Sneetches At Sea

I was a Wog.

It wasn’t a fact that meant much to me, but – in the realm of the U.S. Navy – this was a very important designation.

It meant I was about as likeable as used toilet paper under a pillow.

On this day, at this location in the Indian Ocean, Wog was as desirable a distinction as Nazi sympathizer. There was a stigma attached to it. I wasn’t worth the nasty Navy sheets I crawled into whenever I had a few hours to rack out.

Today was Wog Day. The Crossing-The-Line ceremony. In the real world, this meant nothing. But in Navylife, this ritual was as important a day as the seasonal equinox.



USS New Orleans (LPH-11) underway in San Diego Bay
about 1994. Photo by PH1 Michael Cole, if memory serves.

My ship, a rusting helicopter-troop carrier, that, rumor had it, was originally just to get personnel and equipment to Vietnam for 10 years. It was still floated 30 years later. And it was on the world equator somewhere between Singapore and Diego Garcia. USS New Orleans floated on a combination of constant jerry-rigging and constant prayer.

Our ultimate destination was the coast of Somalia, where a bunch of Special Ops guys had just gotten themselves killed. Now America was pissed and we were on our way.

At about 18 knots, or roughly 20 miles per hour.

There’s a lot of ocean between Singapore and Somalia.

And, because we were still about a week away, someone deemed it important to recognize THE EQUATOR and initiate a WOG CEREMONY. Sure, it was tragic about the soldiers dying and all, but our ship had Wogs. A purification ceremony was needed. And crossing the equator triggers this Navy tradition.



Who the fuck are you? What is on your belly is your first fucking clue.

It reminded me of the Dr. Seuss story “The Sneetches.” I was a Wog. My fat, fuzzy yellow belly didn’t have a Star stamped to it. Shellbacks were crewmembers who had crossed the line before and, thus, earned the title “Shellback.” Shellbacks were essentially Sneetches with Stars on their bellies. If you weren’t a Shellback on Wog Day, you were shit. You were roaches in cereal.

The ritual had started, slowly, the previous day with the election of Wog Queen and Wog Dog. Only about 424 violations of the UCMJ took place during that process regarding sexual harassment, hazing and – likely – the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy.

Now, about six hours later, we were on the actual equator.

It was Wog Day.

4:30 a.m. Or 0430 in military language.

An early reveille clanged through the 1MC intercom system. One bell. DING! “Reveille, Reveille. All hands heave out and trice up.” Trice up. Many guys didn’t know what it meant. It meant getting out of your rack and raising it up to provide for more room in the berthing. But our racks were no longer able to be raised. They were hard mounted. Tricing up hadn’t been done on most Navy ships in 20 years, but you don’t change Navy traditions. And it was a traditional morning greeting from one of the boatswain’s mates on bridge watch.

I heard the 1MC crackle more. Voices were on it. I recognized the Captain’s chatter, but the others? I couldn’t quite determine who was speaking. The Captain? He was … apologizing? Oh, he’s talking to … King Neptune and Davy Jones. And he was sorry for entering their realm with Wogs on his ship.

How cute, I thought. We’re playacting.

I crawled out of my bottom rack. I hated, and avoided, getting up with everyone at the same time. Usually life was done in shifts, so you rarely had the 160 guys in the Ops/Supply berthing all walking into one-another. But this was like a fire or General Quarters drill. Everyone up. The only ones already out were the Shellbacks who’d vacated to prepare, but about 100 of us were Wogs and bumping into each other at zero-dark-thirty.

In the berthing, the coffin racks were stacked three high. About 30 inches from our racks, another triple stack stood. Five of the six of us in my section were Wogs. Five of us were getting up at the exact same time. Fuck this, I thought – as I had so many times – I’m never having another roommate once I’m out of the Navy. Five guys with about 30 inches of width and six feet of length to maneuver and get dressed. Such a clusterfuck, and ours was one of the roomier caverns.

The Captain announced the Uniform of the Day for these Wogs that embarrassed him so. Everything inside out. Dungarees, inside out. Underwear, on the outside of your dungarees – and inside out. We’d all known this was coming. Fuck, this is stupid, I thought.

The prescribed uniform for Wogs was one part of the entire tradition. We were told to have our worst workjeans, oldest boondockers and cleanest skivvies ready for the morning. Nobody needs to see skid-marks.

