Lonely Hours—Section 8

My service years were spent in the U.S. Navy, and you can believe me when I tell you that even during a war, time hangs heavy for a sailor. You don't spend much time actually fighting. Instead, your days and nights are taken up with watch standing, studying for promotion, writing letters, or taking part in never-ending drills. Still, in between, there are a lot of hours with nothing much to do. Some guys take up a hobby, but they don't seem to last very long. Just sitting there looking out over the rolling sea not only makes you seasick, but it gets a man to thinking of all the things he left behind when he pulled on those bell bottom trousers. And a sailor gets lonely. Oh, sure, he has the companionship of his shipmates who literally live in his pocket; the crew is so tightly packed aboard ship. It's surprising how you can live in a compartment with 25 or 30 other seamen and still get the feeling of being so isolated, abandoned by the rest of the world. Your existence is pretty well restricted by the physical limitations of the ship, and privacy is almost non-existent. Even taking a shower or something as personal as relieving yourself is done in the company of your buddies.

If the days seem long, the nights are without end. As you lay in your bunk, trying to catch a couple of hours of sleep before relieving the watch, the dark compartment is filled with the clicking of dice from a crap game under a battle lantern, and the slap of cards in the power game at the mess table—always accompanied by the steady flow of Navy profanity. When things do quiet down and everybody hits the sack, the gloom is made heavier by the rumble of snoring sleepers, and the resounding passage of gas, and the occasional sobbing of the new kid who is still having trouble accepting his new way of life. You find yourself wide awake, wishing you had someone to talk to.

After a while, giving up any idea of sleep, you roll out of your bunk to make your way up to the gun deck where the duty crew is engaged in the age-old sailor's pastime of "shooting the breeze."

I guess it's much the same in all branches of the military. Particularly when members of different services get together over coffee, or that familiar cold brew. Looking back many years later, the best memories are usually those of the bull sessions where you were not only entertained, but frequently educated as well. You learned about things you may otherwise never have known existed. Things that were never mentioned over the dinner table back home. But whatever you talked about, those group discussions were often all that stood between a guy and a section eight.

N.B. A section eight was a medical discharge for reasons of mental unbalance.

Originally published in Now Listen Up! An Anthology of G.I. Memories.
Copyright 1996, 2007