I have plenty of “sea stories” about the E-7s, -8s, and -9s that made me look successful for 20 years. Most of them are uplifting and more than a few just plain humorous. Some are not so good, but I found out that incompetents, lazy, and slackers come in both genders, all colors and backgrounds. Conversely, dedicated, hard charging, make it happen people come in both genders and all colors and backgrounds. In both cases, there is no exclusivity.

When I was an XO, and we were on cruise, a few of the Chief Petty Officers were complaining to the Senior Chief Petty Officer of the Command (SCPOC) about how bad the junior officer were. Well, instead of the EMCS doing the “right thing,” and having a short “meeting” in the Goat Locker, where he would have read them the riot act and then handed them the solution, he came to me.

I enjoy solving problems. On the other hand, on a Persian Gulf deployment, being the Navigator, the second in command, and the guy who had to keep all the right balls in the air, I was sort of busy with the “big picture” stuff. When the SCPOC brought this one and dropped it in my lap, I was slightly annoyed, so I had called the meeting in the Goat Locker.

I didn’t yell, I didn’t throw anything around. I just provided them with this fact of life (or words to this effect):

“You know how you you have served with COs and XOs and department heads that really sucked and made your life miserable, because they didn’t know anything? Well, guess what? Their CPOS, when they were division officers failed to take them aside and train them, so you got stuck holding the bag.”

“Not only do you have my permission to bring your JO down here, close the door, put a cup of coffee, no, strike that, can of Coke, in their hands and tell them how life is, I actually expect you will do that, because that’s your job. If you don’t take the time to do it, you’ll just be stuck with them as department heads, XOs and COs who will make your life miserable and you’ll have no one to blame but yourself.”

It sure seemed pretty clear to me how to solve the problem. Once more, I refer you back to one of my earliest posts about RDC Mac and his ensigns beginnings.

We need those senior enlisted to step up to the plate and form a bond with their “butter bars,” so the wisdom of real leadership can be passed on. We also need the “butter bars” to resist the urge to think they have a commission and therefore a corner on the knowledge market in the profession of arms. When this happens, we see a military that can slice and dice more bad guys before breakfast, than most other armed forces could do in a week.

Since we see this capability in action via the many blogs, I know there is this sort of “training” happening. Let’s hope the tradition stays with us.

A few “hall of fame” names of my enlisted mentors (in order of appearance):

OSC Michael P. MacCaffery
RMC Hansen
GMCM(SW) Don Dolance
STGCM(SW) David Frey
FTCS(SW) David Magnus
GSCS(SW) John “JC” Wiegman
GSMC(SW) John Graham
GSEC(SW) Denny Rohr
RMCM(SW) Rumbaugh
OSC(SW) Michael Bennett
GMCM(SW) David Cress

To swipe General Doolittle’s book title, I’ll just say, I could never be so lucky again, to have such great senior enlisted men who took the time to invest in me.

As Engineer Officer in a surface ship, the maintenance and operation of the ships gyroscopes fell under my purview. We were in the South Atlantic Ocean, operating with one of the South American navies for a surface gunnery exercise.

The Weapons Officer was having a bad day, as the fall of shot from our main guns (5
“/54 caliber) wasn’t landing near the towed target. The CO, being the warfighter he was, as well as being a gunnery expert, asked Weps what the problem was. Reportedly, without much hesitation, he proclaimed the signal amplifiers for the gyros weren’t operating properly and therefore, the gun orders from the fire control system was off.

Gee, thanks, John, is really all I could think about as Captain Maxiner chewed on me about equipment not operating to specs. I called Ensign Hale and got him to work running checks. After a few hours, Nolan came back, showing me the sync amp outputs were all within specifications. I reported this to the Captain. What I found out later that day was that while we were scratching our heads and checking the gyros, the fire control division had been madly swapping out circuit cards in the MK 86 Gunfire Control System. If my sync amps were the problem, it was odd that they would be doing this kind of work on their system, particularly if you didn’t know where the problem was.

