08 January 2011

In the Navy

(USS Enterprise (CVN-65) steams in underway replenishment formation. Photo Life.)

I was in the Navy again for about six hours yesterday, and it felt pretty good. In fact, it felt exceptionally good.

In telling the tawdry story of Captain Owen Honors, and examining the latest black eye imposed on the service that was my life’s work, I got a couple notes from officers I admire a great deal. One is retired now, like me, and the other took time out from her busy day in the Indian Ocean, haze gray and underway, to comment on the fact that things had changed, powerfully for the good, and if she was missing her kids on a fifth combat deployment, that was what the job was.

I hastened to write back on my Droid phone from the eerily empty concourse at Dulles International.

The point of dredging up the ancient history of DACOWITS versus The Boy’s Club was not to imply that the misogynies and offensive humor were the flicker of traditions that Owen Honors somehow represented.

It was funny. At the “Hi Mom” reception at the Newport Officer’s Club, they ran a slide show of hysterical training highlights complete with a musical soundtrack that started out with the Village People’s anthem “In the Navy.”

It has always been a great song. On the Good Ship Midway, we used it as the Breakaway theme that boomed out of every speaker on the ship, signifying that the underway replenishment detail was over, and the bridge team could finally relax after hours of tense concentration keeping the massive flanks of the carrier parallel to the UNREP ship.

I was jogging on the flight deck one morning in the Indian Ocean as the song began to boom and the ships peeled gracefully apart, and found myself boogying down the catapult track. It was our signature, right up until Captain “Hoagy” Carmichael asked why everyone thought the song was so funny.

When he was told about the Village People and the joke, the song was never heard again on the 1MC. It should tell you a lot that I have absolutely no recollection of what replaced it.

We missed it, and it was good to hear it booming out again in the staid confines of the O Club filled with young people in their blues with black electrical tape covering the gold braid they would be permitted to expose the next day.

The successful integration of women into the Fleet is an acknowledged success, and in fact is one of the crucial strengths of a most remarkable institution. It was an honor to rejoin it briefly or the purpose of swearing in my son as the third generation of Socotras to wear the gold stripe of and Ensign in the United States Navy.

Naturally, Raven could not be there in the frigid clear air of the Newport Naval Station. His condition is too far along to permit travel or comprehension. Accordingly, I wore his WWII Service Dress Blues, which I always kept striped to whatever grade the Service had mistakenly selected me.

It was a moment in a life to raise right hands with my son and read the oath of office to him in the Captain’s office, with his brother, his mother, the Class Officer and the Captain himself looking on.

The other candidates who were commissioned that morning represent an astonishing and diverse pool of Americans. Male and female, Asian, Hispanic, African American and all white bread, all unified by stress to a common cause. They were A.J. Squared Away, every one of them, and the Marine Drill Instructors were turned out so crisp that you could cut your hand on Gunnery Sergent Cross’s creases and melt in a puddle at his stern gaze.

Anyway, the march of progress in the Navy is one that actually filled me with affirmation that there is hope for the future, and these young men and women will carry on the great traditions of more than two centuries, while continuing to reflect the larger society from which they came.

Not that I could not see something in them. Class 04-11 spoke a bit dismissively of the younger classes. The Captain had imposed some changes in the program. There was not so much yelling permitted by the Candidate Officers, and the new graduates regarded themselves with a certain rue pride that they represented the Old Navy.

So, in telling the story of how the Boy’s Club of a much Older Navy was brought down is a great story. Then, Elaine Donnelly opposed the changes that Rep. Pat Schroeder was able to impose on a Service wracked by the aftershocks of the Tailhook Scandal. Donnelly made her reputation on some vague family value platform that held somehow that women were not equal citizens.

Now that the integration has been successfully accomplished, and with the abolishment of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, the solid professionals of my son’s Navy will move ahead and do what they have been told to do. The time has come, and we need to proceed as directed.

But I had to laugh at the role reversal. Where Pat Schroeder had called for the dismissal of the Admirals for their responsibility for the culture that condoned the conduct of some at Tailhook ’91, this year, Donnelly is calling for the removal of Chairman Mike Mullen on the grounds that he was Chief of Naval Operations when Owen Honors made his videos.

Oh, the Indian Ocean provided me the answer on who orchestrated the leak to the press. If I see you, I’ll pass it along. I don’t see any point in dropping more dimes on anyone. Time to move on.

The new officers had their pictures taken with the Drill Instructors and the Senior Chiefs who had ruled their lives for the last hundred days, scouring them down to bare metal, and then painting them back with red lead and haze gray and Navy Blue.

I have never been more proud of my son, my service and my country.


(A newly commissioned Ensign at NAVSTA Newport, RI, with Spartan Flag. Photo Socotra.)

Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
vicsocotra.com | Subscribe to the RSS feed!