ORIGINAL: bjmorgan
Ah, the memories, ... sitting in my tank in the rain and snow mix, shivering, without a shower for three weeks, eating cold C-rations three times a day, and for entertainment listening to the squadron S-3 drone on and on over the radio like a politician during election season. What a life. You swabies have no sense of what fun is. [8|]
From the great, old Usenet newsgroup sci.military.naval (now fallen on hard itmes), I recalled this classic re-write of a famous Monty Python sketch. Blackbeard was a regular contributor, an ex-bubblehead from Cold War SSN days, and Random was, I think, an ex-birdfarm officer, non-flying type. The war between submariners and skimmer pukes is neverending.
Anyway, it makes ME laugh.
Begin Quote-------
Blackbeard: Ahh . . . Very passable, this, very passable.
Random: Nothing like a good glass of Chateau de Chassilier wine, aye
Blackbeard?
Blackbeard: You're right there, Random.
Random: Who'd a thought thirty years ago we'd all be sittin' here
drinking Chateau de Chassilier wine?
Blackbeard: Aye. In them days, we'd a' been glad to have the price of a
cup o' coffee.
Random: A cup o' COLD coffee.
Blackbeard: Without milk or sugar.
Random: OR coffee!
Blackbeard: In a filthy, cracked mug.
Random: We never used to have a mug. We used to have to drink out of a
rolled up newspaper.
Blackbeard: The best WE could manage was to suck on a piece of damp
cloth.
Random: But you know, we were happy in those days, though we were poor.
Blackbeard: Aye. BECAUSE we were poor. My old COB used to say to me,
'Money doesn't buy you happiness.'
Random: 'E was right. I was happier then and I had NOTHIN'. We used to
sail in this tiiiny old minesweeper, with greaaaaat big holes in the hull.
Blackbeard: Minesweeper? You were lucky to have a Minesweeper! We used
to berth in one compartment, all hundred and twenty-six of us, no racks. Half the deck was
missing; we were all huddled together in one corner for fear of FALLING!
Random: You were lucky to have a compartment! *We* used to have to berth
in a passageway!
Blackbeard: Ohhhh we used to DREAM of berthin' in a passageway! Woulda'
been a palace to us. We used to rack out in an old sanitary tank. We got woken
up every morning by having a load from the head dumped all over us!
Passageway!? Hmph.
Random: Well when I say 'passageway' it was only a hole in the deck
covered by a piece of tarpaulin, but it was a passageway to US.
Blackbeard: We were evicted from *our* hole in the deck; we had to go
rack out topside on a submarine!
Random: You were lucky to be topside! There were a hundred and sixty of
us living in a small shoebox next to the keel.
Blackbeard: Cardboard box?
Random: Aye.
Blackbeard: You were lucky. We lived for three months in a used condom
in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six o'clock in the morning,
field day the rubber, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work in the bilge for fourteen hours a
day week in-week out. When we got off watch, our COB would thrash us to sleep with
his belt!
Random: Luxury. We used to have to get out of the shoebox at three
o'clock in the morning, field day the bilge, eat a handful of hot gravel, go to work at
the boiler every day for $.02 a month, and CHENG would beat us around the head and neck
with a broken bottle, if we were LUCKY!
Blackbeard: Well we had it tough. We used to have to get up from topside
at twelve o'clock at night, and LICK the bilge clean with our tongues.
We had half a handful of freezing cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at
the boiler for $.04 every six years, and when we got home, our COB would slice
us in two with a bosun's knife.
Random: Right. I had to get up in the morning at twenty-two-hundred-
hours, half an hour before I went to bed, (pause for laughter), drink a cup of
sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a day below decks, and pay the Navy for
permission to come to work, and when we got done each day, our XO and CHENG would kill
us, and dance about on our corpses singing 'Hallelujah.'
Blackbeard: But you try and tell the young people today that... and they
won't believe ya'.
Random: Nope, nope..
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