Working Parties

          Back in my navy days I remember when I made third class petty officer. I was delighted that I would no longer have to be concerned with going back to galley duty. I went on-board the Kitty Hawk later and while I was exempt from galley duty, I was not exempt from working parties. I never understood why they were called working parties, because they were never fun. An aircraft carrier at sea during the Vietnam War was always having supply ships coming alongside to deliver jet fuel, groceries and bombs. Therein was the problem. There were always working parties from each squadron and division to move those groceries to the galley and the bombs to the magazines deep in the bowels of the ship. The groceries were not a big deal because we could use conveyors to run the groceries from the hanger deck to the galleys just one deck below the hanger deck. The bombs were a different thing altogether. The bomb fins went one place and the bombs went to another. The bombs were loaded onto steel carts which required one man to push over to the ammunition elevators. The bombs went down the elevators while we on the working parties had to climb down vertical ladders and through hatches that were barely wide enough for a man to go through and I was skinny back then. We would climb down through several decks to where the bomb elevators stopped and then have to move the bombs from the elevator into their parking spots. The fins went to other areas above the magazines. The fins alone weighed well over 25 pounds. One afternoon I was unloading fins from a huge palate and one slid out of my hands and landed on my toes. We did not have steel toe boots so the fin crunched several toes. I had to go to sick bay and see an on duty corpsman. He looked at the toes and grabbed a bucket full of ice for me to put my foot into to reduce swelling. He kept my foot in there until I thought I might have frostbite. The weather was very hot, but that bucket of ice was more painful than the smashed toes. Lucky for me by the next cruise I was a second class petty office and off of working parties, but on to shore patrol. That was a dubious trade-off, less hard labor, but a little more dangerous at times.