The Mighty Viking

Conquering those things we must, one story at a time

Posts Tagged ‘military’

Your Tiny House is… nice

USS Shark, SSN-591


This is a photo of the USS Shark, taken as it was leaving Toulon, France sometime in the mid-80s.  

In the space of less than an hour from this photo, all the men you see here, plus another 95 or so already below, would disappear below the waves – on purpose.  

This boat would be their home – my home – for the next several weeks.  Everything we did: eat, sleep, work, clean, drill, study, clean, drill, dream – all of it was done within the confines of this 250ft long, 31ft wide waterproof chamber.  For weeks, sometimes months, we lived beyond the reach of the sun, alone with machinery and equipment that made this boat a deadly weapon of war.  Torpedomen watched over their “fish” in the bow, Reactor operators kept the water hot for the turbine engines aft, and in between, a maze of electronics and machinery was wrought together into a single, deadly organism.  

In the space of that 250ft, 100 men and countless valves, switches, controls and sensors disappeared together, operating unseen to the outside world, melding into a single, ominous threat to any and all those who threatened the freedom of our homeland.

In the space of that 250ft, we were fed.  In that 250ft, we slept in shifts, taking turns watching, and trusting.  We fought against the sea, and against an uncertain enemy.  We fought boredom and isolation from family – indeed from the world.  We receved little to no news of the outside world.  We searched for an enemy no one else could find.  We talked together in the idle moments, of love and hate, fear and joy, and we did it in an open and honest way normally reserved for a man‘s most intimate companion.  We spoke of plans for a world we could only hold in our memory by faith until the next port of call.

And Toulon, just another port city in France, called us what every other port called us – scallawags, bastards, drunkards, and worse.  They sent the Shore Patrol after us, and tried sometimes to push us out of their towns, back to the Sea, back to the hidden confines of our boat, as if that would teach us a lesson.  

But back in this boat, this small space with less than 3 feet of length for every man – we simply laughed at their fear, and went back to doing what no one else wanted to do.  We went to the dark places, scoured the deep to flush out enemies to the communities that didn‘t want us around too long.

Some of us watched the portents written on haunting green luminous screens, telling us what our natural senses could not – the sounds of sea creatures, of rain squalls over the horizon, of fishing boats winching their nets, tankers plodding along through the waves – and of the odd imbalanced beat of a single imbalanced blade in a hydraulic pump thousands of yards away.  And with the even-toned report of that almost-imperceptible pulse of another submarine made, we would smile a bit, slip into a profound, practiced, deadly silence, and turn together towards our intended prey.

This 250ft long submersible craft was our home, our refuge, and our weapon.  It could not, at any moment, be thought of alone as any one of those.  There were moments when the lines between individual and crew, of crew and boat, even of man and machine, seemed to blur.

And in ports like Toulon, with its naïveté of the dangers that lurked out there, with its names for us, its low opinion of our character…we found our purpose.

It‘s Been a Little While

It’s been a little while.

On 4th of July, someone popped one of those confetti thingies behind me – I didn’t know she was there. scared the bejeebus out of me, I was a shaky mess for quite a while. But…

That wasn’t The Thing. Not really.

I had a motorbike crash almost two months ago, broke my leg, surgery, hardware, etc. Could have been much worse. But you know, weirdly enough, except for the stress-relieving habit of cracking jokes left and right in the ER when I‘m jacked up, I was fine.

There have been a few things that have disturbed my basic groove. But…

It‘s been a little while since I’ve had to face The Thing. It‘s been a while since I‘ve been in That Place.

And then, was it yesterday? Maybe day before? I lose track sometimes…

I had just been reading something, somewhere, online, and came across a written account of the dialogue in the movie “Saving Private Ryan”, in the scene where the German Soldier is grappling with, and then killing one of the characters with a bayonet.

“Give up. It’ll be over soon”. Something like that. The German whispered it like a tempting demon.

