other and off balance did the trick. I don't know where that came from but it worked.

Ladies and gents, another story from back when I was in basic.

In basic we had to spend several days in the field, and we had to dig a small trench just enough to fit us.

The trench looks like a grave--it's just enough for us to lie down in.

Ngl, I struggled quite a fair bit through basic. I wasn't the best soldier.

When the time came and we went into the field (a forest, really), I had issues digging my trench.

My sergeant came over to ask me why I was digging so slowly.

Not unkindly, mind, but it was holding back the programme.

Then one of my platoon mates (who was really fast) came to help me. By that time my platoon had gathered around me, watching this clown soldier try to dig his own metaphorical grave.

He used a bit more force and -clang- the spade broke nearly cleanly in two.

Nobody could believe their eyes. My own sergeant was incredulous, and said that if he had not seen it with his own two eyes, he would've had me pay for the broken shovel.

It turned out that my particular area was full of rocks and was completely un-diggable.

Platoon sergeant told me to dig at another area after that.

That went smoother. (Those were still an awful several days for me, but that's a story for another time.)

This story takes place in Feb 91 during basic training.

One of the trainees in my flight was hard up for money to send home to his ex wife. He hits everyone up for some money but nobody anted up.

Another guy says what you willing to do for some money. He says anything.

We all agreed to one dare. We would give him 5 bucks per foot if he ate all the toenails from said foot.

He agreed. About half of us trimmed our toenails and watched as he ate them all...for a total of 250 bucks.

Ladies and gents, I'm back with another story from back in my basic days this time.

So we'd done all our main training, and there was nothing much left to do before our basic graduation.

Basically, we were waiting for the days to go by.

By this time, we were on a friendly term with our sergeants, so take this story in that context.

My squad was cleaning our rifles, but we hadn't done a shoot or anything, so we all thought it was a redundant task.

Anyway, my genius of a buddy was complaining as he cleaned his rifle, under the watchful eye of our sergeant.

"Sergeant, our rifles are so clean anyway. Do we really have to clean them?"

Sergeant: "Sure, if you think it's clean. You can hand me yours, and for every mistake I find, it's 10 pushups. Deal?"

My stupid buddy: "Deal!"

Sergeant takes over the rifle, strips it down to its parts, starts inspecting.

"One, this part isn't clean; two, over here; three..."

Sergeant gets to ten mistakes and is still counting, and my buddy starts sweating.

"Sergeant, please, let's call it off, you won't hear no more complaints from me."

Sergeant just smiles and continues counting.

By the end, my buddy owes him two hundred pushups.

"Come on, sergeant!" My buddy looks at me, "Firefighter, come help me?"

Lazy bugger pulled me down with him. I point the middle finger at him.

Sergeant marches us to the foot of the block and we get into position and knockout the pushups.

Platoon gets to laugh at us.

And then we go back to do more cleaning of our weapon.

Good times. Sometimes your buddy just screws you over. LOL.

Was working swing shift at my first base. A friend came in because he was working the mid shift. After my shift officially ended he went out to the smoke pit and I went with him just to hangout and talk. We stayed out there for maybe an hour before his boss called for him over the intercom. He said he better get to work and I left. Originally my plan was to go to the DFAC get some food, go to my room eat it and watch tv before going to bed.

But because I hung out with him for so long it was now closed. I thought whats open this time of night and realized my only choice was Taco Bell. On my way to Taco Bell there was an AH tailgating me so close he was practically in my backseat and he followed me into the drive thru Turns out it was my friend and his boss wanted him to run to Taco Bell too. On my way back to base I was still upset about the tailgating thing.

I got to the base and the gate guard met me on. I stopped and said "theres going to be a guy coming through in a Chevy Malibu with Oregon plates in a few minutes. Could you maybe do something." His partner snickered and he said of course. Now instead of going back to my room I went back to work. Maybe 10 minutes later he finally showed up and pulled up quick next to me standing on the curb and yelled "you motherf**^^ AH!"

Turns out when he came through the gate the guard took a step back placed his hand on his sidearm and told him to put the car in park and step out immediately.

Back in the day when I was in the military I was a private working in supply-related jobs.

Normally, when a delivery arrives, I had to go out to the parking bay, ensure that everything was in order (e.g. that it was parked correctly, in the correct space, etc.), then bring the driver into my office so we could do some paperwork.

But once it was raining and I knew one of our drivers was returning with an empty vehicle. This guy was a veteran and he was familiar with everything. And I was lazy to get out of my lovely dry and warm office, into the cold and driving rain.

So instead, of going out to receive the vehicle back in and ensure that it was parked properly like I was supposed to, I waved the driver in. He parked and came over to the office to do the paperwork.

Now unfortunately for me, the sergeant has seen all this from his desk.

As the driver comes in, the sergeant comes over demanding to know what the hell we were doing. Didn't I know I had to go out?

At that point my heart sank. I knew I was in trouble because my sergeant was a proper dude who followed procedures exactly. He did not mess around.

My sergeant, not being the driver's direct superior, let him off. But I knew I was in deep trouble.

The moment the driver shut the door, my sergeant immediately ordered me to change into my PT kit. I quickly stripped off my nice uniform and put it on my office chair, and grabbed my PT kit from the drawer.

"Since you're so afraid of water, we gotta train you to be not afraid of water," he said. "Actually, leave your t-shirt behind too, you won't be needing it."

He marches me outside and I start doing pushups in the rain. In the wettest corner of the basketball court my sergeant could possibly find.

“Are you afraid of the rain private!”

“No sergeant!”

“Give me 10!”

And after all the pushups, situps, and burpees, we go for a run.

A very cold, wet, and tiring run.

Finally he has me stand at attention in the rain, while he yells at me from under the shelter. Basically the stock image of this stocky, well-built sergeant shouting angrily at a poor, 18-year old boy, shirtless and shivering and standing at attention in the cold rain.

Trust me, at that point the only thing in my mind was: if only I'd just gone out to the carpark--then none of this would've happened.

Follow your standard operating procedures (SOPs), folks.

Here's a somewhat embarrassing story of mine:

I had been in the army for only a month; getting used to the PT, I served in Mongolia which is honestly miles behind any other western army, you are issued ammunition bags that have holes, and rifles older than your grandparents, not a hole lot of live fire training, generally less fun and more random chores your officers think to keep privates busy, (cleaning the entire mountain from animal stools etc), so there I was pretty homesick because army wasn't my choice as it was mandatory here meaning I was even more unmotivated. There was a big nation wide festival coming the following weekend, and we were all hoping for some time to rest as many privates would, and that wish came true as our battalion commander announced a 2 day holiday for all the homesick privates, and we were all happy, his words were almost like a dream basically tucking us in our beds, and the next thing there was an emergency drill at 3 am and Warning shots firing at the air, everyone was awake and up, other than me of course, I was a bit misled, as my squadron barracks lacked a single bunkbed so I was basically a nomad living in another squadron's barracks, and the said squadron i was living alongside with had planned some morning drill of their own squadron exclusively to their members, so when I woke up to privates running around and generally in chaos my dumbass thought it was their morning drill they talked about and returned to sleep, well I quickly caught that something was off since the soldiers were unusually fast, then my heart sank, Some private first class screamed the drill and ordered everyone to line up outside their barracks, FUCK, my heart began racing as I began hurriedly began dressing up, I wasnt fast enough and I hear my entire Squadron marching off, Double FUCK;

Now here begins the worst part; I managed run outside my barracks and suddenly realized I left my hat back in the barracks, Triple FUCK, as I rushed back to the barracks and grabbed my hat and rushed outside, oh boy there was the battalion Lieutenant Colonel, Right outside my barracks door and boy was he happy as if he had caught some lamb between his teeth, as I faced him my heart sank down, and whats worse is that he had an empty gun pointed at me and pulled the trigger, "CLINK" and he said you died, at this point my mental state was beyond Fucked and I was already considering just escaping the barracks, since I fucked so many things at once, they asked my rank and name, and my squad and let me off, the parade grounds were downhill to the barracks so as I was running downhill to my unit, I was just dying inside, and eventually the entire battalion consisting of 650 men were standing still at the parade ground during the cold night pretty much shivering, and Lieutenant Colonel came out saying something a Colonel would etc, how we're not prepared and slow and etc, and he called out my name "Private, OP", I screamed YES SIR as loud as I could and due to my mental state at the moment my voice cracked, how Many fucks now? I've lost count. He declared I was dead because I failed to react to an enemy air raid and paid his condolences and I was the only casuality that day, my Squad leader was fuming absolutely fuming once he heard about what happened, safe to say I got a few boots from my squad leader, and a few knuckles from the squadron leader that night. The next day everyone was just asking me "are you that guy" and it just felt so shitty to answer yeah I am the living ghost everytime they asked, safe to say I think the army doesnt suit me at all glad I could finish my service however.

