Reminiscences of a Periscope Operator

Lieutenant, United States Navy, Departing

I grew up watching war movies. Right in the back of the [REDACTED] Public Library there was a small room filled with them: Midway (the Charlton Heston one), A Bridge Too Far, Tora Tora Tora. But out of all of them my favorite was Patton.

It’s an old movie - one of those WWII epics shot in technicolor with an intermission and an orchestral soundtrack. Anyway, at the beginning of the film George C Scott in the titular role – adorned in the starched uniform befitting a general of the 3^RD US Army – addresses his men in a speech that the writers assembled from things Patton actually said. And to 7^th grade me, one line from that speech stood out in particular:

“Thirty years from now when you're sitting around your fireside with your grandson on your knee, and he asks you, "What did you do in the great World War II?" –  you won't have to say, "Well, I shoveled shit in Louisiana.”

That’s probably a strange thing to preoccupy the mind of a 7^th grader. That preoccupation, coupled with an obsession with military history that both impressed and worried my relatives, limited the range of social interactions and romantic partners available to me in my formative years. But that awkwardness aside, the idea stuck with me – at the end of my life I didn’t want to look back on it and think “Well all I did was ‘shovel shit in Louisiana.’” And in order to not shovel shit in Louisiana I had to do one, and only one thing: serve in the Military of these United States.

And through a variety of causes including a medical disqualification for asthma I didn’t have, one very apathetic Air Force recruiter and an incredibly motivated Navy one, the Rube Goldberg machine of life led me to NROTC which ultimately led me to the submarine force.

I was going to be a SWO. But the ROTC sub LT had other plans. He recognized the prime qualities of a submariner in me - supposedly intelligent in a know-it-all kinda way, cynical about things I had no business being cynical about and the strong desire to get $15,000 after the Admiral interview and $2,000 after prototype. I often wonder how I would have fared if I had less knowledge of compound interest. 

I signed on the dotted line and then an interview,  a comp, and five months of rotating shift work later, I found myself stressed out of my mind, on four hours of sleep, with a half-empty thermos of crystallite, dodging [REDACTED] in [REDACTED] to [REDACTED] while getting reminded by [REDACTED] to [REDACTED] the formal [REDACTED] the way we trained –  all the while listening to FT2 [REDACTED] complain about how the cooks fucked up burger day again. (“I mean how hard is it Sir, just put the fucking patties on the grill and don’t burn the fucking shit out of them.”)

Burnt burgers aside, I had a blast. A terrible, sad, funny, exciting, happy, stressful blast. And while I probably won’t have a normal circadian rhythm again, I got to see some incredible things – some of which were made more incredible by the fact that we weren’t supposed to be close enough to see them. 

I’ll definitely miss it. And as I go through my rolodex of memories it’s the bad ones that really stick out – but for some reason – maybe it’s the passage of time, or it’s the benefit of hindsight – they don’t really seem so bad anymore. I resent the fact that a nostalgic smile creeps across my face when I reminisce about the time I was up for 38 hours correcting 9 months of RADCON logs before ORSE. What a joke.

There is a part of me that wishes I was going back. Even now, as I drive to collect my DD214, I have elaborate fantasies of telling hypothetical COs that the direction they want to drive is stupid and in so doing, earn the hypothetical respect of my hypothetical watch section. My hypothetical standing orders would also create efficiency and order, while protecting sleep and workouts, earning the undying love and devotion of my hypothetical department.

But I’m not going back. I’m not going back for reasons that are probably familiar to all of you. However, amongst all those common reasons is a darker, more secret one: maybe I couldn’t hack it. Maybe I’m not tough enough. Maybe I’m not a good enough ship driver or manager or leader and I’d just end up crushed, hated and embittered. Maybe.

By now though, I’ve sat through enough critiques to know that spending time thinking about hypothetical worlds and counterfactuals isn’t helpful and just generates more work which cuts into your oncoming. If I could live two lives, I’d spend one of them as a WEPS, but despite what MMN2 [REDACTED] told me once on the midwatch, I can only live in this dimension and there isn’t any point thinking about what hypothetical waterfront ranking I’d have.

I don’t even know if it would be a good one. 

I do have regrets about my tour. There are definitely better directions I should have turned or things I shouldn’t have baffled. But most importantly there are people I should have been nicer too, supported more and asked more often if they were ok. I wish I could say these errors were made more out of ignorance than malice but that wouldn’t entirely be true. The boat can be a cruel place sometimes.

On the lighter side, there are people I need to thank. And unfortunately, I have to do it here because, for a variety of reasons, ranging from my poor scheduling, to my own level of intoxication, I couldn’t do it properly, so here goes. I have to start with [REDACTED], WEPS – you were the best mentor and ship-driver a junior officer could hope for. [REDACTED], thank you for being a kind, compassionate and caring ENG. One of my biggest regrets is I won’t be there for other JOs the way you two were there for me. [REDACTED] and [REDACTED] – you all likewise were incredible people to work for on shore duty – thanks for all the trust, support and that [REDACTED] leave chit. The final thank you goes out to the enlisted. I’ll never work with a smarter, shadier and more selectively procedurally compliant group of people again. I’ll miss you.

Some people opt for the clean break –  but I can’t do it. The truth is, having spent my 20s in the Navy, I can’t just leave it behind completely. While the submarine force and I are getting divorced, through the joint custody plan that is the Naval Reserves, we’ve agreed to see each other on weekends and in the summers. Let’s hope that, like in most popular romcoms and unlike in real life, the messy break-up goes well.

“It’s the transitions that are fucking you,” the SLC Greybeard told me after a hellish APDT scenario. I find myself thinking about that line a lot as I prepare to undergo this pretty large change.  I’m also a little envious of myself in that moment because while the trawler I almost hit was fake, my looming identity crisis and future unemployment are very, very real.

And like during that terrible APDT PD trip 3 years ago, I am nervous, scared and excited. While I’ve done the prepwork, planned and briefed in accordance with, I still won’t really know what’s on the other side until that scope breaks the water. I do have to keep reminding myself that all transitions have a purpose. Maybe it's to clear a broadcast, or shift the electric plant to a more stable configuration, or – maybe – it's to build a new life. Yes, it's true that I don’t know what’s waiting for me on the other side of the layer, but I do know that regardless of what's there (SONAR SUP says nothing) I will be sad, angry, happy, proud and honestly a little grateful that my life – at least for a time – was lived at speeds in excess of 25 KTS and at depths in excess of [REDACTED] FT, aboard a US Navy Nuclear Submarine.