13 months of C-Rats in the 'Nam 67-68. Showers sometimes. Hot water rarely. Wanted to get there until I got there, but never wrote home how bad the suck actually sucked because it was our job, we volunteered (the Corps was still volunteer when I enlisted) and looking back it was what it was. War.
What with a father and a couple of uncles who had a real long vacation in Europe in the '40s, the return letters wouldn't have been pretty. I'm sure the greatest generation knew the suck sucked, and chose not to complain. Seems like another piece of evidence that some people will blame everyone else for the results of their own decisions.
my grandfathers spent years gone from home in the 1940s. My dad and uncles in the 1960s. Me in the 1980s-2000s … and yeah, it’s the suck and if you don’t embrace it you won’t get through it. MREs in the desert in 1990 … not sure if I would prefer the desert or the jungle.
I was on a Med cruise and we stopped in a couple of warm, dry places. To my remembrance, they all smelled like the final result of MREs (Meals Refusing to Exit). The jungle didn’t smell like that, though some of the villes did.
We did what we had to do. It is frustrating to see the same crap happening over and over. The venue changes, but the blood’s the same color.
Great perspective. I served only in the Taxpayer Division but I’ve always figured if servicemen weren’t complaining it was time to check pulses. I’ve been reading Plutarch. There is nothing new under the sun.
If you poke around the internet enough you see that a lot of these statements come with the qualifiers "longest deployment since the Vietnam war". Or post WW II. I believe the longest deployment was in WW II of the Hornet. There were "landfalls" but from the Continental US to the Continental US was close to 500 days. And no internet or cell phones in those days.
I got on a plane on August 18, 1990 at Hunter Army Air Field in Savannah to fly to Saudi Arabia … ironically the anniversary of getting on a plane for basic training. I got on a plane on April 15, 1991 in Saudi Arabia to come home … also an ironic anniversary LOL …. 240 days on the nose …. about half the length of Hornet’s combat cruise. Those dudes had it hard.
The key is to take it the night before. That's what my mom did. I should have too. I think scaloppine patches are much better. Expensive here but you can buy them in Canada over the counter. Last for 3 days and by then you become accustomed to it and most of the time the rolling motion. Makes you sleepy for the first day so I put one on the night before. Also use a bandaid to hold it in place so it doesn't some off in the shower. Makes your mouth dry the first 24 hours also.
Have any of the Lincoln's sailors complained about leeches crawling up their pants legs to their groin? Or the gift-bearing female Anopheles mosquitos? Do they have scorpions on aircraft carriers? And that's not to mention the periodic AK-47 fire from, maybe .... 30-50 feet away. But despite these occasional irritants I guess we had it good in Vietnam. After all, when I led a reconnaissance platoon, we were pampered: Every 3 weeks or so we would get to a firebase and some of them actually gave us canvas buckets with a shower head on the bottom, all suspended from a pole. And we were spoiled -- spoiled, I tell you -- with a gallon of our very own personal water to pour in the bucket and bask in as it attempted to clean our dirty, stinky bodies. But I never heard of those showers backing up or not working. Not once. And the shower heads were perfectly machined to allow a continuous flow of water -- for at least 50 seconds or so. AND, you may not believe this, but I can say with 100% certainty that we never lost e-mail connectivity a single time! Not once. So, I can feel theise poor swabbies' pain.
I am the widow of an army helicopter pilot who served two tours in Vietnam. Like the crew of the Abraham Lincoln, he volunteered to join the army when he graduated from the Citadel ROTC program. It isn’t that I don’t feel some compassion for the sailors. However , their lot is better by far than that of the teenage draftees who slogged through the rice patties and jungles of Vietnam, never knowing whether their next step would be on a mine or whether the movement in the bushes was a Vietcong with a rifle aimed at them.
My family survived through my husband‘s two tours in Vietnam and my son’s deployment with Desert Storm and Desert Shield. Yes we were concerned. Yes, we knew their living conditions were not great. But we would never think of complaining. As American patriots, we also serve who only stand and wait.
thank you for the lovely comment May … I actually know, closely, several Citadel graduates … and like your family, served in Desert Shield/Storm and some other later deployments … thank you for sharing
I served on a fast attack submarine in the 70s as an Engineroom Supervisor. The engine could get 130 degrees if we were having AC problems. I had to go in the reactor compartment in hot standby, no radiation but the system is at 600 degrees, I had no idea what the air temperature was. Not one time did I wish I was in Vietnam.
With all that said, a lot of the B.S. around the Lincoln was reported by an Iranian News Agency and people ran with it. I brought this up to someone on Substack and I got blocked.