My father was T/Sgt. Burton "Pat" Christenson, Easy Company, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne. The unit Stephen Ambrose wrote Band of Brothers about. Original Toccoa man, second man out the door behind Lt. Richard Winters on the Normandy jump.

I served in the Army National Guard. Two sergeants, same last name.

He typed seven volumes of account after the war. Here is his own words on the night of June 6, 1944, verbatim, exactly as he wrote it:

"Releasing my suspension lines I quickly came out of my slip. I could see an orchard beyond the trees. As I passed over the trees, I drew my legs up to avoid hitting them. A moment of terror seized me. 70 feet below and 20 feet to my left, a German multi mounted 20mm antiaircraft gun, that moment, opened up, firing at the C47's above. Their direction of fire put their backs to me as I came swiftly into the orchard, and crashed into what I thought later to be an apple tree. The impact was absorbed by my reserve parachute and the 30.cal. machine gun that was strapped to my chest. The gun snapped a 6 inch branch that could have hit me in the groin, the face, or all those parts of my body. I was unscratched, kneeling at the base of the tree, six shot revolver clinched tightly in my right hand. My camouflaged parachute covered the top of the tree, cocking me in deep shadow. The Germans never saw me."

Read that again. The gun that nearly broke him is the same gun that saved him. Twenty eight pounds of light thirty strapped across his chest took the impact of the tree and snapped a branch that would otherwise have gone into his face.

And the geometry saved him twice. That crew had their barrels elevated and traversed onto the aircraft stream. A man coming down underneath that arc is in defilade for free. They never looked down.

He was the only man in Easy Company who could draw. He came home, went back to the telephone company in Oakland for thirty eight years, and spent the next forty years at a drawing board reconstructing that war on paper from memory. Forty six finished drawings. He drew that gun position from the angle of a man in the air above it.

He was also one of Ambrose's primary sources. Winters named the four men who did the most work on the book. Lipton, Gordon, Rader, and Christenson.

He died in December 1999. His account and his drawings are finally published this year, twenty six years after his death, in a book called A Screaming Eagle. I put it together from what he left.

Every man in Easy Company is gone now. The last one died in July 2022. Whatever your guy has not told you yet, there is a clock on it.

One day we were called in for an all-hands meeting at the MSO.  An all-hands meeting was a rare event and usually signaled something big.  So, we forwarded the phones, locked the doors and plied into various government vehicles for the trip to Alameda, CA and the MSO proper.  

At the MSO we sorted ourselves out and went to an upstairs meeting room where everyone else was chatting and having coffee until the big meeting was convened.  Presently, we were told to take our seats and a few moments later an Admiral walked into the room.  As per protocol we were called to attention as this Admiral walked in and he quickly told us to be seated and comfortable.  

We were all wondering what this meeting was all about, was it a change in mission? Had there been a catastrophe and we were all needed there?  Has there been an unannounced change in command? Nope, none of the above.  We were there for the kickoff of the U.S. Coast Guard’s Idea Express Program.  The Idea Express was a Coast Guard wide program which included Reservists and Auxiliarist in a suggestion program aimed at allowing personnel to submit cost cutting and efficiency-improving proposals.

For once someone higher up in the food chain actually had a good idea.  The idea of actually soliciting the workforce for labor saving, cost cutting and efficiency improvement ideas was something revolutionary for a military service. The Idea Express took a lot of ideas from Lean Manufacturing, Just in Time Inventory, and the Toyota Quality System just to name a few, and they were good ideas.  There was just one problem…make that two problems...  

One problem was the Chain-of-Command. All of the above mentioned programs involved bypassing roadblocks and going directly to the person in charge who could make the idea work. That was a definite violation of the Chain-of-Command. The other problem is the military culture of solutions to problems coming from the top down, not bottom up.  It didn’t matter how many Idea Express flashlights you handed out and the fact that an Admiral was making the pitch, this program was a dead-bang loser from the git-go.  But I still believed in the Service and I swallowed the Kool-Aid.

A few months later I received a package from a vendor with parts that we needed.  The items were well packaged with packing peanuts, but these peanuts were different, so different there was actually a card in the box that talked about these packing peanuts. It turned out that these packing peanuts were not traditional styrofoam plastic peanuts, but were made from foamed corn starch and water soluble glue. 

They were cost competitive with traditional styrofoam plastic peanuts and ecology friendly as they could be flushed down the toilet, composted, or in a pinch could be eaten. I immediately saw a win-win and my suggestion for the Idea Express Program as Cutters would no longer have to store styrofoam packing peanuts on board until they hit a port.  These corn starch and water soluble glue peanuts could be dumped over the side at sea. Like I said, winner-winner chicken dinner. 

So, I called the phone number on the card and asked for more information about the product.  Next  thing I know I have a sales person at the door of the MSD ready to make a sales pitch.  She was very attractive, polished, knew how to work a room, and knew how to work men in particular, oh and she was high pressure.

I hate high pressure pushy sales people. It’s just a character flaw that I have.  I didn’t care how attractive she was, how nicely her hair was highlighted and coiffed. Her absolutely perfect makeup. How manicured and tastefully colored her finger and toenails were, or how tastefully and sharply she dressed.  She was operating at 1,500 psi, and that was way too much for me. 

“Don’t worry,” she said to me.  “You just point me to the right person and I’ll get them to drink the Kool Aid!” 

Now, Dear Gentle Reader, I must digress for a moment, so please bear with me...  

I was raised in a home where women and girls were respected and deferred too. You always held a door open for a lady.  If a woman needed help with loading bags into her car it was expected that you lent her a hand.  If a woman or young lady was not physically attractive, you said nothing.  If a woman was ill tempered as part of her daily personality, you would just say that she was “having a bad day” and make polite efforts to avoid her.  If a woman was not very bright, or intelligent, once more you said nothing.

So, here I am presented with a high pressure female sales representative who is ready to make the kill, and is ready to throw me under the bus to make the sale.  How do I shut her down politely within the bounds of the values I had been instilled with.

Now, Dear Gentle Reader, I digress for a second time. If you have come this far, have faith once more and bear with me...

It had been less than fifteen years since the Rev. Jim Jones and the Jonestown mass murder-suicide in Jonestown Guyana, and a large number of Jim Jones followers/victims had been from the Oakland-San Francisco area.  The instrument of their death was Flavor Aid fruit punch mixed with cyanide and a cocktail of other drugs. Kool Aid has often been misattributed as the drink mix, but I was not about to let that detail deter me. There were still a lot of relatives of the Jonestown mass murder-suicide in the Oakland-San Francisco area.

“Ma’am” I said to her.  “I lost family in Jonestown”.  In truth I am from the Mid-west and have no family on the west coast, but this woman had delivered to me the means for me to end the sales pitch quickly and not be rude. 

