View From d'Isle
Last Week's Column
   

Return to:

More Forks
by Jean d'Isle

n the last article, I left off with Fork Two, the decision that saved me from a very short career as a navy blimp tender.

Fork Three came in college. As a pre-medical major, I found myself surrounded by two types of students: the brilliant ones who almost effortlessly breezed through even the most difficult courses with straight A's and still participated in athletics and had a social life; and the able, highly motivated but not-so-brilliant students who had to forsake all outside activities to obtain the grades required to compete for acceptance into medical school. I certainly could not be counted among the former -- chemistry remains a mystery to me today, in spite of surviving a multitude of courses, from organic to quantitative analysis. As for the latter group, I was emotionally and possibly physically (definitely motivationally) incapable of burying myself in books to the exclusion of all else. As a result, my grade point average was a sine wave, bottoming out during football and basketball seasons and peaking in the Spring semesters -- from academic probation to Dean's List in one cycle.

The Fork Three decision was to graduate as a pre-med major but to forget about med school. Had I decided to apply, my uneven academic performance would probably have guaranteed outright rejection by all schools, with the possible exception of those with an institutional sense of humor. So, I found myself headed for a career in the navy instead of making tons of money for looking at naked women all day. (Regrets? Only between January and December.)

The Fourth Fork (sounds like a Frederick Forsyth novel ) confronted me as a newly commissioned Ensign ordered to sea duty on an LST (Landing Ship Tank -- but we all knew it really stood for Long Slow Target). Because there were only a few officers assigned to a ship of that type, after less than a year I found myself holding the job of First Lieutenant, in charge of the Gunnery and Deck Department, with additional duties as Supply Officer.

I began to get the uneasy feeling that just about anything that went awry outside of the engine room was going to involve me in some way. This was confirmed one day in Pearl Harbor when the main deck crane snapped a wire while offloading a vehicle onto the pier. Besides serious damage to the crane, the vehicle was completely demolished. To compound the misfortune, the vehicle was a Chrysler Windsor sedan, transported from San Diego as non-manifested cargo (and uninsured) as a favor to a friend of the Commanding Officer. When he returned to the ship to find his friend's vehicle in a heap on the pier, the CO was not amused. His first question, which could be heard at some distance as he approached the ship, was, "Where's the First Lieutenant?" The subsequent extended and one-sided discussion was not cordial. It bordered on irrational. I recall particularly the comment: "Dammit, Jean, we brought this car over for a guy to drive!" I managed to stifle a "No sh*t, Dick Tracy" response that would surely have resulted in my consignment to the yardarm or the chain locker. But the handwriting was on the wall-a career change seemed to be in order.

Next Week
The Navy is at Sea in Ships

__________________________________________________

Jean d'Isle is a retired naval officer living in Hawaii.During his military career he served in a number of overseas assignments, including Germany, England, Spain, Viet Nam and Puerto Rico. Following his retirement, he was an adjunct faculty member of Hawaii Pacific University and is currently under contract with the U.S. Navy at the submarine base in Pearl Harbor.

Jean's column, View From d'Isle, is a regular feature of VegSource On-Line Magazine.