The Navy they advertise and the Navy you actually get are two completely different fucking things. They sell you jets, deployments, action, doing badass shit. What you really get is waiting. Constant, never ending, soul crushing, why the fuck am I even here waiting. Ashore, afloat, it doesn’t matter. You’re waiting for supply to find a part that somehow exists on paper but not on the goddamn ship. You’re waiting for someone in the chain of command to sign one fucking piece of paper that’s been rotting on their desk for days while they pretend to be busy. You’re waiting at muster because somebody important is on the way. Which is Navy talk for shut the fuck up, don’t ask questions, just stand here longer like an idiot. And when you go out to sea? Same bullshit, just saltier. Same shitty food. Same watch. Same dumb conversations. Same day on repeat until your brain starts leaking out your ears. You stop counting days. You start counting Sundays, because that’s the only way to know how long you’ve really been stuck out there on this floating piece of shit.
And it’s not just the routine rotting your brain. The ship itself is barely holding together.
No hot water in the showers when you’re in the Arctic, and boiling hot showers in the Middle East, hot enough to make you question if you should go down to medical. The showers were just as bad as the rest of the plumbing on the ship. Water stops running at the worst time, mid soap while you’re showering, while you’re shaving, or when someone can’t flush the toilet on taco Tuesday. You’re just supposed to deal with it, like that’s normal, and after a while of living on a ship, it is.
This was the same flooding as the photo at the top of the article. Water was coming out of the deck drains, so we were scooping it up and flushing it down the toilet.
Different time. The toilets backed up and started overflowing onto the deck. Unfortunately this is a recurring and shitty problem throughout the fleet.
And the best part. Your work center can be completely done. Tools turned in, gear stowed, space spotless. And you’re still not fucking leaving. Because the Navy loves saying “one team, one fight.” In reality, that means nobody can go home until the slowest work center finishes, even if everyone else has been done since lunch and is just standing around trying to look busy and not lose their fucking mind. That is the real Navy. Not forged by the sea. Forged by boredom, signatures, delays, and waiting for a day that never seems to fucking end.
-Paul
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