Arriving in RI

Getting to RI was a bit more of a challenge than it should have been. The Navy, yet again, scheduled me some brutal connections. The first one I got to with at least a couple minutes to spare (though not enough to go to the restroom), but the second connection was a literal sprint through the Philly airport. I made it, but turns out I was faster than my bag, because when I arrived in RI I received the unfortunate news that my bag was still in Philly. I made arrangements for it to be dropped off at the base, and went on my way. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a phone charger in my carry-on, so that was a bit of a mental stressor for me since the people dropping off the bag would call me to tell me when they were close to the base so I could let them in. Fortunately, I found a very kind individual working at a hotel on base who provided me with a razor, shaving cream, deodorant, toothbrush, and toothpaste. She also let me borrow her phone charger for a couple hours while I waited for my luggage (scheduled to arrive a bit after midnight). Unfortunately, the guy doing to luggage run forgot my bag at the airport, though, so I got a call around 1:00 am that it wouldn’t be arriving until 8:00 am the next morning. I took a late-night stroll back to where I was staying (profusely thanking the front desk lady on my way out for letting me chill in the lobby there), which was really rather lovely. It was a foggy night, but not too cold.

The place I was staying in is named “King Hall.” It is a pretty old building on the very old base that is Naval Station Newport (est. 1883). Technically the base we were on is Officer Training Command Newport (OTCN) which is a much newer base, but since it shares the same grounds as Naval Station Newport, I think it makes sense to use the older establishment date. King Hall is made of 4 floors, with 6 wings on each floor. We treated the building as a ship to get used to the terminology, so actually, it was made of 4 decks, with 6 wings on each. The quarterdeck (main entrance) was on the first deck, along with medical. The chiefs’ offices and student pool (more on that later) were on the second deck. JROTC was on the 3rd deck during the times they were there (only a couple days at a time), and ODS was all on the 4th deck. Decorating the bulkhead (walls) were a variety of murals painted by previous classes, most of which were pretty good, and some of them were phenomenal.

My bag didn’t arrive at 8:00 am because the guy forgot it at the airport. Yeah. It, fortunately, did arrive that afternoon, though, so no harm done. In that time, I went by the store and just bought another charging cable. They were on sale and it never hurts to have a spare, anyway.

First Meetings

I started to meet some of my classmates. Most of the ODS students were medical or dental. The Navy actually pays for 100% of their med school tuition and most fees in return for 8 years of service (of which only 4 have to be active duty). Very amazing program, honestly! The Navy is pouring $400-500K into every one of them! The program is “HPSP,” if you are interested in more info. There is another program that some of them were in that was more similar to mine, where they are made active duty and are paid through their schooling (but the Navy doesn’t specifically pay for tuition) called HSCP, but that really isn’t nearly as good a deal considering how expensive medical school is unless you want to go career military, in which case a couple more years of active duty gets you that much closer to retirement. I am not totally clear on what the different qualifications are for HPSP vs. HSCP, but both sound like excellent programs. Others are attending USUHS (pronounced “you-sis” for some reason) which is a medical school that of straight up free to attend, but has a service requirement attached to it, if I understand correctly. Seems amazing, and I don’t know how I had never heard of any of these medical programs before.

Most of the doctors (or related medical fields, Psychiatrists, etc) were in the 23-25 years old range, and are attending ODS on a summer break. The dentists were almost all graduated already, since dental school doesn’t usually have summer breaks (who knew?) so we generally 26-27. There were definitely exceptions. We had probably a dozen+ students in their 30s, and I think 3 in their 40s. It really was amazing to me how physically fit people with a good sense of humor can seem 20 years younger than they really are. One of the students a couple doors down from me was 43 and I would have honestly pegged her to be mid-20s before she told me. She just interacted so seamlessly with all of us younger people that it was very hard to wrap my mind around her having a son who joined the military before she did (!!!!).

Other than the medical people, there were 8 Nukes, between the teachers (including me) and the researchers. I got the word while I was here that I was selected for the math division, which is fantastic since that was my first choice and I didn’t have a choice in the matter, and I met another student here that I really like that is starting at the same time and in the same department. I may actually live with him briefly when I arrive, if I haven’t bought a place myself, yet.

There was also 1 JAG (Judge Advocate General), 1 Entomologist (who knew the Navy hired those?) And I think that is about it. I may be leaving out a few. This is also the program that Navy Chaplains go through, but we did not have any in our class, unfortunately.

So, I was definitely on the younger side. There was at least one younger than me, and that is the other math instructor, who had his 22nd birthday in the 4th week here.

Our class was 180 students, divided into two companies, Delta and Echo, of 90 students each. I was in Echo, and until the end of our training we didn’t really interact all that much with Delta, so when I refer to “class” I will generally be referring to Echo company. The split was random, and Echo and Delta had different class chiefs and class officers.