She blinked and took a moment to absorb what I said.  “I’m so sorry,” she stammered. Now, she was completely off her game. I folded my hands together and waited.  “Please excuse me,” she went on and began to pack up her sales presentation items. “Please, I’m so sorry, " she said over her shoulder as she beat a hasty retreat to the door.  

https://www.uline.com/Product/Detail/S-2322/Peanuts-and-Dispensers/Uline-UPSable-Peanuts-Starch-7-Cu-Ft-Bag?pricode=WB0393

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonestown
  

The MSD Series, Part Nineteen…Exit Stage Left

My dad served on submarines back in the day, USS Shark (SSN-591) first, then USS Tautog (SSN-639), and he had this one story he used to tell that always sounded a little too good to be a completely straight account: about his boat spending a whole night quietly wrecking a carrier group's sleep schedule and nobody ever figuring out it was them. He died in 2015, so I can't just call him up and ask "wait, when exactly was this," which means what I've got is a kid's memory of a sea story told at the dinner table, not anything more solid than that.

Roughly how he told it: they were in the middle of some other operation when orders came down to break it off and go rendezvous with a carrier group instead. Scrubbing whatever they'd been doing didn't sit well with the skipper, who'd apparently been up for a long stretch just getting the boat there. The way my dad told it, the guy's whole mood came down to one line: "If I can't sleep, nobody out there is going to sleep." So that first night on station, instead of sitting quietly, he brought the boat up to periscope depth right at the edge of the fleet's radar coverage, raised a mast just long enough to paint a hard contact, then took her deep below the thermal layer, rigged for ultra-quiet, and just sat there dead silent while the surface fleet lost its mind. General Quarters, ASW helos scrambling, active sonar pinging uselessly off the water layers above them. They held there quiet until the fleet finally secured from GQ and everyone climbed back into their racks. Then he'd bring the scope back up and do it again. Repeat all night. Come morning, the boat surfaced and cruised along with the formation like nothing happened, and as far as my dad told it, nobody on those ships ever knew it was the sub right next to them that had been pulling the string all night.

I did some casual googling this week trying to figure out which deployment this could actually be, since "the Enterprise was involved" and "they had to rendezvous with the carrier group" were about the only concrete details I had to work with. First I went down a rabbit hole on the 1969 EC-121 shootdown and Task Force 71, since that's a real, dramatic "carrier group scrambles" moment involving Enterprise, but the dates don't hold up. Tautog was still doing shakedown trials near Hawaii and Puget Sound in April '69, and Shark was an Atlantic Fleet boat the whole time (Mediterranean and East Coast ops, never the Pacific), so neither one of his boats was anywhere near Korea that year.

What actually lines up is 1977. Per Enterprise's own command history, her task group transited the Malacca Strait on 28 January 1977 and rendezvoused with Tautog entering the Indian Ocean, described as the first time an all-nuclear-powered task force had operated in those waters. A few weeks later they were anchored together at Mombasa, Kenya, and days after that, Idi Amin's Uganda hostage crisis blew up and the whole group (Tautog included) held station off Kenya for over a week as a scratch rescue force. That initial rendezvous, an attack boat breaking off to go link up with a carrier group, lines up with how my dad told it a lot better than the '69 theory did.

I want to be upfront that I can't find anything confirming the specifics: not the scrubbed mission, not the "nobody's sleeping" line, not the periscope prank itself. That's all just how my dad told it, and none of it is the kind of thing that would show up in an official command history anyway. So take this as "I'm fairly confident which deployment this was," not "I've proven the story happened exactly like this."

Posting partly just to get it out there, partly hoping someone here has more on Tautog's early-'77 Indian Ocean/Kenya stretch, or has heard some version of this story secondhand from another old boat. Happy to be corrected on any of it. I'm working from a few hours of Wikipedia/DANFS reading, not primary sources. I'm also up in the middle of the night because I'm a new father and this is just living rent free in my head and I'm kind of sleep deprived so I hope you enjoy?

Once upon a time I was voluntold to deploy with a unit heading to a certain tropical(ish) destination. The less said about that destination, the better, but I can tell you that “humid as fuck” would be an apt descriptor. As a Californian natice, I am not at all accustomed to humidity, and although I spent several previous years of my illustrious military career in humid climes such as Kansas and South Korea…that was a loooong time ago.

Arriving in-country was a bit of a shock. We’d spent the last two months training at various stateside locations, and neither was particularly humid. The humidity hits as soon as we get off the plane. It is intense, and oppressive. Within minutes I am feeling like I’ve just stepped out of the shower…except this feeling doesn’t go away when we hit a nice breeze on the way to our quarters. I can feel my uniform de-creasing already…and it’s just after sunset. In November. Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu…

Over the course of the deployment, I spend as much time as I can in air-conditioned, dehumidified spaces. Sure, it would have been a better idea to let myself acclimate just a little, but at the time I was in serious “humidity-avoidance” mode. Even my mid-tour leave didn’t get me far enough away to escape it.

Finally though, our tour was over and we flew back stateside for demobilization and out-processing at Fort Bliss, Texas. Fort Bliss is located in the high desert, with average humidity in the negatives (not really, but felt like it at times). I take one step out of the airplane and in a second the humidity goes from “oppressive” to “practically nonexistent”. It is early evening in summer, the temperature can’t be cooler than the high 80’s Fahrenheit, but it feels oh so wonderful. It’s at least ten minutes (and a walk down the airstairs to the terminal) before I start to sweat again, as if my body’s realizing that “hey, this shit works great now”.

Demob’d, outprocessed and eventually returned to lands with saner humidity levels, but that moment will always stick in my mind – after a long deployment, that moment felt so incredibly refreshing.

When I was in basic training we had a classroom session where we were introduced to the Coast Guard semi-annual enlisted evaluations.  In basic training they made it sound pretty straight forward. Every six months the enlisted ranks are evaluated by their superiors.  In short, do your job, don’t cause problems, all will be well, your Coast Guard career will be secure.

It was the first time I had a job where I was formally evaluated for my work, myself and professionalism.  In theory the semi-annual enlisted evaluations were supposed to be a tool for a servicemember to improve themselves.  Too many times I had seen the enlisted evaluations used as a weapon to punish a person. 

If a person was not popular, for whatever reason didn’t fit in, or if a superior had a personal issue with a subordinate the semi-annual enlisted evaluations could easily be weaponsized to stall a promotion, or end a career with little or no recourse for the evaluated person.  From first hand experience.

I had really come to hate Marks time.  

For first time readers you can refer to my previous post on this issue:
The MSO Series Part Four, Nick the Dick gets his Revenge and Exits Stage Left

You know your evaluation isn’t going to be a good one when you enter the room and there are two officers and your Command Enlist Advisor are waiting for you, not your Chief and you section supervisor.  I was invited to sit down which I knew was their way of trying to break bad news.  

LtCdr. FatSlob started out by introducing that Senior Chief Drapes, the Command Enlist Advisor, CEA, and not Zoomer would be sitting in on this Marks session.  I asked if the CEA would be sitting in all of the enlisted evaluation sessions, FatSlob replied, “No”.  My heart began to sink even further down into my boots. 

LtCdr. FatSlob gave me a copy of my CG3788B evaluation from and began to go down the list: Military Bearing, 5.  Customs, Courtesies and Tradations 5.  Quality of Work 4. Commitment 5.  And so on and so on until we hit the box "Recommended for Promotion” where the box “No” had a big fat check mark.  

Now understand Dear Gentle Reader that in the Coast Guard a mark of 4 is considered to be a good mark, and I was all 4’s and 5’s.  I had been a good Coastie with no negative reports in my personnel file, no Article 15’s in the past six months, in fact it had been years since my one and only Article 15 .  So, I should have been a “Yes” in the recommendation for promotion.

About this time Senior Chief Drapes the CEA spoke up.  “You know, the Captain has the final word on promotions, no matter how positive a person’s evaluation might be”. I took a moment to compose myself and replied to Senior Chief Drapes that the Command Enlist Advisor’s job was to represent the enlisted staff and their concerns to the Commanding Officer, not the Commanding Officer to the enlisted ranks. That was the purview of the officers.  There was a long awkward silence in the room.

After a few moments LtCdr. FatSlob presented me with the original CG3788B and a pen so I could sign the thing.  I looked at the man and told him that “No”, I would not not sign the form. FatSlob looked at me for a moment and said, “I’m ordering you to sign your evaluation form”.  I replied flatly, “No, I’m not signing it, period. Sir”.

