military

binnacle list

Eric SaretskyLeave a comment

I am an old seadog these days.  In my youth I would rarely miss work, school or a duty day for something as irritating as a cold or flu.  For centuries, if a Sailor went to Sick Call and was placed on the “binnacle list”,  the leading Seaman or later, the Chief Petty Officer would let it be known that Sailor had better be suffering Scarlet Fever or a severed artery.   Shirkers normally found themselves on duty rosters during port calls.   These days I have accepted that I no longer can bicycle fifteen miles to my duty station and immediately run ( and pass) the PRT fitness test –  I was then still under 30 years old;   I probably would not be able to hoist a sixty or seventy Damage Control bag over my shoulder while wearing an OBA * and hustle up or down the ladder during one of the shipboard training sessions – the General Quarters Drill ( I was not quite 36 then).    My older body has stopped writing the checks my ego really can’t cash.  (For those who may never have seen a check, this idiom was once a popular expression.)

There once was a time in America when self-reliance, mental and physical toughness were characteristics of mature males – college educated or working class.  So when an acquaintance talked about his Army veteran dad only recently talking with a Veterans Administration representative about  medical issues he has had for the last thirty years, and getting a disability rating as a result, I listened.

More than twenty years ago,  I was  hospitalized after weeks-long exposure to toxic fumes;  However,  the service and my young invincibility complex made little of it.  In hindsight, a ruptured appendix that year and 20 years of  hospital visits for gastric issues might be connected.   And for good measure, Gulf War inoculations, and radiation might be worth a good look.   Even if the Government declines,  I will gain experience that I can pass on to my son in the Army.  He’s definitely got physical issues that were aggravated by his service.  But he too, is a tough, self-reliant type.  I don’t want him to wait 20 years.

navy chow is not served here

Eric SaretskyLeave a comment

506green

 

There is a feeling of relief today from both wife and husband regarding an evening of entertaining that has instead become a quiet evening at home.  A call yesterday reminded both the caller and me that I had made – and promptly forgot –  a two-week old invitation to dinner for young man and his date to our home Friday – tonight.

With both of us leaving our jobs late – the holiday Tuesday made a three-day workweek somewhat longer,  over breakfast we had a  improvised some strategic planning:   a grocery run, expedited house cleaning, and games and such to make a welcoming evening.      A call from our prospective guest asked us to reschedule.    Date night – even ones that were to be had at our home – would be less hurried when the date – and the hosts have some time to prepare.

But the menus that I have enjoyed since our youngest left home, and we became Empty Nesters,  is the thing that my wife has made quite encouraging – when she has time to prepare.   I have, unashamedly, taken a liking to my spouse’s insomnia which tends to express itself now in cooking.   Whether inspired by the Food Network or recipes shared on Facebook,  we tend to have tasty lunches and dinners all week long.   For the last six months, on weekends we make a “date” shopping for organic vegetables and fruit, and to COSTCO for meat or poultry.   In the evenings, – as long as I remember to buy propane – I will barbecue the meat that makes up that week’s menu.

Mango salsa, sweet potato, braised chicken, beef stew,  and so on were never part of my diet when I ate at military chow halls.  Even when I became a Chief Petty Officer, and the food improved from chow identified by the day of the week, rather than taste or aroma,  I never knew about mango salsa.   And as a parent, when you have teenagers living at home,  burritos and big pots of food that could be flavored to taste – were the norm.  And when kids hurry out the door at mealtime or promise to eat later, food  I might have secreted away in the fridge for myself – were usually gone before morning.

But when you aren’t cooking for an army,  we can experiment with some of the things that we otherwise might have gone to a restaurant.    Home cooking, when you can tip the chef with a smooch or a little convivial time — is better than anything.