Class Team

On the first day, we got to meet our Class Chief Petty Officer, Chief Valdez. Chief is a senior enlisted rank, E-7, which can be reached as early as 7 years of service. However, it is often the capstone for enlisted careers, or at least the last serious/reasonable goal (though many also retire at E-6) because there are very few openings to be promoted to Senior Chief or Master Chief (E-8 and E-9). Chief Valdez has been in the Navy 22 years, but he doesn’t look anywhere near the age that implies him to be. His motto was “29 forever,” and he lived that the best he could. He is about 6 feet tall, and 203 pounds of pure muscle. If he were judged on the fitness scale that I am graded on, he would still be literally off the charts in push-ups and sit-ups, and at the very top-end of the “Excellent” category for the run. He was the fitness manager for the base (which was rather bad news for us out-of-shape 20-some year olds who were expected to be much stronger than we were), but quickly became one of my favorite people I have ever met.

However, that is a bit of foreshadowing, because that is not how any of us felt on day 1. In OCS, there are Marine drill Sargents that do a lot of the yelling and “knife-handing” (punishing/calling people out), but for ODS we had Chief Valdez. He was the one that silenced the crowd when he entered the room, who demanded rapid and confident responses whenever he spoke, and who did the vast majority of the ordering that our class received through our time at ODS.

We also met our class officer, Lieutenant (LT) Hatef. He is probably 5’10” or so, and a much larger guy. Very strong, but not the perfectly-toned build that Chief has. Somewhat soft-spoken and gave the vibe of being kind of socially awkward, but determined to push through it. Very nice guy, and loved to tell stories from his 7 years in the Navy, and to hear stories from us students. He is the “good cop” of our class team.

All we really did the first day (if I remember correctly) was get our PT gear: shorts, shirt, and (soon to be infamous) glowbelt. At this point I realized I screwed up by bringing tennis shoes instead of running shoes (I was misinformed that we would be issued running shoes) so I had to take time later in the week to buy a pair of those.

Collateral Duties

Writing this 5 weeks after all is done, I am certainly not going to remember exactly what happened on every day, so I will just hit on notable events. There were several collateral duties that needed to be filled by students, including med body to help facilitate injured and ill people getting the help they needed, admin officer to figure out paperwork, first lieutenant to make sure the place was clean, PT body to lead remedial physical training for those who didn’t do so well on the Mock PRT that we would have later in the first week, and many others. I volunteered to be Religious Body, so my job was to facilitate students getting to whatever religious service they wanted to go to, and to help arrange for students to meet with a Chaplain if they so desired to do so. There were two collateral duties that were not volunteer positions, Division Officer and Assistant Division Officer (DIVO and ADIVO). On one of the first couple days, the class elected these positions. LT asked that DIVO be someone with no prior military experience, and asked for volunteers to put themselves out to the class, encouraging anyone to go for it. He said that it was a major responsibility, but a very valuable experience. So I put myself out there, along with 4 other people. The class chose LT Smith as our DIVO, and I am SO glad they didn’t choose me. Smith was highly charismatic and had a very calm demeanor, and was generally pretty relaxed, though be definitely could be strong and loud if he wanted to. For those of you that got to watch the graduation livestream, he was the the big guy issuing orders to the whole class (Delta+Echo) during that event.

LT Hatef requested for the ADIVO to be a student with prior service in the military. We ended up picking ENS Lemond, a prior dive medic. He also ended up being a stellar selection, having experience with military customs and traditions, but still being somewhat relaxed in his manner and super friendly to everyone. Looking back, I think our company was very fortunate in choosing the people we did to lead us. Their attitude and behavior drastically impacted the overall tone of the company, and they worked together very fluidly. They both earned very high respect from the rest of the class in a very short period of time.

Delta company did not appear to be as fortunate. I won’t say much since I didn’t have many interactions with their DIVO/ADIVO team, but their DIVO seemed to be a bit of a pushover and was definitely not quick on his feet as far as understanding commands and generally having authority, and their ADIVO was super, super gung-ho military and made his company’s life much harder than it needed it to be.

Physical Training

With all that in place, I can finally get into what we actually did in ODS! My room was small and was shared with a recently-graduated dentist, LT Parker. I generally woke up at 3:45 am on days when I was going to take a shower in the morning, and at 4:00 am on days when we had PT in the morning (which was the great majority of them). We had to be ready to go in a height line by around 5:00, depending on the day.

PT consisted of a warm-up lap, a few minutes of warm-ups, a run (either sustained or sprint/jog intervals), situps, and pushups, followed by a series of cool-down stretches. It would have been nice to have more variety, but it definitely did prepare me for the PRT, which is 2 minutes of situps (as many as you can do), 2 minutes of pushups (as many as you can do), and a 1.5 mile run (as fast as you can do it). Entering, my mock PRT was 58/76/11:40, which correlated to Good Low/Excellent High/Good Low scores. I actually got the bare minimum number of situps for me not to be placed in remedial PT. Not great, or anywhere close to my best PRT. For comparison, Chief Valdez’s was 120/100/9:20. Yeah. Literally double my situp count. Part of my poor performance was that they tried to make it so we would be in the worst shape for it. The mock PRT was at the end of the first week, and before then we had no organized PT and were not allowed to PT on our own, so everyone was at least a week cold going into it.

Chow Time

Breakfast was generally the best meal of the day. I usually had eggs, some form of meat, fruit, and pancakes/french toast covered in peanut butter and syrup. Sometimes a bowl of cereal on the side. Pretty big, for breakfast, but we were exercising daily and I kind of was wanting to put on a bit of weight anyway.

