Last modified January17, 2010
If ever I were to write a book I suppose it will be a history on one of the US Navy's biggest secrets kept from the regular navy cadre. That secret would be that of Military Sealift Command. See the ship above. This is one of the ships that was transferred over from the regular navy in the late 70's to be manned and operated by the Civilian Mariners (Civmars) of Military Sealift Command. Why would the existence of Military Sealift be kept from the enlisted ranks? Pay! Surely the Navy did not want to have a loss of personnel fleeing to MSC for the lifestyle and pay offered by a seagoing career so it was basically kept from the rank and file and certainly was not discussed in the Naval History being taught out of the Blue Jackets Manual while I was attending boot camp.
Now here is the truth, in the late 70's the year before I left the service and before transfers such as the Kawishiwi to MSC an All Hands Magazine article surfaced illustrating the experience of an enlisted Electronics Technician serving aboard an MSC ship. This was before the days of the ladies aboard ships. The requirements for an enlisted persons posting on an MSC ship were a 4.0 service record and second tour which in navy terms usually meant second enlistment. MSC ships tended to be deployed at sea longer than regular US Navy vessels so duty aboard an MSC ship was considered be double the sea duty time. In other words the Mildept (Military Department) received two years of creditable sea duty for every year that they were billeted aboard an MSC ship. The other perk of Mildept service aboard an MSC ship were the living conditions of an officer(compared to life in the regular navy), and no responsibilities in the galley, or of cleaning compartments. Imagine if you will the sheer excitement of living in a two man state room versus 90 or more to a berthing compartment. Not to worry though, even if the cat had gotten out of the bag sooner it would not have mattered to most of us in the enlisted realm of the Navy, that is because only certain military billets were designated for MSC ship manning.
You can learn about Military Sealift Command from Wikipedia or even the official website of the command itself but I would rather you learn it here since I spent a great deal of my life in its employ and have a perspective that Wikipedia does not. Let's face it folks if we in the US Naval Forces are doing something it is because our parent culture's Navy has done it first. Before there existed an MSTS or MSC there was an RFA (Royal Fleet Auxiliary). Just like the Air Craft Carrier and the Steam Catapult (even radar) we learned and borrowed the concept from the British Navy. Essentially by transferring service ships and troop ships (long since passé) over to civilian manning the regular Navy gets to focus its own trained manpower to combat vessels. Simply put we can do with a lot less personal aboard an Auxiliary since those ships are not involved in direct armed conflict and this is why the current structure of the Naval Fleet Auxiliary Force is a civilian manned operation under the purview of MSC and regulated by several components of Federal Government rather than just the Navy itself. All new construction MSC built to specification ships have to adhere to Coast Guard, American Bureau of Shipping and NAVSEA regulations as well. So, not only does an MSC ship have to go through an inspection called INSURV but also a Coast Guard inspection.
The Kawishiwi or Special K as she was affectionately known was tasked as the UNREP training tanker for the US Navy REFTRA in San Diego. I reported to Kawishiwi in the latter half of 1989 as a 2nd Electrician. The ship would berth at the Supply Depot at the foot of Broadway on Friday evenings and relocate to the Fuel Pier on Sunday mornings to take on fuel. Early Monday morning we would put to sea and arrive on station to receive ships alongside. It was the first time I had sailed with women aboard a ship. There was a female third engineer by the name of Jackie. She was a nice young girl but I had hard time understanding why any woman would seek to go into harms way. The way I was raised and influenced by my aunts and grandmother it just was not right to place women in such danger.
Let me put it this way, no civilized Christian nation would deliberately allow their daughters to serve in combat. Along comes the women's rights movement and Senator Pat Schroeder inserting a rider on a defense appropriations bill and all that changed. All of a sudden service in the military was no longer considered a duty of normal males but a constitutional right awarded first to females and recently homosexuals. The service academies were opened up to women because of the rider that Schroeder inserted and title IX under the Clinton Administration furthered the integration.
Historically prior to all of this women could serve the military but in roles that would not take them directly into combat situations. Women and men were not housed in the same facilities but as of the late 1990's barracks became co-ed much like some college dorms that most parents did not feel comfortable exposing their children to. When I saw this in Guam on the Naval Station when checking into the BEQ in 1996 awaiting a flight back to CONUS I decided not to stay and got a hotel room in Agana instead. The justification for female integration of the afloat community according to the scholarship debated in the US Naval Institutes journal Proceedings of the time was that demographics of the late 1970's and the 1980's could not adequately sustain the needed manpower requirements of an all volunteer force. In short Americans were not giving birth to enough males during those years. Another influence was the release of a book during the period called The Last Ship. The book was a novel which asserted that human kind was saved by extinction from a global thermonuclear war via the staffing of a US Destroyer with both sexes. Research on the integration subject while working on my bachelor degree revealed that if not for the integration of females the nation would have to return to mandatory conscription in order to meet manpower requirements across the services.
