How Afraid They Are

Posted on May 2, 2013 by Sir EJ Drury II

As Fate would have Her way, it was not long before I was pushed over the thresh­old by another aspect of Her­self, Nature. Feel­ing the urgency to defe­cate, one day, I slipped off the mess decks to use the head after I had tried in vain to find Far­ris who had wan­dered off to frat­er­nize with some of his cronies. Since the head was only about fif­teen feet off the mess decks, I didn’t think Far­ris would mind if I stepped out to use it with­out his per­mis­sion. On the way back, I ran into Marty in the pas­sage­way and stopped to talk to him. As soon as I spied Far­ris out of the cor­ner of my eye, I knew by the look on his face that I was dead meat.

Like a vul­ture, he swooped down on me, screech­ing, “You’re on report.”

“What for?” I asked.

“For dis­obey­ing a direct order,” he squawked, “and for leav­ing your appointed place of duty with­out my permission.”

“I had to take a shit, Far­ris,” I tried to explain to him. “And when I couldn’t find you…”

It was use­less try­ing to explain any­thing to him, for he was totally unrea­son­able. “You’re on report,” he kept scream­ing into my face, over ‘n’ over. “You’re on report.”

“I’ll tell you one god­damn thing, Far­ris,” I finally inter­jected. “I have never once had to ask any­one on this ship for per­mis­sion to take a shit, unless I was on watch. And I’ll be damned if I’m going start now.”

Imme­di­ately, he spun around and raced off across the mess decks, only to dis­ap­pear down the for­ward passageway.

“The guy’s a f***in’ ani­mal!” Exclaimed Marty.

“Nah,” I replied, “he’s just afraid; that’s all. Like the rest of them, he’s afraid of the tide of resis­tance that has risen up from amongst us plebes, and threat­ens to sweep over the ship like a tidal wave.

“Don’t ya see it, Marty?” I asked him. “There’s a spirit aris­ing all over this ship to stir up oppo­si­tion to what we are being asked to do in Viet­nam. Haven’t you felt it ris­ing up inside of you like magma in a volcano?”

“If you mean the hate I feel for the Navy and f***in’ lif­ers like Far­ris, yeah, I’ve felt it,” replied Marty, “eatin’ away at my insides till I’m ready to f***in’ explode.”

“Can’t you see, Marty?” I exclaimed. “Fill­ing you with hate for the Navy is soul’s way of let­ting you know she can­not tol­er­ate the life you are leading.

“Don’t you recall how alive we all felt as we shared with each other the rebel­lious ideas our souls had awak­ened in us? Don’t you see how list­less we’ve all got­ten since they cracked down on us with their decrees? Don’t you ever feel like reach­ing out and grab­bing hold of the life that would relieve the ache inside your heart and set you free?

“Don’t you see what we do to our­selves, Marty? When the soul draws us to her with tan­ta­liz­ing fan­tasies, we go to her. But let her demand com­mit­ment from us, and we drop her like a hot potato for some whore or totally unbe­fit­ting way of life that nei­ther sat­is­fies our desires nor ful­fills our needs.

“Why? Why do we reject one set of fan­tasies as unre­al­is­tic and accept another as real? Why don’t we decide for our­selves what is real?

“Don’t you see, it’s because we’re afraid? Because their fantasy’s over­shad­owed the hearts and minds of men for so long, we’ve grown up fear­ing what they can do to us if we dis­obey them.

“While the havoc wreaked upon our souls, by our par­tic­i­pa­tion in their crimes against human­ity, is far greater than the dam­age they could ever inflict upon our bod­ies for our non­co­op­er­a­tion, we kow­tow to their god—to the cyclops who resides within the great pyra­mid on the almighty dol­lar. As the pawns in this fan­tasy, we are taught that it’s our sacred duty to sac­ri­fice our lives to this god in the bloody rit­u­als that are peri­od­i­cally orches­trated around the hid­den issue of main­tain­ing, at all costs, the opu­lent lifestyles of those whom this god has favored. Through one of the biggest pyra­mid schemes in his­tory, the Amer­i­can Dream, have we been sucked into believ­ing that we too can become immor­tal but only if we turn our lives over to them to be used as they see fit.

“As our bro­ken lives and dead bod­ies become the bricks and mor­tar with which they con­tinue to build this colos­sal mon­u­ment to their god, the ques­tion arises, do we really want to spend the rest of our lives fight­ing and dying, just to help make some lousy bas­tard back home filthy rich? Or do we want to espouse a whole new fan­tasy, one based upon truth and jus­tice for all?

