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box-in-the-box.livejournal.comI'll set the stage. It's December of 2002, so I'm still in uniform and my ship is in port at Norfolk, but not for long.
Bad vibes all around. Bush and Saddam and both of their respective camps have done so much saber-rattling that everyone, military and civilian alike, knows what's coming down the pike, especially since we're set to pull out of port for our next operational deployment shortly after the start of the New Year, but officially, all our plans say it's supposed to be a standard cruise to the Gulf.
I've put in my leave chit for Christmas and New Year's, which has already been approved, but at the last minute, I'm told that everyone who plans to take two weeks of leave for the holidays has to trim it down to one. I talk it over with the folks, and they agree that there's no reason for me to come home for only one week, when two days of that is going to be eaten up by travel time flying there and back again. So, I eat my leave and stay on duty, on ship, through the holidays.
There's more than a few of us stuck on ship for similar reasons that holiday season, between me, Rob Kerns (my LPO, with whom I remain good friends, in spite of our respective politics being oil and water), plus maybe Kat Whittenberger (then a seaman in our PAO, who's long since been promoted into the ranks of the khaki corps) and a couple of other shipmates from outside our shop, all hanging out in our TV studio, watching movies and cable TV on our system.
Because when you're an aircraft carrier that's in port, you get Cox Cable piped into your CCTV system, so we had all the premium channels while we were docked in Norfolk, and since the PAO's TV studio offered the most comfortably enclosed and big-picture TV viewing experience on board ship, that was where us and our circle of friends from the other departments would cluster to watch our DVDs and check out what was on HBO.
( Which was how we caught "Live From Baghdad." )
Bad vibes all around. Bush and Saddam and both of their respective camps have done so much saber-rattling that everyone, military and civilian alike, knows what's coming down the pike, especially since we're set to pull out of port for our next operational deployment shortly after the start of the New Year, but officially, all our plans say it's supposed to be a standard cruise to the Gulf.
I've put in my leave chit for Christmas and New Year's, which has already been approved, but at the last minute, I'm told that everyone who plans to take two weeks of leave for the holidays has to trim it down to one. I talk it over with the folks, and they agree that there's no reason for me to come home for only one week, when two days of that is going to be eaten up by travel time flying there and back again. So, I eat my leave and stay on duty, on ship, through the holidays.
There's more than a few of us stuck on ship for similar reasons that holiday season, between me, Rob Kerns (my LPO, with whom I remain good friends, in spite of our respective politics being oil and water), plus maybe Kat Whittenberger (then a seaman in our PAO, who's long since been promoted into the ranks of the khaki corps) and a couple of other shipmates from outside our shop, all hanging out in our TV studio, watching movies and cable TV on our system.
Because when you're an aircraft carrier that's in port, you get Cox Cable piped into your CCTV system, so we had all the premium channels while we were docked in Norfolk, and since the PAO's TV studio offered the most comfortably enclosed and big-picture TV viewing experience on board ship, that was where us and our circle of friends from the other departments would cluster to watch our DVDs and check out what was on HBO.
( Which was how we caught "Live From Baghdad." )