It turned out Weps hosed me, but I did get a dig in a few days later when we were doing another gunnery shoot. I wandered up to the bridge, and stood behind the Co and Weps, as the guns pounded out round after round and got calls back over the radio from the tug that was towing the target sled of “Alpha Mike” over and over. “AM” is the report that the round hit within close enough proximity to the target sled that it would have been a direct hit on a real ship.

I waited for several of the reports of success to come over the radio, then, when there was a lull in the firing, said loudly “Those sync amps sure are shooting good!” All I got was two hard, cold stares from the Captain and the Weapons Officer. All I could do was stand there and smile.

One small victory for the Engineering Department was racked up that day.

While reading something on Matt’s blog recently, he commented about taking the time to send a letter to the troops. While I’m sure it was being done before my experience in 1986, I found myself at the other end of a big letter writing campaign. Here’s my after action report:

I’m not sure if this story is about the real beginnings of Operation Dear Abby, but I believe it is. The purpose of this post is to use some history to give you some first hand accounts of the impact of letters from all over America have on our troops, and, quite honestly, to help you make a decision (for you fence sitters) to take the time to get out pen and paper and to communicate with those at the “pointy end of the spear.”

Sometime in mid to early 1985, an enterprising and forward looking sailor stationed aboard USS BIDDLE (CG-34), wrote a letter to Abigail Van Buren (Dear Abby) and asked if she would ask her readers to write to “any sailor” while our Battle Group was on deployment to the North Arabian Sea from Oct, 1985 through Apri1, 1986. This certainly was before the days of extensive access to the internet in the US, so “the word” would have to he passed by more conventional means. From my understanding, Abby checked with the Pentagon to make sure this would be acceptable to publish and (the obivious) answer was “yes.”

Fast forward about 9 months. We had left our east coast ports, sailed to Singapore, and then made an early return to the “Med,” in January, 1984, due to the belligerent stance taken by Col. Khaddafi. By April, we had conducted several “freedom of navigation” operations and had engaged Libyan surface slips in combat. Then the letters started to come.

Sometime about early April, mountains, as compared to the normal flow of mail, I’m not exaggerating, began to be delivered to the USS CORAL SEA Battle Group, addressed to “Any Sailor.” My staff was embarked aboard BIDDLE at the time, and when the logistic runs by helicopter from the Carrier came each day, we would get 3-4 large orange mailbags of just this mail. The bags would be taken to an area near the front of the mess deck, and left for all to dig through as time permitted. Believe me, we made time for this.

I’ll say this: It was better than Christmas, and all we were getting was letters from ”home.” It was special and mail, the hard copy kind, hand written stuff is/was always wonderful to receive from your real relatives, but this stuff was outstanding because all types of people from all over took a few moments of their lives to write to us; faceless, nameless service members floating about on haze grey vessels half a world away. I can’t put into words the elation these pieces of paper provided to so many of us.

We read them, passed around the ones we liked, and many sailors wrote back, I know at least a few sailors even met some of the writers. I recall letters from veterans, housewives, an airline pilot, school kids and even a few from some women inmates in the Florida Correctional system. The “thank yours” were numerous, but many included just plain old “slices of life” from the hearts and souls of American citizens, giving as a glimpse of their days.

These letters were a special gift and lifted the spirits of many. If your ever wonder if just taking a moment to share a little of your life with someone in the service is worth the effort, the answer from someone on the other end, is a resounding “it sure is!”

I know after we were released from the theatre, after a 3 week extension to bomb Libya in May, 1986, the continuous, massive amounts of mail were delivered to the Battle Groups left in the Med, and I suspect it got distributed widely about the Fleets in all oceans.

For my part, thank you to those who may have written back then, but today, especially to anyone who has been doing the same sort of thing for our service members. You are making a difference, and, as then, I know your seemingly small efforts are tremendously appreciated by the men and women far from home.