“Don’t you see how much they fear us? How afraid they are of what we’re say­ing. How afraid they are of the rebel­lious tone of our voices. How afraid they are of our reluc­tance to carry out their every com­mand. How afraid they are of the truth that keeps ooz­ing out of us no mat­ter what they do to us.

“And so I ask, who has more to fear? I dare­say, they do.”

“I don’t know about that,” exclaimed Marty. “They still have the upper hand, you know.”

“Only because we let them have it,” I yelled back as he dis­ap­peared down the passageway.

As I walked back to the mess decks…(to be continued).

[Excerpted from A Dif­fer­ent Kind of Sen­tinel]

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This Underground Resistance

Posted on April 28, 2013 by Sir EJ Drury II

Unfor­tu­nately, I got to play ship­fit­ter for only about a week or so, before I was sent back up to the mess decks to serve three months for “R” Divi­sion, whose turn it was to send some­one. Under great protest did I go, only to find friends like Greg and Dink among the new faces that greeted me up there. With a lit­tle gen­tle per­sua­sion from them, I decided to give it my best shot, in spite of how unfair it seemed that I should be sent back up to the mess decks so soon after hav­ing already served two months up there for First Division.

How quickly did Fate reen­ter my life, this time around, by using a third class boil­er­man named Far­ris, who had just been assigned to the mess decks as our new petty offi­cer. For She wasted no time in cre­at­ing fric­tion between this petty tyrant and myself, the ship’s rebel with­out a cause. In Her usual man­ner, did She con­vince a few of us more enter­pris­ing souls to get our work done early, so that we could gather up top­side to expand upon a fan­tasy that had recently gripped us all. Hav­ing orig­i­nally filled our heads with mutiny, that is, with the idea of seiz­ing con­trol of the ship, of let­ting the old guard off in boats, and of then set­ting sail for Aus­tralia, She skill­fully steered sub­se­quent con­ver­sa­tions around to other pos­si­bil­i­ties such as a gen­eral strike, to shut down the ship, so that it could not ful­fill its mis­sion in Viet­nam. At the same time that She was spurring us on to resist the Navy in some real­is­tic way, She roused Her Neme­sis, the Great Gray Whore, into con­vinc­ing a few of the old guard, those cocks who still remained faith­ful to the Old Gray Bitch, that the morale of the crew was seri­ously being under­mined by these clan­des­tine meet­ings of ours. To force us into giv­ing body to our fan­tasies, Fate allowed Her neme­sis to take pos­ses­sion of Far­ris and drive him to decree that we could no longer leave the mess decks to frat­er­nize with other mem­bers of the crew with­out his per­mis­sion. She let the Old Gray Bitch con­vince him that order amongst us plebes could only be main­tained so long as we were kept busy enough to inhibit reflec­tion upon our present con­di­tion, and were pre­vented from shar­ing our feel­ings with other like-​​minded souls.

Although this fel­low­ship was short lived, I nonethe­less found great con­so­la­tion in the affir­ma­tion I received from them, for the views I held. See­ing oth­ers, for the first time, under the spell of the same fan­tasy that plagued me, namely this under­ground resis­tance to the war in Viet­nam, helped me to real­ize that I wasn’t so crazy after all. With par­tic­i­pants from every divi­sion on the ship, I felt ener­gized by the poten­tial for action that lay within our grasp.

In the face of sim­i­lar decrees in other divi­sions through­out the ship, and with the excep­tion of a few stal­warts like Marty and me, I saw this fel­low­ship quickly dis­in­te­grate. In the end, I—like so many of the others—grew fear­ful of the con­se­quences we would suf­fer if we acted against the Navy. Unwill­ing to lay my life on the line at this point in time, by join­ing this under­ground resis­tance, I sim­ply stood aside and watched it fes­ter beneath the sur­face until it gained enough momen­tum to push me over the thresh­old between fan­tasy and reality—to openly rebel.

As Fate would have Her way…(to be continued).

