Sailing To Oblivium: August 2, 2017

The guys on the ship called him “Shorty” and that was no term of camaraderie in the United States Navy. I called him Danny and he liked that.

He had been a “Bubblehead,” i.e. a submarined sailor. Long before, though, he had washed out and been assigned to tender duty, a huge step down. See, he tended to “drink a bit.” I guess he stood about five-foot-four in his Navy boondockers. Sometimes, though, after one too many drinks while on liberty, he saw himself as tall and tough as Gary Cooper. He persisted in that notion, no matter how many times the Charleston, South Carolina police disabused him of it.

Unlike the 99 percent of police officers in our great county who are brave, dedicated, and respectful of rights, the ones in Charleston, at least back in the late 1960s, didn’t need a president of the United States to tell them to rough-up suspects. It was in their DNA, especially if the “suspect” wore a military uniform. Uniforms of the United States Navy, in particular, excited their “whip-ass” genes.

The last time I saw Danny wasn’t the first time I had seen him being escorted up the gangplank AWOL. It was the worst time, though. He had to be half-carried and I wouldn’t have recognized his face had not someone told me who he was. Even the front of his blue Navy blouse was covered in caked blood.

“He done been fightin’ them police again,” Seaman Richardson said. “I told him about that.” Seaman Richardson stood over six-feet tall, weighed over 200, and was a pretty rough customer from all accounts. He was a gentle giant, but some shipmates from his home town of Memphis swore he had once cleaned out an entire holding cell of men bent on violating his honor in ways he deemed improper. Nobody crossed Richardson, but even Richardson didn’t cross the Charleston police.

Anyway, that last trip up the gangplank with a bruised and battered face was enough for the Navy. They could make sailors like Danny disappear quickly, and they did.

We pretty much forgot about him, that is until a shipmate from his home town came back from leave one day. The Deck Force crew began to buzz. “Hey, did you hear about that guy Shorty … the one they shit-canned last winter? Well guess what?”

Yes, guess what. It seems that Danny and some friends were at a lake watching people swim when a young girl drifted out too far and fell from her inner tube. There were no lifeguards and the crowd froze as she screamed, all except Danny.

You can guess the rest. He got her back to her tube, but he couldn’t make it himself. His waterlogged clothes pulled him under. Our informant swore that, when they finally got his body ashore, he had grown six inches in height. We chose to believe him. After all, shipmates are shipmates, and many a man among us would be taller in death than in life.

To Shipmates: those who serve
 with a thin sheet of steel between
 them and the bottom of the sea.