There was more, but I don‘t need to go into the morbid details. Seamlessly, like the strobing wink of a lighthouse on its rounds, I was in That Place. It’s not a good place. And this world, the real world for better or worse, was faded out completely. I remembered That Place. I felt the atmosphere-controlled air of an underway boat. I heard the inherent, constant hum of a living submarine. The boat moved through its exercises. And I felt it all go still, remembered like I was still at sea, sitting in Sonar. The boat went still, and then a cacophony of men running past the shack, grabbing rehearsed damage control equipment. We rigged our compartment in brisk, practiced movements. Voices gave commands, and passed info! just as we practiced. And then no one running. Everyone who could run aft had gone there, just as we had practiced.

But then… something was wrong. Time dangled with indecision, waiting to know what, why, something – anything. Only the depth gauge moved. I stood on a bulkhead, because our angle meant that was easier than the floor. Just when the tension of knowing nothing reached its apex, the Chief of the Watch started chanting. We could hear his words, and little else, on the open mike saying, “oh shit we’re gonna die” over and over again. The aux operator looked over at me, looking for something like confidence.

I didn’t have it to give.

And that moment, right there, where as a qualified submariner I didnt have an answer… that is where I stay, endlessly repeating. Why did I go blank? What look, what words, what action could I have taken to reassure the sonar crew?

We in Sonar couldn’t fight the casualty – we‘re on watch, the problem is back aft, and there’s as many as can be back there already. I can tell myself that a million times. But yet…

Over, and over.

So, we were! just waiting to die. Hope faded as we passed well into that zone beyond which sunlight never reaches.

It was a sick feeling, and I felt that sick feeling as keenly as the day I was there. The floor seemed to tip forward to the down angle we took that day. I could hear everything I heard then, all the sounds the boat made to agree with the COW, that we were indeed doomed.

I don’t know how long I stood there. I don‘t even recall standing up. When I bestirred myself the dogs had come to my side. I was weary from standing on one leg, and from the imagined stress of remaining upright in a tipped-over world.

And no one else in the room seemed to notice.

There are a fair number of people whom I love. There’s a lot of people who say they have my back. There are very, very few who seem to actually understood what they offered with that phrase when the moment comes. I guess I don’t really hold the grudge, I understand…well, how hard it is to understand That Place. It took me a couple decades and I‘m inside this head.

But when I absolutely, positively can‘t take the chance on being ok myself!

I‘ll be outside with my dogs for a while.

It gets better, I guess, in the sense while it still happens, between the right meds and counseling and some dedicated work – and the loyalty of two dogs – it’s gotten less frequent.  I‘ll figure it out.

But it‘s been a little while.

The Qualification of a Submariner

The last evening of our patrol started the moment I got off watch. My usual routine was to leave the Sonar shack, get something to snack and some coffee, and head for a quiet corner to study my notes, and from which to wander the boat, putting my hands on valves, breakers, panels, emergency lockers – anything to strengthen my memory of the working systems of the boat. For nine long months I had devoted every spare moment to learning every feature of this old boat, one of the S-girls, the USS Shark. As a part of a submarine crew, I had to be able to respond to any emergency that may crop up where I stood at any given moment. Should a fire start, or a pipe burst, or any of the intricate survival, power, or weapons systems go awry, there was not always time to assemble systems experts to discuss the problem. Action had to be taken immediately, and the person standing next to the emergency had to be able to respond intelligently. That person’s knowledge could be the only chance the rest of the crew had. In Russian Roulette, the empty chamber is the one that wins. In a submarine emergency, the empty head standing next to it is not just death for one person, but for a hundred. The last thing anyone wants at that moment is to be the guy that can only stand there in fear, with no clue what to do. To wear the coveted “Dolphins”, the insignia of the qualified submariner, is to bear the trust of a hundred men. Names were to be had for those who hadn’t finished the qualification process yet: Nubs, FLOB’s (Free-loading Oxygen Breathers), Non-quals. If you were behind schedule in your qualification, you were a Dink (Delinquent) and hounded mercilessly. A submarine crew has as much mercy for for slackers as the 400 feet of sea above us had for our tiny tube of steel. Any weakness would be crushed.

