The Guam Bomb

Whenever we pulled into a foreign port on WestPac, there were always four vehicles waiting for us: a sedan (reserved for CO/XO use), a pickup (supposedly for the whole crew, but whenever we needed it for something heavy like switchgear testing rigs, the Chop always seemed to have it) and two odd-smelling vans. This was back in the late 80’s, so we’re talking all-white, please-target-me-Mr-Terrorist Chevys that worked more or less when they felt like it.

The command occasionally got worried we might escape if they let us wander off on our own and stationed the duty drivers. Their basic mission was to drive around downtown, picking up drunk squids and returning them safely to the boat where they could be properly reamed in a timely manner by the duty chief. Being a duty driver was actually a good deal if they used duty section guys to do it; given a choice between topside watch or driving around, most people preferred driving. Needless to say, nucs need not apply.

But, true to form, the Navy found a way to screw up even this good deal in Guam by using people who DIDN’T have duty that day as the driver. The argument went something like “we don’t have enough people to support it, and it’s only for a few hours, so why don’t we have someone do it after they get done with the normal work day?” Naturally, no one was volunteering to get bagged with this suddenly not-so-good deal, and the duty driver became even harder to find than the Doc.

After a few days, someone hit on the bright idea of having the cranks do it after they got done with the evening meal. In most cases, cranks didn’t stand any sort of duty while cranking (unless you count putting out bread and peanut butter for midrats as “duty”), so on the surface this was a perfect fit. There was only one problem: none of the cranks knew how to drive.

Let me back up a bit. We were pretty hard on whatever government vehicles they issued us, mostly out of apathy. When we first pulled in to Guam, some lady came down and lectured us for a half hour about how THESE vehicles were actually bought by the rec committee, so please don’t trash them. She was about three or four boats too late with this plea; both vans had already been ridden hard and put away wet. The fist bump we hit in the road, half the windows fell out.

With the vans already worked over, and the threat of having qualified guys stand duty driver on their day off, the whole boat pretty much looked the other way when the cranks started their “learn as you go” driving school. There were some spectacular accidents and even better near-misses. But the real problems were caused by having E-2 nubs acting as chauffeurs for super-drunk E-6’s, most of whom delighted in seeing what they could get the drivers to do with a threat or two.

I’ll give you one example. We were in the van without windows (yeah, both were missing more than one, but this van only had a windshield) and heading back to the barracks when we spotted one of the lesser-loved JOs in a cab ahead of us. We were on a long, deserted stretch of road in the middle of BFE, so we made the driver get up along side the cab, the better to moon him. However, as we got closer, we realized the JO wasn’t alone; he has a girl with him (at least, we hope it was a girl; there were a lot of he-she’s on Guam) and they were, um, ‘busy”. Mooning might go unnoticed, so instead some of the more inebriated among us decided to try to piss in the cab's window from the van.

Okay, let me just say that, had someone thought this through ahead of time, we would have positioned “hose team alpha” at the back of the van, where there’d be no blowback. Instead, they were at the front of the van, and virtually all of it came flying back in (due to the lack of windows), drenching the rest of us who were crowded on that side to see what was happening. To make matters worse, the cab driver freaked out and swerved towards us, making our trusty duty driver (with all of two days’ experience driving) scream like a girl as we went flying off the road and into a ditch.

Then the puking began.

While no one got hurt (and the JO never saw a thing, thank god) we wrecked the van and ended up having to walk the rest of the way back home through a snake-infested jungle in the dark. Besides getting totally spooked by all the noisy critters running around, we managed to sober up enough to come up with a plausible reason the van was trashed. When we returned to the scene of the crime the following morning, it turned out that all we’d done is pop a few tires. The van was good to go (sort of) by the following night, though not even fire hoses could get the inside clean again. Stuff like this is why most people chose to buy $200 “Guam Bombs” rather than take their chances in a duty van.