Hey Sailor In October of 1967 I got my orders and packed my seabag for the Naval Holding Facility at Charleston, South Carolina. After a couple of weeks there, mostly spent keeping the barracks clean or getting drunk at local waterfront bars, I got new orders to USS Dean, homeported at Norfolk, Virginia. I remember my plane landing well after midnight, and my cabby drove me straight to the Destroyer-Submarine Piers. It was a scene with great cinematographic possibilities, little me in my uniform, seabag slung over my right shoulder, orders clutched in my left hand, walking down an immense pier where the long, sleek ships of the Atlantic Fleet were tied up like sleeping greyhounds. The Dean was officially a Coontz-class Guided Missile Destroyer Leader (DLG), or what the Navy of those days nicknamed a 'frigate'. When I went aboard her she was already eight years old, still a young girl by the standards of her race. Dean was 520 feet long, 52 on the beam and carried a crew of about 400. She was armed with heavy and light cannon, missiles, rockets, torpedoes and depth charges, and bristled with the latest communications and sensor gear. She was beautiful and fast, and she was deadly. I paused in front of my ship, recognizable by the hull number painted on her bows, took a deep breath, saluted the colors and walked briskly aboard. How can I do justice to the US Navy in just the few paragraphs it will take me finish this chapter? This was a major experience which I had done little to prepare for, especially in my military training. It was a world of lonely and homesick teenagers, not the thirtysomething heroes that war movies had led me to expect. It was not a particularly cruel or savage place, like the gun decks of Nelson's frigates, but neither was it a nurturing or heroic environment. It was the worst of all possible worlds, a universe of indifference, like a great wilderness. With the stresses of a new setting and unfamiliar companions, it was a lot like entering high school except that Dean was a killing machine, designed primarily to provide weapons and electronic support to a squadron of other vessels. Her crew were treated the way her other on-board machinery was, well-maintained and lubricated, efficiently utilized and constantly exercised. We were a resource to be used, and, if need be, consumed in the pursuit of the ship's mission. I'm not being critical here; I can't think of any other way to run a man-of-war: it's just the way it was. I was assigned to First Division, the Deck Force, because that was the unit that was always chronically short of men. It was the Naval equivalent of the infantry, where all the seamen without any technical skills wound up. The duty bosun's mate who had welcomed me aboard, Lebeau, must have pegged me right off as someone who would not fit in, and he immediately took me aside. "Look, I'm half asleep now and tomorrow I won't remember you, so you make it a point to remind me to take you to the ship's office tomorrow and we'll get you signed up for some correspondence courses so you can get out of First Division." He then led me down into the belly of the beast and showed me my bunk and my locker. I could still get a few hours of sleep before morning muster. Lebeau's advice was good, and I'm glad I took it. First Division was the private domain and personal property of Chief Bosun's Mate Dogget, a huge black man who reminded me of Idi Amin, both in appearance and temperament. The deck force essentially ran the ship. They operated deck gear and guns, painted and cleaned, and were in charge of key activities such as underway replenishment (UNREP), refueling and highline operations; in short, anything that required you to be out on the weather decks. Nothing could make a Captain look bad as quickly as an incompetently run deck force, and here was where BMC Dogget shined. He was mean and he was tough, but Dogget was a superb seaman; he could whip up a gang of club-footed reservists like us and have us refueling underway in a gale in no time. The ship always looked clean and painted, so the senior officers always looked good. In return, Dogget pretty much got to run his division any way he wanted to. He was assigned a nominal supervisor, Ensign Moss, a recent academy graduate who was as inexperienced as his lowliest seaman. It was a situation familiar to anyone who has ever been in the military, probably since Pharaoh's time: the senior NCOs are really in charge, and the junior officers are just in training. I don't think Dogget was a particularly evil man, but he was not placed there to further our naval careers or to keep us happy, either. His management style was bullying and intimidation, although if you studied his carefully choreographed tantrums and rages you noticed no one ever really got hurt; he relied on the threat of violence to keep his people in line. I learned quickly that no one on the ship was out to get me personally, they simply had their own agendas. On the other hand, no one was going to go out of their way to help me either, and I was on my own. Dogget made it clear that nobody was getting out of First Division until after our WESTPAC cruise, but that he would be happy to provide recommendations and transfers to worthy lads after our return. I decided to listen to Lebeau, bless 'em, who had advised me that taking correspondence courses was my right and there was no way they could stop me from doing so. To achieve rank or transfer divisions required formal training and permission from your superiors: they could deny you the latter but couldn't stop you from acquiring the former. I had decided to start studying to be a quartermaster, which in the Navy is a navigation technician, not a guy who passes out blankets and uniforms. It seemed to fit in somewhat with my interests in astronomy. I had brought absolutely no knowledge of navigation with me. As far as the deck force was concerned, I was hopelessly clumsy, I couldn't even learn the Five Basic Knots. Dogget was not happy when he learned I was taking the QM courses. He gave me extra duties (against regulations), and made me stand extra watches; he even encouraged some of Lebeau's fellow petty officers to bully me around a bit and try to provoke me into a fight. It did not work for either myself or my co-conspirator, Bloom, who was in the exact same situation as I was. All of this was to play itself out over the next few months as Dean approached the war zone. PREVIOUS    NEXT       Back to Sea Story page