Don’t Piss this Guy Off – Just Do It

Vic’s recent soliloquy on the crossing the line ritual we used to “enjoy” that was once a staple of being a Westpac sailor brought back what are now, in retrospect of nearly 40 years, some great memories. Goddamn it was good to be a JO in Ronald Reagan’s and John Lehman’s 600-ship Navy. However, I fear now that it – the experience – has been watered down into something less gross, painful, and cathartic. It was once a rite of passage and transformation from being a scurvy-riddled slimy Pollywog to a Trusty Shellback – now I’m afraid that it is just another participation award given to everybody regardless of whether they show up or not.
Over a 27+ year career and four extended cruises, I crossed that imaginary magic line in the water ten times – but the first one is seared in memory. We were aboard the USS Kitty Hawk, transiting north back up to Gonzo Station from a port call in Perth, Australia, where I had joined my VA-52 Knightrider squadron mates, most of whom were subjected to “Wog Day” on the way down. I among others was the subject of Wog’s revenge – what we called being a “special case.” Trust me; you never want to be known as a “special case.”

The fun started the night before with the arrival of King Neptune and the Royal Court for hangar bay skits and other shenanigans, like the Wog Beauty Queen pageant, which was basically when all of the drag queens came out of the woodwork, so to speak, to strut their stuff. It was ribald and unruly every time I witnessed it, so I can’t believe that it is a tradition that has survived – but on second thought, it might make sense given today’s swerve towards LGBTQ empowerment. I remember my last crossing watching the spectacle unfold while standing next to the 2-star battle Group Commander, RADM B. He was shaking his head in amazement at some of the more flamboyant performers. I told him:

“Can you believe that we are getting away with this shit after Tailhook?”
And this was in 1993…

On the appointed day, we were told to wear khaki pants turned inside out and backwards, a white T-shirt with the number of years and months you had been in the Navy written in black laundry marker on the back, some type of heavy duty shoes or boots – gloves and knee pads were optional. We lucky few were roused out of the rack before reveille by our squadron mates, paraded down to Ready Six, and then after much verbal abuse led on all fours out to the mess decks for “wog breakfast,” which consisted of raw eggs cracked on your head, and soured milk and orange juice poured on you, along with whatever other treats the shellbacks wanted you to enjoy, like oatmeal, Cheerios, oranges, rotten tomatoes, etc., pelted on your helpless carcass, and then getting your ass whipped by the ever present shillelaghs – three foot sections of used fire hose wielded with great zeal and vigor.

Then we had to crawl up the stairs to the hangar bay and make the long trek down to EL 4 for the ride up to the flight deck. It was a raucous welcome – we were greeted with fire hoses and a mob of butt-thirsty shellbacks rhythmically slapping their shillelaghs in unison on the flight deck and chanting “Wogs! Wogs! Wogs! Wogs!”

Wogs Rising

There, we were subjected to the whims of your average American enlisted sailor, who took great pleasure in slapping an officer’s ass. While I was an Ensign, another miserably abused creature next to me was then-RADM Huntington “Hunt” Hardisty, the Battle Group commander who had somehow escaped Wog Day by virtue of being an East Coast sailor for more than 27 years and some change, or so said his T-Shirt (mine said 13 months)

Once we got up to the flight deck, the Kitty Hawk skipper, CAPT Foster S. “Tooter” Teague came over to greet us and put a rope leash around the admiral’s neck, and then paraded him around on all fours on the flight deck like he was a pet poodle at an AKC Dog Show – he was a real “special case.”[1]
There was no mercy or timeouts for stress in the old Navy – my Navy.

The flight deck was actually not that bad since there was a breeze to waft the stink away and you weren’t subjected to all that much concentrated abuse except for the occasional enlisted-guy (most of them were from our squadron) ass-whipping you and yielding to their constant demands to blow water out of the pad eyes, waiting your turn for the judgement of the royal court. Trying not to vomit on King Neptune, you were sentenced to the next carnival ride, which invariably consisted of confinement in some rotten food fermented for a week on the mess decks and in the sun that morning. The worst part was the wear and tear on your hands and knees from the abrasive non-skid – I picked pieces of it out of myself for six months afterwards.

There were several stations that your Wog handlers had to choose from but you had to have your shellback certificate chit in your mouth when you went up for judgement by the Royal Court, and to kiss the royal baby (aka the fattest CPO on the ship whose navel was greased with the nasty lube they used on the arresting gear wire batteries), and then swim through the garbage chute to “cleanse” yourself before joining Neptune’s Legions. After that, I swore that I would never eat tuna or green peas again, it was that foul, and the ship stunk to high heavens for weeks afterwards.[2] Then, you took a dunk in some sort of green dumpster vat filled with industrial-strength Lysol-like stuff to cleanse off the bacteria, and once you popped up, the flight docs were there to swab out your ears with disinfectant and greeted by a welcoming committee of your now salty peers asking “What are you?”

“A trusty Shellback!”
Since we all still had crud in our hair and on bodies, there were showers set up at the end of the flight deck before the round down. I was not the only one who stripped naked, tossed my clothes overboard, and walked back to my bunkroom in just my boots for a real hot shower and uniform change. Imagine in today’s Navy a thousand naked guys walking around on the carrier flight deck… and the other ships in our battle group were doing the same thing and we were all sailing in close formation so there were a lot of naked guys on the equator, hooting and hollering friendly insults at each other across the water, mostly commenting on the size of our aviation vs. black shoe peckers as only groups of naked grown men can do. There’s a lot to be said for the experience – it was what transformed a battle group of disparate ships and individuals into a true battle group of warriors forged through shared common hardship.

Was it what is now considered by the liberal PC-types as hazing and sexist? Yeah, probably, but I would not have missed it for the world. I also wouldn’t do it again, either. SERE School was the same – go there and get that T-Shirt, but you don’t want to do it twice. People may disagree with this notion but it is/was character building – both were; and when it came time to go to war and swill the adrenaline of combat ten years later, I wasn’t awed by the prospect since I had already endured a little bit of hell, survived those ordeals, and came out on the other end mentally stronger and more confident in my own abilities than before.
My next cruise the tables were turned and I extracted my own sadistic version of Wog’s Revenge. I had my talented IS, who had studied graphic arts, design for me a special T-Shirt which featured a mushroom cloud emanating from an underwater nuclear explosion, including dead whales (with crosses in their eyes) being blast-heaved out of the water, with the underneath caption “Nuke the Wogs.” For good measure, I also had fashioned a special fire hose shillelagh into which I had the para riggers sew in a rope handle with my own personal Shellback motto emblazoned upon it in big black letters “I Love Sweet Wog Ass.” The T-shirt is gone, just like those great Navy traditions now and forever frowned upon. However, I still have the shillelagh in my old patch-covered and faded parachute bag, somewhere.
I remain your faithful servant.

[1] Both of those great naval aviators have long since passed, but if you get the chance, you should look them up as they were pretty amazing men and leaders in their time. I had the pleasure of being at a meeting when I was a LCDR with then retired 4-Star ADM Hardisty at the Naval War College and got to remind him that we had shared the Wog Day experience on the Hawk together – the look on his face was priceless.
[2] I was on the Hawk 17 years later when I was the CCG-1 staff N-2 as a CDR, and I swear the ship still smelled like rotten food and vomit from that Wog Day in 1981.