[Excerpted from A Dif­fer­ent Kind of Sen­tinel]

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The Shipfitters

Posted on April 24, 2013 by Sir EJ Drury II

Early the next day was I trans­ferred out of First Divi­sion with lit­tle more fan­fare than the hand­ful of well-​​wishers who had gath­ered around, as I was leav­ing. Escorted by a very ami­able, though loqua­cious ship­fit­ter named Aubrey, was I shown to my new quar­ters where ini­tially I expe­ri­enced an even colder recep­tion. Fig­ur­ing that my rep­u­ta­tion had pre­ceded me, I looked every sin­gle one of those who glared at me as I passed, right in the eye, to let them know that I was not about to be intim­i­dated by their short­sight­ed­ness. Left in the lurch by Aubrey, who had been called to the bridge, I sim­ply pro­ceeded to stow my gear in my new locker. Only after I had heard the famil­iar voice of a friend call out to me from some­where across the com­part­ment, did I let go of the appre­hen­sion I had begun to feel around ever hav­ing trans­ferred over here, in the first place.

“Hey, Dury!” Exclaimed Marty as I spun around to greet him. “Wel­come to ’R’ Divi­sion.”

“Thanks,” I responded with a ner­vous smile. “For a minute there, I wasn’t too sure if I was wel­come or not.”

Just then, another ship­fit­ter came up and intro­duced him­self. “Hi,” he said. “My name’s Romberg.”

“Mine’s Drury,” I replied as I turned to shake his hand.

Romberg had a fleshy white, round face accented by a very small mouth and a lit­tle bit of hair above his lip, which he claimed as a mus­tache. Unkempt in his appear­ance, he was one of those friendly, albeit foul­mouthed char­ac­ters who moved at about the same speed as a sloth. And sel­dom was he ever seen with­out either a lit or an unlit cig­a­rette dan­gling from the cor­ner of his mouth.

“I’m one of the guys you’ll be workin’ with,” he added.

“Do you like workin’ as a ship­fit­ter?” I asked him.

“It’s all right,” he responded. “While it’s still the fuckin’ Navy, it sure beats the hell out of workin’ as a fuckin’ boatswain’s mate.”

“That’s for damn sure,” inter­jected Aubrey, who had just returned from the bridge. “It ain’t nothin’ like First Divi­sion where they treat you like a fuckin’ ani­mal. Here, you’ll be treated like a human being.”

Plump in build, Aubrey reminded me of a car­toon char­ac­ter named Porky Pig. Why he even had the same pen­chant for stut­ter­ing as this car­i­ca­ture of him. Only Aubrey had a ten­dency to get on my nerves with his inces­sant bab­bling about the most mun­dane con­cerns of day-​​to-​​day life—an aspect of him­self that had already man­i­fested itself when he escorted me to my new quarters.

“Have you met Shorty yet?” Asked Aubrey as Shorty tried to slip by unnoticed.

When a very embar­rassed Shorty turned to greet me, I made the com­ment that we had run into each other not too long ago down in the bilges, where­upon Shorty promptly excused him­self again.

While his nick­name was obvi­ously a take­off on his diminu­tive stature, Shorty was nonethe­less a very pow­er­fully built young roustabout, who car­ried a ter­ri­ble chip on his shoul­der. For he had a way of bad­ger­ing hap­less souls into fight­ing him so that he could beat the hell out of them, pre­sum­ably to make him­self feel bet­ter. A very moody per­son, he kept to him­self for the most part, or at least until he again felt the need to spar with the unseen evil he saw in the faces of his vic­tims but which really lay hid­den behind his own façade.

In Shorty’s place, there sud­denly appeared another ship­fit­ter affec­tion­ately nick­named Sleepy. Because Sleepy habit­u­ally used mar­i­juana to help him cope with the oth­er­wise unbear­able pain that being in the Navy caused him to expe­ri­ence, he always looked as if he were about to fall asleep. With his long lanky limbs, red­dish brown hair and slow delib­er­ate move­ments, he reminded me of an orang­utan that had to take this drug to ease the pain which wracked its body as it strug­gled in vain to adjust to captivity.

While Sleepy and I were intro­duc­ing our­selves to each other, I noticed a first class petty offi­cer nudg­ing his way through the small crowd of ship­fit­ters and curios­ity seek­ers that had gath­ered around me.

With a look of appre­hen­sion on his face, he hes­i­tated before intro­duc­ing him­self. “Hi,” he said. “I’m Joe, your new boss.”

“Wel­come to the ship­fit­ters,” he hastily added, as if he had not really meant it.

Like the wise pig in the tale of “The Three Lit­tle Pigs,” Joe had cho­sen a career in the Navy as a shel­ter against the wiles of a civil­ian econ­omy that would oth­er­wise have devoured him. As an added safe­guard against job inse­cu­rity, he quickly earned the love and respect of his men by treat­ing them exactly as he would want to be treated if he were in their shoes. Because Joe sensed, right away, that I was dif­fer­ent, he felt a lit­tle ambiva­lent about hav­ing to take me in under his roof.

