A gray dawn breaking

photos: sunrise in the Straits of Messina, highlighting Mt. Etna - May 2009

There is an undeniable allure to the morning 4-to-8s, inexplicable to the average landlubber. Perhaps the mystique is bred solely of exhaustion; after all, there’s never enough sleep beforehand. You struggle, bleary-eyed, out of the rack, slapping fruitlessly at your alarm blinking coldly: 0230, 0230. You bless all those blue lights in Combat and the red lights in the passageways, because by the time you stumble down to Main Control, you’re not blinking so furiously in that stark whiteness, blowing hot and loud. The forced routine of the round keeps you moving. An apple in one pocket, a granola bar in the other – breakfast an eternity away – and, finally, you emerge wide-eyed into the night air for the last part of the round, topside.

Even pulling down on the bar to close the door behind, I’m staring up, eyes trained. Cloudy or clear? crisp and dry? heavy with fog? – I’m picking out stars, wind on my cheek, listening, smelling, smoke shimmering from the stacks, nav lights glowing; I’m forcing my eyes to adjust, judging visibility and illumination, squinting at the horizon, distant and shady. I head aft. If it’s clear, the multiplicity of stars arrests me; and I stare up, sky dense, layers upon layers, blinking, deep into the inky darkness, picking my way across the panoply: Orion, the Pleiades, Cassiopeia, the Big Dipper, Polaris. North. I judge our heading, overlaying it on the mental picture I started outlining back in Combat.

On my way forward, my feet gauge pitch and roll, adjusting as I lean into the wind, striding up the weather decks, boats tied down, dim green light of batteries charging, crouched and waiting. Usually up on the foc’sle, time allowing, my feet stumbling over ground tackle, I stop and look out, scan the horizon, wait for relative motion. Other vessels, the lights of land, the greens and whites and reds along that thin line between sky and sea, blinking on and off, some steady, some coming, some going. Aspects, sizes, distances, all compared exhaustively against the radar scope burned behind my eyes. Then, finally, up the ladders and a visual scan around the bridge catwalk, eyes pressed to binoculars, double-checking.

Entering the bridge at last, saluting the officer of the deck, it’s all double-checking now, confirming details etched in my mind. Distance and direction to land, safe water, territorial seas, nearest port. Friendly forces. Shipping. Patrol boxes, tracklines, “hot spots”, hazards. I listen and watch, judge the alertness of the bridge team, check my equipment, darken the bridge: it’s never black enough. Review the logs, the charts, the night orders I wrote (it seems an eternity ago) yesterday evening, before escaping to bed, before the phone calls, answered half-asleep. Engines, radios, intelligence, tasking, and then, the passdown, nodding, knowing the words before they’re said, agreeing.

I wait. I’m sure. I offer my relief.

The start of the watch is slow. That’s normal: I have to get my watch section accustomed, night-adapted, set in their routines. A half hour in, around 0400, and always for break-ins – and they’re inevitably there, aren’t they? it’s the best watch for training – the session starts. We review the plan of the day and anticipate responsibilities, plan actions. Rehearse wake-up calls for the captain and XO. Calculate sunrise; shoot morning stars. Review casualty procedures, in detail; run mini-drills. Memorize Rules of the Road. Calculate time-speed-distance overnight, and to our next waypoint. Watch the sun rise; shoot amplitude or azimuth for gyro error. Knock out checklists. Hunt for bad guys. Sign off boat checks. Secure nav lights; re-set the bridge for day. Smell the sweet scent of breakfast, curling up to the bridge, the only time the watch ever seems to drag, those last thirty minutes with your stomach crying out and well-nourished reliefs finally plodding up the ladder, mumbling lazy, satisfied reports and you hearing nothing, begging only for waffles or orange juice or biscuits and gravy.

It’s gone fast, and now you’re saluting the watch away, checking your logs, a final touch of the cap, heading below. Time to start the day. But, maybe if you were lucky, maybe somewhere, maybe in the midst of all that rush, maybe while the break-in ran for a head call or dug for a star chart or calculated a fix, maybe you slipped outside for a minute, draped over the bridge rail, looking up, looking out, lost in the vastness of sea and sky and stars and sun, the as-yet-unseen sun, golden only in its clouded reflection, not even risen yet; maybe you braced against wind and wiped away rain and tasted the salt spray on your lips; maybe you just stood, still, alone and small, a dot in the middle of the vastness. Maybe you remembered why you’ve done more in the past four hours, before reveille, than many on land do all day.

At the end of our long patrol this spring, we took on perhaps a dozen friends and relatives for the last short leg home, up the California coast. Two nights and a day, a short sojourn after our long adventures. Most hid in the wardroom, watching movies; the unluckier ones spread-eagled on bottom racks, sick. The more curious among them toured common spaces or spectated at special evolutions: getting underway, mooring, boats launched and recovered. Relative, yes; but no passenger, this man.

No; he appeared wordless, a shadow on the morning 4-to-8, settling silent in XO’s chair on the port side, steaming coffee mug in hand, unbidden, dark against the darkness of the foggy night, alert, watching. I suspected he’d made a round of the ship beforehand, likely more thorough than mine. He said little. He’d been in the merchant marines for years, captained ships, run a fleet out of Singapore, lately retired, still youthful, unbowed, eyes bright. He sat and kept watch with us, comfortable, listening, smelling, feeling, looking, poised. Through the sunrise; and then, upon relief, slipped away down below; breakfast called.

Yes, that man – he was a sailor. He knew.

To the lonely sea and the sky

It's hard to adjust to the landlubber's life after being six months away at sea. I keep thinking this is only a port call, with sailing orders set in a day or two. I am strangely silent, uncomfortably formal and polite, withdrawn and taciturn: it's odd having to explain yourself after living half a year with shipmates who knew you more intimately than you yourself, who ate, drank, slept, breathed, watched, and endured the exact same boredom and adventures as you. Words, in the end, weren't even necessary, except to acknowledge orders or repeat back commands; only a simple look across a crowded bridge, and it was done.

There is the ceaseless watchfulness to break myself of. The unending hurry, the restlessness and impatience, the lack of time. It is particularly hard to let back in all the trivialities that so consume our daily lives back on the beach: car batteries and utility bills and noisy neighbors and church politics. All the domestic fluff you leave behind when you cast off lines. It all seems such vanity, such chasing after the wind.

But hardest, for me, is the confinement. For months it was just us, bobbing around in endless vastness of wind and sun and sea and sky. Every morning the sun crept above the horizon in the east; every evening, it slowly sank with ephemeral flash in the far west. Nights, the sky dripped with stars, the Milky Way reaching out with uncharacteristic brilliance and clarity. Below, the sea kept pushing, the dolphins diving under the hull and the flying fish scattering like spindrift before you. Day after day, in monotonous expanse. No buildings to hide the gathering clouds; no city lights to drown out the moon and planets, Jupiter overhead, red Mars consorting with blue Venus in the east, the moon rising cold and white and full.

I came back, and made for the hills, whence came my salvation, of sorts. The mountain paths of the Sierras climbed on and on ahead of me, one trail forking into the next. The untamed river rushed and curled and spread out lazily in the sun, over smooth, round stones. The air was fresh, bright, undimmed by smog. At night, the stars hung low. You could almost believe you had only to wake for the next firewatch, to share your adventures over coffee and hot cocoa, to sink slowly into quiet sleep and sweet dreams and wake before dawn with the birds' eager chirps.

Society, of course, waited at the bottom of the mountain, as it had crouched on the pier, eager, ravenous, ready to devour us with its pettiness. I do not want to speak or explain. Gossip bores me. Why are the windows up? Why are we sitting inside when the sun shines or the night calls? There are fresh fruits, fresh vegetables, fresh milk and cheese. Why are we eating, blindly, from drive-throughs? (Why is the rum always gone?!) What are all these rules, these laws, these restrictions and hierarchies? At sea, there is only the captain, imperious and imperial.

On our last day underway, a retired merchant marine captain, one of our "Tiger Cruise" guests, appeared wordlessly on the bridge while it was still dark to perch in the XO's chair and stand the morning 4-8 watch with us. He said little, just gazed out at the lightening sky and darkening waves and watched and listened and smiled.

I didn't ask why. No need.

Prejudice

It is such an ugly word. I like to tell myself I'm beyond it, past the myopia; blind and all-seeing. I like to say that because skin color means no more than hair or eye color to me; because gender, sexual orientation, socio-economic status or class, appearance, physical abilities or disabilities, job, talents, marital or family status, height, weight, educational accomplishments, religion or lack thereof - because this laundry list of descriptors are no more to me than the variety of fruits in the supermarket; that because of this, I am blissfully non-prejudicial. I buttress this with the fact that despite (or perhaps because of) growing up in a very multi-cultural area, I didn't realize there were race tensions until the Rodney King riots when I was in junior high; reinforce it with the rather surprising fact that I was the only white child marching in a Black History Day parade at school one year, and I barely noticed it; reassure myself by the fact that I don't use skin color to describe strangers or ask about someone's ancestors' accomplishments or care how bourgeois someone's money is.

It is all an uncomfortable illusion. I discovered that, this patrol.