 

Tonight, however, my schedule was different. I had finished my qualification card, a series of interviews and signatures that I had amassed in the nine months since my arrival on the boat, interrogations given by qualified crew-members considered experts on their respective systems. I had been grilled about the air systems, the hydraulics systems, the electrical, the emergency equipment, the reactor, the propulsion, weapons, small arms, the waste systems, the atmospheric monitoring and maintenance systems…every aspect of the boat had been put to question to me. I knew about spaces on that old girl that made her blush. Any given interview had taken days to learn, and sometimes hours to finish an interview before a signature was given. I had failed interviews for lack of a single answer, given “lookups”, and another day’s studying before return. And I had done this all while also learning my job as a Sonarman, learning the acoustic traits of friend and foe alike, learning how to tease detection of those traits from an array of hydrophone sensors, connected to dozens of cabinets full of electronics, memorizing numbers representing the characteristics of propulsion systems and churning screws of all sorts of water craft, tuning my ear to hear the difference between mechanical and biological noise sources. And I had learned to repair this equipment when it malfunctioned, learned to maintain it on a prescribed schedule to keep it tuned and calibrated. For nine months, I had worked three jobs. But tonight I was going to rest.

 

I turned over to my relief, briefing him on the happenings of our watch so that he could, from the moment he took the headphones, be on top of any development that may come from the contacts we held. Tonight was a busy night, acoustically, but the traffic topside was all commercial. We approached our surface point, from where we would transit in to port soon. It was expected that we would pull in in the morning, and I planned to catch up on sleep, and be ready for going home to wife and children tomorrow. I took the five steps from the Sonar door and turned, sliding on my hands down the ladder rails and navigating automatically through the twisting path to the crews’ mess coffee pot. I had spent much of the last nine months in front of this machine, making and fetching coffee for the sonar watch team as the nub of the division, its most junior man. In under fifteen seconds, I hovered over the pot in a ritual stronger than the call of my rack, drawing in the strong brew’s aroma. I was jarred from my reverie by the 1MC announcing circuit crackling to life.

“Station the Maneuvering Watch” came a bland announcement. As sweetly as the anticipation of the luxury of sleep had come, it now departed with the snap of the release of the microphone over the speaker. I turned, and returned to my station in Sonar. A month at sea with endless weapons drills, engineering drills, fire drills, flooding drills, had made the dejection of another lost sleep opportunity almost automatic. I numbly accepted this new schedule, that in another hour we would tie up to the pier, and that I was on duty tonight. There would be no wife and children until later tomorrow.

The lines were thrown over to the pier by the last light of the day, and with brisk efficiency the boat was tied, secured, and the same bland voice finally announced, “Secure the Maneuvering Watch”. I knew the officer that made the announcement. I marveled at his ability to mimic a Being with no soul. I wondered silently if Officers’ training included this, or if he was truly a transformed hound from hell. Two-thirds of the crew were all ready to depart, lurking in various spaces between berthing and Control Room, the path to the outside. The past month’s exercises were behind us, and these men were ready to see their loved ones, to breathe fresh air, to stretch in every direction, and to think nothing of the sea for a while. I, on the other hand, as part of the remaining crew on duty, had to spend the night. I picked up my dreams of sleep, dusted them off, and put my plan for sleep back into action, securing the sonar systems and opening the thin, aluminum-framed door once again for my well-worn 80-step path to bed. My Senior Chief stood outside the door, hand on the knob I had just pulled from his grasp. He smiled the smile of a man about to exact revenge for a lifetime of annoyance and tribulation. Moses smiled this smile when he realized that the Israelites, after they passed through the parted sea before them, would be wandering through the desert wearing nothing but sandals.

“Qual board in 20 minutes, Roesener. Make me proud.” And then he disappeared through control, and out the hatch, following the exodus of men dragging sea bags up and to the pier.  He had a gift for brevity.

