I was into the third and final year of an active duty hitch in the NAV. The antipathy between me and my Chief and Division officer had reached it's peak. I pretty much ignored everything they said. Normally, a situation like that could be fixed and not in my favor. Since I was the only at sea QMOW besides the Chief, they couldn't get rid of me and the XO didn't want to replace me and let me off the boat, for fear it would precipitate a rush of no load slackers in my wake, they were stuck. Normally, in the yard, I would muster with the crew at 0700. I would putter around until about 1100, then catch the duty pickup to Chesty's, MINSY's Marine club. Every weekday, they had naked ladies dancing from 11 to 3. If it was not long after payday and the tips were good, the ladies would stay even longer. It was better than any strip club I've ever been to. The atmosphere was relaxed and the beer 25 cents a glass and a buck a pitcher.
They couldn't do anything about this because a lot of guys from our crew were always there at lunch time, just not all the time, every day, like me. I'd always be back on the boat in time to muster off. Usually then I'd go back to our barracks and find some guys to drink with for the rest of the night or if I was willing to spend some money, catch a ride to the Horse and Cow.
I was in my mid twenties, healthy and pretty resilient but needless to say, some mornings, at muster, I felt pretty rocky. One morning, in particular, I was totally incoherent and in fact, barely even conscious. I made it through muster but that's all. After that, I went down to the deepest, darkest reaches of forward berthing and crawled onto the fart sack of the most inaccessible rack I could find and passed out. About three hours later, my Chief woke me up. Bad mistake, on my part. Mornings, on submarines, everybody works or pretends to work. You need to be able to account for your time. You need to respond if the call is put out, requesting your presence.
I got written up for AWOL, which can be a serious infraction of the UCMJ. You can request a Court Martial, for any offense, or the command can decide to Court Martial you. Neither is a good thing, ever, even if you're innocent of the charge, which I certainly was not. If you can get off with a Captain's Mast, go for it, every time. Normally, you don't get put up for AWOL, while still on the boat and only missing for a few hours but the Chief and Navigator were adamant and the XO eventually went along.
Even at a Captain's Mast, they can still do very bad things to you. If the infraction is minor and the behavior that you exhibited to warrant the offense idiosyncratic you can expect some leniency. In this case neither of these things was true. It was not the first time I had been to mast with this Captain, also not a good situation. Being a competent and dutiful at sea QMOW, I had about as good a relationship with the deck officers and Captain as an E-4 can have, it could even be described as friendly but there are limits to the forbearance of even sympathetic superiors.
In the end, I got off easy. 60 days confinement to the ship. No reduction in rank. No forfeiture of pay. Not bad, considering we were going to sea the next day, for a month. This really jacked the jaws of Chiefy and NAV.
We made a little covert run down to the South Seas. Nice change. Had a great time, as always. When we got back, I could see I was going to get watched like a hawk for the rest of my confinement, to the end of finding more charges to put me up on. There are ways for diligent superiors to do this and I was a bad boy, it wouldn't be hard.
The day after we got back to MINSY and moored, I went to the COB and volunteered for a month of mess cooking. We had always got along. He thanked me and said that was exactly what he was looking for. Wink, wink. Mess cooking in port isn't easy and still long hours but nothing like the grueling regime of it at sea. Off I went. What the COB says, within his domain of responsibility, pretty much goes. The time went by quick.
When my last thirty days of confinement were up, with two months pay in my pocket, I was ready. It's generally not a good idea to confess to something in the Navy, in order to try and benefit yourself. They have ways of dealing with that. There was a guy once that went to the XO and told him he was a homo in order to get a discharge. The XO questioned the veracity of his claim. He told this guy to go down to Crew's Mess and let the Chief Mess Specialist butt fuck him and the Chief could then notify him, officially, whether or not he was really a homo. Everybody knew the Chief Cook was gay. He had his dick tattooed with red stripes like a candy cane. Guy never did get a discharge, or even off the ship but the story got around and it wasn't a good thing for him. He took a lot of "Hey, how 'bout a blow job", ribbing.
So, I went to the XO and told him I thought I might be an alcoholic. I volunteered to go to the Alcohol Dry Dock program at Alameda NAS, 20 miles or so South. This was an entry level portal into the Navy's alcohol abuse program. They held you there for thirty days and evaluated whether or not you were an alcoholic and not just a typical drunken swabby and either sent you back to your command or onto one of the more extensive treatment centers, which almost always culminated in an early discharge. What could the poor guy do. He didn't like it but he called them up, booked me a spot and cut me orders.
Alcohol Dry Dock was great. Me and the Chief that ran it, a reformed rummy, became great friends. They gave us a dose of atabuse every day, so that we couldn't drink. For about six hours every day, we sat around in a group and told sea stories about how much we drank, the crazy things we did while inebriated and pretended we were sorry about it and wanted to stop. A couple of evenings a week they put us in a van and took us around to various AA meetings, never ones with regular citizens, ones where only lowlifes and indigents frequented. It was fun and nice to get off base.
As my stay in Alcoholic Dry Dock came to a close, I had an official conference with the Chief in charge. He said I was indeed an alcoholic and between the two of us, he said he doubted I'd ever quit drinking. He recommended in his report to my command that I be immediately transferred to the Medical rehab program at Long Beach, then to the Psych rehab program at San Diego. The Long Beach program would be up to 2 months and San Diego Up to 6 months. Since my enlistment would end before I finished, I would probably walk with an Honorable and not even a General discharge. He was ready to send me on the next day and everything I owned was in my sea bag, with me. I was ready to go.
He called my XO to give him the word. The XO was neither pleased nor acquiescent. I was back with the Seawolf next day, cured of my drinking problem. We went back to sea a couple days later. I loved being at sea. Some people are born to be sailors.
I don't want anybody to think that I blame the Navy for my problems while I was in. The Navy is great. I'm a knucklehead with a bad attitude. Going along to get along was never my strong point. I always pushed hard at the limits of what you could get away with and the limits broke often. I never learned a lesson from it. I always got every chance available. I could have stayed out of trouble. The idea never even occurred to me. After being on the boat less than a year, they let me take the 2nd class test, way early. I didn't study and did poorly. With a little effort I could have made first before finishing even my little 3 year hitch. If I had re-upped I could have made Chief pretty early and coasted from there on, a lot of guys in the program did that and they weren't rocket scientists or even that squared away. It's all on me.
Just an old man rambling.
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