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[The ship I'm on is one of]
the smallest ships that we have in the Navy,
and we're in cramped quarters where my berth
area, we hold six personnel down there. It's
about big as a normal person's bathroom. You
sleep in coffin racks and so just about six,
six and a half feet by four feet wide and everything.
And it's interesting, you know, down in that
compartment only two people can be there at
one time changing clothes or whatever. And
the chow line. I mean, they serve enough food--
they make enough food to feed a crew of 85,
but it's like everywhere you go, you got to
wait in line and stuff. I mean, it's interesting
though, but you have a lot of camaraderie on
there, though, being so close to each other
and that six-month deployment, I think a
lot of people on there, you know, connected.
We had a lot of unity onboard that ship being
such a small crew and we were away from home.
Everybody helped each other try-- you know,
try to get through the rough times. You
know, a couple of guys never been away from
their families before, so we had like group
sessions onboard just to talk about, you know,
the separation and we tried to do different
things just to get our minds off the separation,
you know, like do command sports. You know,
have we call it Family Night; one night where
everybody sit around, oh, and go card games
or wherever they wanted to do. We do little
skits, you know, like dress up for Halloween
or whatever, you know. You know, do videotaping
of that and send it back to the families and
stuff. I think during the whole six-month deployment,
what really brought everybody together was when
he told us we could do a video teleconferencing.
That's to do a videotape and, you know, say
hi to the family members, let them know how
we are doing and they send it back to the States.
Let them see it and then they videotape our
families and sent it over there to us. So that
helped build morale up a lot, too. And the command
sponsored a lot of activities, softball game,
basketball tournaments and stuff. That helped
a lot-- a whole lot.
In all my endeavors, you know,
I always had a support team there. Our command
has a support team. If you're having any problem
whatsoever, there's someone inside the command
you can go to and talk to or they'll give you
resource of where you can reach out and help
you in any means that's necessary. I found a
lot of--I mean, I enjoyed the Navy. I met a
lot of great people from all over the world
in the Navy and stuff and without the Navy,
I don't think I would have met half of the people
that I did. It's a lot of camaraderie here,
so I enjoyed it.
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