USN Chief

Quigley_Sharps · Nov 18, 2010

USN Chief <hr style="color: rgb(255, 255, 255); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" size="1"> Im currently deployed on the USS Abraham Lincoln and am a Senior Chief on board. I recieved this from a fellow chief that we both share the same ideas of leadership. The below is a great read in my opinion. I had to clean it up to be able to post.

It may not pertain to all that have not served. But you can read and get the just of the story.

Recollections of a Whitehat.

"One thing we weren't aware of at the time, but became evident as life wore on, was that we learned true leadership from the finest examples any lad was ever given, Chief Petty Officers. They were crusty old salts who had done it all and had been forged into men who had been time tested over more years than a lot of us had time on the planet. The ones I remember wore hydraulic oil stained hats with scratched and dinged-up insignia, faded shirts, some with a Bull Durham tag dangling out of their right-hand pocket or a pipe and tobacco reloads in a worn leather pouch in their hip pockets, and a Zippo that had been everywhere. Some of them came with tattoos on their forearms that would force them to keep their cuffs buttoned at a Methodist picnic.

Most of them were as tough as a boarding house steak. A quality required to survive the life they lived. They were, and always will be, a breed apart from all other residents of Mother Earth. They took eighteen year old idiots and hammered the stupid (edit) into sailors.

You knew instinctively it had to be hell on earth to have been born a Chief's kid. God should have given all sons born to Chiefs a return option.

A Chief didn't have to command respect. He got it because there was nothing else you could give them. They were God's designated hitters on earth.

We had Chiefs with fully loaded Submarine Combat Patrol Pins, and combat air crew wings in my day...hard-core (edit) who remembered lost mates, and still cursed the cause of their loss...and they were expert at choosing descriptive adjectives and nouns, none of which their mothers would have endorsed.

At the rare times you saw a Chief topside in dress canvas, you saw rows of hard-earned, worn and faded ribbons over his pocket. "Hey Chief, what's that one and that one?" "Oh hell kid, I can't remember. There was a war on.
They gave them to us to keep track of the campaigns." "We didn't get a lot of news out where we were. To be honest, we just took their word for it. Heck son, you couldn't pronounce most of the names of the places we went. They're all depth charge survival geedunk." "Listen kid, ribbons don't make you a Sailor." We knew who the heroes were, and in the final analysis that's all that matters.

Many nights, we sat in the after mess deck wrapping ourselves around cups of coffee and listening to their stories. They were light-hearted stories about warm beer shared with their running mates in corrugated metal sheds at resupply depots where the only furniture was a few packing crates and a couple of Coleman lamps. Standing in line at a Honolulu cathouse or spending three hours soaking in a tub in Freemantle, smoking cigars, and getting loaded. It was our history. And we dreamed of being just like them because they were our heroes. When they accepted you as their shipmate, it was the highest honor you would ever receive in your life. At least it was clearly that for me. They were not men given to the prerogatives of their position.

You would find them with their sleeves rolled up, shoulder-to-shoulder with you in a stores loading party. "Hey Chief, no need for you to be out here tossin' crates in the rain, we can get all this stuff aboard."

"Son, the term 'All hands' means all hands."

"Yeah Chief, but you're no kid anymore, you old coot."

"Horsefly, when I'm eighty-five parked in the stove up old (edit)'
home, I'll still be able to kick your worthless butt from here to fifty feet past the screw guards along with six of your closest friends." And he probably wasn't kidding.

They trained us. Not only us, but hundreds more just like us. If it wasn't for Chief Petty Officers, there wouldn't be any U.S. Navy. There wasn't any fairy godmother who lived in a hollow tree in the enchanted forest who could wave her magic wand and create a Chief Petty Officer.

They were born as hot-sacking seamen, and matured like good whiskey in steel hulls over many years. Nothing a nineteen year-old jay-bird could cook up was original to these old saltwater owls. They had seen E-3 jerks come and go for so many years; they could read you like a book. "Son, I know what you are thinking. Just one word of advice. DON'T. It won't be worth it."

