By LCDR Tom Sousa…
An obituary for Navy Tradition (USN, retired) — 1775-2013:
In a press release from Washington D.C., the Navy Department announced the death of Navy Tradition today after a long illness.
Navy Tradition was born into a world of turmoil and revolution in 1775. Starting with nothing as a child, Navy Tradition evolved to become an essential part of the most powerful Navy the world had ever seen. He was present when James Lawrence ordered “Don’t give up the ship” as he lay mortally wounded on the deck of the Chesapeake. He witnessed cannon balls bouncing off the copper-shielded sides of the USS Constitution, “Old Ironsides.”
He fought pirates off the Barbary Coast and suffered with his shipmates on the battleship Arizona during the attack at Pearl Harbor. He fought his way across the Pacific with Nimitz and saw MacArthur fulfill his promise to return to the Philippines. Navy Tradition was there when sailors fought bravely to save the frigate Stark after it was hit by a cruise missile and witnessed the launch of Tomahawk missiles from the battleship Missouri at the outset of Desert Storm.
Through all the strife, good times and bad, Navy Tradition was there to support his shipmates and give a balance to the misery that sometimes accompanied a life at sea. Be the nation at peace or at war, Navy Tradition made sure that we always remembered we were sailors.
He made sure that promotions were celebrated with an appropriate “wetting down”; crows, dolphins and wings were tacked on as a sign of respect from those already so celebrated; chiefs were promoted in solemn ceremony after being “initiated” by their fellow brethren; and only those worthy were allowed to earn the title “shellback.”
But in his later years, Navy Tradition was unable to fight the cancer of political correctness. He tired as his beloved Navy went from providing rations of rum to its sailors to conducting Breathalyzer tests on the brow. He weakened as he saw “Going into harm’s way” turn into “Cover your backside,” and as “Wooden ships and iron men” morphed into “U.S. Navy, Inc.”
A lifelong friend of Navy Tradition recalled a crossing-the-equator ceremony during World War II: “ I had to eat a cherry out of the belly button of the fattest sailor on the ship. It was disgusting. But for that few minutes, it took our minds off the war and to this day it is one of my greatest memories.”
In lieu of flowers, the family of Navy Tradition has asked that all sailors who have earned their shellback and drunk their dolphins; who remember sore arms from where their crows were tacked on and were sent on a search for “relative bearing grease” or a length of “water line”; who’ve been through chiefs’ initiation or answered ship’s call in a bar fight in some exotic port of call, to raise a toast one more time and remember Navy Tradition in his youth and grandeur.
Fair winds and following seas, Shipmate. You will be missed.
Nuff said…
At least you guys had traditions.
1947 wiped our slate clean. Not for the better.
It’s not like we had a lot of tradition to begin with…
(Yes, I miss nose art.)
I can still remember the bruising & sore arm from tacking on crows with various numbers of chevrons … and I still get angry when think about what the PC movement in gummint has done to a once-proud service.
It’s disgusting.
I’ve said it before, and will continue to.
POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WILL BE THE DEATH OF US!
gfa
I wonder how many of those at the highest end of the chain of command could best be described as wimps? My gut feeling is that it’s all of them.
But it is a POLICY! What is your problem? (written as I contemplate grievous harm to ……..)
Sad indeed……………
A former coworker here at Edwards crossed the Equator at the International Date Line…………..Dinner theatre with stand up comedy was how he described it. I got a shillelagh whupping on Ranger on 28 December 1980.
Seems all the forces have been emasculated to some extent.
Old AF- Yep, but the nose are was good!
Rev- Agreed (wincing) and it does suck!
gfa- Correct sir, dammit…
Jess- 95%, the other 5% are waiting to be fired…
WSF- F!!k policy… grumble…
ORPO- Concur…
I remember crossing the Equator after leaving the Vietnam gun line July 1967, I remember having my face rubbed into the grease covered belly of the fattest sailor on the ship and my butt beat while crawling on hands and knees down the deck between two rows of men with short fire hose whips. I remember the tacking of the crow, I remember it all. R.I.P Navy Tradition.
excellant post. We have most of Seniors shellback posters they handed out. Remember those?
And I remember Seniors Intiation, I honestly think that was one of the last real years they did it the tradional way.
What really got to us, was when they allowed the E6 and below to wear khaki shirts.. I was floored. Sorry to offend any lower ranking people, but Khakis were “Earned” and it was a sign of hard work acheived.
Yes, I have seen this and it’s said that the navy has become the politically correct liberal cess-pool. I remember it all, dog piles in the lounges, tricing racks up with sailors still asleep, tacking crows on, crossing the line ( x 14) but the Chiefs Initiation by far was the best thing I ever did. I learned so much in becoming a great leader from 39 Chiefs, Senior Chiefs, and Master Chiefs onboard Spruance. I still remember the day in the mess when in front of the whole mess, the CMC asked us, do you want to do initiation the old way or new way, all four of us said the old way. That day we earned all their respect.
OK, what have they done now to bring about this sad state of affairs? I haven’t been paying a lot of attention lately to what the Navy has been doing. When I retired in 1994 I was already full up to the gunwales with PC crap.
We had our traditions in the SPs, Sarge… every PCS called for a washdown, promotees had to run the gauntlet and get their stripes tacked on, choir practice in the bowling alley at 0700 after last mid, and sending the new jeeps out for a bucket of prop wash or 50 feet of flight line 🙂
I remember having my stripes pinned on (I was a marine). My dad was a sailor in WWII and told me about the day he became a shellback. It’s a sad day when our military loses their time honored traditions.
No more liberty at Subic/Olongapo either…
The present navy isn’t somewhere I’d want to serve. It’s been destroyed by progressive, politically correct thought. I know that they can fight the ships for now. In ten years with cut backs in basic maintenance and decreasing the lifeblood of the navy (tradition and privilege based on norms that everyone understood) — maybe not.
CA73- Thanks…
JUGM- Good points all, and re the khakis, the kids at Yoko that ‘tested’ the new uniform DID NOT like the khaki shirts, they preferred the grey shirts (same rationale).
Senior- Thanks!
Ray- Sorry…
Crusty- Yep, but not anymore… Most of those would get you written up now…
Robert- That it is…
LL- Oh HELL no, they are actually restricted to the hotel complex down there now… The second point is dead on…
Must have offended some metrosexual.
I found my father’s certificate for crossing the equator and the ceremony, he had never mentioned it to me, but then he said he had nothing for Leyete, and Okinawa where he saw his cousin in the Marine Corps. He did say the Winter in Inchon harbor in 1945 was seriously cold. That from a Minnesota boy.
Tradition does seem to color one’s life, and taking the black beret from the Rangers and giving it to everyone is how to make everyone drab.
Damn Political Correctness