Another tradition was passive-aggressive Wog Rebellion. It’s not like we could start an uprising and toss the Shellbacks, King Neptune and that fucker Davy Jones back into the sea, but we could express some hostility. The permitted way was a message on our T-shirts. Most guys didn’t want to fuck with the Shellbacks, they just wanted to make it through the day un-fucked-with. They simply just confirmed their status with Sharpie pens. Their T-shirts said “Wog” or “I’m a Wog.”

Others were slightly more creative with poetic phrases like “Suck My Wog Cock, Shellback.”

Let’s hear it for insurrection.

At the time, my rate was journalist, and my rank was seaman. In Navyspeak, that translated to JOSN. A lot of guys knew me as JOSN, which was pronounced Josen.

So, on the back of my prescribed uniform of the day, I wrote “The JOSN Wog.” To me, it sounded different, but not rebellious. Perhaps rhyming with “The Chosen One.” I wasn’t just any Sneetch without a Star on his belly.

I thought it was more creative than “Wog,” but not as provoking as “I FUCKED YOUR SHELLBACK MOM.”

 

We started to hear the Shellbacks clapping, yelling, slapping racks and the thin-steel bulkheads. Overall, about half the ship were Wog and the other half was ready to haze. King Neptune and Davy Jones were pissed. Some Wogs had polluted their seas. The calls howled through the cave as someone turned off the red night lighting and flicked on the white fluorescent in the berthing.

“Fuckin’ Wogs! You’re gonna die, Wog!” Shellbacks announced.

This is so fucking stupid, I thought. Shellbacks began walking through the berthing to herd us like farmers do cattle, or Nazis did Jews, or the Calvary did Indians. We were reminded that Wogs must crawl on their hands-and-knees. Do not look up at the Shellbacks.

“Keep your heads down, Wogs. Don’t fucking talk. Nuts-to-butts! Move it.”

Nuts-to-butts. It was a catchphrase in bootcamp when the company commander wanted recruits to move as close as possible to each other in a line. When 80 guys are trying to get into the Mess Hall in as little time as possible to avoid losing any air conditioning, the CC screamed “Nuts-to-butts, Rick!” Rick. Everyone in basic training was Rick. Navyspeak for recruit.

Nuts-to-butts didn’t apply here, though. I’m not doing nuts-to-butts on all fours. Fuck that. I’m sure that’s against the Geneva Convention and that “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” thing. And I’m not doing nose-to-ass either.

It was October 11, 1993. And in October 1993, June 1996 couldn’t come soon enough. My EAOS. End of Active Obligated Service. I played their games because I enlisted into their games. I crawled with my fellow Wogs through the berthing to the metal latter. Because it was still technically night, all the hatches had been closed and the only exit was through an escape scuttle. One bare-bellied Sneetch at a time.

Seriously, there are a lot of references to Dr.
Seuss when you cross the equator. What
were his thoughts on dry-humping other dudes?

The route was to the Mess Decks for Wog Breakfast (everything was food-dyed green. Green eggs and green ham. Dr. Seuss would have been proud.) Shellbacks were to feed us. Most guys had it just thrown in their face; some had it tossed in their hair. Here, initial retribution was paid out to the Wogs who had the more-provoking T-shirts. Shellbacks screamed obscenities, and then squashed scrambled eggs into Wog ears.

One Shellback went too far. Of course, it was against the guy with the “I FUCKED YOUR SHELLBACK MOM” T-shirt. Packets of hot sauce were squirted down into the back of his dungarees along his asscrack where he, quickly thereafter, started howling in pain. Someone in charge of making sure things didn’t get too out of hand pulled Shellback Mother Fucker out of the line for clean-up. Cruelty, apparently, was allowed.  But not actual injury.

This is so fucking stupid, I thought for the umpteenth time. My eyes glanced up to the mayhem. There were, at this time, no women assigned to the ship – although we were expecting some within the next year or two. Warships were just being broken into the idea of having women onboard. I liked the idea. I didn’t think this type of situation would take place with women aboard.

A friend of mine on most days, Chris noticed me. He was a Shellback.

“Oh, Lawson. ‘The JOSN Wog.’ Now that’s just fuckin’ creative. I tell you all the time you’re a creative motherfucker. That’s so creative that I’m going to have to make you tastier for whatever Shellback is going to want to eat your skull.”

