I woke up to someone screaming reveille throughout the bunk room. I looked at my cheap Casio watch and it read 5:30am. I knew today would be a good day because I was out of boot camp, no more marching nor people barking orders. Well, I was wrong again. I sat up on my rack, fumbled around for my shower shoes, grabbed my towel and walked towards the showers. Then they appeared with red sashes around their arms. EM1 Cody and RMC Jones were barking orders half of the inaudible. I did decipher, “Get up….you piece of shits……maggots…hurry…shit, shower and shave and you got 10 minutes!” Once the last audible order was given, it became mass hysteria in the bunk room. People were bumping into each other, cutting in line for the bath room and fighting over who cut in line for the showers. We looked like ants hyped up on sugar. I “shit, showered and shaved” in 8 minutes and went to the place where we mustered (gathered for roll call).
EM1 yelled out names in alphabetical order and people answered, “Here!” My name was the next one called and I answered, “Here sir!” In unison, the entire class turned and looked at me. They all gave me the “you dumbass this ain’t boot camp” look. EM1 stopped what he was doing and walked over to me. He looks me up and down and gets right in my face. Now EM1 stood about 6’2” around 235 pounds. He looked more like a middle linebacker than a nuclear trained sailor. “Cole, do I look like an officer to you? Don’t I look like I work for a living?” I opened my mouth to answer the first question he told me to shut my damn mouth he didn’t want an answer. He looked me up and down put his finger in my face and said, “If you call me sir again…I am going to beat you! Do you understand?” I nodded my head and he walked away. He finished calling the names on the list and we got into marching formation.
We marched up to the Mess Hall to breakfast. I grabbed my steel tray and waiting in line. On a positive note we didn’t have to do “Nut to Butt” like in boot camp. I held my tray out and the cook behind the line slopped food on it. After he was finished, I had powdered eggs, greasy bacon, one slice of French toast and something that looked like grits. “Damn does all Navy food suck”, my inside voice asked. I sat down and began to eat. Vasquez came over a few minutes later with the same slop on his tray. We talked about what is going to happen our first day of real sub school and we still were bitching about how we got screwed out of Orlando. We finished eating and put our trays away. We walked outside just as the class was getting into marching formation. We marched to school. The school looked like every other building on the base. We walked single file through the glass door to a very polished quarterdeck.
Everything from the floor to all the brass was bright and shiny. “Man I wonder who would shine all this stuff.” We showed our ID card to the watch on station as we piled into the class room. The room held 40 soon new submariners. The desks in the class were 1950s style where you can lift it up and place your books underneath. The instructor came in and gave a quick speech. “I am FTC Shields. I am one of the instructors here at this fine place we call Sub School. Here you will learn how the all the systems on the boat. Also, you will be required to draw them and know every valve associated with that system. Now I want you to count off 1 and 2 so we can divide the class up. Any questions? Now start counting.” The echoes of the numbers 1 and 2 rang throughout the class room. The rhythm finally got to me and I really wanted to say 3 as a joke. The image of EM1 Cody about to beat my ass from this morning deterred my thinking and I said the number 2. I looked at FTC and he was no spring chicken he looked like he could do some damage. The 1s got to stay while the 2s had to go to the class across the hall. Vasquez was a 1 so I gave him the head nod and left. Another instructor came in introduced himself as ST2 Brower. He handed out a sign in sheet and a few other pieces of paper. The other papers were a disclaimer about classified documents, a questionnaire and a building map. The disclaimer describes how we as student may see sensitive material and we cannot talk to anyone about it if they didn’t have a need to know. The building map was there to help us navigate around also to leave the building in case of emergency. I flipped open the questionnaire and it was 20 pages long. “Ok you got 30 minutes to fill out the questionnaire. Once you are finished place it on my desk and go outside.” Everyone looked at each other and flipped to the first page.
The first page was information only. Page 2 is when all the fun started. The first question asked was, “Are you happy?” I had to answer by coloring in the circle that fit me the best. 1 meaning yes and 2 meaning no. I colored in the 1 circle, now on to the next question. Question 2 asked the same thing but with a twist. “How often are you in a good mood?” I thought to myself, “What kind of questions are these?” I flipped ahead a few pages to check out the rest of the form. One question really caught my eye. “If you had a bomb, what would you do with it?” What in the hell? I flipped back to the starting page and continue to answer the questions until I was finished. Outside, a few of us got together and talked about the form. Some answered the form a lot different from others. I told the group which question stuck out the most and it was about the bomb. Our mini break was up and ST2 called us back to class. “If some of you didn’t catch on that was a mental evaluation questionnaire you filled out. Depending on how you answered will decide if you need to be interviewed further.” There was an eerie silence in the room because we all knew we all had different answers to the same questions. I knew I was safe I knew I wasn’t crazy. Well soon as that thought exited my mind I was the first name called up.
“Sumbitch!” “Hello I am HMC Jones and I will be going over your form with you.” Right now I felt a trickle of pee flow down my leg I was so scared. He opened up the form scanned a few questions and took some notes. He asks, “Tell me about you.” I talk about my life until I joined the Navy not in great detail just a few antics. I kept praying that he would not stop on the bomb question. I must have bad luck because that was the very next page. “So Cole, if you had a bomb what would you do with it?” Shaking and slightly pee soaked I answered, “Depending on what my supervisor wanted me to do with it.” He shot back, “Ok let me take a different approach. If you had a bomb would you blow it up?” Again I answer, “If my supervisor wanted me to blow it up I would.” “Who would you kill if you had a bomb?” This time I knew the answer to this. I puffed out my chest full of Navy pride and said, “When given the order from my supervisor I would kill the enemy!” HMC looked me up and down and signed a paper I was sane. I walked back to the room smiling because I got a clean bill of health for not being crazy. They called about 10 more people to talk to HMC. Out of those 10 people, 5 of them were sent to the surface fleet. The day was over and we marched back to the barracks. I talked with the other class and they lost 5 people also. The ironic part about it the 10 people who left were the ones who answered the questions different from us. I went to the pay phone called Malina and told her how my day went. She laughed at all my corny jokes and that’s why I loved her so much. I hung up the phone and lay down on my rack. It was only 2000hrs (8pm) but I was tired. I counted my blessing on not being crazy and drifted off to sleep.
