Smothers, Curtis J.., LCDR - Military Timeline

My final deployment on active duty with the U.S. Navy was an around-the-world cruise on board USS Coral Sea, an old post-World War II aircraft carrier. We left the friendly confines of Alameda, California, sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge and headed west via Alaska, Japan, the Philippines, Korea, Singapore and up across the Indian Ocean through the Red Sea through the Suez Canal to Alexandria, Egypt. We visited three ports in the Mediterranean and proceeded home to our new East Coast home port, Norfolk, Virginia. The cruise was about six months.

I was a Lieutenant Commander, and was ship's Administrative Officer, a job that was not unlike the City Manager of a small town. Our carrier had a population of nearly 5,000, and the people who did all the administration (personnel, postal, the police force - we called them masters at arms - the print shop, our career counselors, the ship's legal office) worked for me.

The day I am about to describe is by no means a typical one in the life of a deployed service member, but it was by far my most interesting. It was the day I was initiated into the most sacred order of Shellbacks, those distinguished and hardy mariners who have crossed the Earth's equator by sea. Yes, and to my shame at the time, I was still a wretched Polliwog. I had spent all my Navy Service (about 20 years) up to that time on the East Coast and in the Mediterranean. To be fair, though, our ship's Captain was also a despicable "woggie," and he willingly submitted to the initiation.

The day before the initiation I received my summons. I was to appear before King Neptune and answer for my (trumped-up) transgressions and sins against my betters, the Shellbacks. I was ordered to wear my khaki working uniform inside out, because there is only one rank among woggies, and that was no rank at all.

I was awakened the next morning to a group of rowdy Shellbacks roaming the passageways pounding the walls yelling "Here woggie, woggie, woggie." As an officer I had my small private room, and I hid like the cowardly wog I was and did not come out voluntarily. I made my way stealthily up to the Ship's Administrative Office, where I took advantage of the office design to hide beneath my desk. I would not surrender!

Suddenly, the office door burst open and a group of scurvy-looking Shellbacks accosted me. (He denied it later, but I know that chief petty officer who worked for me ratted me out.) Cornered, I had no choice but to come out and join the line of other miserable Polliwogs already lined up in the passageway outside my office.

Addressing me disrespectfully and prodding me with their wog paddles (a four-foot segment of canvas fire hose duct taped to a wooden handle) I was herded aft towards the mess decks and on my hands and knees. From the after mess decks, we were prodded up a ladder to the hangar deck. This was an aircraft carrier, and there were hundreds of us wogs. We could have at any time revolted, but a sort of Stockholm syndrome took over and we began to bond with the Shellbacks who taunted and mistreated us.

Being one of the very few officers in the woggie line, I was a prime target for special attention. In fact, one of the men from the pipe shop spotted me and dragged me out of line. I was escorted to the shop where a group of grinning snipes (that's what we called Engineers) decided to make a special sport of me, an officer wog. There in the middle of the shop was an unattached toilet whose bowl was filled to the brim with a brown liquid with suspicious-looking chunks of chocolate-colored log-shaped items. I was ordered to dunk my head into the bowl, and obeying the order I found to my amusement that the brown liquid was cola and the log-shaped items were Baby Ruth candy bars!

I returned to the line and we eventually crawled to the forward aircraft elevator, which raised us to the flight deck while a screaming group of Shellbacks stomped and banged sticks on the deck to the chants of "wog, wog, wog!"

Once on the flight deck, the ordeal was nearly over. Naturally, I was chosen to "kiss the baby." The "baby" was a rather fat sailor whose stomach was smeared with grease. (He was supposed to represent Neptune's baby or something like that.) I had to...ugh..kiss his fat gut.

With fake enthusiasm, I complied and was permitted to proceed to the final gauntlet: a line of Polliwogs waiting to be immersed in a large dumpster filled with fog foam (disgusting stuff) and floating garbage. Once through that vat, we emerged on the other side to answer the question, "What are you now?!" The answer was obvious even to the more obtuse among us: "I'm a Shellback!"

I still have my Shellback card and certificate, and hope some day to again sail over the equator, so that I can, too, shout: "Here woggie, woggie, woggie!”