And with that, my friend Chris poured a variety of substances in my hair and down the back of my T-shirt. I wasn’t sure the order, but from what others were receiving, I was thinking it was probably a concoction of peanut butter, apple jelly, ketchup, toothpaste, syrup and mustard.

“Now you look like a much better Wog, you piece of shit.”

Sure, he told me I was a piece of shit. But it was said with a tone of friendship that guys understand. Chris didn’t mean to ridicule, but it was the tradition of the moment. Fair enough.

After the humiliation of the mess decks, it was time for the humiliations of the hangar bay. It was more of the same, really. I looked to my side and bumped shoulders with Mitch. He was one of my closer friends onboard. He was a California kid who’d made it through Hell Week of SEAL training just to be cycled out when he came down with pneumonia. Buddyfucked.

Mitch was a paradox to me. Funny. Likeable. Mellow. But he loved the idea of the special forces. He sought out the job of being a SEAL. And, since he was cycled out of the program due to a momentary illness, he was considering going into another branch of the service. The Navy had really buddyfucked him with his BUDS training.

Buddyfucked. One of the words the Navy taught me. Buddyfucker. Bohica. Idgaff. Well, we'd created Idgaff at Defense Information School, but it had gained a bit of a cult following onboard New Orleans. Idgaff. I don’t give a flying fuck. Bohica. Bend over, here it comes again. Buddyfucker. A buddyfucker is someone you trust who screws you over, intentionally or not. Oftentimes, we used it as a word of endearment. Sure, we could have used “pal” or “chum” or the Navyspeak “shipmate.” However, buddyfucker was just funnier. You could say it with different voices, different exaggerations and cracks of a smile.

Of course, sometimes there was a real buddyfucker. A loathsome creature. Some lifers were buddyfuckers. Their gain for your loss. Some recruiters were buddyfuckers. “Oh, sure you can be an officer. Just enlist right now with me first and we’ll get that process started.” Whoops. Sorry. Becoming an officer isn’t as easy after enlisting as the recruiters sometimes said. But they didn’t care. They were buddyfuckers with a quota to fill.

The Navy had apparently buddyfucked Mitch. He’d made it through Hell Week, but came down with pneumonia which stopped him in the middle of BUDS training – the initial training for SEALS. They said he could stay in the program, but he’d have to recycle back to Week One of BUDS. That might mean an enlistment extension, and it’d mean he’d have to endure Hell Week twice. Weakened by illness and pissed off, Mitch essentially just told them to send him to the fleet. Three years on a ship probably isn’t as bad as one Hell Week. He was buddyfucked.

USS New Orleans (LPH-11) at anchor in 1991.

In the hangar bay, someone coated me with more sauces. Whoever did it was a buddyfucker. And someone sprayed us with water and with bug juice. Bug juice was essentially Kool-Aid onboard, except you can either drink it – or use it to clean brass fittings. It was thick with sugar and surprisingly corrosive (don’t leave it on brass fittings too long) and nasty. But when you look forward to the taste of quality toothpaste every morning, all your standards tend to sink.

Bugjuice, I thought. Pour some of that in my hair, buddyfucker. Help me get some of this peanut butter out.

Mitch was smiling. This wasn’t fazing him. This guy went through Hell Week. This was a knock-knock joke to him. He smiled and went on smiling, evening as Shellbacks yelled at him. I think Mitch’s knowledge that he had already been trained in several ways to kill a man quickly at close range gave a great boost to his self-esteem. It helped my self-esteem that he was a friend. He might hesitate if the government ever asked him to kill me. For a moment, he might.

Junior officers were being fucked with immensely. This was the one morning that an enlisted Shellback with little time in service outranked any officer who was a Wog and no retribution could come back to harm the Shellbacks. In some cases, when it was their own division officer, the enlisted took full advantage.

“Hump that Wog, Wog!” a Shellback commanded an officer, his khakis on inside-out, and his skivvies on outside his pants.

You’re kidding me, I thought. This is not happening. But Shellbacks rule. And before my eyes, an officer was dry-mounting an enlisted Wog. Now, there was no actual skin-to-skin contact, and I can’t vouch for anybody that might have enjoyed this. I’m sure some guys love the sensation of being mounted. But this shocked me, and it takes a lot to shock me. It wasn’t gay sex, but the embarrassment of being forced into gay sex positions that the Shellbacks suddenly found appealing.