I used to not understand how a book written many years ago would have much bearing on my life. Since October 1998, I have been growing in understanding in how the wisdom of the Bible is applicable today. A vision of a life’s experience recently came to me to help me counter the objection of: “How can a document written 2000 and more years ago have any applicability in today’s society?”

I spent a career in the Navy, to include a duty that required me to be a Ship’s Navigator for 18 months. For 15 years before the moment the story following describes, I had been associated with the principles of celestial navigation, but it had not been my professional assignment to actually conduct the task. I first saw it practiced on the USS ANCHORAGE (LSD-36) by the bearded Lieutenant who was the Navigator. It was many years later when I took the sextant in my hand to look skyward and tell my Captain where I figured we where. My first effort, as a 1st Class Midshipman, was very inaccurate. I recall at least I was plotting us in the western Pacific, which is good, since we were there. By March of 1990, aboard USS CARR (FFG-52), my navigation skills had developed considerably.

I have experienced the same thing in my newfound Christian life. I am confident that with each passing day and devotion to learning, I will find the messages more precise and concise. I recall the cool, humid air rushing by my face as the ship cruised at about 15 knots across the calm waters of the Persian Gulf. The night is just about to leave twilight and the sky is cloudless. All of the stars of the heavens are not yet visible, just the brightest ones, to the eye, but they are there. The western sky is still dimly lit, providing a clear view of the horizon. I review my planning sheet, completed this afternoon, and make sure my recorder has his stopwatch ready. Standing with my legs apart to stabilize myself on the starboard bridge wing, I lift my sextant and preposition the adjustable arm to the estimated angle for the first star I will “shoot.” Gazing to the southeast, my practiced eye quickly focuses on Sirius as I bring the small telescope to my eye. My left hand pinches the release mechanism to make an adjustment of the mirror. I see a split picture of the sky around Sirius in the mirror and the horizon. I pause and watch the subtle upward movement of the star in my field of view brought on by the rotation of the Earth. I turn the fine adjustment wheel to shift the view where Sirius is slight below the level of the real view of the horizon. I begin to swing the sextant left and right about 20o, “swinging the arc” to ensure I have brought the star to the horizon correctly. My legs flex to compensate for the slow rolling of the ship to provide an accurate reading. A thought crosses my mind as I wait for Sirius to match the horizon. My body is in automatic after so many times I have shot celestial bodies in the course of my assignment. I think just how marvelous the human mind is and how it can accomplish so much with so little thought – a true gift. With each slow swing of the sextant, pivoting about my eye, Sirius rises slowly ever so slightly. My urge to manipulate the fine adjustment more is overridden by my desire to savoir the moment in this peaceful state. I perceive so much, yet I am so single-minded. In the background, the crackling static of the bridge-to-bridge radio and the footfalls of the Officer of the Deck coming onto the bridge wing are heard, but do not distract me. My recorder, a signalman without professional tasks at the moment, stares at the stopwatch he holds to the clipboard with his left hand, his other holding a pen over the star sighting log sheet, dimly illuminated by a small flashlight clipped to the board. As Sirius is about to cross the horizon, I say “Standby” to alert him, then a few short seconds later “MARK!” when the view in the mirror of the brightest star in the sky crosses the horizon, by my best reckoning. He notes the time and I take the sextant from my eye and shine a red flashlight on the angular reading. As I read the numbers to him, I think about how the reading I have just taken represents the light that was made from that star many millions of years ago by the fusion process. I am using it to figure out where my ship is today, but the light has had to travel across space in time to reach me so I could use it as a reference now.

