220504 Sentinel, The Bear And The Swine

The Bear and the Swine
On the 1966 to 67 cruise there were two characters that I’ve never forgotten.

One was nicknamed Bear, real name Langly and the other called Swine, real name Ron. Now Bear was aptly named, as he was a hulking young man who was strong enough he could rip a man apart with his bare hands. He could have been named “Gentle Ben” after the TV show about a man and his genial pet brown bear. Now Swine, on the other hand, was his polar opposite. Swine was barely big enough to be in the Navy, and certainly not the Marine Corps. Swine was not the neatest pin in the drawer. He was meek as a lamb when sober, but give him a six-pack and he was a tiger! Swine had a lot of problems, with the Navy, with his job, with women, come to think of it; he was a walking, talking, problem. Several of us tried to help get him squared away, but it was a hopeless task. I don’t know how he made it through Boot Camp. We collectively gave up after a while; he either didn’t get it, or didn’t want to get shipshape, preferring to be out of the Navy altogether. We even took him on liberty in Honolulu, Hawaii to give him some companionship and a sense of belonging to the group, the squadron. He was just miserable all the time. No matter how we encouraged him and tried to build up his self-confidence, nothing worked. I felt bad about distancing myself from Swine, but there came a point when I had to cut loose or drown with him in his depression.
The final straw fell one night in Hawaii. A group of us had been out having a few beers, seeing the sights and had returned to the ship around 2300. That was pretty early, but a beer was a dollar in Hawaii then, and we didn’t make many dollars in a month, so we had to nurse those bottles of golden refreshment. We had been in our respective bunks for about two hours, not together, the Navy frowned on that sort of thing, one man to a bunk. About one in the morning up at the top of the ladder, this tiny voice in the night cried out: “Come on Bear, I’m going to kick your ass!” Everyone woke up, but tried to go back to sleep, knowing it was just Swine mouthing off. He persisted: “Bear, I’m coming down this ladder and going to kick your ass!”
Someone shouted back: “Shut up Swine and go to bed.”
“I’m going to kick this guy’s ass,” Swine retorted. There was no answer from Bear as he lay quietly in his bunk, patiently waiting for Swine to grow tired of his folly and leave. Swine wouldn’t let it go, so he finally came down the ladder into the berthing compartment and began to poke the Bear to roust him from his rack and commence his battle of the century. The heightened atmosphere and activity finally got to Bear and he began to crawl out of his bunk. Swine’s alcohol level, or his adrenaline level suddenly became too much for him so his gut began to tighten, sending the contents of his stomach in a reverse direction of the way it went down; leaving him spewing like a volcano, right into Bear’s nicely shined shoes. That took the starch right out of Swine and sent him reeling into the darkness of the night. Bear calmly rolled back into his bunk, never said a word and went right back to sleep.
The following morning Bear got up, still never said a word and went to breakfast. Swine meekly peeked into the compartment looking for the great one. He didn’t see the bear, so he came down the ladder, picked up the shoes and left. That afternoon he returned with the spotlessly cleaned and polished shoes, put them under Bear’s bunk and left, his face red as a beet, his heart pounding so hard I could almost hear it, but he never said a word. Bear came back after work, picked up the shoes, never uttered a sound, put them in his locker and then went to supper.
I never saw Swine around the compartment after that. When I saw him on the ship he would pass by as if we were strangers. Everyone else reported the same story when encountering him.
I still feel sadness for him in the years since then.