That’s my point about modern social media and news …. Don’t f’ing talk about stuff on social media. And I can only imagine what the reactor compartment might get like … inside a tank turret in the desert was pretty bad.
The source was related to me as Tasnim News Agency. The actual Iranian State Media News on the story about a riot and 7 dead sailors. So, based on that, I'd say that everything else is in question. Also, if the conditions were really that bad, yhe captain should be relieved. Concerning bad toilets and showers, what a bunch of crap. If something is broke you fix it. The crew polices it's own. If it's not done that way chaos ensues, at l east in my experience.
Amen brother. 22 years as an infantryman and pilot and I don’t recall many hot meals during wartime. Or clean sheets. Cry me a fuckin river sailors. You joined the navy.
My stepson's on the Lincoln, and we have not complained. While it's been very hard for him, he's maintained a good attitude throughout.
What sucks for us is that every time one of these news stories comes out, we get barraged with texts from people swayed by them. The recent news completely misrepresented the facts, as they had a port call just a month ago, and they're now eating fine. It was a short port call, not everyone was able to leave the carrier, and the Lincoln had just broken the Navy's record for continuous days at sea without a port call. But the news made it sound as if sailors were so deprived, they were jumping overboard to their deaths. Shame on the senators issuing press releases and the reporters gobbling up this propaganda.
I am positive that 99% of the families are NOT part of the bad social media activity. Huge kudos to your stepson for doing his duty and keeping that good attitude. It’s not easy. I’ve had multiple 200+ day deployments and they were never easy. But it is absolutely something I knew could happen when I raised my right hand.
Agreed on the families; I assumed as much when I read the news articles. Thanks for the kudos; I will pass that along to him. And you make a good point about expectations. I'll be interested to see where he is with that in his heart, though he was pretty well prepared. Unlike many of his brethren, he did not wash out when tested. He had the advantage of being older than the other recruits when he went through basic and the rigors of his nuke training.
13 months of C-Rats in the 'Nam 67-68. Showers sometimes. Hot water rarely. Wanted to get there until I got there, but never wrote home how bad the suck actually sucked because it was our job, we volunteered (the Corps was still volunteer when I enlisted) and looking back it was what it was. War.
What with a father and a couple of uncles who had a real long vacation in Europe in the '40s, the return letters wouldn't have been pretty. I'm sure the greatest generation knew the suck sucked, and chose not to complain. Seems like another piece of evidence that some people will blame everyone else for the results of their own decisions.
my grandfathers spent years gone from home in the 1940s. My dad and uncles in the 1960s. Me in the 1980s-2000s … and yeah, it’s the suck and if you don’t embrace it you won’t get through it. MREs in the desert in 1990 … not sure if I would prefer the desert or the jungle.
I was on a Med cruise and we stopped in a couple of warm, dry places. To my remembrance, they all smelled like the final result of MREs (Meals Refusing to Exit). The jungle didn’t smell like that, though some of the villes did.
We did what we had to do. It is frustrating to see the same crap happening over and over. The venue changes, but the blood’s the same color.
we all wear green and bleed red for sure.
Great perspective. I served only in the Taxpayer Division but I’ve always figured if servicemen weren’t complaining it was time to check pulses. I’ve been reading Plutarch. There is nothing new under the sun.
as I told junior NCOs as a senior one …. you can tell there’s a problem once a soldier stops bitching ;-)
If you poke around the internet enough you see that a lot of these statements come with the qualifiers "longest deployment since the Vietnam war". Or post WW II. I believe the longest deployment was in WW II of the Hornet. There were "landfalls" but from the Continental US to the Continental US was close to 500 days. And no internet or cell phones in those days.
I got on a plane on August 18, 1990 at Hunter Army Air Field in Savannah to fly to Saudi Arabia … ironically the anniversary of getting on a plane for basic training. I got on a plane on April 15, 1991 in Saudi Arabia to come home … also an ironic anniversary LOL …. 240 days on the nose …. about half the length of Hornet’s combat cruise. Those dudes had it hard.
Plus you didn't have to worry about getting seasick. So advantage there!
heh, you've never been on a tank moving across the desert I see!
No, you got me on that one.
we had a new lieutenant discover that he was susceptible to seasickness .... ended up taking a lot of dramamine.
The key is to take it the night before. That's what my mom did. I should have too. I think scaloppine patches are much better. Expensive here but you can buy them in Canada over the counter. Last for 3 days and by then you become accustomed to it and most of the time the rolling motion. Makes you sleepy for the first day so I put one on the night before. Also use a bandaid to hold it in place so it doesn't some off in the shower. Makes your mouth dry the first 24 hours also.
