Last week, my sis-in-law cleaned out the attic of Ye Olde Family Manse and in the process ran across my boot camp yearbook, which she then gave me.

Lordy lord, my boot camp yearbook, which I hadn’t seen since – you guessed it – boot camp.

I opened it, and the memories came flooding back.

There we were, Company 281, in a firefighting exercise, staggering through the smoke house and gasping and sobbing in the tear gas room.

Next we were in the drill hall, lined up to get a buttload of shots (some literally).

Then we were on the grinder doing the 96-count manual of arms with that cursed 1903 Enfield – all 9-and-one-fourth pounds of it.

I flipped some more pages, and suddenly there he was, The Old Man – Captain J.R. Collier, himself.

Captain Collier was the Commanding Officer of the entire recruit training command, and as such was a figure of mystery, much like the Wizard of Oz. Having had to memorize the chain of command the first week, we all knew he was a captain and the CO, but that’s all we knew. The only Navy captains we’d ever heard of before then were Queeg and Bligh – one a raving paranoid; the other a cold-hearted sadist. As far as J.R. Collier? He could’ve been both those things, or neither, since in the course of our training we never even saw him. I, however, due to a fluke of random selection, not only saw him but saw him up close and personal.

In the brig

I was in my sixth week there, called Service Week, because the recruits spent those seven days doing all the crap jobs that kept boot camp running. Among them were working in the chow hall or grounds maintenance or the supply and processing buildings, and so on. My job was filling out the form letter sent to Mom and Pop America telling them their son Biff was now at Great Lakes and was having all his needs and wants attended to, even as I typed. After that, I addressed the envelope, stuffed the letter in it and sent it on its merry way back to Willoughby.

One morning as I was typing away, another Service Weeker from somewhere else on the base came in the room and called my name.

“Yeah?” I said.

“Got a letter for you,” he said.

“A letter? What kinda letter?” I said.

“Dipped if I know,” he said. “Some lifer puke in Personnel gave it to me to give to you.”

I opened it. Inside was a typed note that said Seaman Recruit Seidenstein was to report to the brig at 1300 hours, that day.

The brig? Report to the brig?

Immediately, my blood ran cold, and my bowels filled with ice water.

In the Navy, the brig wasn’t just a jail – it was also a disgrace. This was drilled into our heads from the get-go. We weren’t allowed to be on the same side of the street as the brig, and when we walked past it, we weren’t supposed to even look at it. Of course we did, and if ever there was deterrent to crime, the brig was it.

It looked like it’d been built in the mid-1800s, a huge grey stone building, surrounded by high stone walls topped by concertina wire. Atop each corner was a sentry post manned by a marine in crisp utilities, an M-14 in his hands. He was, I’m sure, bored out of his skull and was praying to the ghost of Chesty Puller for some idiot to try to escape so he could empty a couple hundred rounds into him and maybe get his marksmanship badge upgraded.

The brig rats themselves, considered the shame of the Naval Service, were kept out of our sight. They were never in the chow hall at the same time as the other recruits, and from what I heard, they were run in there, allowed only 10 minutes or so to gobble down their chow, and then were run back to the brig.

I’ve no idea what they did, but when asked about it, our company commander gave us a gentle reminder why we didn’t want to find out first-hand.

“They got a stone quarry there, in the back of the brig, where they pound on it with sledgehammers,” he said. “They been at it since 1911 and from what I hear, they ain’t even half done yet.”

So much for the brig. What about me? Why was I headed there?

Good question, and the one I kept asking myself. When I got there, I found out I was to be a witness for a captain’s mast, along with a bunch of other recruits also chosen for this illustrious duty.

A captain’s mast is a non-judicial punishment, as opposed to a judicial punishment, ie, a court martial. A court martial is a real big deal, involving lawyers and a panel of officers as judges and so forth. The captain’s mast is for lesser offenses, and the captain runs the show all by his lonesome. He can assess penalties like restriction to quarters, loss of pay, and reduction of rank. In fact, in my day, he could even sentence someone to three days of solitary confinement, with only bread and water. Today, that’s been changed to a day without wi-fi.

A first-class petty officer met us and explained our duty, namely standing there. Of course, there was a bit more to it than just standing there. First, when the captain came in, the first class’d call, “Attention on Deck” and we’d all snap to. Then when the captain was ready, he’d nod at the first class and he’d order us to stand at parade rest. And there we’d stand till it was over.

The first class, being as sardonic as every other petty officer in Great Lakes, had some additional information for us.

“You ever seen the Old Man?” he said.

We all shook our heads.

“Yeah, well, he’s got him some serious jowls. It’s like he’s stuffed two big chaws of tobacco in there, each jowl sagging down ’bout to his collar.”

Then he added the masterful metaphor: “Looks like a friggin bulldog.”

Looking back …

A few minutes passed, then the captain came in, stood behind a lectern, and we went through our rigamarole. He was a beetle-browed, fierce-looking man. And like the first class had said, he had huge drooping jowls, and he did look like a bulldog. I’ve no doubt I would’ve laughed out loud if I hadn’t been scared witless of being sent to the brig for it.

Once we were at parade rest, another parade started – the parade of miscreants.

They were all small time. They were at captain’s mast because they either couldn’t or wouldn’t follow orders, like reporting places on time, staying awake on guard duty, keeping their lockers neat, and so on. Whatever their offenses, they all ran together in a seemingly unvarying blur.

And something else was unvarying – the Old Man”s message that followed the pronouncement of his punishment.

He spoke in a low, rumbling, gravelly voice – the voice of a real Navy captain. I’m sure he came by it honestly, after hours of watching James Cagney as Captain Morton in “Mister Roberts.”

If the first guy’s name was McLaughlin, the captain’s message ran as follows: “McLaughlin,” he’d say, “what we need out in fleet is men. And you know what? You, McLaughlin, are a boy. And we don’t need boys in the fleet, we need men. So you’ve got a choice to make. You can either become a man and go out in the fleet; or you can stay a boy and spend the rest of your hitch in boot camp.”

If the next guy’s name was Heckler, the message was exactly the same, the only difference being the substitution of Heckler for McLaughlin.

The captain was doing the same thing I’d been doing during service week – filling in the blanks on a form letter. But since each guy was out of earshot of the others, what was same ole, same ole to us, might’ve been the word of God Almighty Hisself to the poor slob on trial.

So that was my experience being in the same room with the Old Man.

And now an odd follow-up note: This week when I saw his picture in my yearbook, he didn’t look as I’d remembered him.

For one thing, his eyebrows looked like everyone else’s.

For another, not only did he not look fierce, but he was downright pleasant looking.

And, most amazing of all, his jowls were barely noticeable, his resemblance to a bulldog nonexistent.