Navy Berthing...

I'm lining up all my stuff for November, and it looks like it was sort of a lucky fluke that I got my own room the first time I drilled in Fort Worth.  Getting a room is called "berthing" in Navy terminology.  The berthing coordinator said that having a room-mate would be the norm.  Getting a single room with a shared bathroom would be the exception.

I'm a total Sally about this sort of thing.  There are a lot of things I want to see before I die.  Like Nuno Bettencourt playing all the solos from the songs he played on with Extreme. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jrfRp8Tshs&feature=fvw

Of all the things I want to see before I die, another man's hairy butt doesn't make the list.  I suppose some folks might say that this makes me some sort of closeted homophobe or something.  Personally, I think it just makes me a guy who doesn't want to see other naked guys.

This is one of those culture shock things coming from the Army to the Navy.  Yes, in the Army you had communal living and a lack of privacy compared to civilian life, but for the most part, there was a thin semblance of privacy.  I mean, yeah, you might have 4 room-mates at a training command.  2 room-mates once you got to your duty station. 

Nothing like the Air Force, where pretty much every Airman has his own room. 

But also, nothing like the Navy where you are in a berthing area with row after row of bunks 3 deep, or the Marines where they still believe in living in open-bay barracks.

Their seagoing heritage means that they're used to living in areas that most people would consider too small to be a walk-in closet.  (One of my favorite quotes about the Navy is that when designing housing, never ask a Navy man what he considers an acceptable amount of personal living space.) 

So, to have one room-mate?  That's living high on the hog by Navy standards.

The Navy does see the problem with this, though.  Mainly that when you treat people worse than you have to, and worse than society at large does, with no good justification for it, they tend to think the job you're giving them is crappy.

In fact, they have launched an initiative that will provide private rooms for various ranks, but it won't apply to junior officers until fiscal year 2012, I think.  So, relief is on the way.  It just won't happen for another year.

In the mean time, these drill weekends are utterly exhausting, as it is.  Starting with my fly-out date, I'm up at about 5:00 a.m. every day and sometimes earlier.  With trying to catch up with old friends in Fort Worth, I am usually out until 10:00 or 11:00 every night.

Folks who know me know I'm a very light sleeper.  The last thing I need is to have what little sleep I'm getting interrupted by somebody snoring or coming in late.  Also, time is at a premium for showering, etc.  I just don't want the hassle.

I'm still trading e-mails with the very patient and forebearing berthing coordinator.  It looks like, at this point, that I will stay on-post during the weekdays.  At that point, demand should be down considerably.  It's mostly Friday and Saturday nights where folks need rooms. 

I can use the last of my Marriott Rewards points to stay at a hotel in Bedford, TX this weekend.  Not ideal, but it works.

I used to think the Army treated it's soldiers really badly when it came to single soldier housing.  The Department of Defense has guidelines on the minimum amount of space that each servicemember should get.  The Army would then simply declare a "housing emergency" and make itself exempt from all DoD standards.  Near as I can figure, the housing emergency on most Army Forts and Bases started in World War II and has continued for the last 70 years. 

The Air Force, on this issue and most others, is way out in front.  Part of it is that they have a ridiculous amount of money relative to their needs.  Contrary to popular belief, the services don't really get money based on what they need.  For the past several decades, it basically gets divided 1/3 to the Army, 1/3 to the Air Force, and 1/3 to the Navy.

They try to claim that it's need-based and zero-budget based, but that's a complete fabrication.

This 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 division is meant to keep the services from fighting among themselves for funding. 

http://www.slate.com/id/2187616/

The end result is that the Air Force, which has a very small mission, has way more money than it needs.  Always has.  Probably always will.

The Army, which has to pay the largest number of people, is pretty much properly funded, though the fact that they shoulder the biggest burden in our two wars puts a strain on them from time to time.

The Navy?  When you think about it, the Navy has it's own air-force, with all the aircraft and pilots it has.  It has its own army because the Marine Corps gets their money from the Department of the Navy.  It has ... well... a Navy, too, with ships and seaborne weapons systems.

So, packing people into a room isn't just based on tradition.  It's based on lack of money, too.  It's not just because of mean-spiritedness that the Navy has, for years, made lower enlisted people live on ship when the ship is in port.  They have a lot to do and only a limited amount of money to do it with.  They have to be very careful with the funding they have.

The Navy is releasing more funding for this in coming years, but it won't happen overnight.  In the mean time, I think it's ridiculous that officers are required to have room-mates.  When I went to MEPS for my entrance physical, I got my own room just because I was an officer candidate.  When I went to the hotel while reporting for my first drill, and the desk-clerk told me I had a room-mate, I thought this had to be some sort of mistake. 

It's not.  It's how the Navy does things.  Bad as it was that I had a room-mate, imagine how my room-mate must have felt.  He was an O-5 (a senior officer) and they were still sticking him with a room-mate.

During a bad economy like this, it's not such a big deal.  The military services can and do abuse their people in any way they deem fit when retention is high and applicants exceed available open slots.

However, once the economy improves, people who feel they're mistreated will leave.  They always have.  The fact that when I was a Sergeant in the Army, I had living conditions that were substantially worse than those in a typical college freshman dorm, played no small part in my decision to get out and seek my fortunes elsewhere.

Right now, the reserves are doing pretty well.  Folks need the money in an uncertain economy.  Patriotism is still running on a post 9/11 high. 

However, things won't stay this way forever, and the Navy is wise to stop treating it's people like cattle when possible.

In the mean time, if I have absolutely no other choice, like if I'm deployed or on orders on a military base, I'll do whatever I have to do, including putting up with a room mate. 

Otherwise, though, I'll be doing something else.  Actually, weekend hotel rates tend to be pretty good, too.  That's generally when hotels are at their emptiest.  So, if I can get on-base berthing on the weekdays and go out of pocket on the weekends, that won't be so bad.