Have any of the Lincoln's sailors complained about leeches crawling up their pants legs to their groin? Or the gift-bearing female Anopheles mosquitos? Do they have scorpions on aircraft carriers? And that's not to mention the periodic AK-47 fire from, maybe .... 30-50 feet away. But despite these occasional irritants I guess we had it good in Vietnam. After all, when I led a reconnaissance platoon, we were pampered: Every 3 weeks or so we would get to a firebase and some of them actually gave us canvas buckets with a shower head on the bottom, all suspended from a pole. And we were spoiled -- spoiled, I tell you -- with a gallon of our very own personal water to pour in the bucket and bask in as it attempted to clean our dirty, stinky bodies. But I never heard of those showers backing up or not working. Not once. And the shower heads were perfectly machined to allow a continuous flow of water -- for at least 50 seconds or so. AND, you may not believe this, but I can say with 100% certainty that we never lost e-mail connectivity a single time! Not once. So, I can feel theise poor swabbies' pain.
next time I write one of these, I'm just turning it over to you!
I am the widow of an army helicopter pilot who served two tours in Vietnam. Like the crew of the Abraham Lincoln, he volunteered to join the army when he graduated from the Citadel ROTC program. It isn’t that I don’t feel some compassion for the sailors. However , their lot is better by far than that of the teenage draftees who slogged through the rice patties and jungles of Vietnam, never knowing whether their next step would be on a mine or whether the movement in the bushes was a Vietcong with a rifle aimed at them.
My family survived through my husband‘s two tours in Vietnam and my son’s deployment with Desert Storm and Desert Shield. Yes we were concerned. Yes, we knew their living conditions were not great. But we would never think of complaining. As American patriots, we also serve who only stand and wait.
thank you for the lovely comment May … I actually know, closely, several Citadel graduates … and like your family, served in Desert Shield/Storm and some other later deployments … thank you for sharing
I served on a fast attack submarine in the 70s as an Engineroom Supervisor. The engine could get 130 degrees if we were having AC problems. I had to go in the reactor compartment in hot standby, no radiation but the system is at 600 degrees, I had no idea what the air temperature was. Not one time did I wish I was in Vietnam.
With all that said, a lot of the B.S. around the Lincoln was reported by an Iranian News Agency and people ran with it. I brought this up to someone on Substack and I got blocked.
That’s my point about modern social media and news …. Don’t f’ing talk about stuff on social media. And I can only imagine what the reactor compartment might get like … inside a tank turret in the desert was pretty bad.
The source was related to me as Tasnim News Agency. The actual Iranian State Media News on the story about a riot and 7 dead sailors. So, based on that, I'd say that everything else is in question. Also, if the conditions were really that bad, yhe captain should be relieved. Concerning bad toilets and showers, what a bunch of crap. If something is broke you fix it. The crew polices it's own. If it's not done that way chaos ensues, at l east in my experience.
A tale as old as time... Thucycides, Book 6, https://web.viu.ca/johnstoi/thucydides/thucydides_4.htm
Amen brother. 22 years as an infantryman and pilot and I don’t recall many hot meals during wartime. Or clean sheets. Cry me a fuckin river sailors. You joined the navy.
My stepson's on the Lincoln, and we have not complained. While it's been very hard for him, he's maintained a good attitude throughout.
What sucks for us is that every time one of these news stories comes out, we get barraged with texts from people swayed by them. The recent news completely misrepresented the facts, as they had a port call just a month ago, and they're now eating fine. It was a short port call, not everyone was able to leave the carrier, and the Lincoln had just broken the Navy's record for continuous days at sea without a port call. But the news made it sound as if sailors were so deprived, they were jumping overboard to their deaths. Shame on the senators issuing press releases and the reporters gobbling up this propaganda.
BTW, I published your garden content. Looks like you missed it: https://www.brunettegardens.com/p/your-kitchen-gardens
I am positive that 99% of the families are NOT part of the bad social media activity. Huge kudos to your stepson for doing his duty and keeping that good attitude. It’s not easy. I’ve had multiple 200+ day deployments and they were never easy. But it is absolutely something I knew could happen when I raised my right hand.
Agreed on the families; I assumed as much when I read the news articles. Thanks for the kudos; I will pass that along to him. And you make a good point about expectations. I'll be interested to see where he is with that in his heart, though he was pretty well prepared. Unlike many of his brethren, he did not wash out when tested. He had the advantage of being older than the other recruits when he went through basic and the rigors of his nuke training.