The Coyote Who Wielded Mjölnir
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Did you know that a 3 pound hammer, when wielded by a sufficiently enraged Chief, can rip a hole in a metal wall when thrown? I suppose it was really only a partition wall, meant to create office spaces within a larger watertight space, but it was still impressive enough that a witness had the hammer engraved "Mjölnir" and returned to the Chief. That hammer hung in the office for a while, concealing the hole. I'll call the chief (E-7) Coyote, as he was something of a resourceful trickster.
Buckle up, it's a long one. This is a weird one folks, and I'm not sure about how I feel about many parts, or what I believe the truth is here. This tale is from my first and only ship, and is one of many reasons this was my only ship.
When I arrived in the blessed land of Norfolk, our division (about 50 people) was run by a Senior Chief (E-8), who was much beloved. By someone. Theoretically. I never met that person, but I guess his own mother, maybe? Probably not, but I'd still like to give him the benefit of the doubt. Anyway, we're in berthing getting dressed before morning quarters and we hear a medical emergency called away over the P.A. system, and the compartment number (location) they give is our division office.
Knowing there's only one person who'd be in that office at this time of day, an E-6 laughed uproariously and intoned words of wisdom I remember clear as a bell to this day: "Careful whatchya'all wish for, motherfuckers!" And with that well timed (but non-lethal) cardiac event, we were rid of the evil Senior Chief, and there was much rejoicing.
You see, many higher ups on this ship were there because it was seen as career enhancing. Us little people were on that particularly decrepit tub due to shit luck; they were there to make names for themselves. The higher ups were almost uniformly career seeking assholes who would stand on the backs of their dead friends, if only so they could be seen a little more above the crowd.
Except for Coyote. Coyote was a chief in our division who ran one small but highly technically specialized workcenter, and had no ambitions to leadership. He wanted to do his 20 years and retire. He was very, very good at his job, and his guys deeply respected him, and kept his secrets.
Now, when Chief got stabbed with responsibility for the leadership of the division, not all divisional activities were entirely above board. Which is to say, people did their jobs as they were trained by those before them. Those trainers had done their jobs as had those before them, and on and on. Everyone knew how to do the job By The Book; you did it with The Book By you, open to the right page, while you did it the way you were taught. The higher ups knew this (and couldn't catch anyone); everyone knew about this (we'll circle back to this later). But the young blood wanted to do things The Right Way, and Coyote had our backs.
The problem is, when you change how you do things, the logs look different. The records look different. If 10 years of weekly logs each look like the logs of the week before, people get used to that. So when the logs slowly changed to look more like what one would expect in theory, vs what one was used to seeing, the Higher Ups figured something was up. They wanted some butts, but Coyote refused to offer up people who had done things the way of their fathers and their fathers before them, so long as things were now being done The Right Way.
So, they made his life Hell. Every little nit they could pick, they went after. Anything they could shine a spotlight on, and try to turn into an offense, they did. Nothing stuck, because Coyote was not only a better man, but much smarter, and again, very good at his job.
Now, Coyote had a boat wife. She was an E-5 firecracker from a different workcenter (before his involuntary promotion). Again, everyone knew, but kept their secrets. She got out of the Navy at 8 years; no reserve time, no strings attached, shortly before things got so bad for him that somehow, a transfer was arranged. Due to the change in homeport, he was allowed 30 days moving leave, + 30 days of regular leave, before arriving. He never showed up at the new ship.
She fell off the grid, too. Our new chief, Sir Ass Kissington III (not his real name), called her dad up in an obscure holler in Appalachia, and was told in no uncertain terms that he would never find those two, and that if he showed up in the holler looking for them, no one would ever find him. His guys on the ship refused to narc; they let slip to the rest of us they'd moved lock, stock, and barrel to New Zealand. She had handled the logistics of the move while he got ready to bolt.
Years later I looked him up, and found the last couple sentences were pure bull. They'd sought asylum in a different friendly democratic country. The tale he told was that the reason the Higher Ups hated him was because he'd seen our F/A-18s coming back from Iraq riddled with small arms bullet holes, and found out they were deliberately flying low and slow over populated areas to lure people into shooting at them; then the door kickers would go in. He thought they were deliberately terrorizing civilians (using fighter-bombers), which was a violation of the Geneva Conventions. So he discussed his concerns with being a part of that, and asked for a transfer off the ship. They called him a traitor, threatened court martial, etc; he requested Captain's Mast to talk to the CO. So, they made a deal; he'd transfer to a ship not going back to the Persian Gulf, and shut his mouth until he hit 20. Only he found out the ship he was ordered to would be deploying to the Gulf almost immediately after his arrival (I know that part was true), so he deserted.
Honestly, I have no idea where the truth is in this one. We lost people due to DUIs, mental health breakdowns, drugs; so I'm not even sure how I feel about the morality of his one. From my perspective as a little NUB, I saw a good leader who fixed things and cared about his people get treated like crap and disappear, and the people who replaced him were simply awful. He eventually landed on his feet; I looked him up, and it looks like he's doing OK, 15 years later. He was also a deserter who was tapping a boat boo 2 ranks below him.
Finally, the thing I said I'd circle back to: we periodically received a regularly scheduled anal probing audit from hell. The auditors looked at the records from this time period, and pulled several of us into a private meeting that never happened, and was never run past our chain of command. It went something like "So, I looked at the old records, and I looked at yours. We've seen a lot of records that look like the old ones. We look very closely at those kinds. You're doing your job the right way, correct?" "Yes, sir." "What about those before you?" "I can't say, sir, I wasn't them." "Good. Keep doing what you're doing."
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