The Willful Destruction of Government Property

Left stand­ing out­side the XO’s state­room, I felt a bit like Jesus, who’d got­ten shuf­fled from one author­ity to another, in much the same man­ner, as each one real­ized he had no author­ity over He Who Is. In that one brief moment, I felt as if I were in con­tact with some incred­i­bly pow­er­ful force, I per­ceived to be the force of truth. Because I didn’t know this truth, I couldn’t hold onto it for very long. As its intox­i­cat­ing grip on me faded, I was sum­moned by the Lieu­tenant and, with all due haste, offi­cially intro­duced to the XO.

“Mr. Drury, Sir,“ smartly snapped the Lieutenant.

“Thank you, Mr. Smith,“ snapped the XO. “You may go now.“

“Have a seat, Mr. Drury,“ the XO said in a rather annoyed tone of voice as the door slammed shut behind the Lieutenant.

“What’s this, I hear, about your refus­ing to eat?“ he asked.

“I don’t wanna eat any­more,“ I man­aged to squeak out as I strug­gled to con­trol the trem­bling of my body with fear.

“Pop­py­cock!“ he shouted in my face. “You will eat, Mr. Drury, because I order you to. Do you understand?“

“No Sir, I don’t,“ I replied rather indignantly.

Fail­ing to elicit an obe­di­ent response from me, he decided to take a dif­fer­ent tack. “Did you know, Mr. Drury,“ he began, “that by refus­ing to eat you are will­fully destroy­ing gov­ern­ment property?“

Puz­zled, I asked, “How’s that, Sir?“

“When you enlisted in the Navy,“ he replied, “you signed your life over to the gov­ern­ment of the United States to be used as it sees fit. In effect, you became gov­ern­ment prop­erty. What­ever befalls you befalls the prop­erty of the gov­ern­ment of the United States. So you see, Mr. Drury, you could quite pos­si­bly be charged with the will­ful destruc­tion of gov­ern­ment prop­erty if, in the con­tin­u­a­tion of this ridicu­lous fast of yours, you harm your­self in any way.“

Irked by his insis­tence that I was gov­ern­ment prop­erty, I responded rather coldly, “I see.“ For I wanted so badly to tell him I was not some soul­less piece of meat the Navy could order around like a zom­bie, but bit my lip instead.

Hav­ing threat­ened to write me up if I didn’t eat, he again ordered me to eat.

Once again, I refused.

“You leave me no choice then,“ he con­cluded as he rose from his
chair and hur­ried out the door.