Tools and their uses

Eric Saretsky1 Comment

5 For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; 6 and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; 7 and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. 8 For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. -2 Peter 1: 5 -8 (NIV)

 

Academy to so educate train and develop midshipmen 1 That they may have a fine sense of honor,  a wholehearted love for the best traditions of the service,  an enduring love for country,  subordination based on proper initiative of the subordinate,  an appreciation of the humanities,  and a keen sense of responsibility in assuming authority over others

– Report of the Board of Visitors to the United States Naval Academy, p 10, 1910

“What tools are in your toolbox?”. the speaker asked last night at our men’s church devotional service.   tools_and_their_uses_tm_9-243-10He went on to offer several additional scriptures on faith and perseverance, as tools.   As a former Navy Senior Chief Petty Officer,  I understood that  any young Sailor – or young (spiritually) disciple of Jesus,  life is embracing that you do not know what you do not know but then learning the doctrine, spending time with a mentor and persevering through conflicting desires and priorities.  Perhaps it is safe to say that “duty” is the first concept I embraced.   As a Sailor matures,  the life that each voluntarily accepted  on the NAVY’s terms has certain obligations and responsibilities.  So to as a student of Jesus,  voluntarily but without a ‘contract.   Some skills are beneficial as they will potentially save you or a shipmate in times of peril.  Mastering your calling and seeking to help others grow stronger – for a greater good – will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your naval career.

So too, with a spiritual compass.  The Master Mariner, Jesus, sets my course though I voluntarily follow.   But a path voluntarily chosen can build character, endurance, positive outlook and joy that the world desperately needs. (Happiness is a shallow, easily damaged emotion where joy is not.)   Where the military prepares a service member to prepare for war,  it is no less true with even a glimpse of a spiritual life,  war continally rages around us.  For us to rise and help others to rise out of violence,  hatred,  greed, fear, selfishness, loneliness, and misery,  requires faith in a gracious God and the proper tools – faith, perseverance, knowledge, self-discipline, good character, and whole-hearted love.    God’s Word  and the Navy I served for a quarter-century are tools for life.   FB_IMG_1491759647178

Courage at sea

Eric SaretskyLeave a comment

“Until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore, you will not know the terror of being forever lost at sea.”  -Ovid

As most of the world knows by now,  a horrible collision at sea occurred between a merchant freighter and a U.S. Navy destroyer, the USS FITZGERALD (DDG-62),  a couple days ago off the coast of Japan.  Three Sailors, the Commanding Officer and two others were injured and are in the Naval hospital in Yokosuka.  The ship was obviously extensively damaged above and below the waterline.

With the ship now safely in port, the Navy has announced that the remains of several of the seven men, previously unaccounted for, have been recovered from the flooded compartments.   It is a credit to the training and resolve of the crew that the ship and crew were able to control the flooding and that not more lives were lost.  At sea,  compartments below the waterline are maintained at modified-Zebra, where the hatches are closed between compartments and between decks, with the scuttles opened for crew movement.

In an emergency, announced over the 1MC system, they would announce “General Quarters” with perhaps only seconds to respond in this case.   I remember one emergency response in our berthing compartment when a sensor in Engineering erroneously detected a poisonous gas (freon) leak in the space below ours (the compartment was above the refrigeration system compartment).  From a dead sleep, all my shipmates and I evacuated in less than 2 minutes.  But in a collision and the resultant flooding might allow for less that half of that time to get out and secure that hatch.

Regardless of the questions as to events leading to this catastrophe, the loss or injury of a single Sailor is a blow to the community of Sailors.   I pray God’s comforting embrace for my brothers and sisters who continue to serve every day.   For the lost and injured at sea.  And for the surviving crew and families of the USS FITZGERALD.  Serving with HONOR, COURAGE, and COMMITMENT.

Civilians say the darndest things

Eric SaretskyLeave a comment

Men do not make conversation of the sort that women tend toward.  Outside of the walls of a Chiefs Mess, or among men in my church small group,  men do not normally express emotion.  And in those settings, it mainly has to do with frustration or some mis-steps in leadership situations that an  older or more experienced Navy leader (or church leader, given the situation) can provide counsel.    But in the normal daily venues that men gather, in a workplace, at a football game, or in a social setting, I have never heard men discuss emotionally about relationships, weight gain or loss, or the onset of  ‘life changes’.     Continue reading →

the Navy remains in good hands

Eric SaretskyLeave a comment

Commuting home on a Monday, I knew that the traffic on the second leg of my drive would be better if I stopped by the cigar lounge for a little while.  Watching basketball (Golden State won the championship!) this evening at my favorite den of man-dom, it was also a chance meeting for this old Senior Chief to swap sea-stories with a 9th-year Sailor currently on training orders to San Diego.

