Naval Justice
Pyle, Albert
Naval Justice by Albert Pyle Judgments are rendered quickly below decks in the Navy. Enlisted men (women are still a small minority in the seagoing ranks) hold court on the spot, and they are far...
...He obviously loved the organization that gave his life order and meaning, and it is equally obvious that he knew that organization well...
...Albert Pyle, a Cincinnati writer, served in the Navy from 1966 to 1970...
...The reporters who covered Admiral Boorda's suicide, who went looking for baffled officers and friends who could not understand how the man could take so seriously such a small error, got it wrong...
...They would also know that, among the men he cared about and for, the admiral's honor was restored...
...The social scientists and think tankards whose numbers fill journalists' rolodexes, those thoughtful faces chatting with Charlayne Hunter-Gault from Madison and Cambridge and Georgetown telling us what we think on the NewsHour, have no place at sea...
...An aircraft carrier is so big and carries so many staff officers that there are probably spin doctors and speechwriters aboard, but enlisted men are effectively isolated from their wisdom...
...A sailor who does his job, does it right, does it when it needs to be done, who does not make his shipmates pick up slack, who does not complain or whine, whose work is consistent, is a sailor who can be trusted...
...Searching in the halls of the Pentagon and among the deskbound they had no trouble getting quotes...
...He could sink your ship...
...At sea, the first measure of a man or woman is his honor...
...The standards of justice of sailors before they join the service are formed in small towns, blue-collar suburbs, and on tough streets...
...Political correctness is not a consideration in seagoing deliberations any more than it is in a hurricane...
...Whether he will be reliable when high explosive shells pierce the bulkheads, when the engine room catches fire, when jet fuel covers the flight deck, when the nuclear reactor fails to respond to orders, when a fire-control radar locks on, or when sea water pours in after a collision...
...And if you cannot trust a sailor, you do not want him anywhere near you when things get rough...
...As the chief of naval operations he surely knew the capital well enough to know that there would be no tough judgments from the draft-evader in chief of the armed forces over a couple of unearned brass Vs stuck on those little bits of ribbon...
...But as a veteran of six years in the crowded, close society of enlisted sailors, men whose society he seems to have sought many years after becoming an officer, Admiral Boorda knew that his honor was busted...
...And at sea those standards of justice are shaped by shipmates, by the dangers with which sailors live, and by the rules of war...
...Had they gone to sea and stood by the sinks where sailors brush their teeth with rationed water, however, those reporters would know that Admiral Boorda's death was perfectly well understood...
...Enlisted men (women are still a small minority in the seagoing ranks) hold court on the spot, and they are far more interested in truth and justice than in mercy and reform...
...At sea, all opinion is local...
...An attack submarine carries no peace enablers...
...It's not whether he's electable, a nice guy, or went to an impressive college, but whether he is straight-up...
...Political journals don't reach the mess decks...
...Admiral Jeremy Boorda spent six years as an enlisted sailor before he moved up into the wardroom...
...Reliability is measured by performance on the job and honor in deportment...
...Even on the pier, collaring real sailors, men who know better than to speak truth to a reporter, they found the angle of pious concern they wanted...
...Having claimed for himself a credit he did not earn, he had sacrificed the trust of his men as long as he lived...
...But having lived among those men, he must also have known that his standing with them would be restored by his final action...
...There are no clinical psychologists in the sick bay of a destroyer...
Vol. 1 • June 1996 • No. 37