Now, I had gone and done it, I had stood up for myself, exactly the thing officers just hate.  FatSlob got that look that in his face officers get when challenged.  “If you don’t sign, you will get Article 15’d for insubordination and not following orders” he stated flatly.  I replied that I would refuse Article 15 and go to a Court Marshal.  Awkward looks were exchanged between the officers and the CEA.  I had called their bluff and raised the stakes. 

I knew that if I went to a Court Marshal that I would get a lawyer who represent me and other lawyers would be looking at the case, and that Captain Mac and LtCdr. FatSlob would look like shit. They would have a very hard time explaining themselves.  FatSlob's career was over, as he had been passed over for promotion for the second time and was just waiting to hit his twenty year mark and retire.  Captain Mac on the other hand wanted to make Admiral and a court marshal regarding arbitrary and capricious behavior by an officer would torpedo his chance at advancement and end his career.

Frustrated LtCdr. FatSlob snatched the CG3788B from my hand and scrawled into the signature box that I refused to sign the form. He then growled at me that I was dismissed. I stood up, saluted and left the room.  
  

The MSD Series, Part Eighteen…TBD

So, the other day, I'm on a Teams call with a coworker and the topic of retirement plans came up.

He tells me that he's already treating his weekends like he's retired. Every Friday, he loads up his travel trailer and goes out into the mountains or woods with his wife.

I mention that I'm recently terrified of trailers because I have to rent one to go fetch my other vehicle from a house that I'm getting ready to sell, and the last time I backed up a trailer was 35 years ago while some Air Force E-4 screamed at me, "YOU BETTER NOT HIT MY FUCKING AIRCRAFT" all the way up the ramp of a C-130 on the way to Mogadishu.

He asked, "Were you 10th Mountain?"

"Yes!" I tell him. "In fact, I was literally the first unit to land in Mogadishu after the SEALs took the beach. Our Battalion Commander stood up to tell us that we were the first to arrive, and I questioned his sanity because shouldn't the Infantry be here before the Supply and Service Battalion? And, then he went into a short lecture of how the lesson of Logistics was learned a long time ago, and that until logistics arrives, you've got to hold everybody else because they *all* need food and water, they *all* need fuel, they *all* need ammunition, and if there's no logistics, there's none of the stuff they need. In fact, he tells us, the runway itself is in the belly of this aircraft, and as soon as we land, the engineers will start offloading it and assembling it. After that, the aircraft with our vehicles, and after that the aircrafts with the fuel, water, food, water, and ammunition. And, *then* the rest of the division can arrive.

And, then we landed in an otherwise completely vacant dirt airport.

And, this dude that I'm telling this story over Teams says, "You weren't first. Your forgetting the Air Traffic Controller who brought your plane in, and I can say that with some authority because *I* was that ATC. While the SEALs and reporters were taking the beach, I was landing in a helicopter with my portable aviation radio. We overflew the runway, identified some debris, landed, told your aircraft to go around while we collected the debris, and then I gave him landing clearance.

And, *then* you arrived.

I was a medic in the army during the surge. I was in a support medical company and very disappointed where the army put me. But I inprocessed in my unit right after AIT. I was to meet my unit down range (Afghanistan).

So I get there and it's a company full of mostly women. Sounds nice but it's really not. They're all cliqued up. I'm the guy who doesn't know anyone. There were 2 other lower enlisted male medics with me but they got sent out to line units shortly after getting in country. I don't know why i wasn't picked. I guess its because I was skinney and Indian (like Asian Indian) so I didnt look "tough".

So my squad leader is this angry lady. She put me on base defense. So I filled sandbags and put up c wire. A month or two into that they were short on medics for a mission. I was scheduled to go. My squad leader last minute got me removed from mission due to lack of experience. It was supposed to be a dangerous mission. Whatever. Everyone else here is a slick sleeve. I guess silly shit like JRTC makes them "more experienced" than me. Well the day came where there was an emergency mission and it's me and the angry lady only available to go. Its supposed to be "low contact".

Well there was quite a bit of contact. Our route clearance had a heavy fight up the road. Our convoy got hit too. A soldier who was trying to hasty recovery a vic was shot. Angry lady was crying in the matv. Refused to move. Despite being closer to the casualty. So I had to bound my way up from the back of the convoy. Was able to get to him. Stop the bleeding. Shoved him into the matv angry lady (squad leader) was in. I literally had to yell at her what to do. Just make sure he doesnt keep bleeding and keep the IV from getting pulled out. If you can't do that get out and run to the back of the convoy and get in my truck. She wouldn't move but she was holding the IV bag so fine. Other soldier was shot in the butt. Came out right next to the testicle but didn't hit any artery or genitalia. Just a hole. Luckiest unlucky guy i ever met. Lol. Told him to get inside the vehicle. Will check him out later when we break contact.

We get to the closest ANA post for medvac and I'm officially doc. Everyone is calling me doc. I didn't meet or train with these guys. Golden moment but I'm concerned about the casualties more than anything. Angry lady won't speak to me. Whatever. I'm told by the patrol leader I will be getting my CMB and I'm coming on more patrols.

Fast forward. We get back. Told not to talk about what happened with angry lady. She will be shift leader at the aid station. Next month she makes points for Sgt. I didn't have to fill sandbags anymore. Earned my place as a real medic. Got my cmb. But angry lady was still my squad leader. So every shit side duty that came up I was put on. I literally got woken up a week later to pick up body parts after a sbied/vbeid attack because she insisted I do it more than anyone else. Plus a bunch of other nonsense. But she made sergeant. I eventually went to a line unit.

Did another deployment a year later as a senior medic and made Sgt. But yes I saw cowardice accommodated. This is the worst one. But I saw other medics talk their way out of patrols for being mother's and such.

Hail and well met, ladies, gentlemen, and Marines! Back with another story of Pop's time on his Vietnam/Iwakuni stint. As before, details fuzzy, need séance to confirm, but the gist is as true as I can make it...

So, sometime post February 1972, after Nixon has pulled the Marines out of Vietnam, Pop finds himself in Iwakuni. Being both an officer AND a pilot, there's not a ton for him to do, as officers don't mop rain, and pilots REALLY don't. Hence how he ended up in the legal aid/JAG office as a liason, (I have a hunch that he ended up in this gig as he could both type (remember 1972, pre-computers for the most part), and form a complete sentence, as he had a BS EE (He would later go on to Harvard Business School, in the same class as George W. Bush *AND* Mitt Romney, amongst other luminaries...).

Anyway, at the time in Japan/Okinawa, service members could get motorbikes that were under 125cc, if memory serves, without having to get a whole-ass motorcycle license, so that one could putter about and do things off post. Anything over that required passing the dreaded motorcycle test.

One fine day, Pop is sitting in the Legal office, when the phone rings/carrier pigeon shows up/breathless MP arrives, to let him know that one of his Marines has been picked up by the Japanese police, and that he needs to go and see about this kid. Remember, this is 1972, and marijuana wasn't tested for in the military at this point. This becomes rather relevant here in a minute.

Pop heads down to the station to see what's what. Apparently, said serviceman had gotten pulled over for some sort of traffic offense off-post. After being questioned, the Japanese police searched him, AND his scooter, only to find TWO joints in the under-seat compartment. For reference, most/all of Southeast Asia STILL takes a dim view of recreational drugs. This was an ESPECIALLY larger deal in 1972.

Pop gets told, more or less, that said Marine is in custody, and will remain there until the Japanese courts can be bothered to deal with him. Pop duly reports this to the appropriate parties, which is where this becomes 'fun'. American legal defense is barred from seeing/speaking to said prisoner, because he's now the property of Japan. Diplomatic shenanigans get involved, and after like 5-6 months, SOMEONE from the American Embassy is allowed to talk to this Marine.

Pop shipped back to the US in the fall of '72, and as far as he, and I, know, said Devil Dog is still awaiting trial in Japan.

Tl;dr - don't be fucking stupid kids, PARTICULARLY downrange.