Before I knew it, this was a new form of vengeance on Wogs. The Marines onboard thought this was hysterical. Wogs were 69ing and dry-humping each other for a few seconds, maybe 30, because it was apparently part of the tradition.

Tradition.

It is a word the Navy throws around a lot. Even some of my friends would discuss it. I mean, it wasn’t Topic No. 1. It was pretty far down the list. After women. Women. Physical attributes of women. Deployment schedule. Buddyfuckers. Women. Hometowns. Sports. Women. Movies, music. Deployment schedule. Funny comedians and women. But, sometimes, tradition would sneak in as well.

As I could figure it out in the modern Navy, there were three kinds of tradition. Living. Extinct-but-living. And stupid.

Living traditions were the ones that made sense to still do. Like carrying a .45 while on quarterdeck watch. Like the route of traffic during general quarters. Movement, during the initial seven minutes of battle stations, is up and forward on the starboard side and down and aft on the port. Everyone is scrambling to get to their battle station, so having a standard way of scramble avoided clusterfucks in the passageways.

Extinct-but-living were the ones that, at one point, made sense but no longer did. Like the flap of fabric on the back of our dress uniforms. A name for it isn’t even in the Bluejacket’s Manual, but the backstory is the little shoulder cape was started when sailors A) had long hair and B) used tar as a type of hair product. They’d clip fabric to their shoulders of their dress uniforms to stop from staining it. Great tradition. Except, A) our hair wasn’t allowed to be long and B) even the sailor with the most vanity wasn’t using tar on their head anymore.

And then there were the stupid traditions. Where nobody was really sure of the origin or purpose. But we did it anyway. Like this morning.

One of the legends is the tradition of Wog Day dates back to the slave trade. Slavers would use whips to strike captured men and women during the trek between Africa and America. A “Shellback” was a man taken as a slave who had thick scars on his back due to that abuse. Because of that, some of my friends took issue with Wog Day. Especially a few of my black friends.

Vince was one of the first guys on New Orleans to befriend me. About 18 months earlier, he’d seen me writing letters home and asked if I wanted to get some McDonald’s. He taught me how to use the San Diego trolley system and what strip clubs let the under-21 guys inside. Vince took me to Tijuana where we drank Tecate and talked with Mexican girls. He was a ladies man. At one of the classier strip joints in San Diego, he introduced me to a stripper-girlfriend, and asked if I wanted to date her stripper-co-worker. In TJ, girls on the street – who I didn’t perceive were hookers – knew him by name.

Vince was called Sammy a lot because he looked like Sammy Davis Jr. Not just similar, but exactly like him. Short, handsome and quick with a smile. He loved to laugh. He was political, but at the end of the day, if all was bad, you talked about women and home.

I really didn’t get the senses he’d be taking part in Wog Day as a Shellback. He’d spoken against it to me a few weeks prior. He’d gone through it on his first deployment during the 1990-91 Gulf War. It was a tradition based on the scars of black slaves. Vince knew who Malcolm X was before the movie was made, he had strong views on race relations and what harms them.

I lost track of Mitch. There were about 700 sailors on my ship, and about 2,000 Marines, so figure 1,500 of us (about half sailors and two-thirds Jarheads) were on their hands-and-knees. Mitch was probably using some SEAL mind trick to make this all easy. I was annoyed by this stupid little ordeal. Smart enough not to say shit, but in a constant state of annoyance.

First the voice. That Sammy-voice echoed from behind me.

I'm still not sure if this is Sammy or Vince.

“Oh, Lawson!”

Vince. Cool. Hell, what is Vince going to do? Nothing. He’s against this. I waddled around and looked up. Yep. Vince. My pal. My chum. My shipmate.

“Don’t look at me, you fucking Wog!”

My buddyfucker.

He was the first guy to slap me with the length of rubber. Old, tattered hose had been cut up and was being used to flog the Wogs. A few guys had been struck, but not too many. I felt it hit my back and rib cage. Motherfucker, that hurt. I spoke to myself. What the fuck are you doing, Vince? Jesus H. Christ.

He slapped the hose against my back a few more times. He grabbed me by the nap of my neck and led me to a group of our mutual friends … who all happened to be Shellbacks.

“Look at this fucking Wog!” Vince announced, and all greeted me in a similar fashion. Berating me. Laughing at me. Throwing coleslaw and ketchup on my body. I became their toy. More food juices. More sauces. Like a circle jerk of lonely men with an orgy of condiments.

