One thing we weren't aware of at the time, but became evident as

life wore on; was that we learned true leadership from the finest

examples any lad was ever given. Qualified CPOs. They were crusty

bastards who had done it all and had been forged into men who had

been time tested over more years than a lot of us had time on the

planet.

The ones I remember wore hydraulic oil stained hats with scratched

and dinged-up insignia, faded shirts, some with a Bull Durham tag

dangling out of their right-hand pocket or a pipe and tobacco

reloads in a worn leather pouch in their hip pockets, and a Zippo

that had been everywhere.

Some of them came with tattoos on their forearms that would force

them to keep their cuffs buttoned at a Methodist picnic. Most of

them were as tough as a boarding house steak. A quality required to

survive the life they lived. They were and always will be, a breed

apart from all other residents of Mother Earth.

They took eighteen year-old idiots and hammered the stupid bastards

into seagoing sailors. You knew instinctively it had to be hell on

earth to have been born a Chief's kid. God should have given all

sons born to Chiefs a return option.

A Chief didn't have to command respect. He got it because there was

nothing else you could give them. They were God's designated hitters

on earth. We had Chiefs in my day... Hard-core bastards, who found

nothing out of place with the use of the word 'Japs' to refer to the

little sons of Nippon they had littered the floor of the Pacific

with, as payback for a little December 7th tea party they gave us in

1941. In those days,

'insensitivity' was not a word in a sailor's lexicon. They

remembered lost mates and still cursed the cause of their loss...

And they were expert at choosing descriptive adjectives and nouns,

none of which their mothers would have endorsed.

At the rare times you saw a Chief topside in dress canvas, you saw

rows of hard-earned worn and faded ribbons over his pocket. "Hey

Chief, what's that one and that one?" "Oh Hell kid, I can't

remember. There was a war on. They gave them to us to keep track of

the campaigns. We didn't get a lot of news out where we were. To be

honest, we just took their word for it. Hell

son, you couldn't pronounce most of the names of the places we went.

They're all depth charge survival geedunk. Listen kid, ribbons don't

make you a sailor. We knew who the heroes were and in the final

analysis that's all that matters."

Many nights we sat in the after messdeck wrapping ourselves around

cups of coffee and listening to their stories. They were

light-hearted stories about warm beer shared with their running

mates in corrugated metal sheds at resupply depots, where the only

furniture was a few packing crates and a couple of Coleman lamps.

Standing in line at a Honolulu cathouse or spending

three hours soaking in a tub in Freemantle, smoking cigars and

getting loaded. It was our history. And we dreamed of being just

like them because they were our heroes.

When they accepted you as their shipmate, it was the highest honor

you would ever receive in your life. At least it was clearly that

for me. They were not men given to the prerogatives of their

position. You would find them with their sleeves rolled up,

shoulder-to-shoulder with you in a stores loading party.

"Hey Chief, no need for you to be out here tossing' crates in the

rain, we can get all this crap aboard." "Son, the term 'All hands'

means all hands." "Yeah Chief, but you're no damn kid anymore, you

old coot." "Horsefly, when I'm eighty-five, parked in the stove up

old bastards' home, I'll still be able to kick your worthless butt

from here to fifty feet past the screwguards along with six of your

closest friends." And he probably wasn't bullshitting.

They trained us. Not only us, but hundreds more just like us. If it

wasn't for Chief Petty Officers, there wouldn't be any U.S. Navy.

There wasn't any fairy godmother who lived in a hollow tree in the

enchanted forest who could wave her magic wand and create a Chief

Petty Officer. They were born as hotsacking

seamen and matured like good whiskey in steel hulls over many years.

Nothing a nineteen year-old jaybird could cook up was original to

these old saltwater owls. They had seen E-3 jerks come and go for so

many years, they could read you like

a book. "Son, I know what you are thinking. Just one word of advice.

DON'T. It won't be worth it." "Aye Aye, Chief."

Chiefs aren't the kind of guys you thank. Monkeys at the zoo don't

spend a lot of time thanking the guy who makes them do tricks for

peanuts. Appreciation of what they did and who they were, comes with

long distance retrospect. No young

lad takes time to recognize the worth of his leadership. That comes

later when you have experienced poor leadership or lets say, when

you have the maturity to recognize what leaders should be, you find

that Chiefs are the standard by

which you measure all others.

They had no Academy rings to get scratched up. They butchered the

King's English. They had become educated at the other end of an

anchor chain from Copenhagen to Singapore. They had given their

entire lives to the United States Navy. In the progression of the

nobility of employment, "U.S. Navy CPO" heads the list.

So, when we ultimately get our final duty station assignments and we

get to wherever the big CNO in the sky assigns us, if we are lucky,

Marines will be guarding the streets. Well, I don't know about that

Marine propaganda bullshit, but there will be an old Chief in a

oil-stained hat and a cigar stub clenched

in his teeth, standing at the brow to assign us our bunks and tell

us where to stow our gear... And we will all be young again and the

damn coffee will float a rock.

Life fixes it so that by the time a stupid kid grows old enough and

smart enough to recognize who he should have thanked along the way,

he no longer can. If I could, I would thank my old Chiefs. If you

only knew what you succeeded in pounding in this thick skull, you

would be amazed.

So thanks you old casehardened unsalvageable sonofabitches. Save me

a rack in the Alley.