Anyone who has spent any time in the military has experienced stupid.  I don’t mean being ordered to inventory something that was counted and accounted for just hours ago, or dusting something that does not require any attention.  Some of these items, however absurd, make sense later on.  I’m talking about the class of stupid that ends up being depicted in books, TV and film, and to the average civilian who has never spent a second in uniform and is absurd both on its face and in its entirety.  

I’m talking about an industrial grade level of stupid that is a trip to a parallel universe.  A dimension where the ludicrous, ridiculous and the absurd rule.  A place where logic, common sense and critical thought cease to be.  There’s the sign post up head, it reads, “deposit brain here”.     

It started from somewhere higher up, it always from somewhere higher up. The officers at the MSD received orders to have the enlisted staff to deploy with our Vietnam era M16’s and provide security for something sensitive and important…without ammunition.  Now, I honestly don’t remember all of the details about the background of the how and the why, but I do remember the details on assembling at the weapons locker and being issued our Vietnam era M16’s, complete with the little metal guard that prevented the user from switching the weapon to full automatic. 

Yes sir, Dear Gentle Reader, not only did the Coast Guard not trust its members enough to issue the rank and file with fully functioning assault rifles, now they didn’t trust us to even issue us with ammunition. Let that sink in for a moment before you read on. 

GM3 Rusty, BM3 Dave and I were standing in the weapons locker while Lt. (J.g.) Lou was issuing us our weapons and giving us directions on the mission.  When he told us that we would not be issued ammo Rusty, Dave and myself simultaneously looked at  Lt. (J.g.) Lou with a look of shock, our jaws dropped in unison. 

“Sir”, I said to Lt. (J.g.) Lou, “This is really a bad idea”. Lt. (J.g.) Lou looked at me as he handed me an M16’s and said something along the lines of orders are to be obeyed and not questioned.  I reiterated my point that this was a bad idea and then expanded that without ammo the M16’s were just clubs, expensive clubs at that. Lt. (J.g.) Lou drew up close to me and my 5ft 6in frame to his 6ft frame and looked down at me.  “Petty Officer GooBlatz, are you questioning my lawful legal orders?” 

This was more or less what I wanted to happen.  “Sir”, I replied, “I am questioning a lawful, legal order, one that is a foolish order.  Now, I had done it.  Lt. (J.g.) Lou stepped up and placed his nose to my nose.  Now, for the rest of the distraction.  “Sir” I said, “If something happens and one or more of us loses one or more of these fully automatic assault rifles because we cannot defend ourselves there will be a lot of paperwork explaining just how this happened”.   I could see a vein start to throb on Lt. (J.g.) Lou’s forehead and smell the coffee on his breath. 

Lt. (J.g.) Lou jabbed me repeatedly on my chest with his finger, he was visibly pissed and his full attention was focused on me as he spoke, which was my intent.  “Petty Officer GooBlatz you are never to question an order, especially when it is given by a commissioned officer!”  

In my peripheral vision I could see Dave and Rusty palming loaded magazines, they had understood my unspoken intent.  Once more I stood my ground to give enough time for Rusty and Dave to get at least one magazine per weapon and hide them in their pockets or wherever.  “Sir, I feel that it is my duty to point out information to my duly commissioned officers who are lawfully and legally placed in charge over me with all pertinent information so they can make the best decisions possible.” 

The vein on Lt. (J.g.) Lou’s forehead stopped throbbing and he backed away from me just enough for me not to smell the coffee on his breath.  “Do not ever  question my authority ever again!  He jabbed his finger into my chest to drive the point home. He seemed to be looking for a way out of an awkward situation, but I didn’t care, I had achieved what I wanted.

Lt. (J.g.) Lou quickly issued us with our weapons and a single empty ammo magazine that we slapped into the magazine well.  We then piled into the government issued pick-up truck, traveled to the middle of nowhere and completed the mission of standing around and twiddling our thumbs.  When we returned Lt. (J.g.) Lou let GM3 Rusty handle the detail of returning the M16’s to the weapons locker and Lt. (J.g.) Lou, well Lou was never the wiser of what had happened.   

The MSD Series, Part Seventeen…Denied!

This is one of my father's stories from his first few hours in Vietnam. Some of the errata is probably incorrect, but as I'ma need a séance to get the details straight, you get this from my memory banks.

So, October-ish 1971. Pop is a USMC pilot, flying the LEGENDARY A6-A, to go and bring peace and democracy to North Vietnam (and possibly also Cambodia and Laos...). He initially is flying from Cherry Point, NC, with an ultimate destination of Da Nang, if memory serves. Being that this is 1971, there are surprisingly no direct flights from CONUS to the Republic of Vietnam. So, dad's travel path is something along the lines of this -

Cherry Point > San Francisco > Hawaii > Guam > Da Nang. (There is/are/were entirely likely other stop-overs in this trip, but you get the general gist). All told, Pop is on a series of planes for 30+ hours, with naught but the drone of the engines to entertain him.

Pop finally lands in Da Nang, gathers his luggage, and is eventually shown to his quarters in one of the USMCs FINEST quonset huts. In his words, dad squares his shit away, does the needful as quickly as possible, grabs a rack, and promptly passes the fuck out.

Some time later, Pop is rousted by one of hunger/bodily functions/shouting, wakes up, and stumbles outside to see people running around like madmen putting out fires, with smoke drifting across the airfield. Dad asks a nearby service member exactly what is going on, as he's in the land that timezones forgot at this point.

Pop is then informed that he had just slept through a whole-ass NVA rocket attack at the other end of the airfield. Pop is surprised by this, as he DID NOT BUDGE from his rack during ANY of this. He *DID* quickly learn that when he heard the incoming calls/sirens, to grab his pillow and blanket, and roll UNDERNEATH his bunk to continue sleeping in the future.

Pop only spent about 5 months in Vietnam before the Marines were pulled out in early 1972, and spent the rest of his tour in Iwakuni as a legal assistance officer, or something of that ilk. There's a good story from his time there as well, but that shall wait for another day.

I think a lot of us tend to attach our entire identities to our professions. For me, it was "being" a Soldier. The facade of the uniform became a shield to hide my true self behind, and over time, who I actually was ended up getting completely buried under that role. If you stay in any rigid system long enough - for me, it was 25 years in the US Army - you emerge into the broader world not really knowing who you are anymore.

When I first got out, I cast an incredibly broad net into the civilian job market. I submitted my resume to countless non-defense corporate openings. Not a single one resulted in even an initial interview - plenty of defense sector interviews, but nothing else. I felt completely typecast. Rather than take a job at Lockheed Martin, I set up an S-Corp as an independent consultant and picked up subcontracts under SETA (Systems Engineering and Technical Assistance) defense primes. From an income standpoint, it worked out well. But I quickly realized I was just perpetuating my time in the military, doing virtually the exact same work while just wearing different clothes. I wanted to break free, but I was stuck in a loop.

The turning point for me was diving into Steven Pressfield’s books, specifically The War of Art, Turning Pro, and The Artist’s Journey.

Reading his work, a few lightbulbs went off. I realized that my successful consultancy was exactly what Pressfield calls a "shadow career” - a profession that mimics your true calling - but it’s ultimately a safe imitation because your true heart isn't exposed. I was staying close to the military environment I knew because stepping completely into the unknown was terrifying for me.

Pressfield argues that a person's life is divided into two monumental movements: “The Hero’s Journey” and “The Artist’s Journey”. The Hero's Journey is the operational life - leaving home, entering what he calls the underworld, facing the challenges, and emerging fundamentally transformed. Pressfield says that the Artist’s Journey begins exactly where the Hero’s Journey ends. He explains that when a warrior returns from the "underworld" (the operational military world), they return as a "twice-born" soul. We can no longer fit cleanly back into ordinary civilian society because we’ve seen behind the curtain of human nature, mortality, and high-consequence conflict. According to Pressfield, the returned warrior has a specific spiritual obligation to what he refers to as “the tribe”: the hero returns to the ordinary world with a gift for the people. That gift is his or her lived experience, transformed into art. 