Though he is an Operations Specialist (OS) on the USS STENNIS now in Washington state, and I was an Cryptologic Technician,  any Sailor I know would relate to the conversation; it was observations, opinions and swagger that a solidly capable, mentoring-focused, take-no-b***t career Sailor and I enjoyed that evening.  Even though I haven’t set foot, in uniform, on a ship or installation in eight years,  the conversation about current events,  deployment, camaraderie, and the social and political changes the Navy has undergone, invigorated me.  There’s something about watching the NBA Finals with a bunch of guys – some veterans, some civilians, and like this fellow, currently serving, that made a Monday great hangout time.  dont-tread-300

heroes aren’t like in the movies

Eric SaretskyLeave a comment

There are things that we remember from our youth ( or while I was still ‘under 30’) that should be left in those musty corners of our mental garage.  Just like the old cassette tape  I found during one ‘Spring Cleaning’ out there,  hearing the Split Endz again – or 38 Special  just doesn’t make me “feel” the same thirty years later.   Same thing tonight. A little casual dinner on the couch while watching the beginning of “Highlander” – the one with Sean Connery and Christopher Lambert.  (I recognized the villain, but I can’t remember his name.)   The effects are so rudimentary and the dialogue is rather lame – Sean Connery sounds a Scot but is supposed to be Spanish; however, Chris Lambert – he’s got one of those Kevin Costner-like non-accents due apparently to limited ability to speak English.

Even the swordplay and beheadings are cheesy.   I am trying to figure out why that movie spawned sequels and a television series.  Men in kilts?  Swords?  Perhaps it is the decades in the Navy that have colored my judgement.  I often let reality get in the way of plot on a lot of alien, superhero, or alien versus battleship dramas.   I should have read Mental Floss ‘s review here before I realized a few minutes in that watering the plants and picking up the dog poop was a better use of my time.

I offer a list of dropped must-have guy movies (or TV collections) of the last 30 years.    Some I don’t get why I liked them in the first place.  I don’t have either on DVD or nor recorded on the DVR:

  1. Top Gun (I still can watch Minority Report – for Max Von Sydow ) Cruise movies annoy me
  2. Die Hard (sequels)  ( the first was a classic, then they just kept coming)
  3. Highlander ( love Connery, but fast-forward 20 years to see how comic book-type movies are made WELL)
  4. Smokey and the Bandit ( Gleason’s last films, but such a dumb plot!)
  5. Battlestar Galactica (1978) (Lorne Greene still Cartwright for me !)
  6. Star Trek (only one of those movies I’ll watch again is Wrath of Khan with Monteban – I saw the original TV episode and loved the movie.)  However, the reboot movies with Chris Pine are great!
  7. Talledega Nights  ( now I wonder why I thought Ferrell was funny)
  8.  X-men after the first one.  I cannot keep up with the comic book plot jumps)
  9. Outlaw Josey Wales ( I prefer the Eastwood movies he’s made since 2000)
  10. Taken.  I liked Liam Neeson’s portrayals in Star Wars, the villain in Batman Begins, and Taken -even Love, Actually.  Then he just annoyed me with his Taken sequels   and his anti-gun off-screen preaching.

I think I need to watch Gladiator,  Lone Survivor,  and any of the movies that Sam Elliott was in. Testosterone, guts, courage and attitude.  What we need now more than ever are heroes: dads who want to raise their children responsibly,  people who recognize the effort and support the work of cops, volunteers to help our senior citizens  and young people who don’t want a hand out, or a “safe space”.

