I Was Almost Busted

 During the last months of my five years, I was nearly busted down in rank.

Marty Larson was a First Class Petty Officer (E-6), while I was an E-5. I wouldn't normally disparage a shipmate, but he later dishonored himself by getting caught stealing from other guys' lockers in berthing, and the Navy canned him. But at the time, he wanted to qualify as an Identification Supervisor, and as both the Division Training Petty Officer and the TIC he worked under, I determined he was a train wreck, so I refused to qualify him. An example of professional rank overbearing military rank.

A few days later, I was busy laying a new track on the chart table specifically for the Captain. Larson stepped up to me and told me to go clean the passageway. I hadn't cleaned anything outside of all hands "evolutions," as they called big hauling, refueling, and replenishing jobs and such, in two years, so I went over to the Seaman lounging at the end of the surface alley to assign them the work and went back to laying this track. After a while, Larson came back over and forcefully told me, "No! I told YOU to go clean the passageway." (I hadn't cleaned anything in around 2 years).

The Mistake

Unfortunately, I responded, "Fuck off, Larson." Annnnnd unfortunately, my entire chain of command was having an impromptu pow-wow right behind us, within earshot. My Leading Petty Officer, Senior Chief, CICO (CIC officer), Department Head (Lt. Commander), XO, and CO were there. From the XO down, each dropped a disciplinary chit on me, including Larson.

Now, you can only go to the Executive Officer's Inquiry (XOI), which precedes Captain's Mast, for one disciplinary problem on one chit. There cannot be duplicate chits. Still, I had to work to get each of them to drop their chit, except for Larson, who claimed he couldn't drop his in the face of those witnesses and still be taken seriously as a First Class Petty Officer. I stepped closer to him and whispered, "It's OK, Marty, nobody takes you seriously now."

The command has 90 days from the chit date to bring it to XOI. On day 90, they announced XOI, and Larson finally took pleasure in telling me, "Strike below, get into your dress blues and report to XOI."

I was done for. I'd spent nearly five years trying to walk a perfect line, and I'd gotten too full of myself.

But I had a secret weapon.

And here's where I need to be a little vague: a few months earlier, a senior Radioman distributed the ship's drug-test results message to all the ship's department heads, which was wrong. First, the XO must sign off on the message; only then is it distributed. So they retrieved the distributed message, got the XO's authorization, and redistributed it. My close friend Radioman Everett (RIP—who I'd served with on mess duty) noticed something fishy: the first message implicated a senior member of the ship's personnel, but his name was missing from the second. Then Ev promptly copied the first message to his closest friends. I felt I had nothing to lose, so I prepared to request a closed XOI (all must leave except the XO and the ship's Master-at-Arms), slide that evidence across the table to the XO, and point out that nobody's perfect.

Our Master-at-Arms was Master Chief Radioman McCormick. A quirk of our new watch rotation schedule was that the Captain assigned a Radioman to sit in Combat Information Center (CIC) to communicate with the guys in Radio and change any frequencies we might need to "kick" for being too "dirty." This was normally the job of the Leading Petty Officer of the Watch in CIC (an E-6).

Not only was the Radioman unnecessary, but MCRM McCormick didn't have enough Radiomen to cover this new watch position. Fortunately, the Master Chief covered the position during my watch rotation. He saw how I operated in CIC, and during dull watches, a bunch of us would chat and tell stories over an internal circuit we invited him to; he rewarded us by sharing his salty stories. That's how I knew that after 29 years of service, the Master Chief was getting out instead of taking his full 30. As he put it, "I always told my wife I'd get out when it stopped being fun."

Everett had also been telling McCormick Shook and Everett stories for a couple of years because Mark and I had amazing adventures both onboard the ship and on liberty. That probably helped me here, too.

So, on my way to strike below and get into my dress blues as commanded by Larson, Master Chief McCormick was rolling up the passageway to XOI, and he stopped me:

"Shook, I was told to gather the paperwork for your XOI, but I gotta tell ya, I can't find it."
With my rank on the line, I was completely confused, so I asked, still in my stupor, "What does that mean?"

"It means no XOI for you," he said, winking, and continued his casual saunter up the passageway like a man well in control of his world.

I was still stunned, standing in that passageway with my adrenaline slowly evaporating for quite some time before it finally sank in...

I returned to CIC, where Larson basically bull-rushed me, bellowing, "I told you to strike below —"

"No, Larson," I interrupted, "there's no XOI for me today," giving him no other information and leaving him mystified as I walked away with an even louder yet unspoken, "Fuck you, Larson."

I was untouchable.

Oh, and once again, your real shipmates will protect you when they know how real you are. My best advice to anyone on a ship: know your network and treat your shipmates straightforwardly, and as if you already owe them a favor.

Shipmate is a sacred word in Navy terms.