“After you get your gear stowed away, come on back to the shop; and I’ll show ya around,” he con­cluded in a rather rapid man­ner of speak­ing that was quite char­ac­ter­is­tic of him.

“Okay,” I responded with the uncer­tainty of one who fully expected that, at any moment, the real Joe would leap out from behind this façade and pounce on me like the big bad wolf or that weasel of a first class petty offi­cer back in First Division.

“You’ll like it in ’R’ Divi­sion,” said Marty as he left to go to work.

“Maybe so,” I replied, “maybe so.”

Unfor­tu­nately, I got to play shipfitter…(to be continued).

[Excerpted from A Dif­fer­ent Kind of Sen­tinel]

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A Fresh Start

Posted on April 20, 2013 by Sir EJ Drury II

Before I would see her again, I was offered an oppor­tu­nity I couldn’t refuse, the chance to leave First Divi­sion. To my utter dis­be­lief, I was approached, one day, by a chief named Dug­gan who asked me if I would like to trans­fer over to “R” Divi­sion to work as a ship­fit­ter, the Navy’s ver­sion of a sheet metal worker/​plumber.

“What would I be required to do as a ship­fit­ter?” I asked him.

“Until you have com­pleted your appren­tice­ship,” he replied, “you will be required to assist the other, more expe­ri­enced ship­fit­ters in mak­ing minor repairs to the ship, wher­ever they are needed. You will also be required to stand sound­ing and secu­rity watches, which con­sist of tak­ing mea­sure­ments of the depth of the water that nor­mally accu­mu­lates in the bilges at key points around the ship, to see if those par­tic­u­lar areas need to be pumped out or not. While on watch, you will be expected to report your find­ings to the officer-​​in-​​charge on the bridge, every hour on the hour. Other than that, you may be asked, on occa­sion, to help clean your own com­part­ment, the pas­sage­way out­side the shop or the head we share with First Divi­sion.
“Well, what do you think?” He asked. “Would you like to become a shipfitter?”

“Yes, I would,” I said with­out think­ing, for I wanted so badly to do some­thing con­struc­tive for a change.

“Good!” He exclaimed. “I’ll see what I can do to get you trans­ferred. I think you will find your tasks as a ship­fit­ter, a bit more sat­is­fy­ing than those you have been asked to per­form in First Division.”

Left stand­ing in a quandary over whether or not I should have accepted this offer, I began to have seri­ous doubts about the real­ity of these encoun­ters with my soul. As I looked back upon the last stunt she had pulled on me, I won­dered if maybe I wasn’t get­ting a lit­tle too car­ried away with all of this imag­i­nary stuff, and if instead I wasn’t really get­ting sucked down into some schiz­o­phrenic night­mare by a Siren I had inad­ver­tently helped to cre­ate. Then too, I won­dered if maybe I ought not to be ignor­ing her and all of her non­sen­si­cal lit­tle tricks, rather than allow­ing her to hornswog­gle me like she did.

The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to for­get about her and get back to liv­ing some sem­blance of a nor­mal life. Why should I let some imag­i­nary lit­tle sprite, that no one else could see any­way, ruin my life. I had to be strong; I had to stand up to her and stave off this ten­dency, I had inher­ited from my father, to be dri­ven mad. I had to pull myself together before it was too late. And I could do that with a fresh start in another divi­sion on the ship.

Early the next day…(to be continued).

[Excerpted from A Dif­fer­ent Kind of Sen­tinel]

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A Life of Her Own

Posted on April 16, 2013 by Sir EJ Drury II

For days after­wards, I was so excited I could care less what the Navy did with me. Hav­ing finally been rel­e­gated to the posi­tion of a com­part­ment cleaner suited me just fine, for I was cer­tainly begin­ning to feel more pres­sure from within to con­tribute as lit­tle of myself as pos­si­ble to the war effort in Viet­nam, regard­less of the consequences.

Hav­ing visu­al­ized my soul for the first time, I wanted noth­ing more than to see her again. How quickly I learned she was not some genie I could sim­ply con­jure up at will. For now, I would have to set­tle for the very gray but last­ing impres­sion she had left on my mind.