Hanging back out of harms way or not an MSC auxiliary still remains a target of opportunity for those that have the capability of inflicting harm on a navy's supply line. It is difficult for most to adjust to the loss of a male family member to warfare, losing a female member would have a far more devastating effect on a family. It is for this reason that the press did not reveal the pictures of the female crew members that were injured on the USS Cole. The public outcry would have been great. Perhaps the most important issue is the moral one. Must we continue to throw out moral principle for the sake of expediency or an individuals perceived right? Is the nation best served this way? Are we justified in separating mothers from their children as was the case for many of the women serving aboard MSC ships during the 1990's? Are we justified forcing men and women to live in close proximity where privacy is ill afforded? Now we must ask the same question when it comes to the homosexual agenda.
Life aboard ship is not a nine to five job where everyone gets to go their separate ways at the end of the day. People are living in an often isolated situation with no opportunity to get away for weeks and sometimes months at a time. When men and women are thrust together in these situations relationships that would not have otherwise taken place occur. The shipboard environment or battlefield is not the appropriate place for these relationships to occur and no amount of military regulation will prevent their occurrence. A Chief Master of Arms aboard the USS Acadia while it was berthed in Jebel Ali Port in Dubai in 1992, lamented to me that he would catch a couple making out in a darken ship entrance in the morning, write them up for the offense, and then find them at it again in the evening. During the years of Zumwalt's term as CNO such problems were non existent because it was against the law for women to be billeted aboard military ships. The continuing conflict with feminization would weigh heavy on my heart until I felt that I could bear up under it no more which lead to my eventual resignation from MSC in 1998. This is what happens when new rights are given to individuals that were considered socially unacceptable, the lifestyle of others is displaced to placate the desires of the seeking individual. Further in my opinion I think that it is reprehensible when able young men shirk from doing their duty and then their fathers encourage daughters to fill that void. What does it say about society? Does it not signal a statement of general weakness? Women aiding in the armed resistance against conquering invaders is a last resort. It should not be the normal status of affairs. What would John Paul Jones say to us today if he learned that his name sake the USS John Paul Jones was staffed with women. If we can not meet military man power requirements because of the lack of young male volunteers then by all means reinstitute mandatory conscription. This is the normal approach for many of our allies. It is the fact of life for men in Switzerland, Israel and Singapore. You will read about my talk with Israeli soldiers in my page dealing with my time aboard the USNS Observation Island.
As we travel in time away from events memory looses some of its clarity. So while the history that I try to portray here did indeed occur not all events stand out as dates except the very few and that also attends to the time when I had my knee injury aboard Kawishiwi. I am going to assume that it was on June 17th on 1990 that I injured my knee. I had been going down to the pursers office which had been in the forward house one deck down from the weather deck. I was checking to see if draws were available so that I could have some money to go out on the town. As I was going down the ladder ( we don't call them stairs) to the pursers office I missed one of the steps as I got off and went down with severe pain in my left knee. I would injure that knee twice during my time with Military Sealift Command. The scripture says that everything happens for good to those that love the Lord. It is quite possible that had this event not occurred I would not be with my wife today. As it was the event required my departure from the Kawishiwi due to an unfit status. In OPM terms this was a temporary total disability incident. Being in the crippled state that I was I did not have much help from fellow crew members when I left the ship. Nor did I have any help from the baggage handlers at the Oakland Amtrak station.
Back in those days when a mariner left a ship in an unfit status protocol required that the mariner be sent back to the placement pool for medical evaluation to verify the unfit status before being allowed to go on medical leave. I had to wear a knee immobilizer during this time which was very uncomfortable but I had no choice. There was no way I could walk on that leg without some kind of support. I was found unfit for duty due to a work place injury. When one works for the Federal Government and a workplace injury occurs it falls under US Department of Labor and Office of Personnel Management supervision. The government employer is required to place the employee in a continue on pay status for 45 days and then short term disability kicks in after that for up to two years.
When I became unfit for duty and knew that I needed corrective surgery the only place I could think of going to was my mothers place in Tampa, Florida. She had just recently remarried and so I wound up crashing her honey moon. I did not take the train across country for this purpose, at least at the airport you can pay someone to help with luggage. I wound up seeing one doctor in Tampa that had retired from the Air Force and he apparently could not read an MRI, bear in mind that these test had to be authorized and paid for by OPM . I do not remember that doctors name, the most memorable thing from that meeting is that the guy weighed more than my 300 pounds. I had to get approval for a second MRI and a second opinion from the then Gulf Coast Orthopedic Institute in Hudson, Florida. The doctor who saved the day was Dr Alfred Bonati. Bonati determined that I had a torn meniscus and I would have later have the surgery in the month of August to repair the tear. My poor mom and stepdad had to put up with me as a resident and had to transport me to the appointments and the surgery. It was during this time that I started writing letters to girls that I saw in Jack West's pen pal list. One of them would wind up with the woman who is now my wife. I must admit that sitting around waiting for appointments and having the surgery done was rather boring. I just could not stand being cooped up or sitting around just because I was not totally ambulatory did not rule out sitting behind a steering wheel. I rented a monthly rental from Payless Rental Car near the Tampa airport. Basically, although it was uncomfortable with the knee immobilizer I got in the car to explore Florida's highways. After I completed six weeks physical therapy I was able to walk again without much trouble. Dr. Bonati declared me fit for duty and I returned to Oakland, California for assignment just in time for Desert Storm.