Pyrrhic Victories

Yesterday I didn't get to post because I was out shooting the bull with some soldiers explaining to them the rigors of submarine life. It all started when one of them started talking about some poncho liner that they called a Wubby that is apparently a soldiers' best friend in the field. The talk migrated to how cold it gets in Colorado where my unit is stationed and how Wubby is great gear in that environment, so I had to mention that I prefer the 70F and florescent weather of a submarine. As you may have noted from previous posts, that is close to an outright lie, but you have to defend your culture to the barbarians.

Defending the Navy in the presence of the Army is not as easy as it sounds for more reasons than the necessity to convey big thoughts with small words. (Sorry, that was pejorative. I was just playing off the barbarians versus culture theme that I've got going on in my head. It is the Army as a whole that is barbarian, not the individuals as that last sentence implies.) Soldiers, SEALs, and some hardcore Presbyterians (Mary/Heather, don't get mad - I only meant it as a joke.) revel in their misery. The more they have sacrificed and the more pain they have endured, the greater their contribution. Not this guy. I am not at all a fan of misery. In fact, I generally try to avoid misery. Nevertheless, to defend the Navy, you have to make it sound like a hard life, which in many ways it is even though we don't get shot at or blown up as much as our green cousins. You also have to define misery on their terms: physical misery. The average soldier measures misery in 20 mile humps, days without hot meals, number of times their vehicle has been blown up. To have street credibility, you have to make it sound physically uncomfortable and hard because barbarians understand brute force rather than mental anguish.

And poop. Barbarians understand poop. Poop is universally unpleasant. The immediate trump card to make submarine life sound unpleasant is to talk about the sanitation system that is blown overboard at high pressures and has been known to be blown inboard on accident. When you are deep, it takes a lot of pressure to push the poop outside of the boat because of the back pressure of the water, and that pressure is supplied with very high pressure air. It has been known to happen that someone will open the flush valve on the toilet when this blowing sanitaries is in progress, and the poop will blow inboard with fire hose like velocity.

That is gross, I know. It never happened on my ship when I was on board, thank goodness, but it is a constant risk and fear and it is one that the average Joe in the Army can understand. And respect. Even those whose truck has been blown up respects people who brave a fire hose of poop when they flush the toilet. One soldier tried to counter how once a helicopter had blown over a port-a-john with a soldier in it, but that was an isolated incident that just does not match the ubiquitous threat of high pressure poop.

So I gained respect and defended the Navy by discussing sanitation mishaps. (Keep the demographic in mind before you rush to judge.) This point of pride is equivalent to having the best borscht recipe. The appeal is limited to a small group whose taste is in question to begin with. And that, dear readers, is why there was no post last night. I wouldn't be surprised if you wished there was no post tonight, too.

**Under the oddly enough category, most junior officers on a submarine would gladly choose to deal personally and closely with the high pressure poop than to deal with the jack-booted thugs that Naval Reactors sends down to do inspections. That is true submarine hardship, terror, and misery. But you can't convey that pain and terror to people who have not dealt with Naval Reactors or the Reactor Safeguard Examination team.