Playing Fair and Being Kind

My service was not a sacrifice by any stretch of the imagination. By ‘service’ I mean to say the time I spent in the active military service to the USA. Much of the twenty three years I was active was spent at sea or attached to a sea-going command. Nearly all of my time spent on sea duty was on board submarines. The time at sea consisted of many hours of boring watches punctuated by moments of sheer terror. This last statement is a common description by hazardous duty military members regarding their jobs. It’s meant as a joke and fits the requirements of accuracy.

So regarding hazard life styles let’s look at how many submarine sailors died at sea in the past few decades. I’m going to look at the beginning of the first tragedy of a submarine lost at sea with all hands in my memory, the USS Thresher. Thresher was lost at sea in April of 1963. Coincidentally the USS Sam Houston of which I was a member of the crew was in the Mediterranean Sea on the same day. No one knew we were in the Mediterranean Sea except for a few members of Submarine Force Atlantic (SUBLANT) and Strategic Air Command (SAC). The only thing that our wives and children and other relatives knew was that we were at sea, possibly in the North Atlantic. We weren’t. We were in the Med.

When Thresher was lost the news bureaus all reported that a nuclear submarine was lost in the North Atlantic. That was a true statement. The Thresher was lost off George’s Banks near New England. That is considered the North Atlantic. Of course all the relatives of the Sam Houston crew and other nuclear submarines at sea on that day thought their dear ones were lost at sea. There was panic at home for a few hours until the name of Thresher was announced. I feel badly for the friends and family of the men on Thresher. One hundred and twenty nine men were lost with Thresher. The submarine was on a sea trial from Portsmouth Naval Ship Yard carrying nearly all of the crew plus many civilians from the shipyard. I need to put the number here again in Arabic numerals for accounting reasons. 129.

From that date, April 1963 to the present there have been a number of nuclear submarines lost at sea. Here are the total number of men lost at sea on nuclear submarines since the year 1960. This number is the total of all nuclear submarine sailors lost at sea from the whole world. The U.S. and U.S.S.R. and Russia have lost this many men. 479. In fifty seven years.

So, “Thank you for your service” comes out of people’s mouths in a kind way but with no real thought as far as I’m concerned.

Here is the number of women murdered by intimate partners in 2007. 1,640. In 2012. 924. Um…this is just in the U.S. In two years.                                       http://ncadv.org/learn-more/statistics

My suggestion is that no one please ever tell me, “Thank you for your service” until you have said to every woman you meet, “I am sorry for all the abuse you have suffered in your life”.

Thank you very much.

G. M. Goodwin, CWO4, USN (Retired) 30 May 2017