"Aye sir, we'll do our best."

Or the day you were laying in a rack at Norfolk Naval Hospital and a fellow you shared coffee with many nights on the bridge, turned up to tell you that the COB was getting gahdam sick and tired of not seeing your ugly face at morning quarters. You knew that he didn't have to do that… And that a man in his position must have things a helluva lot more important in his life than visiting some 'flat on his back' E-3 jerk in a place, stinking of ether and alcohol. There were other very fine officers who would not have done that for a variety of very valid reasons, but you don't get a great feeling when you recall their names and faces… You just remember they were damn competent officers, good men who chose to keep their distance and maintain some kind of mystical social separation.

When a submarine takes a fatal plunge to the ocean floor, all aboard gain and maintain a unique eternal equality.

I am not one who cared or resented an arms-length relationship with certain individuals forward. I have always felt that if a man is honest in his belief and conducts himself in accordance with what he feels is correct, then good men are obligated to accord him respect. In my day, that was the universally accepted norm in the Submarine Service.

All of us saw officers' hats on tables in exotic locations, not normally frequented by nuns and radio evangelists. We saw coats with shoulder boards hanging on hooks in establishments, that sold intimate companionship in thirty-minute increments. And, we remember assisting officers returning to the boat slightly under the weather and having difficulty with their mother tongue, down into the forward torpedo room so the below decks watch could assist them to a point of authorized horizontal storage. We all saw it and knew (A) It was nobody's business and (B) It was part of the fraternal obligation of those wearing twin fish, to make damn sure it remained nobody's business.

I recall riding back in a launch and some officer, off another boat anchored out and 'swinging the hook', was talking about some dark-eyed honey turning tricks in some commercial establishment ashore.

"Gentlemen, she was pure heaven. She knew things that you never saw in books. Any of you guys ever hear of the upside down butterfly dance?"

"Hey sir… Was her name Juanita Cha-Kita?"

"Sure was… You have her?"

"Yeah, had her twice… Once last year and again last week. Man, he's not lying… That chic packs a college education into fifteen minutes."

"Hey sailor… You goin' back?"

"Yes sir… Sir?"

"Yes…"

"You think that makes us family?"

In a way, when our DD-214s turned yellow, our Dolphins tarnished, our hair turned gray and we started scheduling yearly prostate exams, we all became family and on a first-name basis. We peed in the same location, ate at the same tables and wore the same kinds of obnoxious Hawaiian shirts. We told lies and put our arms around each others shoulders and laughed… Laughs nobody else would have understood. We introduced the women in our lives and we were family.

And you know what? The gahdam world maintained its scheduled rotation and didn't fall off its axis.

Note: Gene "Willy" Williams, our beloved COB, lost  his brother on 10 April!
Please send him your thoughts and prayers!