A Christmas Tradition on Board Ship

I think one of the traditions in the Navy that says it all is at Christmas time the youngest sailor on board, the most junior sailor is made captain for the day which we did in the Persian Gulf; there was captain for the day. He switches uniforms with the real captain so that the real captain becomes the youngest sailor of the day. And the crew take great pride out of and pleasure out of making the captain scrub the deck and clean the heads and then the junior captain can give everybody the day off if he wants or the afternoon off or sticky buns at two o’clock instead of eleven or whatever and so the junior sailor will get egged on by some of the chiefs, “Hey, you can do this, you know, you’re the captain!” And that says really to everybody that the most junior sailor on board is as important as the captain and it just goes from there. And when you know that and you realize that that’s the way the navy operates then you understand a bit about how the morale is kept up and how everyone has to do their job and smiling about doing it and with some of these funny stories about pumpkins or Santa Claus or, you know, the pizza and that kind of thing, they’re great because they allow people to think about something other than what they have to look at and that is a missile going overhead or, you know, the scud missiles flew within, well not very far from some of the ships.