The Middi Run

One of the more annoying things we got to do on a Trident was host midshipmen (“middies”, as they’re affectionately known). These are kids from the Naval Academy who get to spend their Summer vacation seeing what life is like in the fleet. Since they will soon be officers (and not just any officers, academy grads; sort of like the upper crust of the officer world) the command always went all out for them. We might go five patrols without a swim call, but you better believe we’d get at least one if there were middies on board.

The middies themselves were as mixed a bunch as you’re likely to see on a boat. Some were brand new to this Navy stuff; in their early twenties. Some were ex-enlisted who left subs to go back to school. Some were easygoing, some were timid (for an officer), and some were self-important SOBs. Unfortunately, your odds of getting someone who believed they were a sea-going god because they’d survived three years in a military academy were depressingly high.

The problem really started when the CO informed us that he was going to get as many of the middies qualified in subs as he could during our patrol. It’s not unheard of for a nub to qualify in one run, but he has to really hustle. The only way the average middi could do it is a LOT of easy checkouts. A-gang, who traditionally controls ships quals with an iron fist, whined long and hard about how none of *them* would be graping anyone off.

Perhaps it was inevitable that, in the process of ensuring that middies suffered for their fish just like anyone else, some middi's feelings would get hurt. After being embarrassed over his lack of DC gear knowledge (A-gang’s favorite stick to beat nubs with) an upset middi foolishly responded with “Well, at least I didn’t end up here because I couldn’t get through [nuclear power] school!”.

You could have heard a pin drop in AMR.

But not for long, because a thousand screaming A-gangers came running from every direction and proceeded to tape up the hapless middi as only they can. Then they deposited a green, squirming mummy in the middis’ bunkroom as a warning to the others.

Normally, the command would overlook things like this – some friction was inevitable when you’re packed in to such close confines for months on end, and this kind of good-natured screwing around is much better than the alternative: endless fighting and blood feuds. But they couldn’t let A-gang get away with harassing a middi; not only was the middi likely to complain about it to our CO’s boss’s boss, but the Navy itself was on an anti-hazing witch hunt at the time.

So two a-gangers ended up going to mast (suspended busts) and the leading first got replaced (temporarily). A-gang, perhaps correctly, felt they were being picked on by the officers, and set out to even the score. They took an empty poopie suit, stuffed its legs with kimwipes, stuck the leg ends in some old topsiders, and set it up in the stall in the officers’ head. When done, it looked convincingly like someone sitting on the shitter (we know because they took a photo for posterity’s sake).

Now, officers are somewhat more polite than the rest of the crew, and would never dream of knocking on a stall door if they thought it was occupied. Perhaps that’s why their one and only crapper remained unused for over two days. In most cases they just used the head by Control, but we saw one or two in our heads as well. Apparently, everyone poops. If it hadn’t been for the XO rounding up stray ensigns for some wardroom training, that stall might still be occupied today.