In The Navy (On the Boat), Part 21

I am going to fill in some miscellaneous items here…

We had been on task for over a month, when to my surprise, a Fly appeared on the Boat. Fly’s have a very short life span, a week at most. But here was a fully grown one, wafting around the mess deck. It always baffled me, but it was probably a dormant larva in some flour or somewhere else and just got the urge to get up. This was actually a regular occurrence during long runs and everyone on the Boat would be trying to kill it, if possible. We should have had a lottery! Never did.

On more than one occasion, I was given the undesirable task of waking up JT. It was well known all over the Boat that you just don’t wake him up. I had heard he was a terrible person to waken, from the messengers that had to go do it before me. This time, we had a light out on the Launch Panel and the Weps told me to go get JT (he was the boss).

I reluctantly went down to his bunk and tried asking him nicely, to get up. “John?” nothing. Then louder, “John?”

Still nothing. I guessed at which way he would be facing in the bunk (you don’t want to reach in there and grab someone’s privates when you shake them awake). I reached in, grabbed and shook what I hoped was a shoulder and called again, “John, get up.”

“What the fuck are you doing!” came back at me, garbled. He wasn’t wake yet, but he flailed his arms at me. I ducked the punches and backed up.

I tried again, louder, “John, we need you in the Control Room. The Weps does!” Again I got expletives and he actually leaned out of his bunk a bit and told me to go fuck my Mother.

Once he settled again, I decided to use the flashlight (bad idea) and shone it into the bunk, towards his head and asked him to get up again. JT jumped completely out of the rack and was face to face with me now. He was still not awake, somewhere in between awake and sleep, but he was staring at me quietly…still.

As consciousness overtook him, he settled down. We had woken up several sleeping neighbors who just muttered “Shut the fuck up”.

JT was awake and I repeated that the Weps wanted him in the Control Room. I headed up there and tried to look busy. JT arrived a few minutes later.

We walked up to the Weps and JT just said “What?” very belligerently.

“There’s a light out on the Launch Panel, you need to fix it.” The Weps quipped.

JT walked over to the Panel and noticed which light was out. He rapped that part of the Panel with his fist and the light came back on.

The Weps got angry, “Petty Officer Norman, that is NOT how we troubleshoot problems on a Submarine!” he barked.

JT calmly, though with clenched teeth, “Sir, I didn’t troubleshoot it, I fixed it!” and with that , JT calmly walked out of the Control Room the same way he had come in. I laughed out loud and got a stare for it.

JT was a character, but he had the respect of the rest of the crew and could get away with that stuff. Most enlisted men would have been written up for something like that.