What makes a sailor different

I found this posted in a Navy-related Facebook group, shared in February 2024. As a destroyer sailor myself, I thought it describes well what makes a sailor different. I have searched all over and cannot find this anywhere else on the Internet, so the author is unknown.

To a Young Person Considering Naval Service: Attitudes and Preparation

If you are considering Naval Service, it would be good to take a look at all the services and what they have to offer. They are identical in pay and benefits for a given rank, though they differ in the main type and setting of the work you will do.

Before we get into the small print, you should know that one very important aspect of military service is the overall attitude and bearing of the particular branch. This is, as much as anything, what you should consider when choosing one over another.
Nothing much has changed in this area in the many decades since I joined the Navy. From what I can see, things are about the same. If you want to get an idea, take a look at what the services consider important. Look at their monuments and memorials.

For nearly all of its existence the Navy didn’t really have a memorial, per se. The reason for this is that the Navy didn’t concern itself that much with how posterity viewed it. It was the Navy and would be the Navy, and if you didn’t know or like that, the fleet wasn’t going to lose any sleep.

This was not at all like the Marine Corps, the Navy’s military partner. The Marines were always about toughness and heroism. There was also a sort of paranoia among them, a nasty fear that they would be forgotten or eclipsed. This likely came of being the smallest force among them, and persisted notwithstanding the fact that the Marines covered the Pacific with their blood in World War 2. If you want to know the mind of the Corps, look at the Marine Corps Memorial in Washington, D.C. There’s your flag-planting on Mount Suribachi, larger-than-life, in bronze. The Marines want you to know that about them. In a sense it’s a warning to the likely recruit: if you’re not into this, take a hike.

If you visit any Marine Corps base I guarantee you will see at least a few guys driving Marine-Corps-red vehicles, with Marine Corps stickers affixed, just in case you didn’t get the idea. They are a proud service, a chin-jutting service. They believe you earn the title by surviving a boot camp experience which is intentionally made worse than eating broken light bulbs.

But back to the Navy. Not long ago the Navy finally got the idea of putting up a memorial to itself. And it didn’t. Instead, it put down a bronze statue of an enlisted sailor standing next to a sea bag, staring off toward the horizon. This, my friends, is the Navy in a nutshell.

First off, the Navy is not a boastful service. It doesn’t have to be. The fleet isn’t worried about what anyone thinks. This is because the sailors, as individuals, couldn’t care less whether you think they are heroes, villains, or anything in between. A good deal of this comes from the nature and arrangement of shipboard duty.

The Navy is a service of trades. On a given ship you will find dozens of different jobs, most of which have only the slightest relation to the others around them. They exist in rough groupings with some overlap, but it is safe to say that the Navy displays the highest degree of independence among its members of any military service. In the days of sail, ships had a carpenter, whose small bunch of men had nothing to do with navigation or rigging. Today, the guy who deals with sonar doesn’t know anything about propulsion or radio or rigging for underway replenishment. These different classes of worker may as well be speaking different languages. That’s an important feature.

You see, the Navy is about dependence, and paradoxically about independence as well. The ship is completely dependent upon the services and skills of a pack of very different people. Knowing and executing a complex, important skill gives power and freedom, as long as the work gets done. The Navy is about knowledge and ability. It is not about charging up hills to bayonet the enemy. It is actually not about working as a team, no matter what anybody tells you. Look at it this way: the Army and Marine Corps are about teamwork. They are like football, where everybody moves with the snap of the ball and goes where the quarterback directs. The Navy is like baseball, where you go to bat alone; field the ball by your own effort; pitch the ball with your own arm. The catcher has a role that is entirely different from the outfielder, and everybody has to stand at the plate by himself. The Navy vessel is a device of a million parts, many of which are machines in themselves.

Within this structure, motivation is difficult. The good news is that it isn’t necessary. You don’t have to threaten or encourage sailors. Neither does any good anyhow. You can’t cheerlead a bunch of technicians. And threaten them? See what that gets you. No, you just stand back and let them do their various jobs—jobs that their officers usually don’t comprehend. It’s a matter of trust in the Navy.

Which brings us back to the Lone Sailor. He’s a good model because you can read his mind. That fellow isn’t focused on killing anything, and he certainly isn’t standing upright, at attention, waiting to be assigned to duty. Instead, he’s waiting for his ship beside a cleat, wearing a reefer coat because it’s God-damned cold and they’ll probably want to use him for a line handler, which will dirty his dress blues, and the bottom of his sea bag is likely wet from the ground and if history is any guide, he’s still half-hung over. Do you think he cares what you think? And why should he? He doesn’t wonder if you consider him a deadly killer or a conquering hero. He’s likely most concerned with getting a warm place to sack out before his next watch.

You see, your sailor, Lone or otherwise, isn’t insecure or actually, proud, in the stereotypical military way. He’s certain of his skills, but you wouldn’t understand them. He doesn’t have to beat up a barroom of strangers, this fellow, because he can flip a switch and destroy a city. That casual slouch tells the story. Sailors don’t stand at attention.

When I was stationed on a destroyer in San Diego, the Padres would try to get sailors to march with the colors at the start of their games. They’d offer free tickets in great seats, and a full meal. Fleet sailors wouldn’t go—they didn’t want to march, and besides, you had to get into your dress whites. In the end, they dragooned guys from boot camp and the service schools. That’s a sailor for you. Appeals to pride meant nothing. And the Marines? Well of course they went. And marched beautifully, as usual.

My memory is filled with sailors who were unexcelled at their jobs, but would scatter like roaches when anybody tried to make them do anything else whatever. We were resistant, difficult, snide, and most certainly unmilitary. And we did our jobs—as we saw them.

The price of this sort of independence is that you have to be very good at something. The Navy will make you very good at something, but you’ve got to have a working brain and the drive to try things that are beyond your years.

Mostly I would say that if you want to do important, utterly vital things, in a place where there is no room for failure and nobody else to blame, the Navy is your nest. You will go through a rudimentary boot camp experience that is little more difficult than a Boy Scout hike, and then through schools which will burn the hair off your head so you can flip those city-killing switches when the moment arises, and maintain the circuitry until it does.

But promise me one thing: that you will wear that dixie cup cover on the back of your head, with a curl on its edge like the sneer on a seaman’s lip at closing time. And when they ask for a volunteer, you remember what to tell them.