We didn’t eat in peace. We didn’t sleep in beds. And we damn sure didn’t complain.
When you’re a Boatswain’s Mate, you don’t get three squares and eight hours. You get cold chow in a paper tray, eat standing up while ops are still running. You learn to shovel food into your mouth like it’s a mission. If you wait too long, the eggs go rubbery, the potatoes congeal, and the steam fades like the last bit of warmth you’ll get for the next 12 hours.
There were days we didn’t make it to the mess decks at all — just grabbed whatever we could and ate it on the fly. Sometimes we ate between evolutions. Sometimes we didn’t eat at all.
Sleep? That was a luxury reserved for someone else. We took catnaps on steel — curled up in the curve of bulkheads or under equipment, trying to ignore the non-skid texture biting into your back. If you got 20 minutes before the next op, you took it. Didn’t matter where. I’ve slept standing. I’ve slept on paint cans. I’ve slept next to gear that could crush you if it shifted. And you woke up ready. Because there wasn’t another choice.
We adapted. That’s the word civilians don’t fully get. We adapted because the mission didn’t care about your comfort. You could be dog-tired, soaked through, freezing your ass off — and you’d still throw the line, man the rails, or carry the weight. And when the operation ended? You didn’t clock out. You changed over and stood watch.
I stood post in sandstorms that peeled your face. On nights so cold my fingers stopped listening. Through blinding fog, brutal heat, and winds that could knock a grown man on his ass if he wasn’t braced.
But there were also nights of peace. Nights where the sky cracked open with stars so sharp they felt close enough to touch. I’d look up at that sky — endless, quiet, and brutally honest. Out there, under the weight of the stars, I remembered how small we are. And somehow, that brought a strange kind of peace — like the universe was reminding me I wasn’t alone, even in the stillness.