On the anniversary of D-Day

Eric SaretskyLeave a comment

bravery and sacrifice

Seventy three years ago on June 6th, 1944  several hundred thousand men dared to assault the beaches and countryside of Normandy, France.   Not very many are still living from those days to remind the world of the valor, honor, and determination of people to defeat an enemy that threatened the entire world.  And those born since the end of the Vietnam war are particularly ignorant of the history that determined the world they inherited.

family tradition

My paternal grandfather came to the United States through Poland in the 1920s.  Any Jewish family that remained behind in Europe were likely murdered by the Nazis;   only a few extended family who emigrated before the invasion of Poland in 1939 are known to my elderly relations.   My grandfather worked in the Brooklyn Shipyard during the war, and my father was an aerospace engineering student during Korea and worked on developing  submarine missiles during the 1950s and 1960s.   My maternal grandmother’s American cousin served in the Merchant Marine and was decorated for heroism during the Battle for Malta.   My maternal cousin served in the Marines in the Iraq War.  My son serves in the Army today.

if the meaning gets lost

The anniversary of D-Day, Operation Overlord, has meaning for that generation now averaging 90 years old as the beginning of the end for a bloodthirsty ideology that began, for Americans, with a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.    Without the resolve of these young men (and women who served in the factories and supporting industries to keep the military moving), very likely America and Europe would be a different place.  The Nazis would have eliminated diversity.  There would be no Jew, no black, no homosexual, no physically or mentally challenged people.  Death by starvation, street-corner execution, or work-camps would have been the norm.  College protests?  Executions would prevent those.  Black Lives Matter –  there would be none due to Nazi genocide.   The No boundaries/ no borders/no illegal-immigrant lobbyists?   The Nazi control of borders and transportation would stop that.   Question the government?  Surveillance, arrest, imprisonment, and torture.    And short of genocide, many of these same controls were in place in the Soviet bloc for decades.

history doesn’t have to be kind, only truthful

As with any culture in the historical past,  there are any number of evils perpetrated on one group by another.  No county is without failings, suppression of civil liberties and freedoms, and some reprehensible behavior in its past.  But in light of all the current death and suffering perpetrated almost daily in the Middle East and now occurring nearly as frequently in Europe,  many of my countrymen today ignore responsibility, integrity,  work ethic and the blessings that becoming “an American” represented in the years after WWII.  They only see a shameful past that must be rectified with ‘fairness” and “coexistence”.    As a student of history, as one who served his country with honor,  and as a disciple of Jesus,  I do not take freedom and the blessings that living in America has afforded me lightly.  Freedom of religion affords me practice of my faith; opponents still seek to diminish it in the American culture.  They have done so in many parts of Europe.   Perhaps these opponents do not see Islam as a religion?   How many failings of men are attributed to christianity as a whole in the culture compared with the barbarism that seems widespread in the Islamic world, yet constantly referenced by state agents as the violence of a few extremists?

Do not use freedom to deny it to others

We should strive to hold each individual accountable for their deeds or misdeeds.  We can have respect for people and cultures around the world.  But the freedoms that were gained by those who sacrificed and served in the Armed Forces in our nation’s conflicts  are now used by members of the latest generations to abuse others in the name of “freedom”.

Entertaining “Shipshape”

Eric SaretskyLeave a comment

46 Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, 47 praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved. -Acts 2:46 (NIV)

As a Navy man, I know the difference between cleanliness and “white glove” clean.  In the ten years since retirement, that is NAVY retirement,  I have not kept up the rigor of four-a-day “sweepers”, field days, and “change of command” – mode painting and sprucing.  With dogs that shed hair hourly, there only just keeping up with the general clean during the week.   0512-0707-1115-1056On those weekend evenings that we entertain – which is something we are doing again now that we have no children at home – my spouse,   and sometimes one of our adult sons – is (are) conscripted in the early afternoon to field day.  While Chiefs supervising junior Sailors prepare official Navy functions – at USS Homestead, Chiefs and indians provide the labor.   But my bride, formerly the Senior Enlisted Leader’s spouse, has got the whole affair managed.   My role subsequently is to take out trash, walk the dogs, put my work-week items away and clean up before guests arrive.  ( I went out to obtain the dessert as my contribution to the evening.)

On a Friday night, we enjoy a home-cooked dinner with friends.  With friends you can relax;   nobody comments on incongruous objects in the dining room – a framed Japanese watercolor cat on rice paper ( hiding a still-to-be sanded hole in the drywall);  a framed hawaiian turtle motif on handmade, dyed paper that eventually will move to a more esthetic location; and a bag of dog food that was overlooked in setting the dinner table.  While the room needs a fresh coat of paint, the house is clean and welcoming.  The dogs are mostly behaved.  The dining table is polished,  scented candles and the dinner-party china are pulled out.