It is not, I suppose, surprising. My father came of age in a city bombed by Germans night and day. Most of the earlier and more extended generations of my mother's family were killed in the Holocaust, or the raids and slaughter that preceeded it, to the point that my grandfather spent much of his adult life hunting for living relatives like needles in so many haystacks, combing phonebooks in cities around the world with sizeable Jewish immigrant populations. He eventually found (among others) a first cousin he thought he'd lost, who, along with his older sister, had hidden as children with a Catholic family in France. The older sister, who kept a graphic diary of their tribulations, eventually "converted" back, but this younger brother embraced Catholicism, eventually rising through the ranks to become - when my grandfather sought audience with him - Archbishop of Paris. There were once rumors he was in the running for Pope. He is gone now, sleeping with the others.

When I was in elementary school, there were still West Germany and East Germany and Berlin. West Germany was très moderne; East Germany produced female Olympic swim champions with hairy chests and deep voices; to Berlin went all the outreach music and drama and sports groups, to spread the good news of Western capitalism and maybe, to taste the dangerous bleakness of the Iron Curtain. Until one year at Thanksgiving, my family sat around in shock and whispered news of the Berlin Wall's incredible crumbling. That year, my mother purchased an enormous new National Geographic Atlas of the World. It showed Germany as a whole country, unified, asterisked - it hadn't happened yet;it was yet in expectation, not without a little fear. Germany had been partitioned for a reason.

But I digress.

For one of the operational periods of this deployment, we worked for a coalition task force commanded by a German admiral. (Later in the patrol, command shifted, as scheduled, to the French.) Our initial interaction withthe Admiral and his flagship was over chat, in an English still oddly accented even on-screen. They weren't the easiest to work with, or for. For our part, we were new to the operational area and to the operating guidelines. The stereotypical gruffness, curtness, rigid and directive control, all bore out in action. The pride, too: despite the "coalition" in our collective title, they repeatedly and intentionally monopolized the action, relegating us to the sidelines and claiming the glory for themselves.

Or maybe that's just how I saw it, through increasingly unsettled, prejudiced eyes. I think it was the day I watched the rotund German admiral proudly strutting across our flight deck to greet our commanding officer that I realized my almost physical revulsion. It struck every time I heard them speak over a voice circuit, read their operational directions, argued with them over tasking; even when I saw their brusque Saxon chat. All sorts of ugly stereotypes filled my mind, despite my best, most conscious efforts to banish them. I was unutterably relieved, finally, to leave them behind, more to abandon my new-discovered jadedness than to actually shift tactical control.

I experienced something similar in Gibraltar. I was with a couple of coworkers, shipmates, friends, and we were trying to find a restaurant on the waterfront for a wardroom function with the other officers. An older German man in a thick, faded navy blue cable-knit sweater intercepted us. "Where are you going? Maybe I can help you get there." We handed him our well-creased map. "Are you in the American Navy?" he asked.

I can't remember all he said. We were careful not to reveal too much of our operational schedule or activities, both still classified. He warned us not to jump off a cliff on the back side of the rock into the waters below, a wild idea carried out (surprisingly, safely) by a daredevil few US Navy sailors some months back. But mainly he was still stuck in the past. He didn't look quite old enough to have seen much, if anything, of WWII, but his entire conversation was couched in it. The post-war occupation. Limitations on shipbuilding and military reconstitution, industry, politics. Pride. A wounded pride glinted sharply from his pale blue eyes. He kept us talking there for a long time. He was suppliant, but proud, undaunted, challenging us in the subtext to both respect his country's accomplishments and yet pity him for our restrictions that kept them from achieving so much more. I felt sick. I kept picturing Nazis and freight-cars bound for concentration camps and piles of emaciated bodies. It wasn't his fault. I smiled and formed a few words, like you do when you're drunk, and was immensely relieved I didn't have to do the bulk of the talking.

Tobruk was the hardest, though. I've mentioned how my father's cousins fought and were captured there. How I read of the desert campaigns and Rommel's brilliancy in Churchill's history. The loss of life, the reversals of fortune, the direction of the whole war turning on "Torch" and Alexander's march to the sea. We toured the French and Allied cemeteries. It was solemn and sobering and humbling. But first, our Libyan hosts took us to the German cemetery. The French and Allied cemeteries were stark, sand-colored, unobtrusive. The Germans' memorial committee had erected an imposing brick monument, a castle with thick walls, two stories, an immense, imposing square on the cliff overlooking the city. We all piled out of the cramped bus into oppressive heat and blinding sun. I almost couldn't enter, where in the darkness, a shrine of sorts paid homage to the thousands of dead Germans who had conquered, then lost, the city, leaving abandoned tanks and miles of bloodshed, taking thousands of prisoners before eventually succumbing, themselves.

Inside, you stepped into the blazing sun in a large inner courtyard. Each side of the inner walls was carved with names, top to bottom, except the wall toward the city, which bore enormous, stylized soldiers and their countrymen, in service and in mourning, in relief against black granite, unwavering and undaunted. Beside them, a list of Libyan battles. I couldn't look. They were young servicemen, like us, sworn to fight and die for their country; but they had empowered Rommel, Hitler, the Nazis, the death machines. I couldn't move past that, not even in a memorial to the dead, sleeping in ignorance. The dead, soldiers, like us.

Climbing thick, winding stone staircases, you emerged again into the sun, on the wide parapet a good fifty feet above the memorial's floor, offering a commanding view of the city. In defeat, victory. It was hard to look. I felt sick. It wasn't the height.

Each time, again and again, I berated myself for my feelings, shrinking in shame. I was supposed to be beyond this, evolved or educated away from such crude, animal reactions. There's no pat answer to this one. Just humility, and a sick realization that I'm no better than those I'd so smugly judged.

Shadows

Last summer, with endless hours in hospital waiting rooms, UCSF shuttles, and hooked up to IVs (I'd say "hours to kill", but that's a bit morbid, in context), I gingerly began leafing through pages of Winston Churchill's magnificent, exhaustive, 6-volume History of World War II.

Wide-ranging in scope, astonishing in detail, intuitively prophetic in political repercussions, strategically masterful, intimate, unforgivingly and proudly British, and above all, rewardingly well-written, this exhaustive personal account propelled me, week after week, through its 4000+ pages and 10 years of tumultuous world events.

I never got as far as WWII in school history classes. Anyway, it would have been American-biased and blinkered, only from December 7, 1941, onward. Iwo Jima and Normandy and the atom bomb. My historical knowledge was generally confined to old war movies, the Diary of Anne Frank, and familial horror stories of the Holocaust. As a teenager in East London, my dad had lived through the Blitz, but claimed to remember only a few highly selective, polished, gems of sanitized stories from the long onslaught. Churchill's detailed history gave me new inroads, new insights, new questions to ask my father, provocative enough to elicit little vignettes nobody in the family had yet heard. Trips to Lake Geneva as a child, dodging Nazi guards. Blacked-out windows on Tube trains. Air-raid shelters dug in London backyards. Peace in our time.

I'd made it to Volume IV when we set sail back in January. Perhaps it was inevitable, given the strategic reach of the Britannic Empire's naval power, but I slowly realized that our deployment was retracing (though, admittedly, out of order) the great naval battlefields of WWII. We began in Pearl Harbor, where we moored for fuel just across from the USS ARIZONA memorial. We sailed through contested Pacific islands, through the Filipino Straits of Surigao (Battle of Leyte Gulf), stopping in Malaysia and Singapore; where on the US Naval base, there is a memorial to the great British sea battle for the fortress. Sailing across the Indian Ocean, port calls in India and Pakistan unsettlingly revealed how steeped those countries' naval forces were, still, in British colonial tradition.

I asked my father to mail me the last three volumes of the series. It seemed fitting to read them as we sailed these waters, redolent with history. The Free French were being installed in Madagascar as we anchored in the Maldives. The air war raged in Iraq and Persia and critical convoys sailed the Red Sea while we patrolled in the Gulf. I sat at a chokingly formal Indian reception, devoured by mosquitoes, while Churchill and Roosevelt debated Indian independence and Mahatma Gandhi refused to eat. The British swept into Athens to flush out Greek communists while I crawled around abandoned gun mounts on a wind-swept Santorini. We steamed through the Straits of Messina just after the Allies' great amphibious assault, wandered through a Rome unscathed from surrender, stared searchingly at Pius XII in the Basilica, and scrambled to the top of the great Rock of Gibraltar to look out, at last, on unfettered Allied control of the Mediterranean.

In between, we watched episodes of Band of Brothers.

And we stopped in Tobruk. Tobruk has great personal meaning for me. Two of my father's cousins, fighting with a South African brigade, were captured there and spent the remainder of the war as Italian, then German, POWs. I'd tracked down one of them, still alert and in his 90s, in South Africa this past fall, to elicit incredible tales of a displaced farm boy whose sweetheart waited patiently on the Cape Town pier, years notwithstanding, for her hero's return.

We were the first American warship to stop in Libya in over 40 years. The local political delegation apologized that all Tobruk had to offer us was a long tour of battlefields, cemeteries, and memorials, but that was what I sought: that was why I'd come, I guess. (Tobruk wasn't even on our initial schedule; Tripoli was.) I wandered around in the blistering heat and touched the gravestones - English, Scottish, Welsh, Irish, Czech, Greek, Jewish, South African, Free French, Polish, Indian, African. Not forgotten. On top of one of the gravestones was a red paper poppy, the sort they sell in England for memorial days, with the name of a South African soldier, unknown to me, who'd been taken in Tobruk, survived the war as a POW, and passed away in the fulness of life, surviving nearly into the 21st century. Requiescat in pace.