While she was no prima donna, I nonethe­less found her to be very attrac­tive. Slightly shorter in height than I was, she had long hair and an oval face. But what really struck me about her shapely form were her breasts, for she had undoubt­edly been endowed with the most beau­ti­ful breasts I had ever seen. Why I was absolutely astounded that I even pos­sessed such an ani­mated image of a woman within me.
At this point, I still wasn’t too sure, just what to believe. While these expe­ri­ences led me to believe, on the one hand, that cer­tain aspects of my life, that is, those per­tain­ing to the Navy, were a part of some grand illu­sion, on the other hand, I won­dered if I wasn’t the one who in real­ity was suf­fer­ing the delu­sion, espe­cially after that last encounter I’d had with my soul. As I strug­gled to gain some per­spec­tive on this last expe­ri­ence, it became clear to me that the path to san­ity led not into the insan­ity of the col­lec­tive or mutual destruc­tion of our­selves in war, but rather into the insan­ity of my own delusions—the myths that were dri­ving me to act as I had.

As I uncon­sciously searched this unruly body of mine for some way to objec­tify the truth, I wound up paint­ing a pic­ture of a woman, albeit a very gray one, who pre­sum­ably por­trayed my soul. Finally, I had found some­one with whom I could communicate—who actu­ally knew me bet­ter than I knew myself. Where in the past I had been unable to put any trust in this gray area of my life, in this encounter I took a great leap in faith. When I saw her stand­ing there, I knew in my heart of hearts I had found the one who could show me the way. And by visu­al­iz­ing her, I basi­cally gave her a life of her own. For in admit­ting to her exis­tence, I finally admit­ted her into my life.

Before I would see her again…(to be continued).

[Excerpted from A Dif­fer­ent Kind of Sen­tinel]

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A Brush Full of Paint

Posted on April 12, 2013 by Sir EJ Drury II

Yan­kee Sta­tion essen­tially con­sisted of patrolling the waters off the coast of Viet­nam in semi-​​alert, battle-​​station mode, whereby we remained on the look­out for enemy ves­sels both above and below the sur­face of the water, around the clock. Our task was, of course, greatly sim­pli­fied since the North had a vir­tu­ally nonex­is­tent naval fleet.

Oth­er­wise, I found life onboard the ship bor­ing as usual, so much so, that one day I was moved to paint what I was feel­ing after hav­ing been assigned to paint some pipes that ran up beside an exte­rior bulk­head. Because a fresh coat of paint could eas­ily be ruined before it dried, by the salt sea spray that con­tin­u­ally bathed the ship, I was given a can of paint which con­tained agents to has­ten the dry­ing and hard­en­ing of the paint. As I approached the pipes to begin paint­ing, I was sud­denly, ver­bally accosted by my soul.

“What are you doing?” She asked me.

“What does it look like I’m doing?” I replied rather rudely, for I was still a lit­tle upset with her over the inci­dent around the torpedo.

“You know,” I added, “not only did you make a fool out of me, but you also got me into a lot of trou­ble, I did not appreciate.”

“I was only think­ing of you,” she replied.

“Think­ing of me!” I exclaimed. “If that’s what you think of me, then I don’t need your help.”

“You never heed my warn­ings,” she insisted.

“Warn­ings!” I exclaimed. “What warnings?”

“I have told you,” she con­tin­ued, “that you do not belong here. And yet you con­tinue to ignore me.”

“What do you want me to do, walk on water?” I asked her. “Obvi­ously, if I had found the way out, I would’ve taken it.”

“I am the way,” she proclaimed.

I laughed. “If you are the way, it’s no won­der I’m still stuck here,” I con­cluded. “Why I can’t even see you!”

“You are so unimag­i­na­tive,” she replied. “When I opened the door for you back in Tokyo, you sim­ply slammed it shut in my face.”

“And who do you think handed you for­give­ness when you reached out for it back in Yoko­suka?” She asked.

“Then why don’t you just tell me what to do?” I scoffed.

“You don’t lis­ten!” She replied. “You don’t pay atten­tion to your imagination.”

“What imag­i­na­tion?” I grumbled.

“Who do you think is talk­ing to you?” She asked. “Is it not a prod­uct of your imagination?”

“I don’t know,” I screamed out in anguish. “I don’t know who the hell you are.”

“Why don’t you try let­ting go of your self, for just a moment,” she hastily added, “and instead, try paint­ing me.”

“Paint you!” I exclaimed. “How ridicu­lous! I have already told you, I can’t see you. So how the hell do you expect me to paint you?”