What made the meal times really interesting was the process for it. Like pretty much everything in ODS, meals were done in a very particular way. In fact, they were the most regimented part of the whole experience (though I will get into the room cleanliness later, which was also intense). It started before our arrival at the building. We would march over there in formation, and after we were halted a section leader would step out and relieve the drill guide. Our formation had four columns, or “squadrons.” At first DIVO was always the section leader, but eventually it was just random students. The section leader would then call the class treasurers out to check us in. While they checked us in, he would have the class crush all the way to the far right of the sidewalk. After the treasurers returned, the section leader would ask them to report. One of the treasurers would then announce where we would be sitting and which lines we could use. The section leader then called the first four students forward to hold open the doors, and called for the squadrons to go in in a particular order (either from the right or from the left). The leader of the squadron called to go first would call “FORWARD,” and the other squadron leaders would call “STAND FAST.” The section leader would call “MARCH,” and the first squadron would enter. When the last student of the first squadron passed the first student of the second squadron, they would call “LAST SAILOR” and the second squadron leader would call “FORWARD MARCH.” This continued until everyone was through the door.

I will take a brief interlude to introduce one of the most iconic characters of our company, ENS Koshkarov, “Kosh.” Kosh lived the first 20-some years of his life in Moldova and spoke with a pretty thick Russian accent. He had harsh facial features and just generally looked and sounded like a very intense guy. He was also the second person in the first squadron which meant that (other than him being quite tall, since the formation is made tallest to shortest) after the leaders of each squadron went forward to hold the door, he was the new first squad leader. So, whenever the section leader called for the columns to enter from the left, it was Kosh who called “FORWARD.” And, boy, did he call it. We were told over and over throughout our time at ODS to speak with speed, volume, and intensity (a quote which made it onto our company T-shirts at the end of our time here), and Kosh took that to heart. When he called the command, he yelled at the top of his lungs with such ferocity that it genuinely made me jump the first time he did it, and got the attention of every person in the rather large chow hall. Later we all learned that Kosh is a very kind, mild guy, which made this event all the more comical for us. After we had heard his introduction (which I might get to later), most people were choking back laughter and tears whenever he called his line forward. His appearance and voice are such a strong contrast to his personality, it is truly astounding. And he did it so seriously! Like, he really scared people! I don’t know how he managed to do it with such a straight face.

Anyway. As each student walked toward the galley doors, they took off their glow belt and got hand sanitizer from a dispenser near the door. They then lined up silently and at attention in front of one of the lines, moving forward whenever the person in front of them moved. When someone got to the front, they would grab a tray, a spoon, fork, and knife, and a glass, and then proceed to get their food. They would then move to the seating area specified by the treasurers and place their tray on the table, the edge of the tray matching the edge of the table. The edge of the plate touching the edge of the tray. The end of the silverware touching the edge of the tray, and in proper order. The glass with logo turned toward the student touching the forward-left edge of the tray. Any fruit/salad on the forward-right corner of the tray. Any soup/cereal on the forward-left corner of the tray.

They would then stand straight behind their seat, and pull a sheet with required knowledge out of their pocket, and hold it in their right hand with arm fully extended at eye level. And they would hold that position until all 90 people in the company had their food and were standing in such a manner. This generally took around 10 minutes at first, though we got that down to around 7 by the end of it all, so those first few people who got their food got a serious tricep workout. My arm was in agony after a couple days of this, and I was rather concerned that it would negatively affect my pushups. After 6+ minutes of holding my arm straight in front of me, I could hardly even review the study material anymore because my arm hurt so much. However, my muscles eventually grew strong enough to hold my arm there without much of a struggle.

The section leader would then call for the company to “PUT IT AWAY,” at which point we put our knowledge back in our pocket, and then to “TAKE…” - right hand goes to the back of the chair - “…SEATS.” Everyone calls out the diddy of the week, pulls out the chair, and enters from the left side, sitting toward the front of the chair with heels together and hands on our lap, “thousand-yard stare” in front of us. The section leader would finally give a 15 minute warning, and we could begin eating. No speaking was permitted during the meal. If you finished early, you sat there with your back straight, staring into the distance. Many times I didn’t even know who was sitting beside me by the end of the meal because I was staring so intently. The only times that didn’t work was when someone asked for a napkin to be passed or during the last few days, when talking was permitted.

After 15 minutes (with a 10, 5, and 1-minute warning), the class was told to “TAKE FEET,” and was called off to bring our dishes to the dishwashing conveyer belt.

This was the process we had for every meal, 3 meals a day. It eventually became completely routine, and I hardly even noticed what I was doing anymore. Believe it or not, this is a greatly simplified version of what OCS has to do for their meals.

It was later revealed that the whole chow hall procedure is designed to prepare the students for graduation. Many of the same commands are used throughout, and the extended arm-holding is training for holding prolonged salutes. The first 3 weeks were pretty brutal, though, not knowing that! I found a renewed motivation to do everything as well as I could once I knew the purpose behind it all.

