Well now that Loadsman is finished
cleaning my clock, he may have a point, I should have handed the Ensign the hammer and said something like, here Sir, you do it because obviously you are in charge and know more than the rest of us put together.
Property damage is one thing, unsafe, immoral or illegal is another. My actions entailed none of the above. "My Lai, Nazi War Crimes"
Oh please!
, A bit dramatic? The only one that had any chance of getting Killed or hurt was me, my crew was well trained, they got the hell out of the way as did I after the deed.
This Ensign had a air of self importance that had grated the nerves of more than just me. He had been an ass since he reported aboard. he needed humbling, so mission accomplished, though a bit more drasticly than I thought at the spur of the moment. I was 21, and was throughly pissed in the heat of the moment he was 26 and had Academy education and
training. Bad judgement on both sides, you bet, small ship and a long deployment ahead, you bet. Cost of the lesson learned by the young officer, a lot. Cost of establishing paramaters for the crew of the whole ship vs this Ensign and other situtations that will surely arrise involving
danger in the coming days where lives depended on procedure being followed to the letter for the duration of the deployment....Priceless.
Now to more fun stuff, I was not the Coxin but the
deck hand, (Coxin in training) on the Cpt Gig. We had dropped the gig while underweigh after coming into
San Diego. The Coxin, after the ship had regained speed after our launch, was surfing the ships wake.
The crew on the fantail was appaluding and hooting and hollering as we (he) did his showoff. It was really coo...until he
lost it got sideways and bucketed the wake damn near sinking the gig. We made it in under our own
power with the
interior of the gig soaked.
So much for weekend liberty, the
Skipper went home in the ships ugly car and we (crew of the gig) cleaned the thing from stem to stern, wax and the whole bit. Then went back out for REFTRA Monday. Won the gig
race with the gigs of the other Skippers gigs back to our respective ships from Coronado. Lots of ribbing the Boatswain took over that. Cause and effect, actions and consiquences. We were a crew, and we suffered as a crew, completely fair, all forgiven but not forgotten.
The layover was an hour and they weren't serving while on the ground so we left the plane and headed for the piano bar in the terminal. We of course ordered Mai Tais. Eventually someone asked us if we had a plane to catch and we hustled back to the gate. There was no jetway and the plane was sitting about 50 yds from the gate. The boarding stairs were still positioned at the door of the plane. The gate attendent said we were 30 minutes late and the plane couldn't take off without us. The July sun was really bright as we ran to the plane and the 
We took our seats and the plane took off. The 
In my 'coffee incident' when word got around some of the chiefs came to me individually and said that if there was a medal for it that I should get it. They thought he was a turd too! 
Keep 'em coming guys 
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