Entertaining has become fashionable again; we may not have granite counters, but we have solar-powered air conditioning.  And games.  Mexican Train, a dominoes game, is quite popular with our friends.  And with our group of friends a late evening is 9 PM.     Best of all,  Saturday is not a work day.  After an early prayer walk with friends, walking dogs, taking out trash, doing yard work, and putting away laundry I will have time to sit and write.

 

May memories

Eric SaretskyLeave a comment

A lot changes in forty years. In  May, 1977,  prior to my departure for Boot Camp at Naval Training Center, San Diego in October,  I was graduating high school.   Jimmy Carter was President, a fact that I thought, being a former naval submariner officer, would make him an excellent leader.   People didn’t want Gerald Ford as he had pardoned ‘criminal’ Richard Nixon, but I remember him for sending in Marines to retrieve the Mayaguez, which had been seized by the Khmer Rouge a month after the last battle involving U.S. troops of the Vietnam War.

In those last two years of the Seventies,  the Zumwalt-era of loosened grooming standards – longer hair, mustaches and beards worn by Sailors were okay.  Dungarees (bell-bottom style) and dixie cups, were the working uniform.   Pot was a problem on military bases including San Diego.   A community that now is marked by the upwardly-mobile, well-heeled beach crowd, Ocean Beach, was then a place where druggies and ex-military,  tattoo parlors and bars were less restrictive than up the coast near the UCSD campus.

A visit over the Coronado Bridge to the Naval Station Coronado, where carriers were berthed was my first view of a ship – the USS Recruit was a wood and metal reproduction on the Recruit Training Command, to introduce us to naming convention, etc – so did not count.  The ‘aroma’ of the interior of the USS Kitty Hawk was the first ‘knock out’ that I will never forget.  Jet fuel, grease, human sweat, urinals and generally,  the stink of at times, 3500 men (no women then) wafted fresh new sailors who had more recently been accustomed to PINE SOL clean scent.

At the time, I was a student learning to work on complex electronics and mechanical maintenance of teletypes.  Where I now cannot see without at least one or two orders of magnitude, I was able then to discern two from three centimeters adjustments.  The instructor was quite ADAMANT about that ability before graduation.   We had Iranian military students – this was prior to the Iranian Revolution – and when they were recalled by their government,  we were relieved.   Suffice it to say that American and Iranian hygiene were on different tracks.

In May of 1982,  with several of my fellow Russian Language students and the professor – I was able to travel  to Russia – prior to the end of the USSR (1989) – visiting cities – St Petersburg, Moscow, Kiev and Tbilisi.  If only for all but one – a socialist-  the trip was very informative and probably saved them and their future families from the ‘snowflake’ sensibilities, the mantra of “coexistence” and “socialism’s great”.  The people may have been interesting and interested, but the economy was a shambles. Ambition was reserved for the underground economy — some of whom are today’s Russian millionaires and billionaires.

In May of 1984,  I had been out of the Navy four years, attending the university in Tucson, Arizona.  Four three of those four years I had been actively involved in the Veteran students organization on campus,  and while peers were pursuing commissioning programs,  I was looking toward a government job after graduation.  Strangely,  in my second year after graduation,  when my graduate school plans went unfunded – I re-enlisted in the Navy -Reserve – that is.  The entreaties of one of my friends finally had me join his unit, only to see him quit!

After petitioning to resume an Active Duty career in 1987,  the next major May milestone I recall was May of 1997 when I was transferred from Norfolk, Virginia to San Diego, California.    1970 Dodge Chargers, if you could find one in decent shape were then ten thousand dollars or more,  homes which had been an unheard of, eighty thousand dollars – for an ocean view, were nearly eight hundred thousand,  and NTC was closed but for a few administrative medical functions.

And in the twenty years since that time,  friends and mentors went to war in Afghanistan and Iraq,  the Soviets became Russian trade partners, the Chinese became the world’s second-most powerful economy, the Islamic world tried to separate the economic need for the non-Islamic world – from the ideology that wants to reduce infidels to ashes,  and we are again at some form of odds over military preparedness against the adversaries that were no longer adversaries?