A Nurse with a Gun

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Carrier

First......Two words........

Comcast Sucks!

Now that I am back online and have that off my chest, I have been watching the PBS series filmed on the USS Nimitz while the ship was deployed in 2005. I brings back huge memories. I ordered the DVD set. It's an excellent series. (Sidenote: I noticed the aviators of VFA 41 were toting Sigs.)

Back when I was in Uncle Sugar's Yacht Club, women were not allowed on board combatant vessels. USS NimitzIt was considered to be a logistical compromise, and an unnecessary complicating factor in many ways. Limited space needed for fuel and ordnance being occupied by separate heads, berthing and stockpiles of maxi-pads. Decreased combat readiness with members of the crew becoming pregnant days before deployment. Fatal distraction on a ship that could lead to not only loss of careers, but of lives. For people who have never sailed in the Navy, the reality of being at sea for months with a mission of going to war if need be is a foreign thing. I would not expect them to understand my thoughts on the matter. I will simply say that if you have not humped 110 pounds of rusty greasy chain around your shoulders at a dead run for 12 hours a day for 110 days straight without a break, eating on your 12 hours off, sleeping on your 12 hours off, showering on your twelve hours off, and all the time wondering if this was your last hour before you lost your life to somebody else's carelessness, well, you don't have a knowledgeable opinion on the matter.

I usually keep that opinion to myself. The new politically correct Navy and Marine Corp is different from what it once was. My generation of sailors resolved conflicts with smokers. If you don't know what a smoker is, you are new Navy, bottom line. It ain't a burnt hot dog or a cigarette.

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20 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

USMC 1977 to 1990. I know what a smoker is. ;-)

12:20 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I flicked it on the other day and heard about 4 seconds of some guy going on about how bad he felt for using the word 'gay' inappropriately. I left it there. New Navy, I guess.
All the ships I was embarked on are mothballed or sunk. Apparently, the men I sailed with are gone too.
I read a post by a petty officer that had a female working on his mess deck. Ordered to carry a heavy box of chow to the refer, she attempted to lift it one time before asking another male to carry it for her. The petty officer stopped her and asked what the problem was. She said it was too heavy. He asked why she didn't split the box open and make a couple trips. She said that would be too much work. Pretty much sums up my experience with them as well.
Chet -Marine infantry combat vet.

7:23 AM  
Blogger Laughingdog said...

I actually prefer the current setup to the half-assed crap they had in the early 90s. There's just nothing like having a 5 year/18 month sea/shore rotation because there just aren't enough sea billets for the women that do your same job, so they get a 3 year/4 year sea/shore rotation.

The only real issue I have with women in the Navy now is the same issue I have with women in the police force and fire department. It's fine to have them there, but they need to be held to the same physical standard of the men doing the job. Either a job has a certain minimum physical strength/endurance requirement or it doesn't. There should never be a flexible standard to meet some stupid quota.

As far as things like pregnancy go, I've found that women in the Navy are no more, or less, likely to be useless deadbeats than the men. The only real difference is the methods they use to avoid deployments or work.

8:48 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Agreed...Dont get me started ranting about the new PC Navy. I witnessed alot of "double standard" stuff when I was in flight school etc. Lets just say that if you had XX chromosomes it didnt matter how many times you ran a trainer off the runway,amongst other things, you stayed in the program.

10:45 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Showering every day?

You can do that on a carrier?

My, oh my. Uncle Sugar's Yacht Club, indeed.

I normally do not watch PBS productions, but based on your recommendation, I will get the series on DVD .

[comment by former submariner, 1956-1959]

11:34 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Ahhh Smokers...The only time I could hit an officer without getting court martialled. :)
USMC 1984-1990

12:15 PM  
Blogger Doc said...

I too watched one the other night. How odd it was seeing chicks on ships. Disgusting honestly. Hell, I was the last of the shellbacks that got the shillelagh which was right after the last Subic visit at the start of my first westpac. Even then it was lame. I hated Clinton's navy which was why I got out. Way too much PC going around after Kelso got the knife. No smokers during my stint. I liked the part with the guy bitching about the navy because that was 'real' navy. Of course you could get that bitching on the floor of any plant across the U.S. too. The episode I saw sort of featured the legal racism part. In my 4 years of being a PN, I never saw someone brought up for racism. How odd.

12:54 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Um, I don't. Fill the rest of us in please?

Lissa

2:49 PM  
Blogger John S said...

Not Navy at all, but apparently the Carl Vinson had one in 2001. Possibly more formal than what occurred most often in your yacht club days.

3:06 PM  
Blogger be603 said...

submariner,
Shower everyday on CV? You better if you worked on the roof like X and I did. You'd be getting a shower party after 2 days if you didn't.

Of course, on a CV we prolly felt safer in the showers than on a sub. We didn't have to deal with the fear of a bubblehead on our six if we happened to drop the soap.

No seriously, love ya man. Thanks for your service.

fairs winds and all that...
dw

6:14 PM  
Blogger Nate said...

As for the Comcast comment- expect them to leave you a comment here before tomorrow is over. They apparently use internet spiders to seek out everywhere a customer is complaining on their blog. I've complained twice on my blog about Comcast and each morning afterwards, there is a comment with contact info left. They have worked really hard to satisfy my concerns and complaints. I might still leave them- I haven't decided. But I sure like how they are reaching out to solve customer complaints.

11:16 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Lissa,

Smoker = homosexual a.k.a. pole smoker

12:34 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

And what do the green shirts do in deck?

I believe white are for safety, red for ordnance, purple for fuel, yellow for aircraft deck movement.

Those green guys wouldn't be monitoring air quality would they? Or hugging trees? :)

1:56 AM  
Blogger Xavier said...

Kilgor.......wrong.

5:23 AM  
Blogger Xavier said...

Among the aviation boatswains, a green shirt is cats or arresting gear. In the airwing, green is maintenance.

5:32 AM  
Blogger be603 said...

Brown shirts = squadron plane captains

White = safety, QA, LSO's

Grapes = fuel

Blue = deck apes/yellow shirts to be

Weren't "Crash and Smash" red shirt also?

Pretty funny how "smoker" has passed from our lexicon. First one I went to was in Aircrew school in Pensacola. A good time. Who needs a cage anyway?

2:16 PM  
Blogger Xavier said...

EOD was/is red.....

6:08 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Been wrong before.

Care to enlighten the unenlightened?

12:38 AM  
Blogger Xavier said...

Kilgor,
A smoker is a sanctioned boxing match.

1:40 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

12hrs off? I was on a cruiser I don't ever remember having 12 hrs off.

9:45 PM  

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