Notes From Brian's Deployment III

WOG DAY 

This post has been made possible by D'Marie

Ellison's great story telling and Brian's great job in collecting photos from the day.  D'Marie is a dear friend of ours who is traveling on the USS Reagan.  She is currently a NFO with VAQ 139 (Prowlers out of Whidbey Island).  The USS Gridley, the ship Brian is on, is currently traveling with the USS Reagan strike group.  I truly apologize to everyone for not knowing the proper terminology.  I am really really really bad about acronyms and basically all things navy "term" related.  But they do say you can teach an old dog new tricks, right?  I am working on it folks.

The following story is taken directly from D's WOG day experience on the USS Reagan and the photos are from WOG day on the USS Gridley.  Hopefully, this will paint a pretty good picture for everyone of the initiation tradition for those that have never crossed the Equator.

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D'Marie's Family/Friends Update:

It is approaching midnight and I am exhausted. I am sitting in the middle of the mission planning room and I am the only one here. Do you know why? Probably, because all normal people are in bed right now. I know it has been a while and I have been pretty lazy with emails and I apologize to everyone that this is a generic email rather than a
personalized one. Alas, it will have to do for the moment.

        Yesterday, the carrier crossed into the southern hemisphere. For thos of you who do not understand the significance of such an act, I will tell you. Prior to yesterday I was considered a WOG. I have no idea where the term came from nor do I know if it is an acronym for something or not. I really did not care much to investigate the history. Today however, I am a SHELLBACK. Ooh, Ahh. Yes, in the Navy this seems to be a rather big deal. So much so that there is an entire ceremony and initiation on emust go through to make the transition from Slimy Wog to Honorable Shellback. The night prior to crossing the equator our skipper informed us of the uniform of the day. All wogs were to wear their khaki or cami pants inside out and backwards. A white undershirt, also inside out and backwards, was to be worn over our flight deck jersey. We were encouraged to decorate the shirt appropriately. Mine read "Smiley Wog"
on the front and "Happiness is being a WOG" on the back. I lacked all creative and tawdry thought at 11pm when I finally decided to create my uniform.

Crossing the Line Ceremony That is what the initiation process is refered to. The day began at 5:00am. Unheard of if you are an aviator. I was pretty sure my clock did not even recognize that as a time of day especially when most of us are used to flopping into bed sometime between the hours of 2:00am and 4:00am. As soon as I woke up and got dressed (let me tell you how difficult it is to button a pair of pants that are on backwards let alone inside out and at the ungodly hour of 5) I trudged half asleep into the ready room to begin the "non-hazing" festivities. Hazing is not allowed in the Navy. Wink wink. The idea is that everyone musters, gathers for you non military types, with the rest of your squadron and the shellbacks in that squadron get to basically do whatever they want

in terms of "initiate" you prior to the final "cleansing" portion of the morning. Our squadron was not as creative as some of the others and so
the harassment was kind of mediocre. In all honesty the hardest part of the morning was trying to stay awake. The enlisted shellbacks by far
surpassed the officer shellbacks in tehir creative form of initiation. A quick rundown of some of the activities that took place:

1. 2hr elephant walk chanting "I'm a happy cougar wog" throughout the ship. My back is still screaming at me about that one. Plus, I never

really thought I would have my hand that close to another member of the squadron's crotch nor would someone have their hand close to mine.

2. Dance off. I cannot dance. For all fo you who know me, Guy especially, I dance by placing my two index fingers in the air and randomly swaying the rest of my body. The only place that I have found this form of dance to be acceptable is Germany. So when it was my turn to dance, I grabbed one of the other JOs and had him lock his arms at the elbows, place them on my shoulders as I placed mine on his hips and we reenacted what goes on at junior high dances. I think Carebear, the other JO, and I actually may have had a moment at one point as we slowly moved our feet back and forth in the shape of a circle.

3. Wog jeopardy. Many of the questions revolved around Porn Stars and Naval History. By the way, I am not an intelligent person on either matter so I pretty much sat quietly in the corner. I am pretty sure my CO thinks I am the most non-naval naval officer he has ever met.  Especially when I had to ask who Davey Jones was. I know he is a legend in Navy history but I had no idea why. With every wrong answer I was punished with cheese out of a can being smeared all over me. Crackers anyone? There was quite a bit of other forms of harassment going on but none to really speak of.