There are no just wars, only justifications for wars. Still, as we sailed homeward across the convoyless Atlantic, cleared at last of U-boats, headed at the close of Churchill's final book into an uncertain post-war modernity, I was left dangling in the great abyss between past and present, ideal and reality, war and politics, posturing and progress. Somewhere, that indomitable spirit yet lurks; the sleeping giant only dozes; the moralist hasn't forgotten. The Empire - tarnished, dusty, and transferred - still stands, a string of lights flickering around the world's oceans, waiting only for electrification.

Making History

We recently visited Tobruk, Libya, of WWII historical fame. We made some of our own history there: we were the first US warship to visit the country in over 40 years. Here is a Navy press release about our trip: BOUTWELL visits Tobruk.

Yes We Could

I’ve chosen to tell this past year’s – diagnosis, treatment, and recovery – in the context of my career, perhaps because that is the most appropriate and least damning story arc. But there are others frames I set aside along the way: say, the 2008 presidential election.

There is no causative factor, of course; only a happenstance correlation. It was back around the time of Key West, back around that heart-stopping lump I felt, that I started to follow the meteoric career of this amazing 2004 DNC speaker, the kid with the funny name from the South Side of Chicago, thrust onto the national stage by none other than John Kerry: Barack Obama. In Alabama, in January, while I was being run through the gauntlet of tests, neon bandages around my elbow from the constant blood-letting, that I walked into a library in West Mobile to see how I, and shockingly, three dozen of the most diverse crowd I'd ever seen gathered in the South, could help elect this man president. While the tests dragged on, and the detailer called to tempt me with the grand surprise, unsustainable, of my dream job, I pounded the streets of middle-class black neighborhoods in Mobile and walked past parades of Mardi Gras revelers, registering voters and talking up the impending primary, which due to its concurrence with Fat Tuesday, was held (in Mobile alone in the state) a week early. Since we were in drydock, I carved out the time to drive 8 or 9 hours round-trip to Birmingham on a Sunday to again see the most incredible cross-section of Southern population, gathered in record-breaking numbers of maybe 12K-15K, to reassure each other that this inspirational man speaking before us was no illusion; the America he touted no idle dream. I walked up naively with handfuls of extra tickets entrusted to me from the Mobile office and was instantly mobbed by hundreds of eager, desperate fellow Americans. Desperate for hope. Desperate for change.

Yes we could.

When I went to Rhode Island for TAO school, that abortive attempt at normalcy my gut told me was doomed to fail, given the biopsy taken on the eve of my departure, the Pennsylvania primary already loomed large, and I made arrangements to drive over and volunteer one weekend. While the eventual diagnosis scotched those lofty goals, my immediate redirection to California enabled me to join a call center and reach out to hundreds of primary voters in Indiana. I registered the leather-clad during Pride Weekend, the arugula-eating in Nob Hill, and the surreally cloistered in far exurbia. In late May, I flew up to Oregon and pounded the streets of Bend, Beaverton, and Portland in anticipation of their primary; Oregon's record-breaking crowd of 75,000 packed into the Waterfront Park rally the day I left. Later that summer, I flew to Arizona and lettered campaign signs with my mother – a devout Hillary Clinton supporter I like to think I helped convert – in a tiny house in the Hispanic ghetto. Did I mention that by this time, I was going through treatment? That I was struggling to focus through the searing pain that was destroying everything within me from blood cells to tastebuds? That I was working 30+ hours a week, gritting out the exhaustion and the dizzying sickness with thoughts of ship commissionings and $1 million security contracts? That I was bandanna-clad, scarf-wrapped guarding my delicate bald scalp and radiated neck from the summer sun? I didn’t, but no matter. It was secondary to me then, too. We needed this moment. We needed this change.

Yes we could.

The primaries wound up. I watched the historic acceptance speech from my apartment in San Francisco, cheering wildly with my roommate, all else forgotten. I followed the general election from the road, sporadically. By now, treatment was over, and I was rushing to catch up. As I drove cross-country to bring my car from Alabama to California at last, I no longer feared to tape my “Obama ‘08” bumper-sticker in my back window while driving through the South. My Obama t-shirts started conversations in small towns and big cities alike, and I couldn't stop handing out leftover pins and paraphernalia. People were emerging, squinting, unsure, out of every forgotten corner of America to wish, to hope, just barely over their fear that a long-held dream might just come true, that we had a future, that we, Americans, could truly have a voice, a long-slumbering power stirring awake.

I watched the final presidential debate, or the majority of it, huddled with a couple dozen flight-mates around a TV in Nagoya during an all-too-brief layover to the other side of the world. South Africa was abuzz with the possibility that a man with an African father might be elected American president. In South Africa, the only reason black men finally won the presidency is that their black majority at last earned suffrage. In America, they amazed, a black man might win because white people voted for him. It was a game-changer.

Yes we could.

Election night itself, I was underway, or getting underway, en route to my new life, the one I'd left behind. We were in the middle of TACT, in San Diego. We'd been anchored for a few hours earlier in the afternoon, and despite my exhaustion of endless operations, night and day, I'd been glued to the wardroom TV the whole time, watching early election returns as the polls closed in the East. Then we set special sea detail, and it was dark; I was on the bridge, and my pocket wouldn't stop buzzing. My roommate was frantically texting me electoral college updates, and when that seemed decisive, I begged her for Senate numbers. Just as we weighed anchor, my mother called. I thought it was an emergency and decamped to the bridge wing. "OBAMA WON!!!! AAAHHHHHH!!!" she screamed. "That's great, Mom," I whispered. "I'm at special sea detail right now."

We left for the OOH before the inauguration; providentially, our departure from Honolulu was delayed a day and some hours; long enough to watch the august event in its entirety, again from the wardroom television via the propagandistic AFN (Armed Forces Network). We left as the world was changing, and all that we heard of home in the interim seemed distant and unreal - a dying economy, a sagging stock market, torture, Guantanamo, Supreme Court, budget fights, bank bailouts.

Even in our port calls, we seemed to cross stars with the new administration. We stopped in Malaysia days before Hillary Clinton flew to Southeast Asia for her first foray as Secretary of State.We sweated through India and Pakistan as Obama shook hands with Musharraf in the White House for the first time. We were moored in Bahrain when the President flew out, unexpectedly, to meet with troops in Iraq and Kuwait and Afghanistan. Leaving Jordan and through the Suez as Obama made his much-heralded Egypt speech to the Muslim world. Sailing through the Med as the First Family traveled Europe and was lambasted by press for hugging the Queen in England and sight-seeing in Paris. As we chased down suspected pirates in the Gulf of Aden for one of our biggest operational accomplishments, Arlen Specter switched parties to set up a sea change in the Senate. Days before we pulled back into Alameda, Norm Coleman finally conceded and Al Franken was sworn in on Paul Wellstone’s Bible. The Senate was at 60. Mission accomplished.

There are new crewmembers now, like our new Weapons Officer who served on the Inaugural Committee and hobnobbed at all the balls, who haven’t the faintest clue the path I hiked last summer. Back home, now, the mass of Americans have sunk, deaf and dumb, into their lives of quiet desperation, worried by recession and distracted by Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett and opinion polls, back into the lethargy, forgetting so easily, relinquishing the terrific power they so recently held.

The moment is past.

Credit by Exam

The Coast Guard, luckily for me, (and mainly from tight resources) relies heavily on OJT - on-the-job training - to qualify its personnel. That's a good thing, because I've never been one to revel in extended classroom "butt time".

Back in junior high and high school, I schemed every trick imaginable to escape from the stultifying confines of those terrible four walls of lecturehood. Testing out, two classes at once, credit for outside activities, dual-credit classes; and my personal favorite, "excused" absences for the purpose of furthering legitimate extracurricular activities. (I missed more than a few days of high school to perform in paid gigs out-of-state. Those were cool chits to route!) It was all about the electives, then, anyway: how many pointless core requirements could I clear out of my day to make room for the good stuff?

College was, quite, the culmination of these years of curiously channeled creativity. In college, lectures were not compulsory; only results counted. I traded somnolent droning for dark tables of dusty books dug from the Bodleian's stacks, runs around the sports grounds to memorize ancient languages, and the midnight-to-0500 shift at the keyboard, typing away furiously at the essay due at daybreak.

Class time it wasn't. It keeps nagging me, somewhere back of my mind, that perhaps I should go back to school one day - fully funded, no less; career-enhancing, certainly. One day in mandatory training explodes that deceptively tempting thought. Classrooms and I don't cohabitate comfortably.

Here, then, I've been busy knocking out "credits by exam", as it were. I was excused from nearly two full months of mandatory pre-arrival training on the proposition that I would gain all that knowledge by doing, on the job, on this patrol. I am a practical learner; we've been busy; it's been ideal. Plus, instead of parking my butt in a plastic chair to blink my eyes sleepily at an soporific instructor, determined to close the last of the hundred Argusian eyes, I've kept watch in the sunshine and the wind on the bridge wing; I've darted around in the dim blue air-conditioned hum of CIC; I've crept through the ship late at night, in port, between endless days of drills and exercises and assessments, skipping the pub crawl to trace the firemain and diagram damage control systems.