Lecture

Between meals we had classes. Lecture after lecture, power point after power point, generally until 6:00 pm or so. The first week was even later since we had a variety of paperwork to do as well, leading to some really exhausting days. I went to sleep as soon as I could. The lectures were everything from talks about military benefits and how to use them, to military traditions, to seminar-style case studies in smaller groups (a personal favorite), to proper greetings and procedures for events. I won’t bore you with a list of everything. It was many, many hours every single day, and we had a test at the end of the third week to confirm that we had absorbed all of the material. Fortunately, they allowed us to stand up in the back of the room if we were feeling tired. Considering that power points are not the most engaging thing, combined with getting <5 hours of sleep on an average night, I took frequent use of this opportunity.

Uniforms

At the end of the first week is when we got fitted for uniforms. We got the Navy Working Uniform (NWU) Type 3’s, which are the “digital camo” green uniforms. These were the first things we wore other than PT dress, while we waited for the other uniforms to be hemmed. This is also what I will wear on an average day once I am in Charleston. The next uniform is the Khaki with the signature garrison cover (hat) that looks either like a taco shell or a shark fin, depending on who you ask. Then comes the summer white uniform, short-sleeves with shoulder boards. This is what we wore for the parade. Then dress white uniforms with the choker jacket, which is what we wore for graduation. Finally, the dress blue uniforms, worn for formal occasions in the winter months. We had black boots with the Type 3’s, black dress shoes with khakis and blues, and white dress shoes for summer/dress whites, all of which had to be shined.

Before we could wear the khakis, we had to pass a uniform inspection. For this inspection, the students stand at attention while the chief goes one-by-one down the line, thoroughly inspecting each member. They are looking for loose strings (of which there were dozens that we had to snip), poor ironing, misplaced items (like a rank insignia placed 1/4” off from where it should be), properly shined shoes and polished belt buckle, all buttons buttoned, shirt stays tight, proper gig line (alignment of shirt to belt to pants), proper hair (more of an issue for the women, who had to make extremely slick, tight buns), and proper military bearing (our eyes had to be dead ahead while they looked us over).

On top of that, they would ask us questions from our knowledge sheet while they did it, which we had to answer confidently without breaking bearing. You were allowed 5 hits, the 6th was a failure of the inspection. And sometimes a single thing would hit you multiple times, and sometimes they would trick people into getting a hit. For example, we were holding our covers at our sides. The chief might take the cover from the students and look it over for strings and proper markings, and then offer it back. If the student moves his hand to take the cover back, that is a break in bearing. If they moved their eyes to see where they had to move their hand to take back the cover, that was a second hit. If they stuttered when told that they had just taken two hits, that was another hit. Sometimes they would say you had gotten a knowledge question wrong just to see if you would flinch or retaliate because that would be a hit even if the knowledge had been correct in the first place.

Knife Hands

Now is a relevant point to go into the knife-handing that we received. By far, the most common knife-hand came from calling a chief “sir.” They are not sirs. That title is reserved for officers and chiefs, though senior, are enlisted. However, so many people (myself included) grew up getting used to replying “yes sir” to a senior person that it was an instinctual response. Even after graduation, I failed once in that exact scenario. It is just so easy to say, and I expect it will take months if not years for me to really grind that habit out of my system. Other knife-hands came from talking out of place, breaks in bearing, poor PT performance, not moving fast enough, talking fast enough, responding quickly enough, or anything else that might be wrong.

Sometimes a knife-hand was just that, the chief forming his hand into a knife and pointing it at you and correcting you. This was especially the case when we were on a tight schedule. When we were a bit more relaxed, however, the knife-hand was usually combined with a simple “push” or “on your face,” at which point the unfortunate victim would continue to do pushups until chief decided that he was done with them doing pushups. You might also have to do squats, or hold a squat, or do leg lifts, or hold legs 6” off the ground, etc. Really anything. If we were on the field, goodness help you because they could get way more creative with their punishments. I saw Senior Chief Liverpool (the chief for Delta company) knife-hand a couple students for repeated infractions, and he had them run across the football field in increments, with pushups in between. So, from the touchdown line, run 10 yards, do 10 pushups, run back to touchdown. Run 20 yards, do 10 pushups, run back to touchdown. Run 30 yards…etc. He didn’t stop them until they got to the 60-yard line and literally couldn’t lift themselves off the ground again. If a large number of the group really screwed up, then they would bring the whole company to the sandpit for serious grilling.

The sandpit was disgusting. It already would be gross to work out in the sand since it was constantly slightly damp from the high humidity and frequent fog, but add on top of that that the multitude of seagulls (awful, awful creatures) and geese (also awful but not nearly as much) decided to use the sandpit as a litterbox. There was goose poop all over the sand, and good luck finding a place to put your hands such that they aren’t in it. Even if you do, chief would often command for us to roll one way or another, guaranteeing that you would get it all over you.

We only went to the sandpit twice. The first I am quite sure was on the schedule from the very beginning, since it was on the first Friday after our last class. The infractions he mentioned were mostly bearing related - many people calling him “sir,” or replying to questions using “okay,” “yup,” “yeah,” or similar casual tones, among a few other things. The session was about 15 mintues of pushups, leg lifts, high knees, squats, rolling, and burpees before he let us go.

