Somewhere in the Arabian Sea
This American Life
This American Life revisits a 2002 episode documenting life aboard the USS John C. Stennis during the early stages of the war in Afghanistan
Key takeaways
- The vast majority of crew members on an aircraft carrier are not directly involved in combat but play critical logistical and support roles.
Main topics
- Daily life aboard an aircraft carrier during wartime
Notable quotes
'We've been ordering a whole lot of new stuff, so I've been trying to keep a whole variety of things in here. Like crunch and munch, we just got the crunch and munch.'
Conclusion
This episode reveals that war is not only fought by those with weapons, but also sustained by thousands of individuals
Transcript preview
Speaker 1 (0:00) As I say these words, the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln is heading home after an extended deployment that put it in the news. I'm guessing you might have seen some of the coverage. Their time at sea was extended to over nine months, taking a toll on the crew. There were reported food shortages, resupply issues, exhaustion that comes from months at sea with no break at all. Stars and Stripes and Navy Times reported sailors attempting to jump overboard. The other journalists were unable to get that confirmed. What is life on this kind of Navy ship like during this kind of deployment? Well, years ago, we did an episode of our show on an aircraft carrier during a war in the same waters that Lincoln was in, the Arabian Sea. This is just a few months after September 11th. We were on the USS Stennis. They were dropping bombs in Afghanistan in the early stages of that war. And on that show, you really get a sense of the drudgery of so many of the jobs and also just how dangerous some of the jobs are. It is a very vivid picture. And so today, with the crew of The Lincoln in Mind, we thought we would play you that hour. It is, I have to say, a surprisingly entertaining episode. We saw many things that surprised us, starting with the interview that kicked off the hour. Let's just jump in. Speaker 5 (1:17) My name is Krivan Scott. I'm just filling up the vending machines. Speaker 2 (1:22) Is that your full-time job? Speaker 5 (1:25) Yes. It's Speaker 2 (1:26) your full-time job? Yeah. Speaker 5 (1:28) Filling up vending machines all day. For 12 hours. Speaker 5 (1:38) A Speaker 1 (1:38) few weeks ago, This American Life producers Alex Bloomberg, Wendy Doran, and I flew halfway around the world to spend some time with the USS John C. Stennis. Stennis is one of two aircraft carriers that are launching jet fighters to support the ground troops in Afghanistan. Alex is the one who talked to Prevon Scott. Speaker 2 (1:54) What are the big sellers? Speaker 5 (1:55) Right now it's Snickers and Starburst. Snickers goes real fast. Speaker 2 (2:01) What's the least favorite candy on board? Speaker 5 (2:03) Bonkers, the fruit chews. We got boxes of those and still have them. Speaker 5 (2:09) Sometimes if we don't have anything else, we'll just put it all rows of bonkers and they'll still stay in here. Speaker 2 (2:15) Some people hate bonkers. Nobody likes bonkers. Speaker 5 (2:18) We've been ordering a whole lot of new stuff, so I've been trying to keep a whole variety of things in here. Like crunch and munch, we just got the crunch and munch, and the Cheez-Its we normally didn't have in here. Speaker 2 (2:28) Cheez-Its? Speaker 5 (2:29) Yeah, the Cheez-Its. Speaker 1 (2:38) Our enemies, needless to say, are not supplied with crunch and munch. Yes, we're at war. And yes, that means thousands of Americans are in Kandahar and Kabul and other very dangerous places doing very dangerous things. But for every person on the front lines, there are dozens backing them up with equipment, logistical support, and Cheez-Its. This aircraft carrier has only 50 or 60 pilots on board who actually drop bombs, who actually take part in combat. Everyone else is here, over 5,000 people, to get them in the air. Back home over the last few months, we've heard about the pilots, we've heard about the people doing more heroic work. But everybody else on this ship is also at war. It's also far from home. It's also sacrificing something to be here. And we wanted to hear their stories too. It's one thing to turn your life upside down to go shoot bullets at bad guys. It's another to give up everything to go fill candy machines 12 hours a day. In the months since the USS Stennis embarked for the Arabian Sea, Grievon has only gone outside twice. If you picture for a moment what an aircraft carrier looks like, the deck of the ship, that big flat deck, is where jets take off and land. So you can't just walk around up there. She sees daylight maybe once a day. She's 20 years old. It's her first time away from home. Speaker 5 (3:50) You know, the hardest part is just missing home, the homesick. If I can get over that, then I'll be all right. When I first got here, I was like really bad. I cried every day and stuff like that. But it's like my parents are really helpful. They email me every day. Speaker 4 (4:13) Today on our Speaker 1 (4:14) program, everyday life aboard a ship at war. What it's really like. If you've never served on a ship like this, believe