Wearing with Pride

Times goes by and things change.  The Marines have a saying, "Once a Marine, always a Marine" and the corollary is, "There is no such thing as an ex-marine."  One of my friends from Pawhuska who joined the navy told me that he could not wait for his first hitch to be over, but then he found the civilian life offered to him was not offering enough to provide for his family.  So, he re-enlisted and made a career of the navy.  Obviously, he has a lot of pride in his naval career as he was a first class petty officer.  He was in a rating that had many people so advancement was more difficult than in some ratings and all of us who have served know that.  We have all seen talented people in the wrong rating who did not advance in that rating.  Some re-enlist for a school in a different rating and move on up.  I was a Radarman so our field was fairly open as opposed to the Boatswain's Mate rating.  I was in only my single four year hitch.  I remain pleased that I was a petty officer and I do not regret my decision to get out of the navy.  Neither do I regret my decision to join the navy.  I work with recruiters a bit where I live and I am there in their offices sometimes when young men come in and announce, "I want to join the Marines."  I watch them sometimes with such mixed feelings for it is apparent right away that they can not meet the minimum standards and I have watched a sergeant ask six or seven questions that quickly disqualify them.  I am then so grateful that I had the physical qualifications and I could pass all of the tests required to join the navy.  I then made it through boot camp, qualified for a school, completed it with high scores and served aboard ship.  Like Bill, my friend who made it a career, I couldn't wait for my hitch to be over and I was then ex-navy.  Or was I?  We old salts do not emphasize it as much as the Marine Corps does, but, as I said, times goes by and things change.  As I have acquired some years and so much of my navy experience, training, education and friendships comes back to me again and again, I, like a marine am beginning to believe that there is no such thing as an ex-sailor, ex-navy.  It's too deep in our blood by the time we have completed our service.  And there is another truth to which I will readily submit:  We don't remember things the way they were.  We remember them the way we want to and that is what makes things better.  But there is more to it than that also.  As we get older, we just appreciate things more than we did in those years when all we wanted to do was get on with life; or what we thought life was going to be.  John Lennon said, "Life is what happens while you are making other plans."  Life happens too, and plans we made at early ages are usually shown to have been a human comedy and in the end, we are left with the life we lived, not the one we planned to live.  For a few, and that is a very few, plans and life worked out to be the same.  I think it's more fun opening the packages that we did not know what was in them.  I am grateful that I can acquire a few things that say "I was in the navy," such as my USS Point Defiance (LSD-31) ball cap I am wearing in the photograph, and the jacket which reads NAVY in large letters.  I wear them with pride and today I think I am still navy, still a sailor and now I believe, "Once a navy sailor, always one."

Stephen Joe Payne