They brought Gary next, and harassed him even more. I had a slight advantage over most. A lot of people knew who I was, but few people actually worked with me. I had less chance to buddyfuck people by being late for a watch or avoiding a working party. Guys who were angry at me had great excuses. “The movies you show suck, you fucking Wog. I couldn’t even hear the audio on ‘Lorenzo’s Oil’!” “Why don’t you ever mention me in the Cajun Cable newspaper, Wog Fuck?”

But for Gary, there were more reasons to be annoyed with him. He was a great guy who routinely worked 12 hour shifts with other guys, but now was time for his hazing punishment. It was doled out for anytime he showed up three minutes late for watch, or forgot to relieve someone for a meal, or bitched when he shouldn’t have bitched. Not that it was meant completely as vengeance. It was all said “in good fun,” I suppose. This was a hierarchy day. This was the only time the Shellback Princes would have any power over us Wogs.

My hands ached as I crawled along the non-skid. Non-skid felt like a mixture of gravel coated by a thin layer of rubber. It was easier to walk on than a metal surface, and less likely that our birds would slide around even when they were anchored by chains.

Our birds. Aircraft. Mainly helicopters, but occasionally Harrier jump jets.

Non-skid was great for grip with the ground was wet. It made walking a whole lot easier. But it could sure skin up your palms and knees in a hurry if you took a spill. Like roadrash. And I’m sure crawling around on all fours was not recommended by the creators of it.

Vince led me over to the forward elevator with 50 other guys already on it. They boosted us up to the flight deck where, as the elevator crested to a stop, we were immediately nailed with a spray of cold water from a fire hose. They weren’t trying to wash us off the ship – they could have done that easily at that point – but just insuring we remained fucking miserable.

The 6 a.m. sun was breaching over the Indian Ocean’s waves and warming the water along the equator, but it was hard to appreciate the beautiful moment with the disorientation and crap all over your body.

You wanted to get in line to see King Neptune and that fuck, Davy Jones. But that was a long line and there were plenty of chances to get pulled out of it by Shellbacks who decided to make you feel like an idiot. There was a little more dry humping, but that seemed like it was more frowned upon here since the Captain might actually see it.

One of the alternative abuses was actually kinda funny.

Dolphins don't understand English, you old fool.

“Wog! Wog!” a few guys would be pulled out randomly. “Wog! Call for Flipper! Call for Flipper!” And with that, grown men would be splayed down to their bellies, clap their hands in front of them and bellow calls that sounded like harbor seals. “Arrrr! Arrrr! Arrr!” I don’t know if dolphins and seals translate their languages readily, but that was the theory being placed forward.

The other activity was a bit more inane. Flight decks and hangar bays have hundreds of small divots – called padeyes – and in them was a small cross bar used to chain down the birds. And did I mention there was a lot of water being sprayed? So Shellbacks created a new game.

“Wogs! Wogs! Get over here!” and they’d pull two or three guys from the waddling line that had been heading toward the Shellback Royalty. “Who the FUCK allowed water in this padeye! Get that fucking water out of my padeye! Don’t use your hands! Blow that water out of that padeye!”

Photo copyright Comrade Kemosabe -- a more recent,
gentler, Crossing The Line ceremony onboard
USS Blue Ridge -- water still in the padeyes.

So two or three guys would blow about a cup of water out of the metal dip until the Shellback was pleased with the look and dryness of said dip. He’d walk away and the Wogs would start to meander back toward the line … until another Shellback screamed.

“WOGS! What are you doing? Blowing water out of my padeye! I want water back in my padeye! Get water in my padeye now, Wogs!” And this took a bit more talent. Blowing water on non-skid wasn’t real easy. Best bet was to wait for a hose to help out the situation, but they had to at least act like they were trying to get water in there. One Wog spit, and that, apparently, was a big no-no.

“Don’t you spit in my padeye, Wog! Don’t you spit on my ship!” and that Wog, whoever he was, was led back down to the hangar bay. Probably back to the mess decks. To undergo the entire process again. Recycled back to moment one.

Stupid.

I called for Flipper for a few minutes, and dealt with padeye water for another few, but moved fairly quickly in line. Vince had lost contact with me a while back. I kept my head down. Eye contact sparks trouble in the Navy. Always does.