The Submarine Qualification Board: This dreaded and coveted interview represents the end of a long list of lesser interviews. A single, big interview, administered by an assembly of four crew-members, including one officer. These shipmates are designated by their reputation for knowledge of the boat. Every board is different, depending on which men are available to serve on the board. The length of the interview can range from a couple hours to several, depending on the proficiency of the candidate’s answers, and his attitude. If you’re certain of your answers, give quick, pointed, and complete responses, and show a respectful eagerness to take on more questions, they often keep the interview short. If you seem uncertain, they will probe you for your weakness, and exploit it until you fail. Get too cocky, and they will batter you just for the pleasure of it. Like sea pressure, they never stop.

I was already half-asleep, the rocking of the boat on the surface lulling me into a pleasant drowsiness, to which I had already half-surrendered. To come back from this point in the sleep cycle was going to take decisive, dramatic action. I lurched towards the coffee pot.

I spent my twenty minutes alternately blazing my way mentally through bits of anticipated questions, and devising ways of cooling coffee down enough to ingest more than my share of volume in less than my share of time. 4 cups later, I sat in the control room of the submarine, in the swiveled seat of the helmsman, with the hum of 400hz equipment providing background ambiance for four slightly irritated men who had also dreamed of sleep.

By the time the formalities of beginning the interview was over, I was beginning to feel the jittery effects of too much caffeine on too little sleep. The first question, posed by a machinist’s mate, was a classic question:

“You are a drop of sea-water. Make the light in your rack light up.”

I had prepared for this one. The question is simple – a nuclear submarine uses a steam turbine to generate it’s electricity. The answer, however, requires intimate knowledge of several subsystems. Intake valves, seawater pumps must be named by number and location. Piping needs to be described. The process through the development of steam from nuclear power must be explained both in theoretical detail, and described by location of equipment, safety shut-offs, control panels, etc. Once the generator has been turned, and electricity developed, then electrical systems, busses, breakers, panels, and wires are named by number designation and location until the generated electron has been pushed through the ballast of the small flourescent light inside each bunk, and in particular mine, and then passed through to ground for a complete circuit. I was ready. I opened my mouth, articulated my response at length, and then finally drew a deep breath, slouched back in my chair, still jittery from the coffee, and broke the ice.

“So…is that the best you’ve got?”

I’ve had better tactical moments. I sat in front of four men, all of whom were keenly attuned to the fact that we, returning sailors from a month at sea, still sat aboard our boat, unable to go home until the morrow. They had thought of their sleep as a means to while away the remaining time until they could go topside, to the fresh air and greater expanses of the world. I had just provided them with the one thing more appealing to a submariner than sleep. I had provided them a target.

8 pupils dilated slightly and focused on my face. 4 mouths curled wickedly into mischief. Four bodies bestirred themselves, shifting in their seats with the unspoken phrase erupting in unison from each one, “WELL now…”. As one, they all sat up and leaned forward in fresh anticipation.

And so it began. For six hours I sweated through questions regarding every imaginable point between the bow and stern of that submarine, inside and outside the pressure hull, and explored the connections and implications of all of them. I discoursed on procedures, on the history of those procedures, on the fate of the boats from whose history those procedures had arisen. I explained at least three quarters of the theories of modern physics, as they pertained to maintaining a submarine in the sea, providing life-support for it’s men, detecting it’s enemies and delivering it’s weapons. I answered obscure questions, convoluted questions, devious questions designed to generate the dreaded “Lookup”. My bladder filled and drained twice. On each trip to the head, all I could think about was the time I was giving the group to secretly consort and design new torturous conundrums into which to hurl me. I rued my words like I had never rued an act in my life. Oh man, did I rue. A deep and abiding rueing of the day, combined with caffeine overdose rush, is an experience never to be forgotten. I predict that at the end, my own death will be delayed by the time it takes to shudder, once again, as that last memory passes through my expiring mind and sends one last shiver of horripilation through my inert body.

 

And in the midst of all of it, I was finally asked one question I could not answer. That question remains as fresh in my today as it was that night 27 years ago.

Where, oh where do I recharge an expended PKP fire extinguisher. And yes. I know the answer.

