Part VI: Code Yellow Series (Aircraft Carrier Fiction, Ripped from the Headlines)

The Trashy Side of Life on Aircraft Carriers

(Persian Gulf) A wide array of vessels, called a Strike Group, sail with one nuclear powered aircraft carrier like CVN-74; indeed, much of the writing in the “Code Yellow” series involves the actions of this Strike Group’s fictional air-wing; featuring a squadron led its dynamic leader, Lieutenant Harrington. (See previous posts)

Part One:  http://goo.gl/YOCE0V

Part Two:  http://goo.gl/fetXVg

Part Three:  http://goo.gl/Tv7Z2o

Part Four:  http://goo.gl/rv1IFK 

Part Five: http://goo.gl/7z1757 

Other ships include three destroyers carrying Aegis weapons, some even equipped with tactical, “Tomahawk” cruise missiles. As if this Posse rode out to battle feeling unprepared, lurking underneath the roiling sea is a pair of attack submarines also armed with vertical launch systems and protected from above by ten “angels,” known as antisub warfare-helicopters.

Zipping in and around the group like a concierge with ADD, is a handy, multipurpose, fast, combat support ship; coordinating operations so that all of the necessary supplies and parts are available to this large peace-keeping force.

Called a peace-keeping force because an aircraft carrier is the most powerful forward deployed tool of United States foreign policy ever devised, CVN-74 floats as if a city, housing close to 5,500 people. Few countries have even one carrier, the United States has 10; and yet most of the US Navy sailors want to peacefully circumnavigate the globe for six months, see the world, have some fun, and return to port without any provocation. How carriers are used is up to politicians; how carriers function is up to unrecognized hundreds of resourceful young sailors.

Non-combatant support ships straddle alongside others in the group, about 150 yards apart; passing even bulky supplies via heavy, long ropes in a fashion ships employed hundreds of years ago. This replenishment allows the group to remain at sea for prolonged periods. Barrels of fuel (both for the aircraft and for the ships), other petroleum products, ammunition, provisions, and various vital supplies transverse through this crude system of exchange, sometimes done in vaulting seas.

Returning to these nimble non-combatant support ships is often the unpleasant remnants of thousands of citizens of these large sea-faring cities; separated, segmented by type, and compressed into large round “pucks” ready to be submitted for re-cycling. Bio-degradable waste is either burned, or dumped into the sea, like greywater; while blackwater is stored and later treated.

This story skates around these pucks like a hockey team playing in the Stanley Cup© finals; they are the work product of an unsung group of enlisted Seamen, mostly the lowest ranking workers on the ship, E-3 and below, who receive this assignment in a 90-day rotation.

 

They are officially FSAs (food-service attendants), exiled to the fourth deck below, deep in the innards of the hull, near the stern. With almost half of the ship’s inhabitants in the air-wing; 3,000 support staff, called the “company,” operate below the main flight deck, the stage which dominates movies and shows depicting life onboard.

18,000 meals a day produced garbage in all varieties: a few mess-attendants gather, divide, classify, and dispose of piles of waste in a process called, “mess-cranking,” comparable to the digestive system of a gigantic beast. It’s not the material of movies like Top Gun; you wouldn’t want this job if you were in prison.

“Another fine Navy day, sir!” He saluted the Chief Petty Officer.

“Right, right;” “we’re all thrilled to be here, Seaman Pellegrino, but your sunny attitude is not going to get those canisters cranked up!”

During the first extended cruise of his Navy career, the slight, Detroit 19-year old lands on every shit-list on the boat; one of the lowest ranking enlisted men in his section.

“I’m grateful my rotation is early in the cruise,” he said to his friend.

Sean was thinking, “If I knew about mess-cranking when I signed-up; it would have caused me to think twice about the big ol’ U. S. Navy?”

Drawing closer, glued to an ashen-gray conveyor-belt 3-yards wide, little clumps of trash separated crudely above in the cafeteria quarters; wheeled along a squeaky, slimy, stinky delivery belt. Sean cleaned off any residue from recyclables and flung them into Kelly-green receptacles resembling the trash containers of any suburban street. They’re called, “puck trucks.”