“I know you can’t see me, but don’t worry about that for now,” she said. “I will stand right here in front of you as you slap paint on my form.”

“This’s insane,” I replied. “What do you think my supe­ri­ors are gonna say when they see me wavin’ a paint brush around in midair?”

“They won’t know the dif­fer­ence,” she responded. “I will stand right here in front of the pipes you are sup­posed to paint. They’ll just see you paint­ing the pipes.”

“I don’t know about this,” I said. “This all sounds so silly.”

“Come on,” she prod­ded me.

When I waved a brush full of paint in her direc­tion, to dis­miss her, I was amazed by what I saw—gray paint actu­ally adher­ing to a form that had pre­vi­ously been invis­i­ble to me. Giddy with excite­ment, I began to hastily fling paint in the direc­tion of the pipes, and smear it around with my brush. While she gig­gled and goaded me on, I worked like a mad­man to cover her invis­i­ble form with enough paint so that I could see her. In fact, I had got­ten so engrossed in paint­ing her, that I was totally obliv­i­ous of the crowd that had gath­ered behind me, back towards the fan­tail, to watch as I con­tin­ued to fling paint at my invis­i­ble can­vas with the agility of an abstract artist. Only instead of build­ing up paint on a can­vas, in real­ity, I was build­ing up layer upon layer of paint on the pipes until they looked like the trunks of some gnarled old tree. Just as I caught sight of the gray form of a woman stand­ing naked before me, I heard a grav­elly nasally voice shout out, “That’s enough, Dury.”

After tak­ing one last look at her, I spun around, right smack dab into the face of an angry First Class Boatswain’s Mate.

“You did it,” my soul whis­pered in my ear as she van­ished. “You visu­al­ized me.”

“O, I am so proud of you. I knew you could do it if only you used your imag­i­na­tion,” I heard her say as her voice gave way to the groans of the boatswain’s mate.

“Not bad for a novice, eh?” Responded I to his great displeasure.

“Go on down below and pass out laun­dry,” he snarled.

Star­ing at me as if I were nuts, did they all quickly step aside to let me pass. Not a one of them said a word to me as I went below.

For days afterwards…(to be continued).

[Excerpted from A Dif­fer­ent Kind of Sen­tinel]

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The Portents of Earth and Sky

Posted on April 8, 2013 by Sir EJ Drury II

As the ship steamed relent­lessly south­ward at full speed ahead, the mood of the crew grew con­spic­u­ously more somber. Forced to let go of the fren­zied and orgias­tic plea­sures of a Dionysian hol­i­day in Japan, they unwill­ingly sur­ren­dered them­selves to the more Apol­lon­ian way of life found onboard the ship. Totally inca­pable of see­ing beyond a purely emo­tional response to their sit­u­a­tion, they quickly suc­cumbed, one after another, to the vagaries of a melan­choly mood.

How eas­ily were they seduced by this invis­i­ble body of neb­u­lous feel­ings and deep dark emo­tions as it descended upon them with the caprice of an Olympian god. Instead of wrestling with this god, as Jacob had, they sim­ply fell prey to all of its emo­tional blus­ter. In their inabil­ity to free their feel­ings from the emo­tional pall that over­shad­owed their souls like a dark night, they failed to expose the naked truth of the god that lay hid­den within the mood.

Hav­ing not yet suc­cumbed to the mood that had descended upon the rest of the crew like the plague, I was struck by the mag­ni­tude of its power when the ship pulled within sight of the coast of Viet­nam. While I stood in awe of the dark fore­bod­ing clouds which now hugged the earth and stirred the pas­sions of her murky green waters into a squall, I sensed a great evil lurked about this land—that no good could come from our being here. “You do not belong here,” I heard my soul scream out in the shrill voice of a Siren. Imme­di­ately, I saw her words as the truth which lay hid­den at the very core of the mood that had finally swept over us all.

Badly shaken by this rev­e­la­tion, I turned aside, only to find Greg and Harold stand­ing there. “We do not belong here,” I prophet­i­cally proclaimed.

The two of them just looked at me and smiled, as if to say that while they both agreed with my assess­ment of this exter­nal sign, they were at a com­plete loss as to what to do about it.

In the silence that over­came me as I refixed my gaze upon the stark panorama which had unfolded before my eyes, I recalled some vague pas­sage from the Gospel of Luke (12:54–57): “When you see a cloud ris­ing in the west, you say imme­di­ately that rain is coming—and so it does. When the wind blows up from the south, you say it is going to be hot—and so it is. You hyp­ocrites! If you can inter­pret the por­tents of earth and sky, why can’t you inter­pret the present time? Tell me, why don’t you judge for your­selves what is just?”

