Thread: A Story For Veteran's Day

Originally Posted by WireBeard

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When traveling to Berlin through East Germany, you had to stop at the Soviet checkpoints and have them stamp your orders. This should have taken no more than 5 minutes, but bureaucrats are the same everywhere, so you could be kept waiting for 20-30 minutes. Once, while handing the guard my papers in a light drizzle and noting that this kid (19 at the most) was shivering, I said to him in Russian "Guard duty sucks, no matter what Army you are in." He looked around real quick for a supervisor, nodded and smiled.

Truer words have never been spoken. Standing topside watch from midnight until 0400 on the cold steel deck of a submarine tied to a pier at the sub base in Groton, Connecticut in February is one memory I would like to have removed. Practically every sailor relieving the topside watch, day or night, every day of the year would stop first in the mess deck to choke down some food and grab a cup of coffee then climb up the ladder and out into the weather, cup in hand and accept the watch. Those cups never made it back down to the mess deck. Once emptied, the cup was always "float tested" and they always failed (in case you don't get it, the cups get thrown over the side). One day it became an issue that our submarines were going through entirely too many cups. (the china pattern on all US Navy ships is the same, white with a blue stripe. Before 1970 or so the cups had a stripe and an anchor)So the Commander of Submarine Group Two (COMSUB 2) ordered divers to go down at every pier on the base to retrieve cups. Well retrieve cups they did, thousands of them! There were cups down there as far back as WWII. It began with a single diver with a mesh bag who came up laughing saying the river bed there looked as though it was made of white china. They got a small barge with a little crane and lowered a basket down for a team of divers to fill with cups. It looked like a dredging operation. They found so many cups it seemed impossible. They also found two .45's and an M-14.

Originally Posted by icedog

Truer words have never been spoken. Standing topside watch from midnight until 0400 on the cold steel deck of a submarine tied to a pier at the sub base in Groton, Connecticut in February is one memory I would like to have removed. Practically every sailor relieving the topside watch, day or night, every day of the year would stop first in the mess deck to choke down some food and grab a cup of coffee then climb up the ladder and out into the weather, cup in hand and accept the watch. Those cups never made it back down to the mess deck. Once emptied, the cup was always "float tested" and they always failed (in case you don't get it, the cups get thrown over the side). One day it became an issue that our submarines were going through entirely too many cups. (the china pattern on all US Navy ships is the same, white with a blue stripe. Before 1970 or so the cups had a stripe and an anchor)So the Commander of Submarine Group Two (COMSUB 2) ordered divers to go down at every pier on the base to retrieve cups. Well retrieve cups they did, thousands of them! There were cups down there as far back as WWII. It began with a single diver with a mesh bag who came up laughing saying the river bed there looked as though it was made of white china. They got a small barge with a little crane and lowered a basket down for a team of divers to fill with cups. It looked like a dredging operation. They found so many cups it seemed impossible. They also found two .45's and an M-14.

Very interesting story!

Thanks to all of you guys for your service, and for taking the time to share some interesting stories!