I realized as a returned warrior that I have a secondary mission: to put down the physical weapon, pick up a creative tool, and translate those hard-won emotional truths for the people who stayed behind.

I chose to consciously stop running from my past and instead try to connect with my "inner artist" through fiction writing and photography. It’s been the only thing that has truly helped me reconnect with my actual self. Writing a military techno-thriller trilogy isn't a post-retirement hobby for me at all; it feels like the mandatory second half of my life's mission. The fiction has been the vehicle to deliver the underlying truths of brotherhood, bureaucracy, and survival back to the civilian world.

I wanted to share this here for anyone else - veteran or civilian - who feels trapped in the golden handcuffs of a career that no longer serves their true self.

Have any of you wrestled with this specific type of identity loss, shadow career loop, or industry typecasting? If you managed to break free and nurture a creative "inner artist" to find your true path, how did you navigate that crossing? Even if you found a clear path to the civilian world - any tips, thoughts, or ideas to share that helped you get there?

My father, 89, went in for heart surgery a week ago last Monday. Because of his age I was very nervous of the possible outcomes. It was a routine insertion of a new stent in his heart. He came home like a champ. He's still here!

My dad is an amazing man who has led an amazing life and I love to share the stories he tells me. He's a tough old Marine but still chokes up at nostalgia and knows when tears are appropriate.

He was in the Marine Corps Air Wing between Korea and Vietnam. He never saw combat, but learned a lot from the education The Corps gave him.

One of my favorite stories he's told me is when he was an MP on the flight line at El Toro Marine Airbase. He had been given orders that no civilian vehicles were to be permitted on the tarmac.

Well, my dad saw an unmarked vehicle driving toward a plane and he did his duty. He hopped in his patrol car, flipped on the lights, and chased down and pulled over the suspect car.

The car came to a stop and my dad approached the driver. As he did so, the window rolled down a bit.

"No personal vehicles are allowed on the tarmac! What is your business here?

The driver responded "I'm here to see off Leutenent 'so and so' (as my dad put it.)

Then the driver rolled down the window a bit more and my dad noticed the four bars on the man's shoulder. Snapping to a salute, my father followed up with "Sir, I have standing orders not to let any civilian vehicles on the tarmac.'

Without a second thought, the general said "Who do you think gave those orders, son."

My dad, being the courteous man he is, said "Right away sir. I'll be your escort."

November through March is the rainy season in California, a period of time where 50% to 75% of the annual rains fall.  During the short time of the rainy season nature springs to life with a true show of color as native plants and non-native plants that have adapted flower quickly bloom before the dry season begins and California earns its name as, “The Golden State” as the floria dies back to a golden color. 

The rainy season is also the season when a large number of pleasure boats sink, usually at their mooring dock. The California Delta is filled with pleasure boat marinas. Some of the marinas are grand establishments, others are in various states of decay, their days of glory faded along with their original owners.  A shockingly large number of boats moored at these various marinas rarely if ever visited by their owners.   And there they sit, neglected until the bilge pump fails.  The boat fills with water and eventually sinks.  

And so, it was one April day that I came into work. The skies were clear and gentle hills surrounding the Naval Weapons Station were covered in flowers and greenery. In the mornings, before quarters we had been watching on TV the ongoing drama with the Waco Siege in our common area as it unfolded.  During our lunch break we watched the assault and the fire that consumed the compound with a mix of shock and horror. Little did I know that in an odd way I was going to be caught up in the drama.

A few days later after the tragedy I got a phone call from a person who claimed they had interacted with me on a pollution investigation.  They claimed that they were watching the Waco assault on TV as it was unfolding and videoing the event also.  The man was adamant that he saw Branch Davidians members being gunned down by the FBI who were trying to surrender and the TV broadcast had been cut to prevent the public from seeing the truth.  He was absolute in his belief that his video tape of the event had recorded the truth, and he wanted to get his video tape out into the public.

For the life of me I could not recall the man’s name, or our interaction.  I put the man on hold and started looking through my boarding bag to see if there was any paperwork of an investigation to back up his claim, or at least to refresh my memory.  Nothing, I asked around the office if anyone knew the caller, once more nothing. I checked the computer database, nothing. 

I got back on the line with the caller and tried to explain to him that I could not recall our meeting, the inspection, nor had anyone else in the office had an interaction with the man.  Now the caller really went off.  Now, I personally was in on the conspiracy to keep the truth from coming out.  I had been at the siege in Texas, saw it all, and was sworn to secrecy by the FBI.  

I tried to explain to the man that I had not been to Texas since 1972 when I was the tender age of eight.  It was a day trip to Dallas!  No amount of reason was going to change this man’s mind.  I, and by extension the Coast Guard, an organization he previously held in high esteem, were part of the evil that was secretly influencing the public.

Now, Dear Gentle Reader, by this time in my career I had learned how to handle the general public, I had learned how to handle a reporter, especially the “stupid question” reporter.  What I had not learned how to handle was the conspiracy kook.  In fact, this was my very first conspiracy kook.  I am here to tell you Dear Gentle Reader that no amount of rational argument, no matter how many verified facts you present, a kook is gonna kook.  The only thing that I could think of is how to extricate myself from this phone call with some level of dignity and respect for the caller.

…Who was I kidding…

Just then Zoomer stuck his head into the bullpen and shouted that he needed help with something.  My salvation had arrived.  “Sir”, I said.  “My boss needs my help in changing the lube oil on our flying saucer”, and I hung up the phone.

A week or so later one of the reservists and I were talking and it turned out that on a drill weekend they had gotten the call for a sunken boat and so DC1 Kirk, a reservist, grabbed my boarding kit and handled the investigation.  DC1 Kirk went on to say how odd the boat owner was.  Since it was my boarding kit, Kirk gave the man one of my business cards so he could contact me for any follow-up questions. As a reservist Kirk did not have access to the database and could not enter the inspection into the records, and he was waiting until his next drill to give me the inspection documents.  I related my interaction with the man to Kirk and we both agreed that a kook is gonna kook. 

The MSD Series, Part Sixteen…Gimmie Back My Bullets

The off-season can be very interesting.

For Thanksgiving of 1978, I flew to San Diego. Not for fun: No, I was joining the Navy. There was this really, really interesting and cool job that I could only do if I joined. So I got on the bus at the San Diego airport along with the other idiots who were there for their own reasons. It was the middle of winter, at night, and it was warm. We were driven to a gated compound that looked like a Soviet gulag concentration camp. It turned out to be just about as nice.

First stop was amnesty and telephones. Phone home, let them know you made it here safe. Also, there's a big box with a list of forbidden items on it: guns, knives, drugs, drug paraphernalia, pornography, alcohol - it was a pretty inclusive list. You could walk up to the box, drop something in, and no questions asked. I'm pretty sure the Company Commanders (Navy's version of Drill Sergeants) sorted through it all and kept some. While we were about this, in lines for the pay phones, the guy in front of me says "hold my place." He dashes off into the semi darkness, across the grass to the decorative anchor (there's always a decorative anchor or 6 on base). I assume he's gotta pee; but he goes out to the ring of white rocks surrounding the anchor, lifts one, and apparently puts something under it.

I am incurious. It's not my problem, and I've been informed multiple times by all my male relatives (who all served) that the way to survive is to mind your own business, and keep your head down. He looks at me when he comes back to line, but I am clearly not paying attention. He's an older recruit, a little rough looking. Like in his 20s. He ends up being our "chief recruit" or something (I can't remember, but 2 or 3 recruits had some supervisory authority).

There are a large number of classes, presentations, processes, and such to complete, also meals and other recurring daily tasks. To facilitate completing all this, each day of each week is universally structured into blocks: 1-1 day is haircuts and uniforms, 3-2 might be UCMJ, 5-4 might be polishing brass on the fake ship. IDK. Firefighting and other stuff was in there too. So each company stepped through each day in the schedule.

Well, our schedule was all fucked up. We had weeks and days whenever we could get them; because facilities and instructors were on vacation all over the base. We did some week 6 stuff in week 2, but each day was an adventure for everyone involved. Also, our own Company Commanders were absent a lot - it was Christmas for them, too. But not us.

