The Ship Where I Became a Conservative

T his past Friday, I published a piece detailing how my former ship, the frigate USS Rodney M. Davis (FFG-60), was used as a target for Canadian, American, Australian, and Malaysian missiles during RIMPAC, a multinational military exercise. When stationed aboard, I would have gladly volunteered her for such a fiery demolition immediately — no more cleaning stations, no more RHIB maintenance.

But now, as an old man of 28 who recognizes how vital his time aboard was to his personal development, it hurt deeply to see the Davis manfully, yet in vain, shrug off bombs and missiles as the smoke gathered around it, a hulk striving to avoid its predetermined grave thousands of fathoms below. Only eight years ago, the Davis was a RIMPAC participant; we may have broken down and limped back to port, but by gum, we were in formation for the photo shoot.

The video of her death can be seen below. (Unfortunately, the Navy opted for a fatuous hype-video format, as if slow motion and rising strings could ever compete with the stark kinetic beauty of missile strikes on steel, unmolested by a video editor’s suite.)

Each missile strike reminded me of a moment aboard, and I hope you don’t mind some brief reminiscences. The first explosion blows out the starboard hangar and the top of Damage Control Central. Central was engineering’s home, a blissfully air-conditioned space stalked by chiefs and officers looking to assign tasks. Crafty sailors would spend as much time behind equipment panels as possible to enjoy the benefit of the former without arousing the latter’s ire. The coffee in Central was the strongest aboard, as 3MC (upper-enlisted fellow in charge of the maintenance program aboard) insisted on a tar-like quality to the brew. Whether his chronic eye-twitch was due to that potent beverage or the many times he’d been electrocuted as a young Electricians Mate, sailors debate to this day.

The second impact slams into Aux 3, home of the reverse osmosis (RO) water-filtration system, and our fourth diesel generator. In this space, my superior discovered that the gangly MM3 Abel was good for something, namely removing oil filters with his long, willowy arms. So it came to pass that I was the filter guy — with arms bared, wrangling filters from their housings like a farmhand assisting a cow birth. I went shoulder deep in a Caterpillar; what did you do to protect freedom?

It was also in the Aux spaces that I became a conservative. No, not by reading Burke or Buckley; the intellectual part would come later. Oily rags made a conservative out of me. See, we would purchase a bale of rags composed of shirt chunks from a Goodwill for an ungodly sum. Refusing to absorb, the rags’ only practical application was to push the oil around to create avant-garde industrial modern art on the frigate’s weeping stabilizer fins. There among the reefers, A/C condensers, and diesels, I realized just how efficient the government was in spending money on junk. If they couldn’t get rags right, why trust them with anything else?

Paveway laser-guided bombs did in the masts, it appears. The span of deck beneath the masts was holy for many sailors. It was the smoke pit, a place for communal grumbling, cigarette bumming, and general tomfoolery. As a non-smoker, I initially moaned about the smokers and their frequent breaks from work, choosing to read a book when they disappeared. But then, one day, I thought, “Why not go up top and take in the air? If they can, so too should I. No sense squatting in a diesel space like a semi-literate toad.” Delightful. Everyone should smoke in the Navy, even if you never take a drag. In the image below, you’ll see the sum of military service, guns and smokes, smokes and guns.

Fittingly, the last close-up shot is of a strike along the starboard weather decks. It was at this rail that the 180 or so sailors of the Davis lined up at her decommissioning in the freezing rain of Everett, Wash. We wore our woolen blues, but the wind and rain soon found purchase, and we shivered so much that one could hear a faint jingling as our medals chattered on our chests like our teeth did in our heads. It was one of the last all-male crews in the surface fleet, with the advantages, bat-guano insanity, and hilarity such a composition engenders.

It’s an odd thing to be young and yet see part of your life turned into history — those who are older tell me this will happen with increasing regularity. It was the best first ship a sailor could ask for. Mechanically deficient and tired, but with a crew that refused to allow the ship to flounder. You did well, Davis. Thank you for the memories and the incomparable South China Sea sunrises I was the sole beneficiary of while dangling over the water on the boat davit.

There are more stories to tell of the ship and her crew, but these will have to do for now.