Getting the Silent Treatment

While many always speak of the hardships of the Army, in their being deployed into war zones (and I don't dispute that, but only a percentage of all combat troops were ever actually in a truly hostile environment) they fail to realize something.

Most soldiers being deployed still got to do things like Skype with their families, send regular emails. They got to come home half-way through for 2 weeks R&R. They have better communications with their families than the general public realizes.

The NAVY on the other hand, pretty much gets screwed over. There is no skyping. There is email, but sometimes that's rather tricky (as you're about to hear) and there certainly, absolutely is NO R&R in the middle of a Deployment! You're lucky if your leave chit gets approved prior to a deployment or after! Because, despite racking up all that Leave (or vacation time in laymans terms), you might not get approved for the time you want because of who the hell knows why.

The Hubby and I have managed to keep in touch, in my own acknowledgement, a lot easier than others in our position. While there is no skyping, there certainly is a lot of emailing back and forth. It's one of the benefits of being on a surface ship as opposed to a sub - more communication.

Unfortunately, the new CO of Hubs command doesn't seem to care for this and has decided to implement a new "Silent Sailing" on this particular boat. What does that mean, you ask? It means that instead of being able to send emails whenever a sailor has the opportunity to, due to work, sleep and duty schedules, they "secure" (another term for taking away a privilege) ALL communications except for those necessary for the mission, randomly for anywhere between 12-18 hours a day, never informing the sailors that communications are secured. Either until after the fact or not at all.

Now, if this was a submarine, I could understand that. Subs are able to go places and do things that surface ships simply can not. However, the particular ship we're discussing is a floating city with over 5,000 men and women aboard. It's a moving target that can be seen from space people!!! It is NOT able to perform covert operations!

See my frustration? I don't expect anyone to truly understand. It's extremely frustrating to me and since this is MY blog, it is MY place to be able to vent, bitch and opine about whatever the fuck I want. And today, I'm going to bitch about a particular Captain and his right hand bitch who seem to get off on making the lives of the men and women who not only serve under them but for their families remaining back home, an absolute hell for the next 8 months. Oh yes people, this deployment JUST got underway and already they've decided that they want to fuck us all over.

So this is a giant FUCK YOU to the CO and CMC. Because, quite frankly, I wish you would both fall overboard.