There's still the oral board at the end. Which always, despite my level or source of preparedness, challenges me, if only because I overthink the questions and doubt my communicative abilities. Put me on the bridge in bad weather with a distress call from a small sailboat; put me in CIC as we're corralling a runaway skiff or creeping up, defenses at maximum alert, to a suspect vessel late on a dark night. Put me on the conn as we navigate a tight spot. Let me do, demonstrate, train, coach, take action. I trust the kinetics. The academics I study.

In this I have, at last, succeeded. I have earned my key qualifications, with (hopefully) a couple more to follow shortly, before I leave. This time, my reward was not electives, free time, or near-residence at the music faculty. This time, my reward was 6th Fleet operations - the Mediterranean. Work and play. Anything but the classroom.

Early April's update from the CO

BOUTWELL Friends and Families,

I can't believe it's been over a month since I've written one of these. There has been a lot going on - I'll tell you about as much as I can. Don't feel like I'm keeping things from you - the things I leave out are not all that exciting, it's just info we'd rather not fall into the wrong hands, and as soon as this email goes to an address that doesn't end in "uscg.mil", there's a risk that that could happen.

Shortly after my last email, we joined ships and aircraft from 10 other countries for an international exercise called AMAN '09, hosted by the Pakistani Navy. AMAN means "Peace" in Urdu, one of the principle languages of Pakistan. The exercise consisted of inport workshops, professional exchanges, underway events like mock boardings, formation steaming and Search & Rescue demonstrations, and cultural events ashore. The shoreside events were all held in Karachi, Pakistan. As you can imagine, security was very tight. No liberty was granted to the crew, except to attend official exercise events, so their ability to 'experience' Pakistan was very limited. The official events were very nice, though, and demonstrated a good deal of the rich culture and historical heritage of Pakistan, as well as some really good food.

The crew also got to visit with the crews of the other ships moored with us in Karachi. Ships from the British Royal Navy and the Australian Navy were most popular, probably because of the (more or less) common language, but we also had guests aboard from the Chinese Navy, and lots of interaction with the Pakistanis. France, Malaysia, Japan, Bangladesh, Turkey, and Nigeria also had forces participating. We interacted with them at the meetings and some of the social events, but they were a little farther away from us so we didn't spend as much time with them. On our pier, there were sports events between and among the different crews, and some vendors were allowed between the 2nd and 3rd entry control points, so the crew could do some shopping.

When we left there, we made another strait transit. Remember those from the Philippines? This one was through the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway between Iran and Oman that connects the Arabian Sea to the Arabian Gulf. We drew a little attention from some Iranian naval craft during that transit, but it turned out they just wanted to get a closer look at us. Not really surprising - I guess they don't see many U.S. Coast Guard high endurance cutters in these parts. I think we got a pretty good picture of them taking a picture of us.

We then stopped in Bahrain for a few days of R&R&R. The third R is for repair. Bahrain is home to the headquarters for 5th Fleet, which doubles as the Naval component commander for Central Command, or CENTCOM. As such, it’s a logistics hub for the region and we received many many much needed spare parts we had ordered, as well as literally almost a ton of mail. We then left Bahrain, went back out to the Arabian Sea. This time, when we had just finished going through the Strait of Hormuz in the other direction, we came across a small Iranian boat, disabled and adrift, with 22 people on it. We contacted officials from both Oman (because it was closest) and Iran, and stayed with the boat for several hours waiting for the Iranians to come help them. We also provided some medical and engineering assistance to them, and in the end, they were able to get their engine started again before the Iranians got there.

After that, we've spent most of our time doing counter-drug type operations, very similar to what we would be doing on an Eastern Pacific patrol. One of the most interesting things we've done was an underway refueling evolution from a Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force oiler, followed by a photo op with them, another Japanese ship and ships from Germany and Pakistan. We're also getting more and more of our people qualified in various watchstations all the time, and we have a lot more qualified boat crewmembers, boarding team members and flight deck personnel than we did before. We've had some advancements as well.

And, as often happens, we've had some equipment break. I think I've said it before in previous emails - one of the strengths of the WHEC is that we have lots of redundant systems, so that even when some of them break we are still very capable. That often makes the decision on whether to continue to operate, at a reduced level, or take time away from operations to make repairs, a very difficult one. That's true in this case as well, but we found an opportunity to repair some of the more important equipment with minimal impact on our scheduled commitments, so as I write this we are back in Bahrain to take advantage of it.

As I write this, we are almost at the halfway point of this deployment. We're starting to get into a rhythm a little bit, hitting our stride so to speak. Things we're doing that at first were new and difficult are now more routine and easier. People are finding ways to make the time more enjoyable and for want of a better word, 'normal'. We've seen the return of steel beach, and a jam session on the flight deck (made up mostly by TAD folks, for some reason). I'm excited and proud of the things we are doing, but at the same time I'm looking forward to being on the back end of the trip. There's starting to be more and more discussion about what we will be doing during the transit back, and once we get back. We still have a lot to do here, and a long time until we're back, but once we get 'over the hump' we generally pick up speed.

CAPT Kevin J. Cavanaugh
Commanding Officer
USCGC BOUTWELL (WHEC 719)

Under wraps

We have now spent close to three months "in theater". Almost without fail, and even in the port calls before we formally inchopped, the countries we've visited have been extremely conservative, traditional, male-dominated, majority-Muslim societies.

I expected women to be largely invisible; black-clad shadows floating, out of focus, in the background; absent from politics, the military, business: all the traditional seats of power. In this, despite the brilliant knots of sari-wrapped wives in Cochin, I was not entirely mistaken. Everywhere we've gone, I've been a novelty, particularly where I've involved myself in the VBSS (visit, board, search, and seizure) and maritime law enforcement training, or assisted with ATFP (anti-terrorism/force protection) concerns, or even just in introductions as the Tactical Action Officer - what our British and Australian cousins call the PWO (Principal Warfare Officer).
In India, where I found company with their regional coast guard's sole female officer, an O-4 in charge of logistics (and where I admit I didn't help my case by providing the musical entertainment for our reception onboard), the general rumor was that I was the captain's wife. Why else is she onboard? In Malaysia, the boarding team members were skittish when I went "hands-on" to demonstrate correct techniques for handcuffing and escorts, and peppered me with questions about frisking female subjects while avoiding what they called "human rights concerns". In Jordan, the local security forces made eyes at all the ship's females (the local US Navy intelligence agent, a woman, said, "Do you feel uncomfortable yet? You will..."), and in Oman, I bought an abaya. Just in case.

Surprisingly, the Saudis were quite polite to me, in our limited interaction; in Bahrain and the Maldives, I was largely out of the operational loop. Everywhere, I was questioned not on my profession, but on my personal life: where are your husband and children?! It reminded me, uncomfortably, of my nosy neighbors in the Deep South.

Gender-wise, the most challenging country we visited was Pakistan. In Karachi, for AMAN '09, I'd volunteered to organize the evolution our ship would run as OTC (officer in tactical command), an exercise demonstrating the multi-national naval forces' collective ability to defend against the threat from small boat attacks. The visiting naval officers were largely nonchalant (worried, no doubt, about their own pending exercises), but the locals weren't sure how to take me. My input in the pre-sail conference was largely smiled at politely - and ignored. After I briefed our exercise in front of the collective countries' naval delegations, long and oppressive silence reigned: nobody dared question my plan...why is a woman up there giving direction in the first place?! Underway, when I sought to take OTC control in order to kick off the exercise, the exercise controller fought with me over an open tactical circuit, belittling my requests. And at the hotwash, it wasn't until the male officers in our delegation repeated my suggestions that they were taken for further review and followup. Still, brush-offs aside, the general response following the at-sea portion was that our exercise - which I had greatly re-written from the previous conference's draft, to increase its realism and applicability - was one of the most useful of the dozen or so executed during the overall event.

So operationally, I've stood my ground. I earned public bridge-to-bridge compliments after conning the ship sweaty-palmed, but smoothly through a RAS (refueling-at-sea) evolution in very rough weather. I gained the silent respect of pilots in Jordan and Bahrain, navigating to and away from a pier; particularly with the very tight mooring evolution in Bahrain, between a South Korean destroyer and a damaged Navy sub, where I spun the ship around in her place and parallel-parked her, as though we had the assistance of stern thrusters or a Z-drive.

I am glad to be here, the female face in the wardroom, in the foreground and not disappearing in the distance. A Navy colleague out here told me that when his destroyer came through, they had a junior officer pretend to be their XO at all official functions: they figured their female XO might be accepted by traditional Middle Eastern societies. To me, that undermines what we stand for as Americans. Do we shy away from appointing a female Secretary of State; do we have her underlings impersonate her in male-dominated countries?

In Bahrain, where I visited the Grand Mosque, my fully-cloaked female guides suggested that what the Western world called "oppression" of women was actually freeing and respectful. Women worshipped separately so they wouldn't be bending over for prayers in front of lustful male eyes. They covered up so they wouldn't distract men from holy thoughts. They had the most important role: raising the children, the next generation, the men who would become great leaders of the future and the women who would, in turn, bear more men. The same words of traditional male-dominated cultures for centuries, and all centered around the towering obelisk of male primacy.


