Toilet Training a Sailor 3 Department: Rx Author: Peter Era: 1982 Date: 12/04/04 A couple other episodes of inappropriate shitting - MM2 Koster was up in the port access trunk with a 5 gal bucket of white paint, painting the walls. In the middle of this, GQ is called - so he quickly tidies up - so he can resume painting when we secure from GQ. - After GQ, when he gets back to work he finds that a creative sailor had solved the dilemma of the heads being secured during GQ. - Koster finds a robust turd planted neatly in his 5 gal bucket of white paint. - We should have called the Master at Arms to search for a sailor with a white circle around his ass where he sat on the paint can. Here's one more.... For a while my GQ station was as phone talker in Repair locker 5. As phone talker - I had to wear one of those funky gray helmets that were sized and shaped proportionally to the standard navy toilet. The similarities must not have gone unnoticed by someone else for one time when I turned up for GQ and started to strap my helmet on - I noticed a rather large, over ripe turd coiled neatly in my helmet. - There was absolutely no need for this since there was a head a mere few feet from where my helmet was - But some sailor thought it would be great fun to shit in my helmet!

Toilet Training a Sailor 4 Department: Rx Author: Peter Era: 1982 Date: 12/04/04 The only other shit story I can think of is that when we pulled into Egypt, the medical department wanted to find out why so many of us got dysentery in Egypt. If you agreed to be part of this program, you got a head of the line liberty pass - so of course, I jumped at it. As part of the program, you had to provide medical with a stool sample. Now around that time period, our D.O. was on a kick of getting us to follow the chain of command - so we'd had several lectures on that point. In compliance with his wishes, I decided to forward my stool sample up to medical through my chain of command. I put the little bucket in the chief's in-basket and left the division office - The next morning I was summoned up to the office to explain why my shit was in his "in basket" Chief strongly "suggested" that it would be better in this case for me to violate the chain of command and deliver it directly to medical.

wine Department: Weps Author: JOHN Era: 1982 Date: 12/09/04 Great wine made many times. 50 dollar chunks of cheese. Great shows on buzzards row. Rather ^ 5 gallons of paint off the hanger deck than paint a space.

Navy Blankets Department: Rx Author: Peter Era: 1984 Date: 12/21/04 At sea, we had laundry day either once or twice a week. - The berthing PO would bring all our clean clothes back from the laundry and everyone (most of us) pitched in to distribute laundry to the appropriate rack. One thing I can never remember seeing is a blanket being laundered. I know for the entire 4 1/2 yrs I was on the IKE, I never once washed my blanket and don't remember anyone else doing it either? Maybe some folks had their's dry-cleaned while we were in port, but I doubt it, too much else going on and the last thing one would worry about was a filthy blanket. I don't remember my first day aboard - but I reckon I procured my blanket from some Quartermaster. I didn't wash it when I got it - and I sure as hell didn't wash it when I turned it in 4 1/2 years later. It's possible that at this very moment, some poor bastard is using my old blanket - and for the past 25 years it's never been washed!

Waterfront bars Department: Rx Author: Peter Era: 1975 Date: 12/22/04 Remember the bars along the waterfront in Naples? The floors, tables, walls, etc. were incredibly filthy. And the head! My God what disgusting places it was... urine, free floating feces, vermin,... The most disgusting sight I can ever recall is seeing some sailor dressed in Summer Whites, passed out on the floor lying in all of that sewage... And people would just step over him to go piss in the rusty trough that dumped out directly on the floor. To avoid going into those bathrooms, my solution was to find a table right next to a storage closet in the bar (they invariably had one) - whenever we had to take a leak, we'd go inside our private bathroom and piss in there. One of my mates took this to the extreme... Once when we were in a 5 star restaurant in Monacco, he pulls that same trick even though their bathrooms were immaculate - this moron sneaks into a linen closet and pisses all over their stack of 100's of white tablecloths! No wonder the French hate us.

Department: Medical Author: John Era: 1982 Date: 12/23/04 In the 2 1/2 years I was on IKE, I saw so many young lives lost on that ship. Many of these deaths were caused by people acting foolishly. We lost more than few sailors who did crazy things such as painting the side of the ship at night without a safety harness. I recall my first month on IKE, and our mail plane crashed into a mountain in Crete.....think we lost 11 shipmates that evening. John drjohn08318@yahoo.com

"Remember when...." Department: Medical Author: John Era: 1982 Date: 12/27/04 Do you recall those long evenings that seemed to drag on forever as we waited for mailcall? Then those damned BMs would sound the whistle indicating mailcall....we would wait, and wait, and wait. Then, they would announce "smoking lamp is out...." or another similar message. They enjoyed messing with our minds that way. Sound the whistle indicating mailcall, then destroy our minds by announcing somethig else. Here's another one of my "favorites". During clean up for field day (which was 3x/week), every single head would be secured. There literally wasn't a place to go to the bathroom until inspection was over. On occasion you could find a single urinal that had been set aside for use, but we didn't always need to just take a leak....sometimes we needed to actually use the toilet. However, it was impossible, and you had to hold it in the entire day until inspection was over. Did anyone detest those field trials as much as I did? They were the absolute worst times! John

"Hamburgers cooking down at Fleet Landing" Department: Medical Author: John Era: 1982 Date: 12/29/04 I recall those nights when we were docked in Naples.....those sliders cooking on the grill down in fleet landing were a welcome sight (and smell) after a long evening out on the town. It was wonderful getting together with fellow crewmembers again after being in a foreign port all day. John

Partying with the Airdales Department: VA-65 Author: Peter Era: 1983 Date: 01/01/05 I was in Naples and somehow got separated from my normal steaming buddies. No problem - I fell in with some airdales who were even more ill-behaved and obnoxious than my normal friends... They were great fun! We ended up in a seedy bar that had pretensions of grandeur.. over the "dance floor" hung a sort of chandelier. In a fit of exuberance, one of my new friends thought it would be great fun to leap at the chandelier and swing out on to the dance floor. Unfortunately, not only was the fixture merely screwed into plaster - but the wiring in that bar was by no means up to code. As soon as he made contact with the chandelier, it ripped straight out pulling a number of wires with it. These wires shorted resulting in a complete blackout not only of that bar but a number of surrounding bars. It was quite a spectacle to see a mixture of drunken sailors and hookers come streaming out of those bars. And "Tarzan" came running out, carrying the chandelier as a trophy!

Log keeping Department: Rx Author: Peter Era: 1979 Date: 01/01/05 When writing the status of one's watchstation - the word "Normal" was used frequently (eg. a piping system could bypass a component or be "normal") My friend Will P. came up with the idea of spelling Normal as "NORML" (which is the title of an organization dedicated to the repeal of marijuana laws) - From then on - I don't think anyone ever spelled NORMAL the normal way!