"Aye, Chief."

Chiefs aren't the kind of guys you thank. Monkeys at the zoo don't spend a lot of time thanking the guy who makes them do tricks for peanuts.

Appreciation of what they did, and who they were, comes with long distance retrospect. No young lad takes time to recognize the worth of his leadership. That comes later when you have experienced poor leadership or let's say, when you have the maturity to recognize what leaders should be, you find that Chiefs are the standard by which you measure all others.

They had no Academy rings to get scratched up. They butchered the King's English. They had become educated at the other end of an anchor chain from Copenhagen to Singapore . They had given their entire lives to the U.S.
Navy. In the progression of the nobility of employment, Chief Petty Officer heads the list. So, when we ultimately get our final duty station assignments and we get to wherever the big Chief of Naval Operations in the sky assigns us, if we are lucky, Marines will be guarding the streets, and there will be an old Chief in an oil-stained hat and a cigar stub clenched in his teeth standing at the brow to assign us our bunks and tell us where to stow our gear... and we will all be young again, and the darn coffee will float a rock.

Life fixes it so that by the time a stupid kid grows old enough and smart enough to recognize who he should have thanked along the way, he no longer can. If I could, I would thank my old Chiefs. If you only knew what you succeeded in pounding in this thick skull, you would be amazed. So, thanks you old casehardened unsalvageable (edit)s. Save me a rack in the berthing compartment."

Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass. It's about learning to dance in the rain.
Click to expand...

Saw this on a another forum thought the squids here might like a look see at it.[W1]

ghrit · Nov 18, 2010

Yep. Truths.

Joseph Thomas · Nov 18, 2010

On shore in the Army those kind of guys formed us and made us proud of ourselves when we met their expectations ( seldomly)

Falcon15 · Nov 18, 2010

Every word gospel truth.

Chief (PO) Jones, my mentor, my curse, my friend. You are missed but not forgotten. Be assured, I won't salute you when I see you in the after-time, because you'll kick my ever-loving rear-end past the moon and back. Thank you for taking a boy that was and making him the man that is.

Hispeedal2 · Nov 18, 2010

Excellent.

Seawolf1090 · Nov 20, 2010

Senior Chief Neil K. Normandin was my old "Seadaddy" on the fine little USS Ainsworth, FF1090 in the early eighties. He fit this article to a "T"......
Once a young Ensign made the mistake of telling the Senior Chief that he (The Senior Chief) didn't know how the radar worked! Hell, the man literally wrote a part of the book used in the Tech School! I could tell him the symptom of a problem, he'd tell me excatly which component was bad! And he'd be spot on!
Well, the two of them were in the radar room, and we dogged down the hatch and left them. Five minutes later the hatch opened, and that now-white Ensign left..... and NEVER said a cross word to the Senior Chief again. We sailors thought we could cuss - we learned some new words that day......

He was a crusty old squid, and we'd have stormed the gates of Hell for him, and keel-hauled old Satan himself.......

Nadja · Nov 24, 2010

Thanks Quig. Brought tears to my old eyes. USN 65'-69'

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USN Chief

Quigley_Sharps The Badministrator Administrator Founding Member

ghrit Bad company Administrator Founding Member

Joseph Thomas Monkey+

Falcon15 Falco Peregrinus

Hispeedal2 Nay Sayer

Seawolf1090 Retired Curmudgeonly IT Monkey Founding Member

Nadja RIP 3-11-2013 Forum Leader

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USN Chief

Quigley_Sharps The Badministrator Administrator Founding Member

ghrit Bad company Administrator Founding Member

Joseph Thomas Monkey+

Falcon15 Falco Peregrinus

Hispeedal2 Nay Sayer

Seawolf1090 Retired Curmudgeonly IT Monkey Founding Member

Nadja RIP 3-11-2013 Forum Leader

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