The Backpack Incident

When you’re on a fast attack, you love schools. Even though the school itself is normally boring and irrelevant, every hour at school is an hour away from the boat. Sometimes you might even get left in port, which is almost like being on leave. Sure, all that work you’re missing out on will catch up with you when you return, and sure, everyone in your division will give you crap about having to cover for you, but you still love going to school.

Which is why nubs on fast attacks rarely, if ever, get sent to school. In fact, until I earned my fish, the only school I ever got to attend was some lame-ass PVO class on Ford Island. And I almost missed out on that as well.

We were all standing around the e-div locker in middle level while our chief was handing out the day’s assignments. He had just given me some nub-worthy task and was getting ready to vanish when he whipped around fast and exclaimed “What are you doing here? I thought you were supposed to be at PVO school…”, which was how he usually let one of us know when we had to be somewhere else.

The problem at this point was that you had to catch a small boat over to Ford Island in those days, and they only ran on the half hour. If you missed the boat, you’d be late to the class… and they normally wouldn’t let you come in late. No way was I missing out on a good deal like school! I grabbed my things, shoved them in a backpack, and hauled ass to the ferry landing.

On the ride over, I figured I might just be able to still get in if I ran the whole way. The nuc schools were hell and gone from the ferry landing (as well as the club, the galley, the mini-mart.. pretty much everything), so I took off running the second I got off the boat. I made it about twenty feet before some chief grabbed me.

“Hold up, son” he said, in his best patronizing voice “you can’t wear a backpack while you’re in uniform.”

(Sure enough, I had my backpack slung over one shoulder while I was running)

“Oh, sorry chief.” I mumbled, removing the offending strap. But he was not appeased by my subservient demeanor, so he took a wheel book from his back pocket and wrote down my name and my boat (from my ball cap – the Navy has ensured that any uniform you’re likely to wear has your command’s name on it somewhere for just such emergencies).

“Who’s your chief and what’s his number?” He asked. I provided the requested information, but I no longer felt like groveling, since it would obviously do no good.

“Can I go now?” I asked, somewhat sarcastically “I’m going to be late.”

“Yeah, “ He replied after a moment “But don’t think I’m going to forget about this. I’m going to call him as soon as I get to my office.”

“Chief, “ I replied “If the only trouble I get into today is you catching me with a backpack, my chief will give me a NAM.”

Then I took off, leaving him to ponder why a 19 year old punk like me was less than impressed with him. To be honest, I was still more worried about missing the school than anything else, and really wasn’t thinking about what sort of trouble a pissed off skimmer chief could cause.

Well, I got to the class with plenty of time to spare; the instructor was having car trouble and we didn’t end up starting until 9 am. I think the class was about three days long (don’t hold me to that), so I didn’t see my chief right away. However, he did have a word or two with me when I got back to the boat.

I explained my side of things, admitted I might have been a tad disrespectful, and Weasel let me off with just a lecture about behaving myself when I wasn’t on sub base. Things like this were a non-issue around the boats (they were honestly just happy if you showed up in the right uniform in those days), but skimmers live for that crap. When I was later stationed on a carrier, we had uniform inspections several times a day.

It turned out that the chief who stopped me was one of a group who had taken it upon themselves to hang out at the ferry landing in the mornings, just looking for uniform issues. Weasel listened politely while his fellow chief tattled on me, and then just as politely asked him to mind his own fucking business. They may not be perfect, but no submarine chief worth the name lets someone else screw with their guys.