This shit happened on USS Tarawa back in 1992. Fuckin' Marines.
I'm not even going to hazard a guess. Notice, though, no
eye contact. Always a good eyedea. See what eye did there?

I was just happy to be close to the Shellback Royalty. Getting through the process. I saw a few guys actually pulled from the line as they were in front of the royalty, and led back to the hangar bay. I don’t know what they did, but it was definitely a fuck up. Get through the process. Fight through the tradition.

One of the members of the royalty was my division officer, a lieutenant named Brent. In my professional life, he was a good guy. He’d helped me out with some troubles with leave and genuinely seemed to like me. We’d ever shared a few jokes along the way. The first journalist I’d worked with didn’t like him much, but he didn’t like anyone much, either. Brent always had a hardcore aviator haircut and sharpened uniforms. He was billeted as an Intel Officer, but had previously flown jets and was very into Navy traditions. I don’t know why he was a member of the royalty. Maybe he just wanted a role. He was “Guardian of the Sea.” King Neptune’s chum. Davy Jones’ pal. My shipmate.

“Seaman Lawson. You look like a pathetic little Wog!” my LT said. “What are you?”

“I’m a pathetic little Wog, sir,” I responded, glancing up at him.

“Yes you are! And don’t look at me, you pathetic Wog!” And with that, he jammed a long, hot pepper into my very surprised mouth and throat.

Red Hot Shellback Pepper? Define "sexy time."

“Bite it!” he yelled.

How obviously phallic.

I bit down. I hate peppers. I hate hot peppers. And this was red, burning on my tongue and down my throat. My eyes swelled. I gagged. I choked.

“Don’t you even think about spitting that out, you fucking Wog!” he yelled.

So this is how I’m supposed to treat women?

He tapped me on the head and moved me toward the rest of the royalty. I crawled away, trying to swallow the hot vegetable, worried about the consequences if I threw up in the line of royalty.

Wog Queen was next in line. She was a He was dressed as a She today. There were two Wogs who didn’t have to endure the ceremony: Wog Queen and Wog Dog. So a lot of guys vied for those titles the previous day by shaving their legs and trying to look pretty, or acting like dogs and humping everything around them during a live broadcast my TV station aired the previous night. The Wog Dog was awarded to some Marine who was eventually humping against a wall. It was funny enough. And, somewhere, to this day, there’s a beta tape of this TV special out there – just awaiting its fame on YouTube.

The "Rocky Horror Picture Show" dude-chick had
nothing on our Wog Queen.

A mess specialist third class won the title of Wog Queen during the drag contest. He was, by far, the prettiest and most convincing. Unlike a lot of Marines and sailors trying to look like a woman in men’s loose clothing, he already had his own dress and makeup. It’s possible the swing vote came in his promising all the Shellbacks he’s suck them off if elected.

Some guys might have thought he was joking, but those of us in Ops/Supply berthing knew he probably wouldn’t object to giving a few blow jobs. The fact that he was gay was a secret only insomuch as nobody ever brought the topic up with anyone who could force him out. His sexuality didn’t upset most of us, although a few twits would occasionally talk about gays onboard somehow accidentally falling overboard. However, officially, nobody ever asked him. And he never told.

“Oh, Lawson,” MS3 looked down at me. “You’re such a cute Wog. Kiss my foot.”

Yikes. It wasn’t a full on kiss. I didn’t pucker up, just pressed my face against his calve. If my lips touched his skin incidentally, fine. But I didn’t pucker up for this dude. No tongue for him.

He slapped my head with what I hope was his royal scepter and I moved on. I didn’t need to know and he didn’t need to tell.

Davy Jones just yelled at me as I remained on all fours and I swallowed the last of the pepper. Jones demanded that I respect King Neptune. I looked at King Neptune. Officially, King Neptune was chosen from the ship’s crew as the oldest sailor onboard. He was, as well. Fat. Bald. That look that you might not want him to baby sit your children. He wore a crown, but no shirt. Sour cream was smeared on his belly, and that was how you earned the King’s trust. By pressing your face to his obesity.

I looked at the Marine currently in front of the King. He bowed but it wasn’t enough. Wog Dog pressed an olive into the King’s cavernous bellybutton.

“Get that out, Wog!” King Neptune yelled. And, again without hands, the Wog in front of me buried his mouth against Neptune’s belly. And somehow, he managed to retrieve the olive.

“Now, eat it!” Wog Dog barked.