“So this’s Yan­kee Sta­tion,” I mut­tered to myself as we all laughed to assuage our fear of the dread­ful truth this silence had stirred up from the depths of our beings.

Yan­kee Sta­tion essen­tially consisted…(to be continued).

[Excerpted from A Dif­fer­ent Kind of Sen­tinel]

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The Cue to Misbehave

Posted on April 4, 2013 by Sir EJ Drury II

Not long after­wards, was I ordered, one day, to report to the XO’s state­room. With some anx­i­ety, did I pro­ceed to his state­room, for I had been on pretty good behav­ior, of late, or so I thought.

“Come in,” responded the XO to the knock on his door.

“Mr. Drury, Sir,” I reported upon enter­ing his stateroom.

“Have a seat, Mr. Drury,” he said.

“I have a state­ment,” he con­tin­ued, “I want you to read. Once you have read it, I want you to sign it right above your name, exactly as your name appears, to acknowl­edge that you have read the state­ment and under­stand what it says.”

Look­ing down at the piece of paper he had handed me, I saw two small para­graphs, each dated 23 May 1967, which read as follows:

You are hereby advised that because of the nature of your con­duct onboard ship, you are being con­sid­ered for dis­charge from the Navy for rea­sons of unsuit­abil­ity, in accor­dance with BUPERS Man­ual, Arti­cle C-​​10310.

P. L. Mer­win, LCDR USN, Exec­u­tive Offi­cer
By direc­tion of the Com­mand­ing Officer

I acknowl­edge that I have been coun­seled and advised that any fur­ther irreg­u­lar behav­ior on my part may cause my dis­charge from the Navy for rea­sons of unsuit­abil­ity, in accor­dance with BUPERS Man­ual, Arti­cle C-​​10310.

Wit­nessed: Eau­dore James Drury, SA
P. L. Mer­win, LCDR USN

When I had fin­ished read­ing the state­ment, I looked up at him.

“Do you under­stand what you have just read?” He asked.

“I do,” I replied.

“Then sign it, right here above your name,” he commanded.

MR. HART: The state­ment you signed, is that page 13–5 of the records intro­duced here, ear­lier today, by the Recorder?

RESPONDENT: Yes, sir.

MR. HART: All right, go ahead.

After the XO had signed his name beneath both para­graphs, he dis­missed me.

Need­less to say, I grew wild with excite­ment over the pos­si­bil­ity of get­ting dis­charged if my behav­ior did not change. Why I felt as if the Navy had just given me the cue to mis­be­have. For lack of bet­ter insight into myself, I could not have agreed with the Navy more, that I was totally unsuited for this way of life.

As the ship steamed relent­lessly southward…(to be continued).

[Excerpted from A Dif­fer­ent Kind of Sen­tinel]

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Respect

Posted on March 31, 2013 by Sir EJ Drury II

As I was chang­ing my clothes and wind­ing down, the master-​​at-​​arms approached me. “Mr. Drury,” he com­manded, “you are to report to me on the mess decks every evening at 1800 hours, for the next thirty days, to per­form extra duty.”

“Do you under­stand?” He asked.

“Yes,” I reluc­tantly replied.

“How long do I have to work each night?” I asked.

“Two hours,” he curtly replied.

Even though two hours of extra duty for that long a period of time seemed a lit­tle exces­sive to me, I did not say a word.

“If you have no fur­ther ques­tions, I will see you up on the mess decks at 1800 hours,” he concluded.

Over the next thirty days, I was made to per­form the most inane work imag­in­able, tasks strictly meant to be puni­tive. Many an evening was I forced to scrub oily decks down in the bilges, on my hands and knees, with an old brush and can of scour­ing pow­der. Or worse yet, was I made to climb atop and clean around the boil­ers, where the tem­per­a­ture often exceeded 110 degrees. Nonethe­less, I worked hard at doing just enough to make it look as if I’d done something.

One night, as I worked down in the bilges, scrub­bing a deck with soap and water, a third class petty offi­cer nick­named Shorty sneaked up behind me and, for what­ever rea­son, reared back and kicked me in the rear end, send­ing me reel­ing across the deck where I landed flat on my face.