Uniform Inspection

The second time in the pit was because of our uniform inspection. We were super pressed for time, and DIVO made a bad call on when to have us line up to get over to the inspection area. We arrived a minute late when we should have arrived a few minutes early. On top of that, many members were unprepared, getting their 6 hits for failure within the first 5-10 seconds of chief inspecting them. For the record, I only got 2 hits, so technically would have passed with flying colors. Only a half-hour in to our 2-hour scheduled inspection, chief told us to run back to our rooms and change into PT gear. It was raining. We ran back, and changed as quickly as we could. This time, the sand wasn’t just damp, it was downright wet from the rain that was pouring down, and we got a serious talking to. We went for probably 15 minutes or so, and I am certain we would have gone for much more, but something happened bad enough that a training time-out had to be called. If someone calls a time-out, it is for only very serious situations. Generally, someone passing out or breaking something. When a time-out is called, all training immediately ceases and everyone turns away from wherever it is called (except for the ones in charge). Whatever happened was bad enough that an ambulance was called. The student was back the next day, but was on light duty for the remainder of the time at ODS. I never heard exactly what happened.

I personally think we deserved to go back to the sandpit on at least two other occasions, but for whatever reason we never did. Apparently, we were a very good class overall. I am not complaining!

Room Inspection

The other type of inspection we had was a room inspection. While not nearly as intense as the OCS room inspections, we still had to keep everything immaculate. There could not be any dust on any surface. Our lockers had to be locked, with the combination lock turned to zero. One chair had to be centered on the desk, while the other chair was lined up with the edge of the room, holding the door open. Shoes had to be placed in the correct order on top of the locker, with laces pulled tight and tied and tucked correctly. Above all, though, was the bed. The bed had to be made in a very specific way, using precise 45° hospital corners at the head of the bed for the bottom sheet, and at the foot of the bed for the top sheet and blanket. The head of the top sheet and blanket had to be folded back exactly 6”, and everything had to be tucked in tightly. To make the bed in this manner takes at least 12 minutes or so if you are not too experienced. To make it perfect took me over half an hour, and involved me ironing each sheet and blanket as I put it on to get out all of the wrinkles. My roommate and I were the only people in our wing who had flawless scores for the beds! It was pretty obvious, because all of the other beds in the hall were flipped on their side or had the sheets flung off, post-inspection. It really was quite a sight, walking down the hallway after the room inspection. If either chair was out of position, both chairs were found upside-down in the hallway. If the shoes weren’t positioned correctly, or weren’t tied correctly, or weren’t shiny enough, they were in disarray across the room. The beds almost universally were flipped. The one poor soul who forgot to lock his locker had all of his clothes flung out of the drawer (that is an automatic failure for the inspection, regardless of the rest of the room).

In OCS, they have much larger rooms, and so more things to be concerned about. In addition, they have to be present during the inspection, and need to yell knowledge back at the chief on request, or do PT on request, and watch as the chief goes through and indiscriminately tosses around everything they worked so hard to make perfect. ODS is always pressed for time, so we were not present. We were just given a three-day window, saying “the inspection will happen sometime in here,” and were expected to have our rooms inspection-ready any day.

Swim Test

During the first week, we all had to pass a third-class swim test. This was one of the easier things we did here, though I was somewhat concerned going into it. It starts with a 10 foot drop into the water, not a big deal, which is followed by a 5-minute float (which is what I was concerned about), a 50-yard swim (super easy), and finally using coveralls as a flotation device (which was also easy, but everyone had to learn on the spot). I don’t really float. I sink quite well, honestly. I have reasonable endurance in the water, so I was planning to just tread water or slowly swim in circles for the 5 minutes, but we were told once we got there that that was not allowed, and that you had to float on either your back or your chest for the whole time. I had never tried float on my chest (face down in the water), but I knew for a fact that I would sink like a rock if I tried to go for my back, so I decided to see how it would go. Turns out, very well! I had no issue staying afloat for the 5 minutes, and though taking breaths was kind of awkward, I definitely feel more confident about it now. All 90 people in our company passed the swim test on the first try, which made the individuals who volunteered for the collateral duty of “remedial swim instructor” have a pretty dang easy job!

Marching

Throughout the 5 weeks, we had drill practice. We marched everywhere, to meals, between classes, back to our room, to PT, everywhere. But we also had dedicated times to try to tighten up the marching and learn new commands. We started by just marching straight, trying to maintain our spacing. Then we added half-stepping and “mark time” marching, for moving slowly and not moving at all, respectively. We then learned how to make turns as a company. “Column Left” and “Column Right” were the commands. Since the person on the outer edge of the turn has to travel a further distance, each squad had a different step for a turn. The inner-most person turns immediately, takes two full steps, then begins half-stepping until everyone has caught up. The next one turns 45°, takes two steps on the diagonal, and on the second step turns 45° again. The third takes 4 steps on the diagonal, and the outer-most takes 6 steps on the diagonal. When done correctly, it look fantastic, and we eventually got pretty good at this.

The goal that Chief put for us toward the beginning of ODS was a movement called “to the winds,” which would involve both companies combined and was intended to be used for the July 4th parade in Bristol that we marched in. The idea is that when the command was called, squads 1 and 2 would do a half-left flank (turn 45°), squads 3 and 4 would do a half-right flank, then they would walk forward (splitting the company down the middle) while the other company (still all walking together, straight) would come between the now-split front company. The company that split would go and shake hands and greet the parade attendees, then form up behind the other company. So, now the companies have switched places entirely, without the back company stopping at all. When the command is repeated, now the other company is the one who breaks off and shakes hands. Turns out, this is very challenging to pull off correctly, and the hopes of putting that together in just a couple weeks with people who had never marched before was quickly abandoned in favor of a slightly simpler version – the same thing but doing a full left/right flank instead of a half-flank.

