Veteran said on interview, "I hate parades. I didn't sign up to march."
Last edited Wed Jun 11, 2025, 02:14 AM - Edit history (4)
My second ship 50 years ago was brand new, was still being built at the shipyard in Bremerton, WA, when we, the Commissioning crew started transferring in. Think, seven months' per diem to rent in splashy Seattle in 1968 - Space Needle, ferry boat to the ship daily, monorail to the retired World Fairgrounds (first opera, first ballet), "schooners" (draft beer goblets), bookstores, antique stores, wearing civilian clothes, a date or two like from An Officer and a Gentleman.
It amounted to a payback for my first ship that was rusted, leaky, built in 1945, that we called "benjo maru" (shit ship). Oh, forgot, in Vietnam rivers.
*** But to the point. When the new ship was ready, there was the obligatory Commissioning ceremony, think a muckety muck breaking a champaign bottle on the bow. I don't remember that part since we crew would naturally not be proximate to where such action went on. What was the real feature, the really big show for the assembled dignitaries, was the tradition of "scrambling" the crew, consisting of the entire enlisted crew of some hundreds, in our picturesque Whites of course (it was Summer), officially taking possession of our now ship by scrambling - *running* in a presumed state of exhilaration, eagerness, zeal, from where our assembled ranks were to wherever the individual duty spots were all over the facade of the ship visible to the dignitaries below.
That scrambling entailed frenzied running, jumping obstacles, climbing "ladders" (vertical stairs). Such formal ceremonies and traditions are for the benefit of the officer caste, like fraternities of ivy league colleges, with the lowly enlisteds performing like trained monkeys.
Well, at some level some esprit de corps is supposed to be involved - in the receded past? Because the prevailing execution of *our* performed scrambling was marked by some self mockery, self consciousness of how ridiculous and undignified this was, not to mention hazardous to shins. And this was 1968, we were civilians at heart, democratic not feudal, resistant to authority, only temporarily mercenary in uniform - well, we sold some years of our lives and thereby didn't accrue student loan debt, whether we were aware of this or not. And despite being insulated inside the military, we knew there was freedom out there we would reclaim some day.
*** So the marchers in KRASNOV's parade might well need to be vetted for their MAGA enthusiasm.
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