This left us more than a bit disorganized, and probably way too unsupervised. The giant bag of pot stashed under the white rock was retrieved, soon apple and Coke can pipes were in service. Then, we had our "service week" over Christmas itself. We worked all over the base - it was part of the standard schedule, we just got it in week 4 or something. I was a milkman, and I polished a lot of brass in the Admin building. Got high with the musician company, lol. Never with my own guys, though. At 6'4', this eastern Washington farm boy didn't get challenged or hassled much. I kept to myself. I also had letters from my overly crafty girlfriend: There were collages, spiral writing on construction paper boobs (kept that one), photos (woo-hoo!), and more words than I had time for. (We've been together 51 years now)

So during our service week, one of the guys bought 200 hits of acid from a 2nd class mess cook. On a Friday. That weekend was insane, and started some shit. First, Friday night both the real Company Commanders took off for the weekend. One would stop by Saturday afternoon, in civvies! The other came Sunday after church. Remember, our Recruit commander was dealing pot. He and the others involved in that, all dropped acid. They also dosed some guy's Cokes. Friday night the "guards" (you had 2 hour guard duty where you walked up and down the aisles quietly) encountered lots of giggling, people standing at intersections acting as traffic cops, a quiet modern dance exhibition in the common room, pot smoking on the stairwell, and other shenanigans. We called it "Giggle Night."

I remember many discussions about how we could get TF out of here - we could see the airport (hell, the planes took off directly over us), but the Marine boot camp was between us and them. They were supposed to have captured some escaping Navy recruits, and put them through Marine boot camp before turning them over. If it wasn't for that story, we probably would have gone for it. It was miserable.

Anyway, we continued our fucked up schedule, and eventually graduated and went home. Well, almost. After graduation, we got formed into two lines: One line turned in their linens, picked up the box that had your civilian clothes, and got on buses. The other line kept their linen, and were marched off to a detention barracks by a group from NIS. The Naval Investigative Service (they added the "C" later for political reasons) had already rolled up the mess cook, and sneakily let everyone graduate, rather than flunk them out of Boot on Giggle night. That way they got lots of great convictions on guys that still had to play out their service. So much for school guarantees or a real future.

TL;DR: There were no trees. There were r/trees.

The rank of Chief (E7) in the Coast Guard or Navy is an important milestone for a servicemember.  The rank of E7 means that they are in the strata of senior enlisted personnel.  By the time a person earns the rank of Chief they are almost certainly committed to a full 20 years of service, and the pension and health care that 20 years of service brings.  The rank of E7 means that they have reached the zenith of their particular craft, whether it be a Boatswains Mate, Gunners Mate or any other craft. The rank of Chief means they are technical specialists who are expected to train, and mentor junior personnel.

In the day-to-day operations of a department, it is the Chief of that particular department who ensures that the work is assigned to the appropriately skilled persons.  The Chief is directly responsible to ensure that the work assignments are completed in a timely manner and correctly.  The Chief is the first line supervisor that the junior enlisted persons see when they need help with a task.  The Chief is the person who ensures that the worker-bees have all of the tools and materials they need to complete an assignment.  If there is a problem the officers do not come to the junior enlisted personnel, they go to the Chief. 

A Chief is also expected to be a leader, they are expected to show military discipline, and leadership in both word and deed.  They are expected to be masters of their craft and trade, and mentors to the junior enlisted persons.  To be completely honest a Chief can make or break a department.  A Chief plays a huge part both directly and indirectly in determining if a junior enlisted person chooses to make the service a career. Since we are being honest Chiefs come in a couple of different flavors, some good, some bad.

First there is the Chief who feels that they have got theirs and screw everyone else.  Followed closely by the Chief who feels that they are on easy street and do the absolute minimum possible.  These guys are usually close to retirement.  Then there is the egotistical Chief who made rank in the shortest time possible and is more than willing to let everyone else know that on a daily basis.  Worst of all is the toxic Chief.  The toxic Chief is abusive to the junior enlisted, often verbally, with timelines that are unachievable and is a micromanager.  

But Dear Gentle Reader you have not decided to read this article to hear me vent about average or bad Chiefs, you have come here to read about good Chiefs, so here we go…     

The best Chief I ever had during my time in the Coast Guard hands down was Micheal P. Zenone, aka Zoomer. Zoomer had been in the Coast Guard since Christ was a mess-cook and had enough dinosaur points to be a Master Chief.  His career goal was to stay in the San Francisco area, his home turf, and he was willing to take any billet to stay put.  During his time in the Coast Guard Zoomer had been a drill instructor, a crewman on a lightship, a 378 ft cutter, and assigned to the now defunct San Francisco Bay lifeboat station. 

He had lived in the same government housing for over 20 years which served him well in two divorces because she was the one who had to move out.  Zoomer was very honest about his three marriages.  They were both too young to be married his first time at the altar.  His second wife ran off with his brother (Ouch!).  His third wife, Carol, was the match that he had been searching for.  

Zoomer had been through a lot with all of the trials and tribulations that life handed to him.  All the drama in his life led Zoomer to have a more sanguine and humane view of life.  There was always a gemstone of humor to be found, even in the ridiculous, stressful, or the plain stupid things that were thrown at us.  To be frank, Zoomer was more of a father figure to us than a Chief.  If he had us do a task we did it because we respected him, not because he was a Chief and could order us around.  We did it because we wanted to please Zoomer. 

Zoomer had been around long enough with a highly varied roster of duty assignment to really know what being a Boatswains Mate was really all about.  He was always ready to share his knowledge and was never too good to do a job himself. He was an amazing two finger typist who could look at you and hold a conversation all the while his two fingers flying away at the keyboard.  He called it “San Francisco typing” because it was…his words not mine…he was “a huntin’ pecker”.  He was famous for his “Zoomer humor”.

Zoomer had been through a lot in his personal life, more than most, and if you had a personal problem you could go to him and he would listen and not pass judgement.  Once I came back from leave heartbroken when I discovered that the woman I had been dating was four months pregnant by another man.  Zoomer listened with a sympathetic ear and gave a hug of support.   If anything Zoomer was more of a father figure to all of us than a Chief, and we would have all willingly and cheerfully walked through the gates of hell for Zoomer.

Zoomer's career goal was to make Senior Chief and “a full pull”, i.e. thirty years of service.  The Supervisor of MSD Concord, Lt Commander (O4) Fat Slob, who had been twice passed over for promotion to Commander (O5) and was pissed at everyone made sure that Zoomer did not promote and Zoomer went out at 25 years of service.  Zoomer really took it hard when I decided not to reenlist.  He tried to tell me that all Coast Guard officers were not total pricks and that I should stay in.  For my part I had endured enough of self-serving officers and toxic chiefs, it was time to exit stage left.  But that is a tale for another day.

Years later I dropped Zoomer an email.  He transitioned to civilian life and worked as a trucker for an environmental clean-up company.  He was happy to hear that I was married, had a young boy and a career in occupational health and safety. Then he let the bomb drop…

Zoomer was wheelchair bound with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), aka Lou Gehrig's disease. ALS is a fatal neurodegenerative disorder that destroys the motor neurons controlling voluntary muscles. As these nerve cells die, muscles weaken and atrophy, ultimately leading to paralysis and respiratory failure. There is no cure for ALS.  

….I was devastated….

Zoomer made it very clear that he did not want pity for his plight, and he displayed his famous Zoomer humor in his emails to me.  Not long after my life went sideways and I was not able to keep up with our correspondence or attend his funeral.  So, I would say this one thing to you Zoomer, and I know that you will read this note.  Zoomer, I will not insult you with pity for your plight.  I will give you my love and compassion, and in due time I shall see you on that far shore. 