Doing a full flank is easier because people have a better understanding of what 90° is. Still, though, this is incredibly difficult to pull off, especially with such a large group of people. When you have 4 columns of ~22, you can line up left-to-right without too much difficulty using your peripheral vision, and it is always easy to cover to the front because you just position yourself directly behind the person in front of you. When you make a flanking movement, now you have 22 columns of 4 people each, which is way worse. If someone has a slight misalignment to either side, that effect cascades down the whole line because you are not allowed to look to the side to straighten out. You have to assume the people directly left and directly right of you are aligned properly, and align yourself to them. Plus, when we turn sideways, now the people on one side of the line are much taller than the people on the other side, since we arrange ourselves by height. So, the small people naturally want to take smaller steps, and they can’t see all the way over to the tall people to see that they are falling behind and warping the shape of the flank.

We split into smaller groups to try to clean up the flanking movements, and eventually got it fairly tight with groups ~8 rows deep. Inevitably, though, when we combined into our full force of 90, it was a disaster. So, we ended up dropping that idea, too.

The final hope for something resembling “to the winds” was for the front company to come to a complete stop, and for everyone to do a left/right face, then walk forward. Not nearly as smooth looking as a flank, but still could be functional, and the rear company might not have to stop if they had enough distance between them. Even that proved to be too difficult to pull off in the time we had, though, so after all of that work we just ended up doing a “fall out,” where the whole company just splintered all at once and went to the sides to greet people. Highly functional, but approximately zero style points.

Save Our Ship

We had two training evolutions in the 4th week that were an absolute blast – the water trainer and the fire trainer. For the water trainer we went to the USS Buttercup, a module built to look, feel, and react like a section of a ship under torpedo-fire. The training started with us bracing for impact on the side of the ship until the torpedoes hit. At this point, the ship tilted dangerously to one side (only a few degrees, but enough that it was very disorienting. Then everyone had to work together as a team to patch the damage before the ship sank. Everyone was given specific duties in this process, and was trained for all the duties before we even got onboard. These duties included being the site manager, manning the engine for the water pump, managing water hoses for the pump, being an inspector (going down into the ship and reporting what kind of damage there was and how they suggested it should be fixed), being on one of three different bracing teams (I will get into that), and being on one of three different patching teams.

As this is just a module, they are obviously limited in the different ways the ship can be damaged. However, they tried to cover all the bases that might be commonly seen in a real-world situation. The easiest fixes were the patches. This was for small holes in the walls or for blown pipes. For flat holes in the wall, there was a plate patch that essentially just pushed a plate with a rubber seal against the hole and had an attachment to clamp it simultaneously to the other side of the wall. For holes with protruding edges there was a bucket patch that worked the same way, but went around the edges instead of flush against them. For blown pipes we had a Jubilee patch, which is essentially like a metal hand that clamps around the pipe and can be slid over the damaged area to seal it.

The braces were the much more interesting fixes, though. These were used to control waterflow coming from a broken door or hatch and were made from wood pieces. For a situation where the door was fine, but water is leaking out around the edges from a poor seal, we had the K-brace, which used the wall and the ceiling along with a hammered-wedge to put a great deal of force against the door, suppressing the flow. For a broken door, we had the H-brace, which used a flat piece of wood to cover the door and was braced against the ceiling and wall using a couple of wedges. Finally, for a blown hatch (on the floor) was the I-brace, where you use the ceiling and a couple wedges to put significant-enough force down on the hatch to seal off the water. The beauty of all of these braces is that they can be put together fairly rapidly with only 3-4 people (even relatively untrained people as we were) and used basic physics (really basic…think 5000 B.C. level) to seal off literal tons of water flooding in.

The module filled with water very quickly. By the time the inspectors came back from their first run through, there was already about 3 feet of water accumulated on the floor, and more rushing in every second. The teams had to go down in a rush, and quickly find the materials needed to fix what they were tasked to fix while being bombarded by water from every direction and dealing with a tilted ship. There were several instructors around to help in case of emergency, but they really stayed totally hands-off unless they saw something dangerous going on.

I was placed on the K-brace on the first module run, and on the I-brace on the second run. I think if I had the choice, I would have chosen exactly those two duties, so that was awesome! On the first go-through, the team failed pretty badly. There wasn’t great communication and the investigators generally took too long to return with the information we needed. The K-brace actually went quite well because they caught that leak when there was only about 6 inches of water in the compartment, but by the time people even started to put in the I-brace there was over 4 feet of water, and it was essentially impossible to push the wood under the water that far with only bodyweight. We were also slow to react to some things, because we couldn’t tell if it was something that we even could fix. The second trial went very smoothly, though, and we managed to get all of the braces and patches in within 14 minutes. There was still one thing we never managed to fix, and that was a pipe that had a cap blown off. We needed to find this cap, and it sank to the bottom of the compartment and was a black cap on a black floor. It didn’t happen.