Holy shit, I thought looking at this impending disaster for my self-worth. No thanks. That’s too much. Anyway, I just had my fill of a phallic-vegetable incident for the day already.

But the Marine proudly munched and showed the food remains to Wog Dog and Neptune.

King Neptune and Wog Dog were still laughing at the previous Wog when I crawled up. I didn’t know either of them personally, and was happy about it. It’s harder to fuck with someone when you didn’t know them at all. You don’t know what you can or can’t get away with.



King Neptune greets a Wog onboard
USS Midway (CV-41) in 1985. (Photo by Eddie Miller).

I bowed; Neptune pulled my face to his belly, the slop of cream against my right cheek. It was a glancing blow; I didn’t want my lips touching this fat lard. It could have backfired. King Neptune could have been annoyed by my lack of affection and had me eating out olives for five minutes, but he was still chuckling about his previous encounter.

“You’re a worthless shit, Wog,” he announced. He’d probably said the phrase 300 times already. “Now go get your ass dunked.” Another sentence he was probably weary of repeating in the morning sun.

The dunking. The last part of the ceremony. Like baptism, you are submerged in water. We were using metal containers that once housed helicopter engines for CH-53 Sea Stallions. They were opened in half, with water “from the sea of The EQUATOR” inside them. The water had been dyed fluorescent green because – apparently – that was the color of the day. In half, the containers stood about three feet high, four feet wide and five feet long each. Just get in one, slide in it, push yourself over a “line” of rope they’d taped in the middle of the container, get out and be a Shellback.

It’s all about the Star on your belly, Sneetch.

There was no right way to get in, but we couldn’t stand up yet. So guys were siding in head first, or crawling into the water and crawling out as they were baptized Shellback.

I hoisted my body onto the lip of the makeshift pool. My hands and arms were caked with food and muck, but I thought nothing of it. The plan was to lower myself into the pool. I would hold onto both sides of it, put one arm to the bottom, and slide into the green water.

I got to the point of having both of my hands onto the sides of the pool, with my center of gravity over my chest.

And then something happened.

All that crap on my hands and arms worked as a lubricant on the metal. I tried to catch my dive, but my arms, sliding, split to the sides. My face caught the weight of my body as I hit bottom. It felt like a boxer’s punch. Snap! It was distinct. I’d been punched before, but this was a bad one.

Motherfucker, I thought in the water. I broke my nose. Jesus fucking Christ. I broke my nose. I reminded myself not to breathe since I was still in the water and drowning would not help my situation. I emerged from the water holding my face.

“What are you!” someone yelled at me.

Disoriented. Pissed. Confused. Injured.

I answered without thinking: “a… a Wog.”



Not the recommended way of entering the final obstacle.
Photo from Wog Day onboard USS Constellation. Date unknown.

“No, man!” he responded incredulously. “You’re a fuckin’ Shell …” he was cutoff mid-baptism by another sailor standing next to him. “Holy … Lawson. You broke your nose.” It was a Corpsman I knew, and he diagnosed it right away.

“Yes, I think I did,” I responded. Blood was in the palm of my hand and oozing onto my upper lip. I could taste its flavor.

“We need to get you to medical,” he said.

Fucking lovely, I thought. I walked, for the first time of the day, to the aft elevator. I stripped out of most of my clothes. The T-shirt, with “The JOSN Wog” was wadded up and I flipped it over the side of the ship while thinking about Indiana basketball. The season would be starting soon. June, 1996. June, 1996. My boondockers, which I’d had since boot camp, were tossed into the Indian Ocean somewhere between Singapore and Diego Garcia.

Doc examined my face, took X-rays and confirmed the known. My nose was broken.

“I can’t really do much for you here,” he said. “We can do a surgery if it’s an emergency, but you’re breathing fine. If it gives you trouble, let me know.”

I managed my way down to the berthing area and took a shower using a hose. Showers didn’t have actual showerhead. We had hoses. You had to spray yourself down, like you were both the elephant and the elephant keeper. I tried getting the muck out of my hair, but it seemed to have settled like concrete. I tried to be careful not to get water on the bandage now crossing the bridge of my nose.

I brushed my teeth and enjoyed the flavor of Colgate. Tasted much better than the shit on the mess decks. I looked at my face. I wondered if it was going to be noticeable to anybody else. Bruising had settled lightly under my eyes. Idgaff, I thought. Idgaff.