In its own way, I realize, it's no different from the "male gaze" dominating Western popular culture as well, despite our "advances" and feminism. Women's magazines abound with photo spreads of scantily clad women; both articles and advertising convince distraught readers that only with the right cosmetics, clothing, jewelry, fancy shoes, and the right attitudes and acts, can they hope to improve themselves enough to attract or keep a man; which is, of course, the ultimate goal of every modern woman's life.

It is then that the billowy black cloak and protecting veil seem, in their way, liberating.

The sound of silence

Solitude is hard to come by on a ship, even one that’s three hundred and seventy-eight feet long, forty-two feet wide, and several decks high. You sleep in company, eat in company, work in company, relax in company, despair in company, fight in company, revel in company.

The luck of landing a private stateroom is fleeting, for your chances of quiet escape are even rarer: you have a private phone number, and everyone knows where to find you.

And there’s certainly no escaping the commotion of everyday ship’s operations: pipes, alarms, radio traffic, engine roar, needle-gunning, clanking, whirring, banging around, shouting, loud rock music from the space next to yours. The soft hum of mission accomplishment.

The brain accustoms itself to this noise, tunes it down and focuses it out, though at times it’s overwhelming, like trying to drive the ship with a half-dozen different radio circuits blaring and ten or twelve crewmembers shouting across bridge wings, other desperately clamping sound-powered phone headsets to their ears in a futile attempt to pick out your commands, hollered over the commotion.

Sometimes you’re lucky, in port calls, when you can escape the buses and vans with piped-in music, the TVs blaring ubiquitously, the raucousness of the drunk and rowdy, the rock music at the gym, even (to my surprise) piped in underwater, in the pool, in one of my few remaining sanctuaries.

Numbed by the noise, the mind takes its time to unwind, to release its carefully hoarded thoughts. Clarity of focus emerges surprisingly, after sleeping in (for once), with noise-canceling headphones tuning out the ceaseless clatter of worklists and general announcements. Profundity is hard to grasp, larger concepts harder to conceive, even rote memorization hard to digest comfortably. Cognition is coiled expectantly, nervously.

Somewhere I find a quiet corner, secretly, briefly. Carefully classified and covertly occupied, lest the others run to possess it in reverse hide-and-seek. Here the thoughts start to bubble up, slowly at first, then in a torrent, pressed down and overflowing. Perspective emerges. Realization. Understanding.

Then I am piped. “…your presence is requested in the XO's stateroom...”

It shatters. The moment is lost.

Under the weather

They call it the common cold for a reason. We all get sick. It’s supposed to be normal, and then we all recover. Except when your immune system’s been compromised, you’re never quite so sure. You scrutinize every sneeze, sweat the fevers, choke back the sore throats, stress over the aches and coughs.

And standing up to 15 hours of watch a day, you don’t have a chance to slow down and sleep it off. You dope yourself up with cold medicine, swallow gallons of water and hot chocolate and cough syrup, and hope the watch will be busy, to distract you.

Eventually the cold medicine wears off, or maybe you’re just building up resistance, or maybe the cold is getting worse (you worry). The pseudoephedra starts clouding up your vision like the steroids did; you’re blind when you first wake up, and no amount of blinking and squinting focuses the picture. The fever’s broken, but you can’t stop coughing. You lose your voice at first, then it abruptly returns, but only in lower, raspy registers; and when you try to sing, out come these strange chirps.

You’ve tried not to think about it, but you’re counting the days, and when, after 7 days you’re still sick, you can’t escape the lurking despair anymore: I had an immune system disease, after all.
Your fingers start reaching, feeling, searching for swollen lymph nodes: neck, collarbone, armpits, thighs. It doesn’t matter nothing’s there. You still worry. You still look.

The recirculated cold air blowing down your throat, the short nights of just a few hours’ sleep before waking for another watch, the close-quarters contact with other ill folks, the stress and noise and uncertainty that keep you up even when you’re in the rack; maybe this is why you’re not getting well, but that’s not the thought foremost in your mind, undercutting all your conscious powers.

One day you wake up after a decent amount of sleep and your head is clear, your chest clear, your sinuses clear. Your voice is back and the cough has stopped, but you open your mouth to sing and still it’s the chirps coming out. And your hand instinctively starts feeling again, searching, dreading.

You still wonder. You still worry. You still feel.

AMAN 09

We recently participated in the multi-national exercise AMAN 09, hosted by Pakistan. "Aman" means "peace" in Urdu.

Here is an official Navy press release.

God's country

At first, it was fishing boats. Wooden, simple, brightly (we Westerners say "garishly") colored. Hundreds upon hundreds of them, glaring and cluttered in the dirty water, air heavy with trash-burnt haze hanging low.

The slightly sooty white ships (snapped in a sepia-toned world of yesteryear) passing close aboard, sailors at attention formed up on every deck, sweaty, saluting smartly, holding salutes into the distance, long past "carry on". Chinese fishing nets draped delicately, cobwebbed, on the tarnished shoreline.

"We call this 'God's country'," crowed the smartly-togged commander at my elbow, resplendent in faded whites. As we approached the pier, the conning officer's helm and line commands were drowned out, raucously, by a tired band in sagging formation, two sweating petty officers posing at either end of a briskly-lettered sign, red on white: "Indian Coast Guard Welcomes USCGC BOUTWELL to Kochi."


The music at times petered out, but given an important command to the lee helm or bow prop operator, the plaintive strains overswept our hearing again, instantly, stridently. It was hot, and hazy, and the whole pier area, everything in sight, was swept clean of people, just for us, rabble cordoned just out of reach. I squinted even through polarized lenses. Still, all the eggy whitewash in the world couldn't cover the mess of Cochin.

We swayed through the crowded streets in shabby luxury buses, worn with time, seats filled incongruously by officers in trops, gleaming white combo covers on laps, peering out through ragged curtains at the world of dust and dirt and grime and striving poverty just the other side of thin glass, inches away at every intersection, chaos and teeming livelihoods undaunted by a cacophony of car horns, moped horns, shouting, pushing, shouldering.

At night, the air was thicker, ashy with burnt trash, red, thick with fat bugs eager to bite, the back of your throat seared. Lights swam back and forth on the water, dark, oily. We clustered in a "safe" hotel, slouched on soft leather couches, five-star on the water, under the verandah, smoked with incense, icy, expensive cocktails in henna'd hands.

Outside, the sewage ran raw through the streets under concrete-block sidewalks. A large, rusty pipe fitting protruded from a cracked wall; above it, a hand-lettered sign: "Potable Water Connection". Every shopkeeper was a hustler, every meal suspect, every transaction scrutinized. Mopeds swarmed around us, driver smartly attired and helmeted, wife side-saddle behind him, child clinging to gas cap, passengers all bare-headed, husband clutching a couple spare helmets in front of him, heedless of hazards.

We disembarked from the musty bus into an oasis, the training center for our hosts and counterparts, colonially time-warped, deep mahoganies and linen-draped wicker, white lights strung through trees in the humid evening, china cups of milky tea in the hot afternoons. Strictly divided: enlisted in the rear, officers up front, captain on a low, velvety couch inches down from the stage, served silver-trayed delicacies by junior personnel. A nine-gun salute. Flamethrowers. Choreographed acrobatic stick-fighting. A long, static, epic mime-opera in drag. Delicious, spicy curries and breathtaking, colorful silks.

A world grasping and unregulated, scrambling over the ruins of a colonial, civilized, casted past. Marked by our words, our skin, our first-world tastes, we struggled to play both gracious host and humble guest, stumbling through ceremony and ritual unfamiliar to us artless Americans, hardening our hearts against questionable need and inescapable touts and beggars. A free market spurning every attempt at regulation.

And in the evenings, around sunset, before the incinerators sparked up and the bug swarms thickened, strains of music wafting across the water, low, determined, calls to prayer.

Underway on the other side of the world

Another update from our CO follows...

BOUTWELL Family and friends,

I'm not sure I'm going to be able to say "It's a small world" ever again. It's hard to believe that we are about one quarter through this deployment, and we are just now getting over here to do the job we were sent to do. But, it's true - except for some of the work we did during some of our port calls along the way, everything so far has been preparation for this. The real work begins now.

Let me tell you about what we've done since my last email. We've made two port calls and worked with the Coast Guards of India and the Maldives. Both of them were very excited about our visit. As you can imagine, they don't get a U.S. Coast Guard Cutter stopping by very often. The Indian Coast Guard really rolled out the red carpet for us. First, they greeted us with a military band on the pier. Then, they invited us to a demonstration of some of the cultural aspects unique to that region of India, including a martial arts demonstration and a very interesting, stylized performance that combined music, singing and I guess you could call it acting, but it was really an intricate display of eye, facial muscles, lips and hand movements mostly. It was called Kathakali - you can probably Google it and get a better description than what I gave, if you're interested.

We hosted them on board for a reception the next night, and they had the wardroom back for another reception on the final night. In between parties, we had a friendly game of basketball with them. We jumped off to an early lead, but they pulled ahead in the second half. We managed to tie it at the end of regulation, but they outlasted us in overtime and got the victory. Also, several of our crewmembers participated in a community relations project, repairing and whitewashing a wall at a senior citizens' home. [Let's just say we were scraping off the old paint with coconut husks.]

