Everyone has a point they may come to where a decision is made if they still want to live beyond this day. For me it happened on a mid-watch while routing messages in Maincomm.
I looked down at the message and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out where it went or if I even cared. I left the ship, walked to the barracks and downed a buttload of pills. When I was sure they were all swollowed, I called the Operations Office on the ship and told Lt. Commander Brandon what I’d done. I thought it fitting at the time, that the man who’d helped create my situation would be the dude I told.
I come from a Catholic/Lutheran upbringing and geneticly, a German with Scot and French/Odawa Indian as a buffer. I have the work ethic of a Krupp employee who’s looking forward to busting his ass on a Monday morning. The Kamradts are full of these people and I’m sure all their employees benifited from it.
The Navy certainly did. Our deployments were 6 months long and during those cruises, I worked 16 hours of every day at sea. That leaves 8 hours for sleeping, eating, and poker, unless your relief doesn’t show up. Then you spend those 8 hours in Radio Central because there’s only one other person on the ship that can do it. There were two or three instances where I spent 96 hours on watch without releif. I’d plead sometimes to get an officer in there so I could leave long enough to take a shit. During General Quarters Drills, I was the ships High Speed Code Operator, so I manned the CW circuit. Then there were the activities that were going on around us. For a couple month period we were in the Eastern Med, watching the Palistinians and the Hebrews go at it with Soviet bombers flying overhead all day. There was a lot more going on then than I can ever talk about, but at the time, I was reading as much as I could get my eyes on. The problem with that was once I went off watch, the information stopped. The ship had two watch sections, or shifts, and you couldn’t divulge what you’d read or heard on that watch (or time period) to the other watch section. So what I’d do, is to join the other watch section and work their shift too. Radio Central was covered so I could spend my time working in broadcast/ship-shore circuits. I’d help out finding clear frequencies and read broadcast all shift. During the period when Cairo almost disapeared from the face of the Earth, I was there reading it.
Sleeping became such an issue that I’d fall asleep standing in line for a meal. There were many times I’d wake up to the sound of “Secure the Chow Line”, and walk back up to Central.
Then of all things, I was sent to “Ditto Repair School” so there would be an onboard repairman for all the duplicators. Of the four of us who went to school, I was the only one who passed, and I aced the exam. Those fuckers knew what they were doing because I ended up getting screwed real good. During the periods when I would get to bed, I’d get woke up to go fix one of the duplicating machines. Often times, the plug would have been pulled, or the “ON/OFF” switch was placed in the “OFF” position.
I guess it was no suprise that I was burned out, but my work ethic admonished me for being so incompetitant. I was a firm believer in culling out the weak and I was a prime example of what to get rid of. I had myself in a real funk by the time I started on that mid-watch, and it ended when I heard the Psyc ward door lock.
Next edition: Rubber Room Ramada
