I suspect everyone who was ever in the service has had the same revelation at some time, namely there’s a huge difference between the official chain of command and the real chain of command. I know I sure did.

I’d been in the Navy about a year and a half, a year of which had been in boot camp and A school, and only six months in my field station. So in reality, for all my time in, I still had no idea how things worked. I was as innocent as a newborn babe, which is how I found myself facing a Captains Mast, with no way out of it.

What had run me afoul of Navy regs was some paperwork I’d forgotten to submit, or maybe had submitted but after deadline, or had incorrectly filled out, or something. It was so minor I can’t even remember what it was. But I remember perfectly who was orchestrating my downfall.

He was a nasty piece of work, a pig-eyed E-6 yeoman ironically named Friend. He was the legal officer’s secretary and for reasons I’ve never figured out (maybe because there were none) he was out to get me. Under normal circumstances he never could’ve done it. But the circumstances were hardly normal, due to the legal officer, Lieutenant Jenkins.

Jenkins hated the Navy, which among non-lifers was hardly unusual — lots of us did. But the big difference between the other haters and him was the others did their jobs. Jenkins, on the other, hand ignored his – completely. He was so anti-Navy that when he was outside he carried his hat under his arm, rather than put it on his head. That way, no one saluted him and he in turn didn’t have to salute them. It was a singularly splendid act of passive-aggression, one I’d never heard of, before or since..

Not that he was a bad guy. He wasn’t — he never said a harsh word to anyone and he never did anything unkind or even impolite. This wasn’t a problem. The problem was he also never did any of his legal duties. So in his two-man office all the work was left to Friend, in effect making HIM the legal officer. It was role he relished…and abused.

By now you might be thinking, So you screwed up some paperwork — how badly can you get punished for that? And if you thought that, it’s a sign you were never in the service, because the answer is: For minor offenses you can get major punishments.

I had no idea what was going to happen to me. I only knew every few weeks Friend called me in and told me he was working on the captain’s mast and was going to jack me up, but good. All I could do was shrug, leave, and go around thinking I was going to get strung up on the yardarm — even though we were on shore in Bremerhaven, Germany and the nearest yardarm was in the Mediterranean.

The operator …

One day at work I was talking to a guy in my division named Jim Kreuger, who asked me what was new and I told him about Friend and my as-yet-unscheduled captain’s mast.

“Why didn’t you tell me before now?” he said.

“What for?” I said. “Friend’s senior to you. What can you do to him?”

“Nothing,” he said. “But Marty Hockett can do plenty.”

Now some vital background:

Kreuger was what the old timers called “an operator.” That is, he knew how things in the military worked and how to get things done – without ever having to go through official channels. And he came by his knowledge the hard way – he’d been in the Marine Corps and the Army before he came in the Navy. He was an E-6, but not one with much time in, which was why Friend had rank on him. He also was a master cabinetmaker, which while it might seem irrelevant, it was anything but. He put his skills to good use and was famous for his gun racks, which he made for all the lifers who asked for them. He charged only for the wood, not his time, but his “presents” came with an unstated price, namely the favors he’d ask sometime down the line.

And, luckily for me, Kreuger was a pal.

Marty Hockett was the division chief. He was tall, craggy-faced, had a salt-and-pepper flat top, and was a good leader. He was civil to everyone, never micromanaged, and was always easy-going and low-key around us. He was also no one to be trifled with. And by hassling me without first telling my division chief, Friend had, by proxy, hassled Hockett. Once Kreuger brought that to Hockett’s attention, Friend was going to pay some heavy dues.

Hockett wasn’t coming to my defense simply because I was a good kid or because Friend had violated unstated protocol. That may have had something to do with it, but the real reason was that by taking over Jenkins’ job, Friend was acting like he was an officer, like he was senior to Hockett. He had gotten too big for his bell bottoms and Hockett was going to cut him down to size.

Hockett was the man to do it. I’d never seen him mad, nor had any of the other guys…nor did we want to. He was one of those people who’s always cool, calm and clear-headed, but you just know if you crossed him, you’d better run for cover. And while Friend had crossed him, there was no cover to be had.

When Hockett got done chewing out Friend, his ego would’ve taken such a beating, he’d have to look up in order to look down. For the rest of his time in Bremerhaven, Friend would do his level best to avoid Hockett, and when he did see him, he’d all but kiss his feet. The mere mention of Hockett’s name would make him wince. As bad as all that was, it wasn’t going to keep Friend waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat. But something else was.

Hockett had powerful juju. He was an E-9, a Master Chief, the Navy’s highest enlisted rank (fewer than 1 percent of enlisted personnel are E-9’s). He had almost 30 years time in, and he had all kinds of connections – including with the detailers. Detailers are the people in DC who assign duty stations to Navy personnel. To almost everyone in the Navy they are unseen and unknown. They are also all-powerful, since they control where you spend your tours.

So what did this mean in the world of Hockett and Friend? Just this: Hockett was no more than a phone call or two away from sending Friend to the Navy equivalent of the Hubs of Hell.

Maybe Friend would find himself on Adak, Alaska, a treeless, fog-shrouded rock pile in the Aleutians, whose unofficial motto was, “Where there’s a woman behind each tree.”

Or maybe he’d get to work on his suntan on Diego Garcia, an island in the middle of the Indian Ocean, where the biggest hap of the day was if a glass ball from a Japanese fishing net washed ashore.

Or if Hockett was in a particularly vile mood, Friend might end up in a tropical paradise like Vietnam.

Not that Hockett would mention any of these things to Friend. He didn’t have to. Friend was full well aware of them already.

Whether Hockett would actually call on his connections was irrelevant. The fact he could was threat enough to give Friend a permanent case of the Screaming Abdabs.

…and the operation

A few minutes after I’d finished talking to Kreuger, I saw him go into Hockett’s office.

A half hour after that, Hockett left his office, a grim look on his face. An hour after that, he came back, with a cat-that-swallowed-the-canary smirk on his face. A little while later, I got called into his office.

After we exchanged greetings he said, “I understand you had some kind of hassle with the legal office.”

I told him I did.

“Well,” he said, “it’s over.”

“What do you mean?” I said.

“That’s what I mean,” he said. “It’s over. Gone. Finished.”

After that sank in, I did the only thing I could think of — I thanked him.

“Don’t thank me,” he said. “I didn’t do anything.”

He had such a look of wide-eyed innocence when he said it, I knew he was lying out both sides of his mouth. But as dumb as I was back then, I was smart enough not to contradict him, so I just nodded.

“That’s all,” he said. “You can go back to work now.”

I started to leave, when he called my name.

“Oh, something I almost forgot,” he said.

“What’s that?” I said.

“When you see your buddy Kreuger, tell him my wife wants an end table,” he said. “Bird’s eye maple, to match my gun rack.”