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I was in the Navy. Life on ships is pretty much the same. You sort of go on autopilot and your entire existence is within the skin of the ship. My parents used

I was in the Navy. Life on ships is pretty much the same. You sort of go on autopilot and your entire existence is within the skin of the ship. My parents used to complain that I never called them or e-mailed that often, but they didn't understand that in that kind if environment it's easy to just forget about everything else. The other thing is that distance makes the heart grow fonder, so seeing family when you return just feels amazing, similar to what I imagine being released from prison feels like.

JoeAltmaier 9y ago
My brother-in-law, a Master Chief, said this of deployment: "It's like Groundhog Day every day. To get through it, you just Do the Next Thing and don't think about anything else."
hudibras 9y ago
I did a sea tour in engineering on an aircraft carrier, and we would get in the routine of standing watch, eat, go work on paperwork in the office, sleep, work out, eat, stand watch, repeat for days and days on end. Not in a bad way, I didn't mind it, I was young, it just got to be routine to spend your entire existence within a sphere of around 150 meters or so. After a while, me and my friends realized that it was unhealthy, so we started going outside to get some sun and watch the airplanes landing and taking off. And then, on a later topside tour, I was standing 3-section watches and then one of the other guys transferred so we went to 2-section watches (port and starboard) while I trained the new guy. The problem was that the new guy was also my roommate on the ship. So we'd stand watch for 6 hours together, go eat together, go back to the stateroom and sleep at the same time (in bunk beds, of course), wake up, eat, go back on watch together. Except for bathroom breaks, we literally spent 24 hours a day together. It only took 3 or so days of that before we were both begging for the sweet release of death...
NavyNuke 9y ago
> "My parents used to complain that I never called them or e-mailed that often, but they didn't understand that in that kind if environment it's easy to just forget about everything else." I was on a submarine and what you've described was what I experienced as well. Add not seeing the sun for 90 days and you've got sub life nailed down. 18hr days, 6 on watch, 6 off watch doing maintenance/training, 6 in the rack...rinse and repeat for the entire deployment...you kinda just fall into a routine after the 1st week or so that causes some distance between what is going on inside the sub to what is happening in the real world...very strange looking back on it now

JoeAltmaier 9y ago

My brother-in-law, a Master Chief, said this of deployment: "It's like Groundhog Day every day. To get through it, you just Do the Next Thing and don't think about anything else."

hudibras 9y ago

I did a sea tour in engineering on an aircraft carrier, and we would get in the routine of standing watch, eat, go work on paperwork in the office, sleep, work out, eat, stand watch, repeat for days and days on end. Not in a bad way, I didn't mind it, I was young, it just got to be routine to spend your entire existence within a sphere of around 150 meters or so. After a while, me and my friends realized that it was unhealthy, so we started going outside to get some sun and watch the airplanes landing and taking off. And then, on a later topside tour, I was standing 3-section watches and then one of the other guys transferred so we went to 2-section watches (port and starboard) while I trained the new guy. The problem was that the new guy was also my roommate on the ship. So we'd stand watch for 6 hours together, go eat together, go back to the stateroom and sleep at the same time (in bunk beds, of course), wake up, eat, go back on watch together. Except for bathroom breaks, we literally spent 24 hours a day together. It only took 3 or so days of that before we were both begging for the sweet release of death...

NavyNuke 9y ago

> "My parents used to complain that I never called them or e-mailed that often, but they didn't understand that in that kind if environment it's easy to just forget about everything else." I was on a submarine and what you've described was what I experienced as well. Add not seeing the sun for 90 days and you've got sub life nailed down. 18hr days, 6 on watch, 6 off watch doing maintenance/training, 6 in the rack...rinse and repeat for the entire deployment...you kinda just fall into a routine after the 1st week or so that causes some distance between what is going on inside the sub to what is happening in the real world...very strange looking back on it now