Posted: 5/14/2006 6:48:09 PM EDT
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31st MEU (SOC) USS Belleau Woods West Pac 1993 Trusty Shellback |
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My dad becase a shellback in 1942 on the U.S.S. Washington. Also got his Bluenose on the same ship earlier in the year. He never spoke much about the inititation, but he carried his shellback card in his wallet until the day he died in 1999. Turned out the ship's XO was a wog too. He had the option of paying a fine to skip initiation, but went through the whole process with the rest of the wogs. He earned a lot of respect from the crew for doing it the "proper" way. |
Gotta like officers like that. These days, the PC crowd has ruined a fun thing because it's 'demeaning'. Really pisses me off. There are a LOT of things that used to make life in the service fun, but they're slowly going away. |
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WOG for life!! My knees are are too fucked up to have been kneee-walking all over the flight deck. They actually had the option where I could have walked the entire time. I slept on the floor of the forecastle untill the CMC of the ship figured out that I was the senior E6 of the WOG non-players. Then I had to ensure that none of us were being hazed by other shipmates.  Besides, I have crossed the equator many times while flying. I also have a bluenose card for both the north and south poles. |
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I often wished I had joined the Navy. Two good friends of mine are ex-Navy and both are Golden Shellbacks, having crossed over the Equator at the International Dateline. And one of them was King Neptune's Baby on a later cruise. Men do crazy things when they've been at see for months and are thousands of miles away from land and women. CJ |
| Sir, FWIW the ships I sailed across the line on never gave it a thought. I crossed the line so many times on SS Gulf Shipper I forgot how many. In addition I crossed the equator and Int'l date line so many times aboard SS Gainsville Victory I don't remember how many either. I did get threatened by some shellbacks onboard USS Ponce (LPD-15) off the coast of Liberia, but we never actually crossed the line while I was aboard. HTH, 7zero1. |
They already are c130 landing on Forrestal |
but i am dual ditch qualified!! 
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I am. ETA: Times have changed. It looks like it is just a motion now and not the tradition as it once was. Pants on, gloves on, no underwear on the heads and outside of the clothes...Did they even bother having a fat guy with a cherry? Where are the sea soaked rubber hoses that hurt like hell? Ditch qualed here as well (Somalia)....We did a marathon the whole time...  and BBQ'd. It was cool seeing the old gun emplacements. |
Yep! Not allowed to do what they did to us 30 years ago. Bluenose..crossed the Arctic Circle in 1970. Had to stand on Flight Deck of an Ice Breaker and get hosed down with sea water. The pain from the pressure wasn't bad, but 28F sea water is damned cold! Stood out on the deck until clothes began to freeze and icicles formed. Then had to crawl thru ground garbage that they had been saving up for over a week, another hose down, then visit to the Royal Doctor, Royal Barber, and Royal Face Painter. The 'doctor' mixed up some concoction we had to drink..although it was approved by the real ships doctor, it made everyone violently sick. The Barber shaved different designs in everyones head..when he wasn't busy stopping the flow of blood. And, ever try to get oil & lead based marine paint off your face? It was a 4 hour event and there were only about 50 of us that had to go thru it (small ship). Still, it was easier than what happened to the 2 guys who chickened out, climbed up the mast and sat on the hatch of the Radar Electronics room. The initiation for us was only 4 hrs..for them it lasted the rest of the deployment. Just to start, although the new Bluenose are supposed to clean up after the initiation, the Deck Officer made the 2 guys do it all by themselves and they couldn't go to bed until it passed his inspection..days later, they finished. They even got extra duty during our liberty in Thule and Copenhagen. |
Yea, me too, just in a P-3. |
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Yup...crossed three times. The first with B Co 1/3 aboard the USS Schenectady in 1985 and last with BLT 3/2 and 26 MEU in 1994... --Sorry...no girls. --when I went through in '85 I got beat so hard with fire hose that I couldn't sit down for 2 days. I remember most of us having to eat standing up in the ward room for a couple of days. --ever had tabasco sauce run down the crack of your ass?...or a weeks worth of someone else tobacco spit dumped on your head? or had to crawl through two dozen other peoples vomit to get through the "birth canal"?... When I went through it in '94 it was a sanitized version. Although there were some old timers that got our shots in when no one was looking. The advantage we had was that 90% of the crew were wogs so the "political correctness police" couldn't watch us the whole time. And finally, being Marines, we were going to fuck with the squids, PC or no PC...I had a video of it around here somewhere... |
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I did it, I believe in 97. I felt bad for the guys behind me who had to bob for condoms from a toilet, since I'd puked in it. Until it occured to me that someone ahead of me had probably done me the same favor. Only crossed the equator once though, so I never got to be on the other side of the firehoses. 
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