Taken from an e-mail correspondence of the Chief…and when I completed my answer to it, I thought there might be some things here that were (a) worth sharing, and (b) IMHO actually relevant to some of our current circumstances as a nation. Personal references have been redacted in the interest of privacy.
Yeah you radio guys had it easy. 1st Div had to be on deck hours before the refueling laying out those lines for you. ha I had it easy. I was the Visual Signalman on the forward station. Mr. —- was the OIC. The CO treated him like crap. He seemed to want to mentally destroy the kid. After one refueling the oiler screwed up and when we disconnected the couplings gallons of black fuel went across the deck. The AO had failed to give us the blow-down or the back-suction.
It was the little torpedo deck right under the bridge. We were on our hands and knees wiping up oil and the CO was right above us. We kept looking up to see if he was looking down. He never noticed. After we finished Mr. —- asked me, “Do you think he saw?” I shook my head and told him, “No sir. He didn’t see it.” I had my differences with Mr. —- but I wasn’t going to make him feel worse than he already did.
Interesting to think back… when I had radio messenger watch, I had a lot of contact with Officer’s Country and its denizens. Mr. —- wasn’t the only one in that position, but some, like LTjg —-, the — officer were, to be generous, marginally competent at best, and often made their own troubles. On the other hand, a good leader could/should buck up the weak links in his command… and should be able to get better performance without dragging people through the mud. (Sort of like working with marginal, but capable students in a classroom.)
I remember a lot of stuff like that in CPO Leadership Indoc training after I was selected for RMC, and I have to say that on a lot of this (admittedly much later than our time on USS Sellers) the Navy has its ducks in a row, and the leadership principles and application they taught were on a higher, and more useful level than most of what passes for educational management, etc that I have been exposed to as an educator over the years in interminable (and all too often irrelevant) “In-service” sessions from school(s). Ha ha!
I think the Navy started paying a lot more attention to stuff like that after the 70’s Zumwalt Navy which was warm and fuzzy, but had real problems with really lousy discipline, common drug use, etc.  Some of the Chiefs and senior PO’s I can recall from Sellers days would have been (justifiably) busted out of the Navy by the standards of the mid to late 80’s or later. Others were really good at their jobs, and did their best to look out for their subordinates, under what were difficult conditions at best, given the difficult command climate at the time.
I remember from radio message traffic that the Atlantic/Med ships seemed to always be “sucking from the hind teat” when it came to personnel, parts, supplies, etc., since we weren’t directly involved in the war of the day, and our alleged betters in Washington were determined to try to fight on the cheap so as to not make anyone in the states feel any economic inconvenience from the effort. (Hmmmm. Sound familiar?) Anyway, that attitude possibly (probably?) filtered down from the Pentagon through the Lant/Med Fleets, and it HAD to be tough on the ship drivers to be accountable for performance, while getting semi-adequate logistical support.
People like Eisenhower, and Colin Powell have the right idea… as did others, like WW-II Wehrmacht Generaloberst Heinz Guderian who phrased it “Kick ’em, don’t piss on ’em!” – meaning that if it’s important enough to go to war… half-measures don’t make it. Apply full force, as fast and hard as possible, so as to minimize the ultimate materiel and personnel costs to the country, and its people.
The alternative, war as practiced by McNamara, LBJ, Nixon, and more recently the Clintonoid generals and admirals under SECDEF Rumsfeld, just drives me crazy. IMHO it’s fundamentally immoral to ask/expect men to lay their lives on the line in order to score some sort of (domestic or international) political point without coming to a clearly decisive result in the national interest.
Unfortunately, once Rummy et al slapped the Iraqi tar-baby, we were stuck for sure, and a quick withdrawal would have been worse that not having done anything in the first place…so the cut-and-run policy pushed by the left-Dems these days, shows such a poor situational awareness that it supports a case for a form of insanity. (…like one of radio talker Michael Savage’s books: Liberalism is a Mental Disorder)
So, where does that leave us now? Fortunately, some people like Petraeus, and USMC Commandant Conway (who I knew in H.S. in St Louis – I have his signature in a yearbook!) seem to have a good grasp on reality…so we might get saved from ourselves over there yet. (From what I have read about Adm Mullen, I wouldn’t give a bucket of spit for his attitude…he apparently doesn’t want to fight hard due to the administrative difficulty of maintaining recruiting and retention if there was a “hard” war! (Is here ever any other kind of war? NOT! Refer again to the Guderian quote above.)
Oh well… all too many of us these days are so enervated (by – what? Cultural corrosion? Too much emphasis on our modern “bread and circuses”?) that we don’t want to make the commitments NOW that can avoid a disaster LATER… sort of like the Brits (except Churchill) and Frogs in the 30’s.
Sheesh! All that from a simple recollection of days of “haze grey and underway” from 40 years ago. What a trip!