God placed the stars in the heavens many years ago, so I might be able to “fix” my position, then from there I might be able to plot a course to my destination. I can come back later and take reading from the same stars to measure how far I have gone and in which direction and they are still gracing me with this information based on their presence in antiquity. The stars are large and bright and their light has spanned the millennia, being used by the ancient Phoenicians, Chinese and European sailors. The methods used by these ancient sailors have been refined, but the techniques are essentially unchanged today. The Bible is a book the does for you, what the stars did for me on that and many other nights. It may have been written many years ago, but it’s wisdom and guidance fixes us and our life’s direction today. Also, like the stars, they will report where you are, if you read them correctly. If you have traveled off course, they will reveal that to you, just as they can tell you are where you expect you would and should be to avoid navigation hazards. God made this book so we would have it today to avoid life’s hazards and it can tell you when you are right as well as wrong, once you study it.

After shooting Sirius, I repeated the process for Betelgeuse, Castor, Pollux, and Aldebaran. My recorder dutifully recorder the time and the “height observed.” I review the data sheet and head back to my state room. I close my door, reach for my nautical almanac, and HO 229 on my book shelf to begin the process of reducing what I have observed. I do the lengthy calculations manually for the intellectual exercise. After stepping through a long series of formula and look up tables, I arrive at values to mark on a nautical chart. The results of this next step will tell me how accurately I can determine the results. When I first began, it was not unusual to be within five nautical miles of where I should have fixed the ship, but as the days went by, my precision became more refined and therefore more correct “interpretations.” This is a similar process with the Bible and understanding. At first, you pick up this ancient text and know there is some wisdom, but you don’t understand how well it actually speaks to you. With time and regular exposure to the Scriptures, your understanding becomes more clear and concise.

The infinitesimally small arcs on the chart are drawn as straight lines, as the radius of the circle plotted in millions of light years in measurement. After a few minutes, a crossing of the lines indicates where the ship was about an hour ago, as I stood 41 feet above the water’s surface, calling marks to my recorder. I could not make an instantaneous judgement on my position, as the stars are so far and small, I could not interpret it until I studied it for some time. The Universe, created to show us God’s glory, is vast and too large to grasp, but when studied, some of the meaning will be revealed, if you make the time to observe it and devote time to interpret what you have observed in your “readings.”

As the navigator looks to the ancient sky to find his place on the face of the globe today, so can we look at this example to help understand the purpose of the Bible and how it relates to our lives now. Navigation is the combination of pure mathematics and personal proficiency in interpreting what you study. With dedicated effort, your ability to find the lessons of life become clearer. With understanding, you gain the ability to pass the information on to others, but they too must devote their energy to gain the ability to know for sure when the stars cross the horizon in the split mirror view. Knowing the “math” alone will not lead you to the answers, nor can you expect that using someone else’s observations to provide as much as you need to know, if you just “plug in the values.”

I sent an email to Matt at Black Five to make some personal observations about a story about John Kerry riding in a military aircraft. By telling a story of my Navy experience, I wanted to bring out differences in leadership. I could do this because of a man who was the first person I actually had working for me, once I was assigned my first leadership tasks at my first command, the USS MILWAUKEE (AOR-2).

I have decided to repost it here, as it is a tribute to Operations Specialist Chief Petty Officer Michael P. MacCaffery, USN, a man whom I owe much to for taking me aside and teaching me things that are the foundation of leadership. If he ever manages to read this, he’ll be upset that I didn’t refer to him as “RDC,” the Radarman rating that had been replaced with “Operations Specialist” just before I came into the service. He was proud of the old moniker, and had a certain passion about him as he chomped on his half smoked stub of a cigar and snarled “RDC MacCaffery!” to make sure everyone one knew who he really was, after being addressed or introduced as “OSC Mac.”

Here’s my posting:

Once more, it’s the “when you think no one is looking” stories that tell your heart…

Before I begin, let me say something I learned about leadership. My twenty years in the Navy began aboard a replenishment oiler out of Norfolk. As an Ensign, I was a Division Officer, fresh out of several professional schools and college, but with no hands on experience in leadership of any significance beyond Boy Scouts and “playing Army” at The Citadel. OSC Michael P. MacCaffrey, USN, began the age old duty of making something out of the know nothing that just became his “boss.” For at least the next six months (and I didn’t realize what this was until about 4 years later), the Chief would ask me if I’d like a cup of coffee. I’d say “yes,” and we’d head off to the “Goat Locker” (what a Chief’s Mess is called). Chief Mac would regal me with all sorts of stories, interspersed with questions, as we drank coffee, surrounded by the Backbone of the Fleet, the senior enlisted men. These stories were in the best fashion of parables. He slowly injected principles of leadership learned over centuries of human interaction, yet rasied to a fine art in modern western society, into my consciousneess, and sub-consciousness. That’s the ground work, for the
point of one of these coffee induced meetings (read “disguised lectures”).