Across from Sean on belt-duty worked a stout, young Seaman named Vincente Vasquez from Texas. He was obscured by a plastic mask, the face shield worn by riot-police, or dental hygienists; but his was smarmy and cloudy from hours battling against the droning, descendant highway of refuse.

“Vince, did you see the movie last night?” With long arms, Vince craned and plucked dexterously; as discriminating as a jewel dealer, but as dazed as a sleepwalker.

“You know I don’t like Hockey—I like Los Spurs; and I was born 15 years after that damn game, man;” referring dismissively to the 2004 inspirational movie about the 1980 USA Hockey team.

“Like we say down here, drop the puck dude—drop. the. puck.” Sean shouted over the wonky belt, “ours are probably 100 times bigger, Vince; we could let Jaegers play Hockey with the pucks we make, you know-what-I-mean, Vince?”

Sean loved movies and sometimes the carrier movie-house showed older, corny, sports movies like “Miracle,” but the most popular are the modern Sci-fi flicks like “Pacific Rim.”

Vincente would rather workout on his free nights, but since mess-cranking ruined his appetite; he couldn’t keep his weight up to the standard training required.

Sean envisioned to himself what it would be like to be compressed into a large “puck” 36-inches in diameter and 12-inches thick; similar to the ones they stored in the ship’s walk-in cooler. Refrigerating the pucks, the Navy astutely discovered, reduced their more malodorous qualities.

Boilers constantly hissed, their steam drowning out other sounds like mechanical tinnitus; yet, the slow, wobbly creak of the constantly turning conveyor belt prompted him to look down.

Gleaming and proud, above deck in crisp blue Navy garb, washed and cleaned of the grease and grime of his tedious job; Sean Pellegrino looked and even felt of himself, that he was actually part of the modern #Navy, hashtags and all?

“How did I end up below the waterline of a ship over 1,000 feet long, plowing my way through the Persian Gulf’s dark waters,” he pondered. “I’m sorting trash for God’s sake, like a robot in some post-apocalyptic movie I saw while in port; just a gear in the bowels of a massive mechanism.”

Sean thought, “we dump out plastic pellets like 21^st century industrial poop; later sold on the global market, as if roasted Arabica beans. How cheaply commoditized I’ve become?” If there was still a city like his father’s Detroit; this negative motion, end-process, conveyor-belt, would be a vast assembly-line for upwardly-mobile American drivers; supplying the market with shiny, sleek automotive boats painted colorfully, accented with chrome?

Vince worked quickly, “Sean, c’mon—can you come to the party?” He sorted for both of them while Sean drifted off.

Struggling to interpret the ship’s detritus, staring at the conveyor belt; Sean subconsciously searched for ominous signs. “I was on dry land for awhile; sorry,” as he got back to work, apologizing; using a common synonym of the ship’s slang for day-dreaming.

When the steam operated catapult coiled tight, violently tense (enough to throw a 32,000-pound FA-18 Super Hornet hurling into artificial flight), the explosive release of raw, physical, propulsive power four decks above, shook them in their filthy, fouled, rolling office chairs; converted for cranking by removing the armrests and backs.

Rolling slightly backward, and looking skyward Sean screamed, “Before we get back, I’d like to work on the flight deck, just once!” Either jealousy, fantasy, or both fueled this imagining; life in the dim, excretory dungeon of the carrier stimulated such thoughts as an antidote for futility, misery, and boredom, which bordered on depression, until just about the 85^th day of “crank” duty.

Compressed like garbage, yet stretched to the breaking point by dreary, tedious, unpleasant shifts deep in the ship; these crankers felt entombed; which often turned into simmering rage, nothing like heroes.

“Copy that, Tomcat,” replied Vince, muttering under his breath, “aye, baboso.”

The entire shift they bandied back-and-forth like a married couple; keeping desperation at bay, forbidding it to get a word in edgewise. Unlike the aviators, who endured long periods of boredom, punctuated by flights of sheer terror; E-3 mess grunts acted in slow motion, anesthetized by sound, smell, and sadness. They were the Navy’s coal miners—trapped beneath earthen piles of garbage; trying hopelessly to breathe, making sense of the rubbish by gathering and grouping, grabbing and dumping… as if one could make freshwater out of the sea.

Part 6 of Carrier Fiction copyright©2014 by Mark H. Pillsbury

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