On the day we left, we conducted an exercise with the Indian Coast Guard. We both did SAR demonstrations - they hoisted a swimmer out of the water to one of their helicopters, we hoisted a dummy from our small boat to our helo using our rescue basket. We did some tactical maneuvering with the ships, a fly-by of all our aviation assets, some great photo ops, and did mutual mock boardings with our LE teams. They put on a demonstration of air-to-surface gunnery that was pretty impressive as well.

Our next stop was in the Maldives, near the capital, Male. The Maldives are a beautiful set of coral atolls, about 4-8 degrees above the equator. Tropical island paradise, with crystal clear water, beautiful beaches, fabulous scuba diving, snorkeling and surfing, and really really expensive. We were anchored within the Male atoll, and most of the islands around us charged the crew a 'landing fee' if they went ashore there, going as high as $60 or $75 per person. Hotels started around $200/night. Still, it was very pretty.

We worked with the Maldive National Defense Force Coast Guard there. We gave them some law enforcement and use of force training, did a mock boarding and a SAR demonstration for them, and flew their Director General around in our helo. It was a nice, productive, low key visit with an opportunity for most of the crew to get a chance to relax and have a little fun.

This brings me back to my opening statement about the real work starting now. [We're part of a Naval expeditionary strike group, or ESG.] We've been spread out during our transit from Hawaii, and we'll be doing different things in different places while over here, but we will remain part of that group until we leave. On Friday, the head of the ESG came by for a visit. During the visit, he asked several of the crew, "What have you done for your country today?". It was an interesting question, and I believe it took a couple people by surprise, until it dawned on them that every bit of work they do on board is for their country. It reminded me of a story I heard, that, in the 60's, if you went to NASA and asked one of the janitors who was sweeping a floor what he was doing, he'd say he was putting a man on the moon. It's an important reminder that everyone's job contributes to mission success, and, in our case, it extends to all of you back home as well. The sacrifices you make on a daily basis enable us to do our job - so, thank you for YOUR service!

I know that this deployment is not like typical Coast Guard deployments. I'm giving you less information than I normally would, but I think it's for a valid reason. It might be frustrating, but there isn't any practical reason you need to know where or when our next port call will be. And, for those of you who do know what the current schedule is, there's no reason to give that information to anyone else. Even if you're sure the person you're telling is trustworthy, public communications aren't secure, and believe me, people ARE listening. [In fact, they've told us that every "ship's cell" phone is being tapped.] There are many reasons why it is in the best interests of the crew to keep that information as tightly held as possible.

The next few weeks are going to be pretty hectic and also pretty exciting. I should be able to write again sometime in the next couple of weeks, before St. Patrick's day, anyways. Until then, keep us in your thoughts and take care of yourselves!

CAPT Kevin J. Cavanaugh
Commanding Officer
USCGC BOUTWELL (WHEC 719)

DoD Bloggers' Roundtable: Coast Guard's Anti-Piracy Efforts

Here's a link to a transcript from an interesting "bloggers' roundtable" discussion with two Coast Guard O-6's from CGHQ talking about the Coast Guard's role in anti-piracy efforts.

Bloggers' Roundtable

The blessings of liberty

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. -Benjamin Franklin

It is when I am furthest from home that I tend to appreciate America the most.

Not that every place I visit or live doesn't have its unique and intrinsic charms; but never do I regret winning the birth lottery of natural-born American citizenship. Developing countries tend to exude early-American entrepreneurship and eager, heartfelt service, but run terribly arid on all the splendid little conveniences we grow accustomed to enjoying. Other first-world countries drip with those niceties like drinkable water and flushable toilets and driveable roads, but whirr with a cold efficiency, demonstrating little of the creativity or joie de vivre, the multiculturalism, the daring, the refusal to be confined or defined, the irrepressable variety of our melting-pot society. And you cannot seem to escape castes and class systems, more deeply ingrained than even the color line in America, that deep divide that today seems so joyously to be vanishing, ever so slowly, filled in by the endless toil and shoveling of an endless line of heroic laborers.

Here, in Singapore, you emerge into a most modern, economically successful, clean, superbly-equipped, crime-free, and indeed beautiful city, but its residents flit through the well-swept streets like so many timid ghosts, afraid to even breathe the wrong way for fear of a hefty fine and arrest by police unconstrained by laws of civil liberty.

As trammeled and twisted as our Constitution has been over the past two hundred and twenty-some years, it yet remains the unshaken basis of our laws (laws copied and envied the world over, even and perhaps particularly by those who "hate us") and our concept of a society built on the ideal that something as ephemeral and proclaimedly self-evident as the "pursuit of happiness" was worth enshrining, protecting, and defending in our founding documents.

Happiness and liberty cannot be taken too lightly. Freedom may be messy; but it is irreplaceable, bought only by blood and sacrifice. Never discount it, never sell it short, and never give it up. No matter how superficially attractive the alternative may appear.

From the Captain

BOUTWELL Family and Friends,

Sorry it's been so long since I've been able to get you an update. I'll try to do better in the future, but I have a feeling things are only going to get busier over the next few months. Hopefully, I will still have time to keep you informed every few weeks or so. Besides the pace of operations, there are other things that limit my ability to let you know what's going on, however. While we are working with the Navy, most of our activities and just about all of our capabilities become classified, so I can't tell you where we are going or when, specifically, or write about any equipment casualties we might have.

I can and will tell you about where we have been, and as much about what we have done as I can. And as for equipment status, I can tell you that we have received great support from both the Navy logistics organization and our Coast Guard maintenance commands. Necessary repairs are completed as quickly as possible, much more quickly than I've seen on our usual patrols. Trust me, neither I nor the Navy will allow us to operate in any condition that is unsafe.
We've been gone for just over a month now, and have been mostly transiting during that time. The weather during the trans-Pacific crossing was a little worse than what I have seen in the past, and coupled with the need to get to our port calls in a certain amount of time to meet commitments or maximize time available for inport work, the ride was not the most comfortable I've ever had. For many of our shipmates, this was their introduction to shipboard life, and there were a lot of anti-seasickness patches handed out.

I mentioned needing to be certain places at certain times. The Navy refers to this as PIM, which stands for Plan of Intended Movement, and together with the SOE (Schedule of Events), it kind of rules our lives. People get very excited if we are 'behind PIM', and even a little excited if we get too far ahead of PIM. And, if you want to get something done, you had better make sure it gets entered into the SOE. When I was an XO, I used to jokingly tell people that our meal times weren't in the SOE, so they were optional. This level of control and rigidity is somewhat foreign to us, but when you get the chance to look at things from the perspective of the strike group commander, or higher, it becomes clear how complicated the schedule is and how quickly it turns into chaos if everyone is just acting independently.

Our first stop of the deployment was in Hawaii. Not a bad place to visit, and actually, living there doesn't look too bad either (my emphasis!). We topped off our fuel tanks, picked up some needed repair parts, got some more people qualified at the rifle range, and got the rest of our aviation detachment and some other crewmembers on board. This was a working port visit, so we kept normal tropical work hours during the day, but the crew was able to get out and enjoy the island somewhat.

During our transit after we left Hawaii, we got to experience our first 'strait transit'. A strait transit, something we practiced during our workups with the Navy last fall, is different from open ocean transit and challenging on 3 different levels. First of all, there is the navigational challenge. You're closer to shoal water, there's more traffic, and there's less room to maneuver to avoid it. Second, there's a force protection challenge. You're closer to land, so if someone wanted to do us harm, it would be easier for them. And finally, there's an international law challenge, since during part of the transit we are in the territorial sea of another country. That's okay under international law, but there are certain protocols that have to be followed pretty closely, and they change based on the location and the situation. So, we put together a plan in advance of each transit, make sure everyone who needs to be is briefed properly, put additional people on the bridge and in our Combat Information Center, and make sure we are ready to defend ourselves in the unlikely event we are attacked, but at the same time avoiding the appearance of an aggressive posture. All challenging and interesting stuff.

Next, we had a 3 day stop in Kota Kinabalu, a small city in Malaysia, on the island of Borneo. The main purpose of this stop was to work with the Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency, a 4 year old organization the Malaysians have put together modeled after the U.S. Coast Guard. We held boarding team and boat crew training with them, conducted some mock boardings, and gave some tours of the ship. We also played a game of soccer against them and worked side by side with them ashore doing some trail and walkway maintenance at a regional wetlands park.

Leaving there, our most recent stop was in Singapore for 2 days. This stop was primarily for crew rest, but Singapore is also a logistics hub so we were able to get some good support, received some more parts and got several crewmembers back on board who had been stateside.
When we left Singapore, we did another strait transit, this time through the Strait of Malacca, one of the busiest international straits in the world. The sheer number of large vessels transiting the strait or anchored in Singapore anchorages is absolutely mind-boggling. It was a very long day transiting out, filled with more close encounters with other ships than most cutters experience in a year. To give you an idea, my standing orders to the OOD require that I get called whenever another ship is going to come within 2 miles of us. Usually, I get those calls when the ship is 6 to 10 miles away, sometimes farther. The OOD and I discuss the situation, he or she tells me how they want to deal with it, and we proceed. I will usually go up to the bridge myself if the ship is going to be closer than a mile away. During the Strait of Malacca transit, we were routinely 500 yards or closer to other vessels, often within 500 yards of a vessel on either side of us, making 15 to 20 knots to avoid getting run over. Again, a long day but pretty exciting and professionally rewarding.

