A Woman's Guide to the Navy

In my day-to-day life, my time in the Military will pop up in conversation, and people are always shocked to hear that I was in the Navy. Then, when I tell them I was actually on a ship, they absolutely can't believe it. Which then brings on the inevitable barrage of questions - How was it? What made me join? Were there a lot of guys? (of course), you get the gist.

After answering the same questions numerous times, all of the questions got me to thinking that I should start writing down my memories of the Navy and all of the crazy experiences that happened while I was in. I could probably write a complete book on that time of my life. I started to begin my story in chronological order with boot camp and then progressing through the entire time I was in. But I realized people were always so freaked out when I told them that I was on a ship, that I decided I would talk a little bit about ship life. The more I think about this time of my life, the more memories, both good and bad, started coming back to me.

First off, a little history about the ship. It was a brand new ship that was being built in Bremerton, Washington (right outside Seattle) by Lockheed. It was still in dry dock when I finally got there. By the way, getting there was a whole different story in itself. But anyway, here I was, this young girl who was a piano major at the University of Tennessee, showing to the yard and here I was with my green, Navy-issued duffel bag that contained everything the Navy let me have. It was probably bigger than me.

So, I'm dragging this humongous duffel bag around this humongous shipyard trying to figure out where the heck I was and where I was supposed to go. Of course, there wasn't just one ship in the yard, there was 3 or 4 there at the time being built and none of them had the names on them yet. I was looking for the USS McKee AS-41. It was a brand new submarine tender, and it was also the first Navy ship to be designed to have a female crew. All of the other ships had been retrofitted and converted to accommodate women on ships. For instance, the McKee had female bathrooms (head, in Navy terms), female quarters, etc. rather than the retrofitted male quarters and bathrooms.

After wandering around and looking completely lost, I'm sure, one of the workers pointed me in the right direction. So, I finally found the right ship, but I had no idea hot to get on it, and holy moly, this thing is HUGE! There's scaffolding all over it and several different sets of long, metal stairs going up the side to the ship. I dragged my duffel bag, that was bigger than me, up a million flights of steps and then up a narrow, metal gangplank. There's a guy in uniform at the end of the gangplank and he helps me get my bag on the ship. He then tells me that I'm supposed to salute and say, "Permission to come aboard" every time I come on the ship. Who knew? There was no shipboard etiquette in boot camp.

Anyhow, the ship was just a big commotion of workers, more scaffolding, painters and all kinds of construction that I had never seen as I was taken to the berthing areas. The women's berthing areas were two huge rooms across the hall from each other. I think one had 75 bunks and the other requested a top bunk and they issued it to me. There was a really skinny mattress on top of had 85 or so bunks. There were rows of the bunk to sleep in. It lifted up so I could put all of my stuff under the bunk and then lock it with a padlock. So between 2 fairly small rooms. there were approximately 155 women that could live on the ship. That was compared to about 1400 guys. And there I was in my new home for the next year and a half. What happened during that time is even hard for me to believe sometimes..... (To be continued)