After 4+30 hours of the squadron initiation, our squadron was finally called to the Hangar Bay to partake in the final steps of cleansing. It began with breakfast. Now, there was no food at 5:00am for breakfast so most people are starving at this point. Breakfast was considered another trial to get through. It consisted of cold fried potatoes that were basically raw and just barely cooked all the way bacon that was dyed green. The smell alone was awful. I of course, being who I am, did not have hunger pains at this point and pretended to eat the food while

spitting it out when no one was looking. The last thing I needed to do was throw up from whatever they decided to marinate those potatoes in to get them smelling that bad. After breakfast the fire hoses came out and over the next hour and a half we would be constantly sprayed down with salt water. Huddled together on elevator 4, we were all brought up to th eflight deck where we were introduced to the real ceremony.  The flight deck was covered in green mats all of which had rotten food and condiments strewn about. Because I could write a novel on the festivities, I will keep this short and list off the different stations.

1. Blow out Pad Eyes. They are the crevices on the flight deck that the aircraft get chained down to. While laying on your stomachs you had to blow the remnants of food and salt water out of them. By minute five of this you realized that with the fir hoses still going off there was no

way to accomplish the goal and all you were doing was getting gross salt water blown into your eyes from the guy next to you trying to do the same thing. After this event I could barely see because the salt was burning my eyes so badly.

 2. Low crawl through the swamps of rotten brocoli, pasta, green onions, cabbage and who knows what else. This is the reason why I will never be able to wear my khakis again. The smell of the food was pretty much awful and having it rubbed into every part of your front side did not help. The shellback, while you were face down on the mat, took it upon themselves to gather more of the rotten food and pour it over you while you tried to make your way across the deck.

3 and 4. Singalong while laying on your back and quickly flipping over onto your stomach. There was not enough room for all of us to fit so we
piled on top of each other. The poor guy on the bottom may have had to endure the weight and smell of the person on top but the guy on top was
now being covered with peanut butter, more cheese from the can, mayonaise, crushed drenched dorritos, and anchovie paste. Yum. If my eyes were not burning before this they definitely were now.

5. Cleansing Swim. The last station was simple. You had to swim one stroke through a casing filled with all of the stuff you just trudged through. We were the last group so we had the priviledge of having to duck under water that was filled with all of the fun stuff that came off of 2000 people prior to us going into the mixture.

All in all the day was a pretty good day. You made of it what you wanted. It was not this pain in the butt to get through but rather something to have fun with. By the time I was done my hair was being conditioned with creamy peanut butter and anchovy paste while my arms were covered in strings of cheese (if you can call it cheese). I took two showers and a lot of shampoo to get the evidence off of me and threw out most of the clothes. Now, however, I am no longer a slimy wog and instead an honorable shellback.

Okay, so now I am really tired and I am off to take some drugs and head to bed. Miss you all. Please keep the emails coming and I will do my best to keep up my end.



 Brian's Brief Description of WOG DAY:

 

Yesterday was the Shellback ceremony.  We had a great time, but it took a lot out of me.  I still do not have a voice.  First we had to wear our working uniform (khaki’s for me) inside out and backwards with a white T-shirt on top that said “WOG” on it.  WOG’s are people who have never crossed the equator.  My shirt was specially decorated by the maintainers.  It had 2 “buttons” drawn on it that whenever a shellback pushed the one on my left shoulder I had to sing “We all live on a Yellow Submarine, a yellow submarine, a yellow submarine.  We all live on a yellow submarine, a yellow submarine, a yellow submarine.”  The one on my left lower back and I had to say “Where are all the Dudes at?”  This is why I lost my voice.  The CMC (command master chief, who is the senior enlisted on the ship) added at sometime during the ceremony that I had to put my arm in the air like a periscope while I sang “Yellow Submarine.”  We crawled around the ship and had stations where we would do push-ups, sit-ups, etc, etc and do various stupid things.  They put most of the officers in a group together.  We revolted a couple of times and did stupid things like tip over the boat full of water that we had to sit in and sing “row, row, row your boat” the water in the boat had green die in it, by the way.  I have attached some pictures and when we talk I can explain more, but it’s kinda hard over email.  I have a lot of pics so that you can understand better when we talk.  The next few emails will be all pics.  Love you. ~ Brian



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