The Ambush of Memory

Feels like it was another lifetime...

Copyright © 2024

By Ralph F. Couey

"Our lives are our story, unfolding each day, page by page.

People we meet become characters in our story, as we become characters in theirs.

It is in these chance encounters that we recognize 

that every life is a story waiting to be told."

--Ralph F. Couey

I'm now nearly five months into my job as a tour guide for the USS Missouri Memorial in Pearl Harbor.  While learning the tour presentations presented some challenges for my aging and leaky brain, I've managed to put them in one of the few reliable areas within that mysterious organ.  I've found that I really enjoy doing the tours, partially because public speaking has always been easy and enjoyable for me, but mostly because the ship has such an amazing story to tell.  My biggest problem seems to be not being able to shut up, as my tours usually last way too long.  Working on that...

I underestimated the impact of the innumerable memories that ambush me in every compartment, and down every passageway.  Sometimes they drift in and out, much like the clouds that drift over the harbor.  Then there are the powerful ones, tied to significant events and relationships from those long-ago years that charge in, hitting my most vulnerable places.  As Paul Simon once wrote, 

"Time it was, and what a time it was, it was...

A time of innocence, a time of confidences

Long ago... it must be...

I have a photograph

Preserve your memories

They're all that's left you."

Memories...

We all have them, the good, the bad, and the ugly.  They exist in that indefinable space somewhere between the mind and the heart.  They lurk there, waiting to spring out of hiding without warning.  There are so many things that trigger them, sights, smells,  a song, emotions, or even nothing at all.  Suddenly, for whatever reason, they are there.  For me, it was the familiar smell of a ship which envelops you as soon as you go through a door or hatch.  Steel, paint, oil, all the things that make her whole.  It hit me the first day back, that in a sense, told me I had come home.  

I share those snippets of memory with my colleagues, and they are always willing to listen.  While there are other veterans on this crew, I am the only one who actually served aboard Missouri.  In some respects, it was a relatively short span, only two years, but when I deal with those recollections, I realize that it was a lifetime after all.

But its not just the memories of the ship.  

Two weeks ago, several petty officers from the Destroyer McCampbell came aboard.  They were Gunners Mates and Fire Controlmen, and I was able to not only do the basic tour, but also to take them up to Combat Engagement Center, a space I wore like a shirt the whole time I was aboard.  At some point, we fell into what sailors all do, an activity called "shooting the breeze."  Although, as I recall the word "breeze" was always substituted by something...less delicate.  Our conversation contained the usual things, ships, liberty ports, other shipmates, officers, aspects of the work we did, and bragging about our ships.  There was a lot of shared experience there, despite the decades that separated us.  At one point, a man and his young boys entered CEC, and was introduced as the Captain on one of the ships visiting Pearl at the time.  We all reacted the same.  My sailors snapped to, and said, "Attention on Deck."  I added my familiar words, "Captain's in Combat."  He, of course waved us off, as he was in civvies, but I think he was secretly pleased, nonetheless.  He joined us for a few moments, and suddenly we all became shipmates, sharing something special.  We were all talking the same language, and sharing a fleeting comradery.  

After he left, the sailors also said they had to go, so I returned them to the Quarterdeck and watched them go ashore.  I found myself awash in an emotion that was somewhere between sweet nostalgia and sadness.  Slowly, I realized that I missed so much the experience of being a shipmate, a bond that is far deeper than mere friendship.  For a short space of time, I was back in the Navy, sharing all those aspects of service and shared challenges, humor and pathos, exasperation and fulfillment.  

That same day I met a Chief Sonar Tech from another ship.  We talked about the fleetwide personnel shortage.  He told me he was six sailors short in his division, and OI division (where I had worked) was not only also short sailors, but missing a Chief Petty Officer, a vacancy that was unlikely to be filled anytime soon.  From within my heart came a shockingly strong surge of emotion, an imperative that I should go to that ship and volunteer my services as their Chief.  They needed leadership, and I was ready to wade in.

Of course, that was silly and impractical.  I'm 68 years old with a leaky brain, and completely out of place as an analog sailor in a digital Navy.  And my wife would absolutely not want me gone for the next six months.

In both instances, I was ambushed by emotions that I had thought had been rendered extinct, rocked by the regret of knowing that those times, those opportunities had irrevocably passed.  The most profound discovery was that even after all those years, I was still ready to step up and serve.  

I thought back to the day I became a Chief Petty Officer, and what one grizzled old Master Chief told us:

"Today, you pin on the anchors of a Chief for the first time.

But you will find out that for the rest of your life,

you will never really take them off,

because they are also pinned to your heart."

Days and weeks will pass, and there will be many moments ahead when those recollections will rush in like a flood tide, perhaps momentarily washing me off my feet.  They are, after all, an important part of me.  But I will not turn away. Rather, I will savor them and allow them to rest within and warm my soul.  

And there, they will find a home.