Wetherhorn

When I was serving in USS Valley Forge I had my first encounter with navy specific hazing. The Navy, like many other semi-closed societies, has a vocabulary all its own and has ‘entry rituals’ that are performed to bring in new members. One of the most common is to assign new sailors who have never been to sea before to the mail buoy watch.

One of the electronics technicians in my division was already a senior second class petty officer. He had spent several years working ashore, but he  had never served afloat. We decided that made him eligible for assignment to the mail buoy watch as petty officer in charge.  He was so listed in the plan of day. when we went sea for trials.

Now, there is no such thing as a real mail buoy, but new sailors are not expected to know that. They are told that the ship receives mail at sea from an aircraft that drops the mail in a mail buoy on the intended track of the ship. The ship then picks up the buoy to distribute the mail. In preparation, every man assigned to the mail buoy watch is fitted out with a bulky kapok filled life jacket. He is issued a pair of binoculars to help locate the buoy in the ocean, and a boat hook (a long pole with a barbed metal end) to help bring it aboard. When the watch is set, the members of the watch are given a special briefing hat includes a trip into the darkened radar room where they are shown a radar repeater with a bright spot that shows up after each pass of the rotating radar antenna. While in the darkened space their eyes have not yet adjusted and they are not able to catch the hand of the man giving them the briefing as he makes the bright dot more intense after each pass of the antenna. They are told how far away the spurious buoy is from the ship. Then they are sent to bow to look for it using their binoculars, Usually they are left there for as much as several hours.

My petty officer technician wasn’t taken in. As soon as he saw his name on the watch list he went to see another petty officer whose friendship he had made. This friend happened to be assigned to the metal working shop. My man asked his friend to make him a small replica of a rural delivery post box out of sheet metal. It was completed with a little flag. Next came  visit to the electronics shop where he picked up a couple of as yet unopened letters from the desk of my boss. Box and letters were locked away for a few hours until the mail buoy watch was set. When that occurred my man took out the metal box, dunked it in some water, put the letters inside, and went directly to the electronics shop.  When he entered he proclaimed loudly that he had recovered the mail buoy. He help it up for all present to see. Then he ostentatiously opened it and took out the letters.

“Oh, Look! There are letters inside. And these are addressed to you, Sir” He told my boss.

That wasn’t the best initiation hazing case I encountered at sea. One new seaman was asked to paint a part of the passageway in checkered paint. He had never heard of checkered paint, and said so. He was informed that it was a standard navy paint just like blue striping (a paint that really does exist) and that he needed to go to the paint locker and ask to be issued some checkered paint. He dutifully went to paint locker. But he didn’t ask for checkered paint. He took a brush, an empty paint container, a piece of cardboard, and one tin each of black and white paint. He went to the section of passageway he was assigned to paint and carefully painted several alternating squares of black and white. Then he took the empty tin, put the cardboard in the center as a divider, and poured the white paint in on one side, and the black on the other.  The top of the paint was  left so it that the cardboard divider was just covered. He took the now cleaned brush and made one shallow stroke over the cardboard so the brush came out half black and half white. Then he pulled up a chair and waited for people to come by and ask him what he was doing.

Machinists were often sent for left handed wrenches and deck hand for some shore line to use in securing the ship. But of the best stories came from a my duty in USS Union, a cargo ship. We had just returned home after landing the first combat troops in Danang, Vietnam. We returned to the US and had about a months rest. During that time several sailors were discharged, others transferred, and there were new men reporting aboard to replace them. Then we were assigned to help carry another Marine battalion from Camp Pendelton to Okinawa to replace the one we had delivered to Vietnam.

It looked like the perfect opportunity for a practical joke. Crossing the Pacific involves going across several time zones. It also means crossing the International Date Line. When we were close to crossing that line we published a note in the plan of the day that went something like this:
“We are about to cross the international date line. Anyone who wants to take a photograph of this remarkable natural phenomenon of a north to south oriented line of seaweed in the open ocean should get a camera permit from the executive officer.”

When we actually crossed the line we announced to the entire crew that the line was not visible because the seaweed had been scattered by recent storms. But that isn’t the end of the story. After dropping off the marines at Okinawa we got a couple of days R and R in Yokosuka, Japan. Then we headed back to California, This time, crossing the date line didn’t get any “special treatment”, just a reminder to reset clocks. To our surprise, one of the new crew members appeared at the executive officers cabin. He had just bought a new camera in Japan and wanted a permit to photograph the date line.