I had an absolute blast on both rounds! We all got completely soaked from head to toe, and it was really interesting to see how people might deal with damage to a ship. I think having a module to demonstrate all of the techniques was pretty necessary. If we had just gone through the training or seen diagrams of how to put these braces or were told about different patching mechanisms, I am sure it would have been easily forgotten soon afterwards. However, being in a rather high-intensity situation where you had to apply the knowledge you had just learned really cemented it all into my mind very vividly.

Firefighting

The fire trainer is exactly what you might guess from the name – firefighting training. We learned about the different chemicals used to extinguish fires and which kind to use when as well as how to man a firehose (both ideally, and when things go wrong and it is flinging around), and the various safeties surrounding both of those tasks. We put on fire suits and oxygen tanks (not fun on a 90°F day), went to a warehouse where they had a few different fires set up, and got to use fire extinguishers as well as a firehose, going on 7-man teams on the hose and rotating who was on the nozzle. It was crazy hot, especially being right at the nozzle, since we were only a couple feet away from the blazing fire (though obviously much less hot than if we didn’t have the suits. Mad respect for those people that do it for a living! It was brutal, and I hope I never have to put on that fire suit again. Breathing through the mask was rather claustrophobic, too, especially with how heavy the suit was overall. Still a very valuable experience, but not nearly as fun as the water trainer in my opinion.

End of Days

At the end of each day, we had the appropriately named, “End of Days.” This was the opportunity for LT and Chief to overview how the day went and what we had to prepare for the following day, as well as for a lot of announcements. However, it was also the time for introductions. Roughly 10 people a day went up and gave an intro of themselves to the class. Originally, we were told to keep it to 2 minutes or so (which makes sense, since we have 90 people to go through), but by the end of the 5 weeks the introductions were closer to 10 minutes each. It was fantastic to hear where everyone was coming from and see the huge difference in backgrounds and reasons for joining the military across the board. Unfortunately, I volunteered to do my intro pretty early on, and so was closer to the 2-minute side of things, but there were some awesome intros later down the line.

One of the highlights was ENS Koshkarov’s intro. He came to America planning to work for 4 months, then return to Moldova. When he arrived, he knew no English at all. He got a job at Disneyland (who knows how), which caused the whole room to erupt in laughter at the image of this 6’2”, intense, bald Russian man dressing up in costume or something like that. Unfortunately he lost his job after only a month, and started to travel the US a bit, looking for work since he couldn’t afford to fly back to Moldova, and fell in love with the country and the people and never left. He joined the military as a hospital corpsman, if I remember correctly, and eventually decided to take that to the next level by becoming a doctor, leading him to ODS.

The best intro by far, though was ENS Sorenson. What a legend. First off, he purposely mispronounced his own name just so it would rhyme, pronouncing it sor-EN-son instead of SOR-en-son (“Ensign sor-EN-son”). Second, he took his pivoting turns very seriously. We were told early on to make our turns 90° whenever we were out of our room to practice for marching, and this guy did it to a tee, often making three turns when a single small diagonal step would have done the trick. He actually had to be told to stop pivoting by the people on the USS Buttercup because it was distracting from the training. He was also known for his standing at “super attention,” a rather comical stance that my mortal words cannot give proper description. His entire intro was like a comedy skit, and I again cannot possibly give it anywhere near the credit it is due by simply talking about it. His delivery and inflection was spot on, and the constant self-deprecating humor was perfectly devised and delivered. I so desperately wish it had been recorded, but, alas, it is a historic moment that is destined to live on only in the memories of those who witnessed it first-hand.

Through the intros of DIVO and ADIVO, we learned that ADIVO used to be very into martial arts, and has a great video on YouTube of him performing about a decade ago. We also learned (after ADIVO probed him to reveal it to the class) that DIVO used to have a modeling side-gig, which prompted initial laughter and then shock when we saw the pictures. Dang that guy is ripped. I mean, we already knew that, but dang. Dentist, Naval Officer, and model. A rather unique combination.

Colors

Another notable event in ODS was the colors ceremony. Colors is the raising or lowering of the flag, and happened every morning at 0800 and every evening at sunset. Normally the only flag raised is the American flag, and it is raised on a pretty normal flag pole (of which there are 50, all right outside King Hall). On graduation days, however, the normal flagpoles are used for the 50 state flags and a much larger American flag is raised on a massive flagpole that stands in the middle of all the others, probably 200 feet tall. I mean, this thing is massive. Even from a fair distance, you don’t even see the flag on top unless you purposely look up that high. Three days before our graduation, there was extra ceremony added on top of the normal celebration of colors, to emphasize the importance of the flag. Two massive flags were carried out and carefully unraveled, one held by each company of 90. After the main flag had been raised on the large flagpole, a choir sang a verse of Amazing Grace, then the poem Old Glory was recited, and a few more verses of Amazing Grace were sung while the large flags were folded again. The choir was thrown together just the previous day (myself included) as a group of 12 people. I will say, for only having an hour and a half of practice the evening before, we really pulled together a 4-part harmony quite well. The whole ceremony was very solemn, and I am glad I was able to be a part of it.