I went to work in the office, running a few movies through the ship’s television system and working on the next edition of the Cajun Cable. I decided to rack out for an hour at lunchtime. I needed an hour to sleep. As I lay there, the 1MC sounded and the Captain started to chat.

He congratulated all us new Shellbacks onboard, and said the ceremony was done almost without a hitch. It was being cleaned and everyone had worked hard to make the day worthwhile in the best of Navy traditions. He said there were only a few injuries. A few sprained wrists and ankles. “And, well, JOSN Lawson, well, he somehow managed to break his nose. But that’s about it, really,” the Captain said. I heard some guys repeat my name.

“What happened to Lawson? Fucker broke his nose?”

But I had a star on my belly.

Vince walked by and opened the blue curtain of my rack. “Dude, you okay?” he asked as he saw me.

“Yeah. No big deal,” I said. I looked at Vince and smiled. “You’re a real buddyfucker, you know.”

“Yes,” he admitted, grinning. “Yes, I am.”

Laughter. I had welts on my back, but our friendship went beyond welts or name calling.

 A few years later, in 1995, we deployed and eventually crossed the equator again. Things were different this time, though.

My first deployment in 1993 was spent mainly doing circles for 90 days off the coast of Mogadishu. We finally got a port call on Christmas Eve, when Chris and Mitch received mail from their wives: Legal papers for divorce proceedings to begin.



Don't deploy angry. Don't deploy angry.

That year, the movie “Groundhog Day” was popular. Bill Murray repeats the same day again and again. And that’s what we called it. “Groundhog Cruise.” Ironically, we turned around and left the coast of Somalia on the morning of Feb. 2, 1994.

My second cruise, I had different friends. Mitch was driving a beer truck in his hometown, but working toward Army special forces. Vince also returned to his hometown. I was in charge of the office and still guys bitched about the movie selection and their omissions in the Cajun Cable.

We had a relaxing deployment spending almost as much time in port than at sea. We spent weeks in Hong Kong, Jordan, Jebal Ali and Kuwait, along with days in Singapore and Hawaii.

And this time, we had women onboard. Only about 50. If nothing else, they were nice to see, hear and smell occasionally. But Tailhook was drilled into our memory, and there were definite rules of etiquette. Beware of sexual harassment.

On the day we crossed the equator, it was my day as a real Shellback. My day to take out my frustration on these lowly Wogs who really were having a fun little cruise to date.

It was a simple day, and I wouldn’t have participated any other way.

We were again in the Indian Ocean, this time somewhere between the Arabian Gulf and Australia. It started at 8 a.m., after everyone was already up and about. With women on board, nobody was getting on their hands-and-knees. There was no Wog Dog, nor a Wog Queen. Not a lot of cursing. I didn’t see anyone yelling at any Wog individually. And no separating the group, not that I noticed, anyway.

And it was all voluntary. When I’d gone through it, it was essentially demanded all Wogs submit to the hazing. This time, a Wog had to ask to go through the tradition. So this time, there were a lot less people going through.

There was some food served green, which the Wogs ate with their own hands or forks. They were marched up to the hangar bay in a line. I watched for a few moments from a ladderwell as I was walking up to my office. From a hatch, I saw as a hose was used to spray them down. They were marched to the forward elevator. I walked up two decks to my office and watched from our flight deck cameras as Wogs were watered – for a few moments – with another hose.

By 8:20 a.m., it was done. We had a shipboard full of Shellbacks again. No broken noses. No humping. No calling for Flipper (although that was kinda funny). No vegetables. No belly-kissing.

Just Stars stamped on their Sneetch bellies. Such a stupid tradition.

Mitch recently retired from the Army special forces. Several years ago, I’d heard he was in Bosnia, although I imagine his spent a lot of time in locations much warmer. Vince and I lost touch, but that happens a lot in the military. You make lifelong friends, and you never see them again.

June 1996 was my EAOS. I returned to Indiana – and for the first time in my life, I suffered allergies. Usually people grow out of allergies, but I’d grown into them. I guess that’s possible. Sinus cavities probably change throughout life.

But I wondered, more than once, if its possible crossing the equator led to my Midwest allergies. If that broken nose had something to do with it.

I’m a Shellback. It’s a fact that doesn’t mean much to me, but – in the realm of the U.S. Navy – it’s a very important designation.