Memorial of freedom’s sacrifice

This Memorial Day, I heard several people suggest that to honor those who served in combat honors war itself, and that perhaps we should not. I would like to take a moment to publicly dispute this.

They suggest that perhaps if we spent as much time working for peace as we do preparing for war, we would all be better off. It would seem there are those who still believe there aren’t and down through history never has been people who don’t want to work for peace, but for domination. There comes a point where you can’t talk to those people. There was no talking to King George, as Ben Franklin eventually came to believe and advise. There came a point where there was no talking to the folk who felt the need to own other people in this country, as gentle a man as Abraham Lincoln came to realize. Stalin, Hitler, Emperor Hirohito, Ho Chi Minh, Osama bin Laden…there’s a long list. At some point our freedom has been threatened by these people who didn’t fail to understand reason or respect for others rights, they simply had no interest in it.

I don’t use freedom as a patriotic catchphrase to be bandied around with a flag tied to it. I mean the right to determine our style of government, our right to raise our children with our own beliefs, not those of the state, our right to choose within the confines of personal circumstances our occupation, religious belief, the very location of our home. It is our freedom that allows us to change those things if opportunity, conviction, and desire motivate us. These are our freedoms, and it is these that were threatened. Many consider these freedoms trivial. I believe they think this way because that freedom has never been genuinely threatened or restricted, and the reality of life without them is too far away for most to give serious thought to, what with the joys or pains of the moment in front of us. But there are those amongst us who, when called upon, are capable of seeing a little further, and have acted upon the need to be prepared for our defense against those who would deny us those freedoms. We have set aside one day in a year to celebrate the foresight and sacrifice it has taken for us to remain free.

The people who have been in combat know a secret that is hard to live with. They realize that in spite of all the skill, or equipment, or training – often it comes down to odds that can only be influenced in small ways, and the guy they were just standing next to died because some guy across the battlefield just happened to target him. That guy didn’t die because he was a lesser man, but because he, and everyone else, volunteered to place themselves in the way of this possibility for a cause they felt was that important. Chance did the rest.

It is hard to live with this, because most men in combat have seen others act in a way that makes no sense to the common world – they’ve seen men take actions that endanger themselves in order to protect those around them. In some of the worst of human conditions some of the best human traits come to the surface to meet the need. And every man that’s been in combat and not died comes away wondering, somewhere in the back of his mind, why it wasn’t he that was killed, but some other guy. We wonder if perhaps that guy was more worthy, more courageous – if maybe that other guy died because we didn’t do enough- and we remember it for the rest of our life. We do this despite the abject fear we sometimes saw in that man’s eyes, the fear-driven anger, things that are ugly, and not comfortable talking about. We still wonder in the aftermath if that man was more worthy than us. Memorial day is one day for these men to share this pain of survival with others, to give those who were safe at home a moment’s glimpse into what it takes to maintain this way of life, and most importantly, to honor the men we had the opportunity to see at their best when no one else could. It seems most people don’t believe it takes armed conflict. It seems much of our society believes armed soldiers are bloodthirsty animals looking for prey. Memorial day is a moment for us to realize that most of those who have been in combat were not looking for blood, and expected no glory, on the day when our companions died. On that day when battle plans are executed, men feel fear because they do not want to be killed, nor do they want to kill. And yet, to protect the society they support, it must be done, and this is that day.

Most everyone prefers peace. But once in a while, someone who will not be satisfied with peace comes along, and needs defending against. We don’t have a memorial day for those people. We have a memorial day for those who picked up a weapon and defended his home against them, regardless of the danger. We don’t celebrate the brash young man who left home with his rifle to kick some butt yelling “yee-hah!” down the road in a cloud of dust. We celebrate the courage of a young man who got to battle, and learned quickly that there was more to it than that, that his glory came second to the survival of his group, and who, in the end, got his butt kicked defending them. We celebrate that transformation from brashness to complete sacrifice. And through that example we wish for more courage ourselves to face the need for sacrifice in living each day in our hard-won freedom, seeking peace.