The discussion went something like this:

Chief Mac: “Sir, if were at GQ (General Quarters) and we have to do Battle Messing (boxed meals delivered to yout combat stations, since you can’t leave during heavy fighting), if we come up one ration short, who doesn’t eat?”

Me: (Sort of knowing there was a key lesson here, and pondering the answer) “Me.” (I really had to think to come up with this answer, so I noticably hesitated before answering)

CM: “Right! What if we’re short two rations?

Me: (I answered quicker now, as I was finally catching up mentally) “You and I!”

CM: “You got it! What if we’re short three?”

Me: “You, I and the Leading Petty Officer!”

CM: “Right again. Sir, the other thing is before you open yours, you make the rounds of every man in the watch station area and make sure he has a proper meal and don’t you dare open yours up and start to eat, until they are ALL taken care of. Do this and these men will follow you anywhere.”

Over the next 19 years from that tour of duty, that simple leadership principle served me well, and the great leaders I worked for and with all had that as a part of their core beliefs. I was blessed by compentent people believing in me and together my units routinely stood out at the top of the heap, whether a Division, Department, Section, or a Ship, or Inspection or Training Team. It was more than about Battle Messing, it’s all about the highest duty of a leader is to make sure his people are cared for before him or herself. Think about that for a moment, and consider those you have worked with whom you hold in highest esteem, and know they demonstrated that over and over to you.

John Kerry grabbing the pizza in the story below is a statement not on his hunger, but his character. Thank God I had many Michael P. MacCafferys in my life as a leader. I’m saddened that John Kerry did not.

I found a blog a few weeks ago written by an active duty Navy Captain, and posted a comment to one of his remarks about refueling at sea. He posted it out for the general readership!

My first ship was a fleet replenishment oiler and our job was to drive along, all 40,000 tons of steel, 6 million gallons of diesel fuel and 600 tons of ammunition and spare parts, at about 12 kts on a steady course and have ships from aircraft carriers to small combatants to come up beside us, at about 120 to 160 feet (yes, feet!), at which point, we’d send over fueling hoses and hydraulically tensioned span wires for passing cargo. A short “alongside time” was about 20 minutes, which was more to keep proficient at maneuvering alongside, but we had some ships alongside for hours. For the ship coming alongside, they had to match our course and speed precisely for the entire time. It is a real exercise in relative motion.

Not only did we do it with one ship, but we had the manpower to have a ship on each side at one time. Oh, throw in that we carried two cargo helicopters, which would take off, then hover over the deck (while we went thru the ocean) to pick up pallet loads of cargo or ammunition/bombs on a hook under the “bird.” So, rigs “flying” to ships port and starboard, plus helos swooping in over the fight deck aft was just another day at the office for the 450 of us aboard the USS MILWAUKEE (AOR-2). You wouldn’t have know it be how smoothly the operation is executed, but death lurked all around. Between the incredible power of nature, and the frail nature of human engineering, mixed with moments of inattention, and it’s a recipe for disaster, but I never saw a serious accident on either side of that eveolution in 9 years of sea assignments, only two of which I was on the ship that just sat in the middle, with everyone else having the hard ship handling work. For 7 years of sea assignments, I was on the other side.

If you’re mildly curious about what I told Chap, then it’s at My post on Chapomatic. I’ll warn you, it’s sort of full of Navy language, but it should be understandable. If you need it clarified, just ask…..