Those are the highlights of the trip so far, from my perspective. There's also been a lot of drills, training, gunnery exercises, flight ops, underway replenishments, and normal ship's work. Plus a few morale events to round things out. We've been busy, and we are gaining a great deal of experience and expertise that is going to be very useful not only during this deployment, but in future ops as well. Keeping busy also helps keep the crews mind off the down side of the deployment, separation from family and friends back home. It doesn't work, completely, but it helps. With Valentine's Day tomorrow, I know there will be a lot of homesickness aboard. Know that our thoughts are never too far from all of you, no matter how busy we get.

Until next time,
CAPT Kevin J. Cavanaugh
Commanding Officer
USCGC BOUTWELL (WHEC 719)

Facebook

For those of you who are on Facebook, I invite you to follow along with our sanitized adventures by joining the group "Friends of the USCGC BOUTWELL". That's where our trusty PA3 (public affairs specialist) is posting pictures and more from our epic journey.

You can also swap stories, recipes, and sea stories with all the other folks there. Happy surfing.

Time-Speed-Distance

It's a simple equation. Speed x Time = Distance. In its simplest form, how long it's going to take you to get where you're going. Solve for any variable. Or substitute and solve for two; pick the better solution. Master the basic equation, internalize it, I was told, and someday, you'll be a successful Operations Officer.

It's true. The equation never escapes you. Calculate an intercept. Open CPA (closest point of approach). Develop tracklines and meet up with other ships for replenishment at sea, slowly closing and maintaining stand-off distance while the elements nudge you irregularly. Conduct formation steaming. Launch and recover helicopters during "lily pad" operations (flying a helo back and forth between two ships). Figure fuel burn rates and balance fuel economy with operational need. Plan the day's events. Track targets, calculate maximum effective range, engage the enemy, fight the ship. Time-Speed-Distance.

Eventually you're thinking it without even using the math, internalizing it, knowing it, living it. I race my watchstanders, to their endless frustration and my eternal satisfaction - they work it on paper, on the computer, the calculator, on the maneuvering boards and the radar scope; I think it. The numbers become beings to me, take life, become tangible. This is the math I love, the kinetic, real-life, applicable calculations. Multi-variable equations to model, without theorems or proofs, the seemingly unpredictable movement of a ship buffeted by an array of elements. The books, the theories, the 3-minute and 6-minute and radian rules: they only get you so far. The math of shipdriving is an art as much as a science, and I struggle to explain it, to talk as well as do, to coach; it simply is.

As we steam onward, westward, time melts away under us. Time zones fail to catch us, but the sun and stars and moon are constant in their paths about us, our path about them. Time is measurable, is real; it is at once always the same time, always Zulu, always the time of the sun overhead at local apparent noon; and yet "back home", wherever that is, while we bake at mid-day, it's dark and colder and a whole other day of the week. Time ceases to flow linearly, elastic, inextricable from speed and distance.

You never get a second chance, except going west, on those interminable 6-turned-7-hour midwatches, where the one-o'clock hour is so much sweeter the second time around. And with day following day undistinguished, with sliding six-hour watches that refuse to allow you a set schedule, with operations, planned and unplanned, at all hours of the day and night, there is no day, no date, no distinction; only an unceasing routine and the regular tolling of ship's bells to regulate and to cling to.

Never send to know for whom the bell tolls...

A visit from the Commandant

Before we got underway for our epic journey, the Commandant came to see us off. He spoke briefly, then took a handful of insightful questions from the crew before touring the ship with the command cadre. Local news media was also on hand to capture our thoughts and reactions before casting off.

Here's the link to Admiral Allen's post.

A public affairs specialist is making the patrol with us; he will be posting pictures and other updates in a variety of places, including Military.com and Facebook. More to follow.

That do business in great waters

Somewhere betwixt and between the busyness of rushing past the people close to me tantôt vers la droite, tantôt vers la gauche, somewhere I stop, and pause, and I wonder. I wonder.

Perhaps it is an email, or a Christmas card, or an unexpected visit during a fortuitous port call, where I come face-to-face with the vectored, linear time that slips by me so silently as I glide, day after day, through the deep blue. I fool myself that everyone else's lives sit static while I sail past; but I realize, panged, the concurrent motion is deceptive, and it's really I who flail endlessly in Never-Never-Land while everyone about me rushes past: grows up, moves on, marks the standard rituals of life. Marriages, births, deaths, graduations, anniversaries, an endless string of birthday candles flickering off into the horizon. Holidays. Celebrations. Families. Tradition. Generations. Time passing.

I mark time by the ship's bell. Eight bells and the watch relieves. Eight bells and day and date have slipped past; the seas are the same, the sky is the same, the cold-blown watches in red-lit, windowless rooms are the same; different and new and challenging but yet familiar, changing and unchanged, ever and the same.

There is that pang of regret that I have no hometown now, no one place to which I can return, no rootedness. It is both easier and harder that way, a life without an afterlife, present and past but no future. The sea is my home, salt spray and rushing wind and rocking wave. She is loath to release me and jealous for my return. Even in the welcome arms of a port call, the sea is calling, whispering for me to gaze out at that deceptive line between sea and sky, the ever-receding horizon beckoning me onward, tugging at my eyes, straining through binoculars.

I offer my relief. I stand relieved. Another watch, past.

Tales of a Traveller

All the officer patients in the ward were forced to censor letters written by all the enlisted- men patients, who were kept in residence in wards of their own. It was a monotonous job, and Yossarian was disappointed to learn that the lives of enlisted men were only slightly more interesting than the lives of officers. After the first day he had no curiosity at all. To break the monotony he invented games. Death to all modifiers, he declared one day, and out of every letter that passed through his hands went every adverb and every adjective. The next day he made war on articles. He reached a much higher plane of creativity the following day when he blacked out everything in the letters but a, an and the. That erected more dynamic intralinear tensions, he felt, and in just about every case left a message far more universal. Soon he was proscribing parts of salutations and signatures and leaving the text untouched. One time he blacked out all but the salutation "Dear Mary" from a letter, and at the bottom he wrote, "I yearn for you tragically A. T. Tappman, Chaplain, U.S. Army." A. T. Tappman was the group
chaplain's name.

When he had exhausted all possibilities in the letters, he began attacking the names and addresses on the envelopes, obliterating whole homes and streets, annihilating entire metropolises with careless flicks of his wrist as though he were God. Catch-22 required that each censored letter bear the censoring officer's name. Most letters he didn't read at all. On those he didn't read at all he wrote his own name. On those he did read he wrote, "Washington Irving." When that grew monotonous he wrote, "Irving Washington." Censoring the envelopes had serious repercussions, produced a ripple of anxiety on some ethereal military echelon that floated a C.I.D. man back into the ward posing as a patient. They all knew he was a C.I.D. man because he kept inquiring about an officer named Irving or Washington and because after his first day there he wouldn't censor letters. He found them too monotonous.

--Joseph Heller, Catch-22

One prolonged blast

After some last-minute alibis, underway at last. It seemed like forever until we cast off that last line and waved goodbye to the families, co-workers, and other assorted well-wishers clustered, cameras raised, on the pier. I wanted to cheer as the ship's whistle boomed out, but was advised, delicately, against it.

I'm not good at drawn-out farewells and it seemed so odd to have days and days to wrap up my last loose ends at home. The hours seemed endless, even as the remaining tasks and chores kept me out late and up early. One last night on the town, a round at the tiki bar, even a couple beers on the back porch of my apartment - yeah, it all sounded good, but in the end I couldn't quite muster yet more adieux; and anyway, I was busy. Special Sea Detail couldn't come early enough.

Before I left, I guinea pigged for a co-worker's career counseling grad school project, where the subjects (including me) took a series of personality and work interest assessments, culminating, as advertised, in recommended paths for higher education and career fields. I'm always leery of these sorts of inventories, not least because rarely do I come out strongly in favor of one "type" or another; and because often, I'm a radically different person in different situations. For example, in my private life I'm a confirmed introvert, but in most work environments my heart's emblazoned on my sleeve. Which creates strange eddies when the two mix - at a port call, or a promotion ceremony. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to leave it at my abhorrence of categorization and strenuous acts to defy pigeonholing or stereotyping.

Still, I've always been curious what career paths were "meant" for me, because my job history has been so spotty, my career destiny so indirect. Since when does an Oxford graduate scoop ice cream and join the military? So I took the test, and in its haughty wisdom, the test told me my top ten career choices were Computer & IS Manager (blech), Biologist (maybe in biotech or microbiology), Architect, Attorney (red tape!!!), University Professor, Chemist, Physician, Forester (park ranger?), Geologist, and Military Officer (aha...). I admonished the grad student who delivered my results that the test failed to take into account the kinetic nature of my learning and working. Most of these white-collar jobs would drive me absolutely nuts, because I couldn't be up and about, away from a desk and computer, facing down the mercurial elements of nature and people and circumstance, every day newly challenged both physically and mentally, defying what and who I was raised to be...

Where on the list was "ship captain"? I teased the researcher. First mate? Salty sailor of the deeps? I know I belong underway, I thought to the uneven lilting of the seas.

