Heck Yeah! The Navy, The Nimitz & the 4th of July

Top Gun.

Great movie.  Loved Kelly McGinnis's seamed stockings. Never gave the Navy another thought after that movie.  Then I got an invite from the Navy's Leaders To Sea program to spend two days on the USS Nimitz and Top Gun became personal. What I thought was going to be an 'excellent adventure'  turned out to be a humbling lesson in pride and purpose of service, freedom and American exceptionalism.

At the North Island Coronado Naval Air Station I was ushered into a briefing where a cheery  Public Affairs officer offered a thrilling description of how wonderful it would be to go from 125 mph to 0 in three seconds when our plane's tailhook caught one of four cables strung across the deck of the Nimitz. Not to worry, she assured us, if the pilot missed cable number four we would simply fly off into the wild blue yonder and take another shot at a tag.  It is, after all, tough to land on something that looks like a moving postage stamp in the middle of the ocean.

 No worries. Have fun.

Pumped up, decked out in earplugs, cranial, goggles and a life-vest, I joined 14 others in a windowless, no- frills plane. We sat backwards, strapped in a four way harness.  We flew for an hour in silence and then finally descended nose up, tail down. We hooked, we lurched and we were hustled out onto a 4.5 acre flight deck.  The roar of the Predators could not be muted by my helmet, engine heat blasted my way, the sense that I had entered a rarefied world was all encompassing but I had only a moment to take it all in. Later I would stand in the biting cold and watch 23 fighter pilots take off from that deck within seconds of each other.  By that time, I learned to follow orders without a second thought the way every sailor on that ship did.

The USS Nimitz was the first in its class. It is 1,092 ft long, 252 feet wide and houses 6,000 personnel. There are four engines powered by two nuclear power plants.  If the vessel didn't need food and aircraft fuel she could function independently for 50 years. The USS Nimitz reaches over 18 stories high from the keel to the top mast. There are four aircraft elevators. I mention the last because there are no elevators for people. All 6,000 persons on board - including me - climbed metal stairs to get where we were going. 

Soon I was clambering up ladders that came darn close to 90 degree angles. Those ladders took me to the most amazing places: briefing rooms, bomb assembly, the hospital, the hangar bay, the mess, and tight quarters where personnel lived for months at a time. It felt like Hollywood; it was, in reality, the business of our country.

I spoke to everyone and everyone spoke back to me without ever taking their attention from their task. I was particularly taken by three young people - so young they could have been my children.

PA Moon, a theatre major in college who worked in Hollywood for a time. How could he have left that glamour for a stint in the navy?  How could he not, was his answer. His creativity was satisfied but more than that he was proud to be part of something so much bigger, so much more important, than making movies.  He admired his mates. He respected his superiors. He was doing good and important work.

I was impressed.

I remember the young woman who stood watch for 6 hours in a pitch black room monitoring computer screens that tracked any movement above and below the water. I asked what she did after she was done with her watch.

 "I go to work."

Watch, it seemed, was what she did for the good of the whole ship; work was what she did for the good of her department.   She told me this with in a voice that held no complaint and so much pride.

I was humbled.

Finally, I sat at lunch with three young pilots. Handsome, intelligent and personable, they had nicknames like Monica and Slag and the Professor. flight suits. These were men and women, so young and bright they seemed to sparkle. They were entrusted with million dollar aircraft that they would use to protect all of us at a moment's notice.  While we lunched, the conversation turned to the fright factor of landing and take-off.  With expected bravado, they accepted my congratulations and expressions of awe.  Then the young pilot next to me looked me in the eye and said, "I'm always afraid when I land at night."

I was stunned by his courage.

I imagine there are times when everyone on the Nimitz is afraid out there in the dark, surrounded by the sea, away from family, knowing their job is to be the first defenders when our country is threatened.  I doubt that young pilot understood the complexity of that simple statement or how it touched me. 

During my stay, I slept in a small room on a thin mattress covered by scratchy sheet. I was jarred by the noise of planes landing above me and the day crew changing places with night crew. I had eaten macaroni and cheese, toasted cheese sandwiches and chicken pot pie and breakfast burritos. The crew had 15 minutes to eat; I ate leisurely for 1/2 an hour. I ran up and down ladders, sat in dark rooms and was freely given information so complex and interesting I couldn't possibly retain it all.  I spoke to people from tiny towns and big cities. I watched the crew work with precision and pleasure and professionalism. I realized that the USS Nimitz is a model of efficiency that should be adopted by schools and government and businesses and individual lives: work for the good of the whole, do work that suits your abilities, respect those you work with and those you work for, understand what your objective is.

Now I am home, writing my books, celebrating heroes in my pages that pale next to the heroism of those 6,000 people on the USS Nimitz. I celebrate and salute each and every one of them.  I am so grateful to them for their service; I am so proud to be an American because of them.

Happy Fourth of July and thanks to all who serve.