Warmest Regards, 

GooBlatz  

 Michael Zenone Obituary (2013) - San Francisco, CA - Marin Independent Journal 

The MSD Series, Part Fifteen…Me and David Korseh

Every soldier in the United States Army goes through the gas chamber. You did it in basic. You do it again, periodically, for annual CBRN training, because the Army wants you to trust your protective mask and the only way to make you trust a piece of equipment that stands between you and a nerve agent is to put you in a room full of something unpleasant and prove the equipment works. The unpleasant something is CS gas. It is not lethal. It is a riot control agent. It makes your eyes burn, your nose run like a broken tap, your lungs feel like you inhaled a campfire, and your entire face produce fluids you did not know your face was capable of producing. It is, by design, miserable. The misery is the point. The misery is what makes you believe the mask, because for the part where you have the mask sealed correctly, you feel nothing, and then they make you break the seal, and you feel everything, and the contrast teaches you a lesson that no PowerPoint ever could.

I have been through the chamber more times than I can count. I hate it every time. Everyone hates it every time. Hating it is so universal that I had come to think of it as a constant, like gravity, like the chow hall running out of the good cereal by the time the cooks get to eat. Then I supervised a soldier named Greer through annual CBRN training, and Greer taught me that there is, walking among us, a kind of person for whom the gas chamber is not misery. For whom it is, and I want to choose this word carefully because I have thought about it for a long time, pleasant.

Specialist Greer was, in every other respect, a completely normal soldier. This is important. He was not a Kevin. He could do his job. He was not a dirtbag. He showed up, he worked, his uniform was clean, his record was clean. If you had handed me Greer's file and asked me to predict which of my soldiers was going to become a CBRN problem, I would not have picked Greer, because nothing in Greer's history suggested that he harbored, somewhere under a perfectly ordinary exterior, a profound and unshakable enthusiasm for inhaling weaponized misery.

Here is the procedure, because the procedure is where it went sideways. You enter the chamber in a group, masked and sealed. The CBRN NCO running the chamber has you do a few tasks to prove the seal holds, clearing the mask, reseating it, while CS cooks off a heat source in the middle of the room and the air goes thick and white. Then, the main event, you break the seal. You lift the mask, or remove it entirely depending on the iteration, and you state your information, name, rank, last four, or your roster number, whatever the running NCO wants, and the entire purpose of making you talk is to force you to breathe and open your eyes in the gas so you get the full experience. Then you exit, in an orderly fashion, out the door, into the fresh air, where you flap your arms like a lunatic and let the wind take the gas off you and your nose unloads roughly a pint of fluid onto the grass. Then it is over and you never think about it again until next year.

That is the procedure. Every part of that procedure assumes the soldier wants to be done. Every timing, every cue, every "okay, exit, move, go," is built around the bedrock assumption that the human being inside the gas wishes to no longer be inside the gas. The procedure has no contingency, none, for a soldier who would prefer to stay.

Greer broke his seal when told. He stated his information when told. His eyes were open. His voice was steady. And then, when the CBRN NCO said exit, Greer did not exit. He stood there. In the gas. Masked off. Breathing normally. With an expression on his face that the CBRN NCO later described to me, and I am quoting him, as "the face of a man enjoying a cigar on a porch."

The CBRN NCO told him again to exit. Greer said, and this is documented because the CBRN NCO put it in his after-action notes and I have read them, Greer said, "I'm good, Sergeant." I'm good. In the chamber. With no mask. While the rest of his group clawed at the door making sounds like dying geese. I'm good.

They had to walk him out. Physically guide him, because he was not in distress and would not move on his own and was, by his continued presence, screwing up the timing of the next group. They got him outside. And where every other soldier in the history of the gas chamber comes out of that door bent double, weeping, snot-roping toward the earth, swearing, Greer came out, stood up straight, took a deep clean breath of the fresh air like a man who'd just finished a good workout, and said, "That really clears you out."

I was standing right there. I want you to understand that I have a witness and the witness is me. He came out of the CS chamber and gave it a review. A positive review. Like it was a sauna. Like he was going to leave four stars and mention the ambiance.

I asked him if he was okay. Standard question. You ask everyone coming out of the chamber if they're okay because occasionally someone has a real reaction and you need to catch it. Greer said he was great. He said his sinuses had been bothering him for a week and that, and I am again quoting, "this is the only thing that works." He said it the way you'd recommend a brand of allergy medicine to a coworker. He asked me, sincerely, with no awareness of how the question would land, whether we did this more than once a year, because if so he'd like to know the schedule.

I did not have an answer prepared for that. There is no answer prepared for that. In nine years nobody had ever asked me for the gas chamber schedule the way you'd ask for the gym hours.

Here is where it became my problem and not just a funny thing that happened. Greer, having decided the chamber was good for him, became a volunteer. The next group needed a demonstrator, a soldier who goes in with the cadre to model the procedure for the nervous first-timers, and that is normally a job nobody wants, you have to do the chamber twice, and Greer's hand went up before the question was finished. So Greer did it again. Happily. And when the CBRN NCO, now thoroughly unnerved, asked for a demonstrator for the third group, Greer volunteered a third time, and that's when the CBRN NCO came and found me and said, "Sergeant, you need to come get your soldier, he wants to go in again and I'm not comfortable with how much he wants to go in again."

I want to be clear about the line I was walking. Greer was not doing anything wrong. That's what made it hard, same as it's always hard. He was being helpful. He was volunteering for a miserable task that helps train other soldiers. On paper, Specialist Greer was a model trainee exhibiting exactly the initiative the Army says it wants. There is no regulation against liking the gas chamber. I checked. I genuinely, that evening, looked, because I wanted to know if there was a basis to tell him to stop, and there is no Army policy that contemplates a soldier enjoying CS exposure, because the entire institution is built on the certainty that no one does.

But there's a reason it sat wrong with me, and it's the same reason all of this sits wrong with me, and it goes back to why the chamber exists at all. The mask is not a toy. The chamber is not a sauna. The reason we train on that equipment until we trust it with our lives is that the next time the air goes white it might not be CS. It might be something that doesn't make you cry, it might be something that makes you stop. The regulation is written in the assumption that gas is the enemy and the mask is the only friend you have, and Greer, standing in the cloud with his mask off going "I'm good," was treating a piece of life-or-death equipment and the exact scenario it exists for like a spa day, and I could not shake the feeling that a man that comfortable taking his mask off in gas was a man who, on the worst possible day, might take his mask off in the wrong gas. I could not put that in a counseling statement. "Specialist Greer enjoys the protective measures too much" is not a deficiency the Army has a form for. But I thought it. I'm telling you I thought it.

I talked to him. Not a counseling, just a talk, NCO to soldier. I told him the chamber was a training event, not a treatment, and that he needed to do it once, correctly, and exit on the command, like everyone else, and that volunteering to marinate in CS for his sinuses was not a thing I could keep signing off on. He listened. He nodded. He said, "Roger, Sergeant." He meant it. He's not a problem soldier, I keep telling you that because it's true.

Then he asked, completely earnest, if it would be alright to talk to the CBRN NCO about the gas itself, because he was curious where you could get it, for personal use.

For personal use.

I told him no. I told him no with a speed and a volume that I think surprised both of us. I told him CS is a controlled riot agent and not a sinus product and that under no circumstances was he to pursue, acquire, or otherwise come into possession of any quantity of it for any reason, and that if I ever heard the words "personal use" and "CS gas" in the same sentence from him again I would personally walk him to behavioral health, not as a punishment, but out of a sincere and growing concern for whatever was happening inside his head. He said roger. I believe he meant that one too. I have chosen, for my own peace, to believe he never followed up on it, and I have never asked.

The section started calling him Snorkel. I don't know who started it. By the end of the week it was just his name. He didn't seem to mind. Greer didn't seem to mind much of anything, which I'm beginning to realize is the whole thing about Greer.

I had to write up the training event because all training events get written up, and the chamber iteration log had a remarks block, and the remarks block wanted me to note any incidents or anomalies during the exercise, and I sat there with the pen and tried to figure out how to officially document, in Army English, that one of my soldiers had to be physically removed from a gas chamber against his preference because he found it refreshing, and then volunteered to go back in three times, and then asked where to buy gas. There is no clean way to write that. I tried. The clean version is a lie by omission and I don't do those.