A Long Comment: Mast and Failed Lives
Lex has a post about going to captain’s mast from the higher-ranking side of the “green table”. His Haloscan comment thingy doesn’t take more than 1000 characters, so I’ll post a response here. Acronym alert, and you probably should read his post first.
Looks like I won’t have the privilege of dealing with convening masts, but I’ve seen my share of being at the side of the green table. Lex focuses in his post about those we can’t save and who go back to a harder life. I hold as a small comfort that there are those we can bring back from the brink in time.
In my previous sea tour, our ship was seen as less than the normal studly SSN. This was because we carried SEALs, not Tomahawks, and due to START II no longer carried nuclear Polaris missiles. (It was one of the few times we in the Navy could either ‘confirm or deny’ such things, since we had a nice public treaty on it. Anything else and I gave the standard “won’t confirm or deny”.) We got more than the normal share of malcontents and guys who were failing on the other ships. In my department, we had a division that didn’t have a rate attached to it, Dry Deck Shelter division–and we put the guys who were having trouble in one division for whatever reason in there, with a couple of thefts from other divisions to add flavor.
Let’s just say I had a share of leadership challenges. But my little team, because I had some great first class petty officers and an occasional outstanding chief, did the toughest kind of work possible on a submarine–close enough to the coast I could swim to it, in seaborne traffic so thick we could not ever stop turning to avoid colliding or grounding, far from home and with a high op tempo. Some of those folks would have failed in life or failed in their job if I hadn’t been lucky enough to have leaders who would be able to take the time.
The proudest moment in my career didn’t have a ceremony. It was when I found out that every one of my “PNA eight times” first classes made chief, and my department “terminal rank” chief made COB and Master Chief. A close second is seeing one of my guys, now a second class and in school, who was on the brink of failing those years ago, or seeing one of the divers I mentored in ROTC. Hell, the second class “PNA forever” guy I somehow bamboozled the captain into CAPping to first wound up running the division when it made a bad mistake (another story, one time)
But if the kid takes an E, or drives drunk, or doesn’t give a suicide signal I can catch, there’s nothing I can do. Our society works partly because we can exile those who can’t hack it, or are just plain unlucky, and exile we do.
5 Responses to “A Long Comment: Mast and Failed Lives”
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July 25th, 2004 at 2:04 pm
And it’s speaks volumes for you that those are considered “Proud Moments” and well they should.
Too often leaders forget that they are only as good as their team.
Good for you Chap! Thanks for sharing.
July 25th, 2004 at 5:30 pm
That’s a great post, Chap – thanks for tracking back. You’re right, it wouldn’t have fit neatly in a 1000 character haloscan box. There have been times when I thought about upgrading, but every once in a while some one will come along and make me glad I haven’t ;-)
Nice work on your hard job.
July 26th, 2004 at 12:17 am
Thanks. I wasn’t mentioning it to get kudos–the guys did the work, not me–but to illustrate that there is good to balance the bad in how we work with people. Sometimes things just work out.
That STS1(SS) that got CAPped to PO1 was a gem. He couldn’t pass the test for love or money–but knew everything about that ship’s sonar, and was a father and mentor to many in the Cone (forward half of the ship). Guy was a grandfather, even–and one of his guys married his daughter after the junior fellow detached. Last good story–after I put the PO2 in charge, the PO2 was doing fine–and when we pulled into Brisbane, he won US$43,000 at roulette the night we pulled in!
Last I heard he was working at what he was happiest at–recruiting in his home town–and doing well in his paid off house (thanks partially to that roulette strike).
I should write about that other story one day of how Sonar leadership changed–I got in some trouble doing it. I scared my boss more than he liked, I think, as I knew something bad was coming down the pike and “flamed on” preemptively and loudly before anyone else on the waterfront knew what was up. One of the connected subjects is still a little raw in the submarine force, though. I’ll wait until some more folks retire before I do.
July 27th, 2004 at 4:52 pm
Sometimes “being exiled” really is one of the best things that can happen to us.
July 27th, 2004 at 7:36 pm
True enough–it is a sort of system reboot. So is going to jail or getting deported or dropping out of school.
For most folks, though, it isn’t a good thing in the short term, at a time in life when the kid will need a little help. For some it’s devastating. For almost all, except for a rare few who can rationalize sufficiently, it’s one of those things you think about for the rest of your life. I know a few who have done well after leaving the service in, shall we say, a timeframe shorter than their initial enlistment document. Success can happen, but it’s hard.
Sink the ship due to falling asleep on watch, though, and it’s more than yourself at risk.
You pays your money and you takes your chance.