Rolling onto my side, I looked him right in the eye and smiled. “I’m sorry you feel that way,” I said, where­upon he spun around and dis­ap­peared through the hatch.

That night, I touched Shorty in much the same way St. Paul had been touched by the suf­fer­ing of the early Chris­tians. In other words, I awak­ened Shorty to his own feel­ings, from which he fled out of fear. As a result, I earned his respect, the respect a wild ani­mal has for fire, once it has been illu­mi­nated by the light of its own feelings.

Nor did I ever report him. Given my rep­u­ta­tion onboard the ship, I fig­ured nobody would ever believe me. Besides, in my naiveté, it never occurred to me that I could have had him writ­ten up for man­han­dling a sub­or­di­nate. I did, how­ever, find great sat­is­fac­tion in just know­ing that, from that moment on, I com­manded his respect as a human being.

Not long afterwards…(to be continued).

[Excerpted from A Dif­fer­ent Kind of Sen­tinel]

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Yet Another Close Encounter

Posted on March 27, 2013 by Sir EJ Drury II

After we had pulled out of Yoko­suka, later that morn­ing, I was ordered to report, in dress whites, to the Captain’s state­room for a Captain’s Mast. As I entered the Captain’s state­room on the heels of the master-​​at-​​arms, I found the XO and a yeo­man from the ship’s office already stand­ing by. And as the Cap­tain burst into the room, in his usual hur­ried man­ner, I was ordered to snap to atten­tion.
Hav­ing snatched my records from the yeo­man, the XO pro­ceeded to read aloud the charge against me. “Mr. Drury, you have been charged with hav­ing vio­lated Arti­cle 92 of the Uni­form Code of Mil­i­tary Jus­tice, specif­i­cally the sec­tion which deals with dere­lic­tion in the per­for­mance of duties, in that while stand­ing watch onboard the USS David­son at 1230 hours, 13 May 1967, you did fail to report the approach of an oncom­ing tor­pedo dur­ing a fleet exer­cise. How do you plead, guilty or not guilty?” He asked.

“Not guilty,” I pro­claimed as I strug­gled like a lowly worm to free myself from the hook that had got­ten under the Captain’s skin. While the Cap­tain showed signs of squirm­ing around my plea, I was not let off the hook that easily.

“Because you have pled not guilty,” inter­jected the XO, “you have the right, Mr. Drury, to tes­tify in your behalf or to remain silent. You may request the appear­ance, before this mast, of any wit­ness whose tes­ti­mony you believe to be per­ti­nent to your case. If you choose to present no evi­dence, that fact may not be used against you as an admis­sion of guilt. If there is any evi­dence you wish to present, you must do so at this time. Let me remind you, that what­ever you say may also be used as evi­dence against you.”

“Do you under­stand, Mr. Drury?” He asked.

“Yes, I do,” I replied.

“Do you have any­thing to say in your defense?” He asked.

As I ago­nized over how I could tell the Cap­tain he is not my mas­ter, I balked. If I told him the truth, my words would only be used against me. How could I con­vince him that my fail­ure to see the tor­pedo, as he had seen it, had lit­er­ally saved the life of my soul? How could I show him that it was he who was guilty of the greater offense here? While I had only offended a mere mor­tal, I saw his par­tic­i­pa­tion in the exer­cise as an offense against the very soul of mankind, the Great Spirit She Who Must Be Obeyed.

“I have noth­ing to say at this time,” I finally said in capitulation.

While the Cap­tain had been notice­ably unnerved by the tone of my response, as evi­denced by his fid­get­ing before he pro­nounced me guilty, he nonethe­less sen­tenced me to 30 days of extra duty. Why the words had hardly left his mouth before he scur­ried out the door sat­is­fied that he had dealt with this thorn in his side. Lit­tle did he know this irri­tant was in the early stages of devel­op­ing into a pearl, the pearl of great price.

Vis­i­bly shaken by the whole affair, I was dis­missed and sent below. Even though I was still unwill­ing to sim­ply fall into step, I was sure glad it was all over, for now. As shy as I was, I hated these encoun­ters into which my soul forced me. And since I had no idea of just how mis­er­able these guys could make my life, I greatly feared the price I might have to pay for any fur­ther action on my part. Unaware of the price that had already been exacted from me for my par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Navy, thus far, I would buckle under, for now, or at least until my soul forced me into yet another close encounter with the Navy.

As I was chang­ing my clothes…(to be continued).

[Excerpted from A Dif­fer­ent Kind of Sen­tinel]

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