How many middle America homes have a nazi flag in them? I was just watching the PBS decade of the lead up to to the War and it struck me that the nazis had millions of nazi flags for their shit. I'm willing to bet a lot of our soldiers brought them home as souvenirs. A hard fought for, in many cases, souvenir. So there they are mouldering in a trunk up in the attic or a footlocker down in basement. You might see the same thing with Imperial Japanese flags or the various flags of the little wars after the Great War V.II.
So far as I know, there are none here. I certainly didn't bring any.
On that note, I remember going through the basic Surface Warfare Officers School in Newport and hearing about an Ensign that was sentenced at a court martial because he had stolen a Greek flag. Imagine my surprise after moving into my stateroom on the luxurious flagship of the Middle East Force and finding a 20' Greek flag on top of one of the lockers. That ship had certainly passed through Hellenic waters while returning from a year in the Philly shipyards, to resume duties as flagship in the Middle East and perhaps that flag was part of the apocryphal story told to us all back at SWOS. Who knows?
I traded it to the MPA of Greek heritage because he wanted it and it meant nothing to me. I was still decades away from seeing My Big Fat Greek Wedding.
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I never heard that story at SWOS. I graduated in early 1986. Did they say "this is a no-shitter" before telling it? That's the only way to know that it's really true!
Nope. they hadn't progressed that far and were still telling wonderful sea stories. I did like the submarine LT we had teaching one of the sections. As he explained himself, he was receiving treatment at the hospital there for a chemical imbalance of the brain and they thought that made him excellent instructor material for swos. i spent about 4 months working out of SURFPAC which was, then, located in the former SWOS west building. I remember the old Surfpac back when it was in the dump next to EODGRU1 which hasn't changed a bit. One can't help but notice what a dump EOD is compared to SPECWAR, oh, which moved across the highway to be in it's own luxurious building leaving just specwargr1 in the dump with eodmu3. It's where the cognoscenti used to get their siprent. Our dump was down the road in NOLF IB, dial up siprnet if you can believe it. Who uses a modem anymore?
SWOS was great. I was on per diem and had lunch at the Brick Alley Pub frequently. No real responsibilities.
did you feel just a little bit of sympathy for the guys going to commo school or legal school and who were jipped out of almost 16 weeks of per diem? Yeah, me neither. We had a house above 3rd beach. 3 ensigns and an LT going to department head school. Salve Regina was just down the block, sort of.
Yeah, that sucked for them. I think it was more likely they'd be going to EOOW school. I went back to the ship (USS Oliver Hazard Perry) and then off to ASWO school in Norfolk (Capt. Vern Clark, commanding) and FFG-7 Weapons Officer course in Dam Neck before officially starting my DIVO tour in Aug '86 - a year after graduating from OCS.
you were almost a nuke.
Nope. Not this history major! I don't know what they were doing at the Deak Parsons building next door.
Wait!!!! there was an EOOW school?
They had plenty of training back then! I might have the title wrong, but the AUXO and MPA attended these courses as part of their pipeline training. They had courses for gas turbine, steam and diesel, if I recall correctly.
I went to my first ship as AUXO. Believe me, there was no school. One got to find all of ones enemies in the wardroom one or two at a time. As you know, it started out when those bastards voted you to be the wardroom mess treasurer. Auxo was like a dose of goodness. Middle East. I could turn off your air conditioning with a phone call. Used to send my guys off to officer country 'checking for grounds'. And no, I wasn't the Electrical Officer. He was above that kind of stuff. LDO as was the CHENG. He might have said we were playing above our paygrade. Then we went to war with the EMO. He was a CWO and had no idea what he was dealing with.
As I type here I am also listening to the music I play. It can be distracting.
I really hope that every officer got what I got out of my job and the people who were my direct supports. I was fortunate enough to have them with me at XOI on the way Mast and they had my back. It's really hard to argue with power and light.
For 30 years I played way over and once it took I enjoyed it enormously.
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