Hey, Mr. Postman

Here's how to reach me while I'm underway the next several months:

(my name)
USCGC BOUTWELL (WHEC-719)
FPO AP 96661-3902

All parts of this address are important. Without my name, it probably won't get delivered. The basic 5-digit ZIP code will get it to our group, but it is the "plus 4" and the ship name that get it to BOUTWELL. "FPO" stands for Fleet Post Office and "AP" for Armed Forces Pacific.

Packages can't exceed 70 lbs or 130 inches combined length and girth (drat, no new flat-screen). The US Postal Service must be used - i.e., not UPS, FedEx, etc. And, any package over 16 ounces must have a customs form 2976 or 2976-A attached. Under the heading "Description of Contents", write “Certified to be a bona fide gift, personal effects, or items for personal use of military personnel”. Priority Mail is recommended for packages. Alcoholic beverages, hazardous materials, and weapons can't be shipped.

I should still be able to post to and read this blog, although our connectivity will be severely limited underway. Using an internet cafe at port calls like Hawaii is great, but who trusts the internet at port calls after that? I'll be suspending service on my cell phone until I get back, so don't bother calling. I won't be able to access my standard Coast Guard email address, although I'll have a different one aboard ship, and that will probably be the best way to reach me. Just take my normal CG email, and add the number 2 in between the end of my last name and the "@uscg.mil", i.e. (myname)2@uscg.mil. Facebook and web-based email like Hotmail are restricted websites aboard ship, so you won't see me there either. Bottom line: snail mail or CG email. If you're sending email to my CG address, be aware that due to severely restricted connectivity (think 28k modem), any large emails or attachments will get rejected. If you want to send me a document, try cutting and pasting into the text of the email. Pictures take up too much room and won't go through regardless.

So that's all the do's and don'ts. I really hope to hear from you! Profundity, profuseness, and/or creativity are no requirements - just remind me that life exists outside our steel bulkheads. Mail call is the highlight of any patrol.

Wading in

I was onboard BOUTWELL most of the day. I've been there on and off the past several days, playing reality-TV Tetris as I cram 6 months' worth of stuff into two tiny lockers and a broom-closet of a stateroom. (I'm in 2-man chiefs' berthing, because there's only one female chief, and I'm the only female officer.) I might well be flying straight from BOUTWELL to JARVIS, and it may be months before all my belongings catch up with me out in Hawaii, so I have to take everything I need for the patrol...AND everything I might need for the first several months of my new assignment. With the caveat that somehow I have to squeeze all these things into suitcases to fly out from some foreign port call, just in case.

Since we're doing so many "meet-and-greets" with foreign Coast Guards and other VIPs, we have to pack every uniform item imaginable, which takes up considerable space. On top of all that, I'm bringing skirts AND pants AND pumps AND oxfords AND stockings AND socks. More space.

That aside, today was a day of meetings.

In one of the meetings, an Iraqi professor affiliated with the Navy postgraduate school program presented a seminar on the history, political and religious background, and culture of the various Middle Eastern nations (in particular, Iraq). A similar seminar (which I was not able to attend) was presented last week by an Iranian professor. While the professor had resided in America since his mid-twenties, he had also completed compulsory service in the Iraqi army as a young man, and maintained ties to the region. It is not often that we, as Americans, are afforded a relatively unvarnished view of Middle Eastern life, and I found the professor's viewpoint refreshingly insightful, nuanced, and rational. So much of what we receive through the media is packaged for mass American consumption, much too crude, simplistic, sound-biting, and jingoistic to reflect the true "facts on the ground".

My day was almost over by the time I was able to depart the ship to start my second job - at the ISC. I feel like I'm moonlighting, except I'm only earning one salary.

Plans to give you hope and a future

It is uncanny how things have fallen so neatly into place this past year. A year ago, I was going through the motions, living on borrowed time, certain against hope that all this rush of good luck was all much, much too good to be true. A last desperate fling at a "wetting down" (promotion party) I refused to postpone, overshadowed by a preliminary diagnosis I whispered to no one but the nagging doubts in my head. Maybe it won't be, maybe it won't...

The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away; blessed be the name of the Lord.

It was, of course, all much too good to be true; and it vanished suddenly, irrevocably, one cold March afternoon in a sequence of phone messages, less than two hours apart, blinking at me in blatant violation of secure-space policy from a silenced phone. Dissolved around me as I sat, sobbing, locked in my car in the parking lot of Navy Surface Warfare Officer School, frustrated, exhausted, spent. What had seemed so limitless now choked in around me. This had been my chance, my golden ticket, my unrealistic and unexpected top pick, my way out, my validation that a born-and-bred intellectual with a degree in medieval English and 15 years of classical violin training could really, against all odds, in defiance of nature, nurture, and family expectations, be at heart a salty sailor, a shipdriver. My payback for sacrificing pride and personal life watch after watch, week after week, patrol after patrol, two boards and thirteen months later, all for a qualification letter and a captain's trust and a hard-earned recommendation. And now, all at once, all gone.

But from the beginning, things fell into place. My command urged me to tell the detailer where I wanted to go for treatment, instead of letting HQ pick. Unbelieving, I picked the Bay Area, and to my shock ended up back on the West Coast, centrally located between family members, and, incredibly, living just an hour's drive from my best friend, whom I'd lived far away from since high school. I went to one of the top civilian hospitals and received top-notch care. The first people to respond to my house-rental ad have been fantastic renters: my house looks better now than it ever did when I lived there. I ended up in a job - intended to be nothing more than a holding pen while I recovered - which was ideally suited to me, where I could draw on my experience, knowledge, and connections and really make a difference at a critical juncture. My command was exceptionally supportive of me. I was able to take large chunks of leave, including an unforgettable trip to South Africa. I landed this irreplaceable deployment opportunity. My latest PET/CT scan came out completely negative. I've seen more of my family in the past several months than in the five years previous. I had few lasting side effects, none seriously disabling. The Coast Guard paid for every penny of my treatment. And, to top it all off, somehow two captains who barely knew me negotiated to get me my top pick this summer, an assignment twin to last year's canceled orders.

Why?

The whole series of uncannily fortunate events has conspired to make me wonder what manifest destiny awaits me. I am certainly no perfect and upright person. There are undoubtedly those far more perfect and upright than me who were touched by far worse. And I wasn't just spared; I was blessed; I've been returned tenfold.

Why?

What burden now must I carry, what torch do I bear, for those who failed to make it this far? What debt must I pay?

Why?

IGTNT

I Got The News Today. Coined to refer to someone answering the door to a sharply uniformed soldier bearing an ominous telegram, today, to me, it means something else: learning of another person's cancer.

Used to be, I thought cancer was for old people. You know, the disease of an industrialized, modern society that eventually catches you up after you've outlived everything else. Old folks and those kids with leukemia whose pictures graced jars of change at supermarket checkouts. I knew a couple people with cancer, here and there. Tragic cases, people whispered, and turned away.

Then when I was in my early twenties, a friend of mine, married with two young kids and pregnant with a third, was diagnosed. The desperate race against time to save both mother and baby didn't make it. The loss opened a gaping hole.

Since then, my father and mother both survived cancer. My grandmother still struggles. And now I've joined the ranks. Since then, it seems cancer is everywhere, particularly cancer of the young. At first it was strangers, stopping me on the street to share stories of their similarly bald-headed nephew, or cousin, or sister. Beautiful, talented, bright, promising young folk - or young adults with kids of their own - snatched away in the flush of their bloom.

And the stories abound of overwhelming costs, of insurance denials, of fundraisers and bake sales and donation funds, of lost jobs and houses, of inadequate care, of outdated techniques, of delayed service. Of lasting, crippling side effects. Of depression, frustration, abandonment, futility.

That is not my story.

I had tremendous support from friends, family, and my employer. I was paid, and encouraged, to relocate anywhere in the US I wanted to go. I was sent to the top civilian doctors, where I received cutting-edge treatment. I continued to work throughout my treatment, but I didn't have to - I still would have received my full salary. I received sizeable housing, food, and cost-of-living allowances, which made it possible to live comfortably in the heart of San Francisco, one of the most expensive cities in the country. I was allowed as much recovery time as I needed, which I used to visit friends and families on the weekends during chemo. And I didn't pay a penny for my treatment - not for the medications, doctor visits, infusions, transfusions, radiation, scans, blood work, or checkups. Not for anything. No insurance hassles necessary. Most importantly, I had a very treatable form of cancer, caught early.

So it breaks my heart every time I "get the news" and hear of someone else broadsided by cancer in the prime of their life, haggling with insurance, stressed by bills, leaving behind young children and a promising future.

When I was in college, I used to wonder how I'd been so lucky as to win the "birth lottery", finding myself in a middle-class American family, instead of a slum in India, a war zone in Africa, a frozen apartment block in Russia, or maybe abandoned in a dumpster in China, just for being a girl. It's part of why I joined the Coast Guard, to repay my gratitude to a country which had unconsciously invested me with so much.

These days, I find myself wondering how I've been so lucky as to win the "cancer lottery", if I can describe it in such crude terms. I've done nothing more meritorious than the little girl with leukemia, or the young man with pancreatic cancer. How do I lay my worth against the parent who passes on after a short but valiant struggle, leaving behind three young children?

Is there a message? Is there a reason? For what greater purpose have I been saved? What debt do I owe to those who didn't make it? What burden do I bear?