The Silent Service

My father was Army through and through, but when he married Mom he married into Navy.  Evidently mixed marriages do work.  Keep in mind, I am talking about the men my Aunt’s married.  The force for double X chromosomes is strong in my family and there are lots of girls, who it turns out, marry mostly Navy men.  They then produce a crop of men and women who also joined the Navy.  FYI, my husband, like my Dad, was Army.  The feds gave him an all-expenses paid vacation to Qui Nhon, Vietnam back in the 70’s.  But I have still seen more Navy blue than Army brown in old pictures. 

 

The one thing we have never had in my family is a submariner.  Now that is a rare breed.  

A person is never assigned to a submarine.  You must volunteer.  Evidently one must go willingly to serve in a tube deep under the ocean.  But just volunteering is not enough.  The Navy does some weeding and seeding with this group. 

Nuclear subs can stay submerged for up to 90 days and, while how deep they go is classified, the Navy will admit to 800 feet.  As you might guess, you can’t be even a little claustrophobic.  You have to adjust to lack of sun, sleep disruption, and the requisite close quarters.  

Because submariners are part of a small pool of talent, they need sailors are good at more than one thing.  They prefer sailors who can handle just about every role from technical operations to galley cook.  From what I have seen of old movies about submarines (Run Silent, Run Deep comes to mind) a submariner must also have amazing tolerance for perspiration on everyone’s part. 

In reading about what it takes to earn your “dolphin” (a submariner’s combat insignia) I learned that it means more than just living through the experience.  It means you have earned the trust and respect of your fellow shipmates.  Time and again I heard the phrase “…knowing how to save the ship.”  I guess when the ship is 800 feet below the surface preserving your life-saving environment is not just your top priority—it is your only priority.  One other element of the sense of “family” that surrounds submariners is the size of the crew.  There are around 130 sailors on a sub—that is a family.   There are 6000 personnel on a Nimitz-style aircraft carrier, which makes it a town. 

There are three different types of submarines in the service.  There are fast attack subs (SSNs), the sports cars of the fleet.  Then there are ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) that represent our strategic defense.  We also have heavily armed cruise missile submarines (SSGNs) that represent the biggest and best of our defense.  I was surprised to learn that we only have four SSGN’s.  But that is not the number that really bothers me. 

Coming from a family of veterans, the numbers that hurt me so are these:

(1)   Over 37,000 veterans are homeless.

(2)  17 veterans die every day (!!!) from suicide

(3)  There are 10 diseases that are found more frequently in veterans than in the general population.  These include such bad actors as Hodgkin’s Disease, ALS, Parkinson’s Disease, Prostate and Respiratory Cancer, and depression.

Considering what they all gave, I am not sure we are giving enough back.  Don’t just thank a vet, vote for them.  Oh, and keep the faith.