Parade

In the last week of ODS, we had the opportunity to march in the Bristol 4th of July parade. This is what all the drill practice had been for (we got much more than most ODS classes do for that reason), and it was a blast. It was quite hot, with a heat index above 90°F, but I had a great time. As soon as I just accepted that I was going to be sweaty and nasty, I didn’t mind at all. We were near the back of the parade, marching right behind the Navy band, which was great. Our biggest problem with marching was staying in step with each other, and having the band constantly playing marches really snapped everyone into pace better than we had ever done in our practices. It was fun to greet people and to here them cheer and clap as we walked by, and we all looked fantastic in our summer white uniforms.

Parting Gifts

Before we left ODS, we wanted to make sure everyone involved remembered it. Each company designed a T-shirt for all of its members, and the whole class came together to buy class coins, as well. The companies designed and produced separate wall murals commemorating iconic moments or phrases for them. For Echo, ours shows LT Hatef and Chief Valdez on either side of the stunning suspension bridge we saw every morning when we went out for PT, and dozens of students in the pushup position. All of our names are also recorded, and a large font says “One Team One Fight,” which was one of the sayings used during pushups (down – “One Team”. Up – “One Fight”). Huge shout-out to officers Wu and Sun, who did the majority of the actual artistic designing after the class threw ideas at them. The result is stunning and, though I may be biased, I think it is one of the best murals on the floor.

We also had personal gifts for LT and Chief. Throughout the weeks, LT would occasionally take a break from whatever else we were doing and ask for someone to come up and tell an inspiring story to get him in the mood to keep going for the day. There were some literally life-saving stories told during those sessions. We bought a journal and addressed it to LT Hatef, “For Your Down Days,” and filled the entire thing, cover to cover, with other personal stories from students in the class. Well over a hundred pages of handwritten stories for him to read whenever he wanted to.

Chief Valdez was so iconic to us, and had so many great sayings, that we couldn’t figure out how to best represent that. We eventually came up with a custom bobblehead in his likeness. The bobblehead was wearing camo. One hand over the shoulder, showing the “People’s Elbow” that he threatened to use should there be an intruder (we were told, for an intruder, to use the “Run, Hide, Fight” method, but both Chief and Senior Chief seemed much more keen on skipping to the last part). The other hand was in the classic knife form that we had become so used to seeing. Around the base was written “29 forever,” and I think a couple other quotes that I don’t recall, now. Chief actually got another gift earlier during training, because we found out it was his birthday! For a week or so he was admitting to be 30, but that changed back to 29 before the end of our time with him. As soon as we found out, someone ran to the general store to look for a card for him, and somehow found the most perfect card I could possibly imagine. The cover had a small mirror on it and said “Congratulations on 30 years, you don’t look a day over 29,” and the inside simply said, “but you are.” He opened and read it aloud in front of the whole class, and his reaction was simply priceless. We are pretty sure that was in fact his 41st birthday, but we can’t say for certain. Both LT and Chief also received the class shirt we had designed, as did another chief who graduated from his “in training” blue rope to his “I will knife-hand you” red rope while shadowing our class.

Graduation

After the 5 weeks were over, on the 5th of July, we had our graduation ceremony. We had practiced the ceremony for probably 12 combined hours spread over the last couple weeks, so everything was essentially muscle memory at this point. It was great to see all of the work pay off, and the commencement speeches made by Captain Nicholson and Admiral Lynch really cut to the heart of what we had be striving toward in the last month: living out the core values of the Navy through our lives, and recognizing the prominence of our position of leadership in the military. Thank you to all who watched the livestream! I felt glad to see that so many people were willing to take an hour out of their day to watch the ceremony, even though I was never even called by name. After graduation I took a bunch of pictures, making sure to get one with LT Hatef as well as with Chief Valdez as well as my fellow classmates, and returned to King Hall to spend one last night before my travel back the next morning.

Misc, Closing

I would love to share with you even more stories from my time here. The time that Chief brought his children to join us for PT and the time I ran into him on Fathers’ day with his family. The time I spent with my friend from OCS who had gone to school with me, and who was able to help me understand just how different are OCS and ODS. All of the things we did on weekends, including the weekend when I went to Boston with a couple other friends. More about the people I met, specifically the ones I want to stay in touch with (the same ones I went to Boston with, among others). My crabby dentist roommate who managed to mild himself out a bit by the end of ODS. The pure joy that radiated off ENS Roddy as she (43 y.o.) ran and did a heel click down the hallway on the way to class. The beautiful scenery. The gosh-darned seagulls. The thought-it-was-good-at-first-but-realized-by-the-end-that-there-was-way-too-little-selection-and-way-too-many-carbs food. Our other interactions with the various Chiefs and Officers who lead the classes at the training command. The cadence running (which I am definitely going to get my mom and sister to do with me). The hours spent shining shoes and telling jokes in the evenings. The lovely church on base with the 1878 Steinway and kind Priest. But at this point, I have already gone on for a very long time, and if I don’t cut myself off here I will easily double what I have already written. If there are particular stories you would be interested in hearing, feel free to reach out and ask me!

If you made it this far, thank you so much for your support and your interest in my life. I look forward to sharing stories with you from the years to come as I move to South Carolina and begin my career.

Wishing all of you the very best.

God be with you,

-Christopher