barbtries a blog: letter from a sailor

Wednesday, July 09, 2003

letter from a sailor

sent from fort meade, maryland, about a month ago. line breaks and illustrations added by the owner of the blog.

Andy and his brother at boot camp grad 04-18-03

hi mom. sorry ive been negligent about writing, but ive been, um, busy.

schools goin good, im almost done with the first section, which is newswriting. and public affairs. grrrr public affairs. two to four hours a day watching powerpoint presentation while some retired marine reads the information off the projector. "death by powerpoint" as it is referred to by students and instructors. but yeah, the writing has been easy as hell so far. they give me information and the order it goes in and all i have to do is make complete sentences out of it.

im on duty this weekend(hoorah duty!) so i dont get to leave the barracks except to smoke or go to chow. somewhere between Phase and restriction is duty. oh and i get to stand sleep deprivation watches all weekend yay! but its okay, ill make up for it next weekend somehow.

oh, the people in charge of me here have no sense of pride in the navy. it works like this--army, marines, and air force march to and back from school with drill instructor like people accompanying them. as a result, they are in perfect formation at all times. navy, since we own the seas, have more style than the other services, and are just all around superior, dont waste our time with those silly formalities. we keep a loose formation, talk in ranks, and basically strut to school and straggle home. well, thats all coming to an end. these navy people in charge decided that we should conform to the other service detachments. yeah, okay, lets change to be like them. dammit, they should be like us. we learned how to march in boot camp, why should we do it here? we have ceremonial guard and honor guard, people who specialize in marching--dont they do enough marching that we dont have to?

apparently not cuz now when we march, we look like a bunch of damn soldiers. im just waiting for the day they issue us camoflauge uniforms so well look like soldiers all the time. grrrr.

anyway, thats my gripe for the day, and i intend to send a full report to the Chief of Information, Chief of Naval Operations, Secretary of the Navy, and Secretary of Defense by next Monday(I'm on duty i have nothing better to do.) i would send it to the Commander in Chief, but im quite sure he wouldnt understand it. hed prolly come out saying something like "Our ships do not have to march. they can defend our oceans perfectly well without marching. also, they do not have enough legs to march." or something like that. well, im gonna go smoke before duty muster(gathering up the troops so we know which trash cans we have to empty) i love you goodbye
Andy

andy's grandpa frank, my father, in the navy 1941

- posted by barbara @ 7/09/2003 04:33:00 PM

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