me, there is so much you don't know. From WBEZ Chicago, this is American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Stay with us. Speaker 4 (4:39) 30 years ago, an island off Manhattan almost brought down New York City. Speaker 7 (4:43) Who will you trust? Your friends and neighbors? Or will you trust the people five miles overseas? Speaker 4 (4:48) This is a story about neighbors turning on each other and what happens when a forgotten place decides it's had enough. But we're not stopping, are we? Listen to Revisionist History, The Staten Island Problem, wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 1 (5:10) This is American Life, our episode from early 2002 continues about life on an aircraft carrier. So Alex Bloomberg and Wendy Dore and I went to the Stennis together, and throughout this hour you're going to hear from all three of us. Speaker 8 (5:21) We got to the Stennis about six weeks after the ship arrived in the North Arabian Sea. Speaker 2 (5:26) The other aircraft carrier on duty there, the Theodore Roosevelt, sends planes during the day, and the Stennis sends them at night. Speaker 1 (5:32) This means that Reveille is called over the ship's PA system to wake everybody up for work at 7 p.m. We expected a bugle. or at least a recording of a bugle, but it turns out to be sort of no frills. Speaker 4 (5:43) Reveille, reveille. All hands... Speaker 2 (5:45) From the time we get up, we're led everywhere by a group of public affairs officers who are, contrary to what you think they might be, well, contrary to what we suspected they'd be anyway, good-humored and quite helpful. Our first day, they lead us down a long passageway. Every 15 feet or so, there's a junction, and other hallways go off to the left or right, and ladders go up and down. It's like walking through a big habit trail. Speaker 7 (6:05) Make Speaker 4 (6:05) a left there. Keep going. Speaker 2 (6:07) Remember, the boat is huge. It's four and a half acres. But most of the life of the ship takes place here, in the eight stories of rooms and passageways. below the flight deck. There are no windows on these decks, and the boat is so big that in good weather, it doesn't really even sway. And so most of the time, the sensation is less being at sea than being underground in some sort of huge subterranean warren. Can Speaker 5 (6:28) I cut through? Speaker 2 (6:29) You're constantly squeezing by people coming from the other direction. Speaker 5 (6:31) Hey, you. I'm still awake. After Speaker 2 (6:34) five minutes of winding our way through these narrow corridors, we come to a big, rounded steel door. It's maybe five feet tall, airtight. It's got a big lever in the middle. Someone turns it. And we climb through, into one of the largest rooms we've ever seen. This is the hangar deck. It's two football fields long, three stories tall. Entering it is like walking through a closet door and finding yourself at the pitcher's mound in the Astrodome. We walk past parked fighter planes and hundreds of people, all scurrying around, pushing hand trucks, talking into walkie-talkies. And then we arrive at the hangar bay door, which is basically a three-story hole in the side of the ship. Speaker 8 (7:20) It's nighttime. Pairing out, we can make out the shadowy outline and red running lights of another huge boat, traveling at the same speed we are, maybe a hundred yards away. A half dozen steel cables stretch between the two ships. Helicopters dip and swerve back and forth. And then, out of the darkness, two pallets with hundreds of pounds of food come swinging in on a cable. Speaker 4 (7:45) We just took on two pallets. Speaker 1 (7:47) Lieutenant Commander Mark Semler explains that they're bringing on enough food for 5,000 people for 30 days. Plus machine parts, bundles of food, people pass boxes of fresh pears and strawberries and avocados, fire brigade style. The entire operation takes over 250 people. And though everyone knows they're at war, in most jobs, it doesn't feel like a war. Speaker 4 (8:07) Not at all. We do our job. Speaker 5 (8:10) I know everything that's going on, but it just feels like... Okay. We're living on the boat for six months. Speaker 4 (8:17) I feel like I'm doing my job the same way and this is pretty much normal. It's not like being on the front lines with an M16 in my hand. Do you wish you had a job which would put you more in the front lines? No, man, no. Not with my wife and stuff. No, I'm very happy with what I am. Speaker 1 (8:41) You feel in danger here? No. Speaker 6 (8:45) I mean the most those guys got is Speaker 7 (8:46) rifles and missiles that they couldn't fire this far out into the ocean. Actually I feel like this is one of the most secure places you can be. We've got 70 plus aircraft looking for the enemy. When I'm not on a ship I feel like it could happen anywhere. Anytime you drive over a bridge or go to a public place it could happen and I definitely feel safer out here. Speaker 2 (9:18) The average age on board the ship is 21 years old. And when you ask people how they ended up here, the most common answer is, I don't know. They just shrug and say they were failing out of school, or they wanted to see the world, or they wanted money for college. Almost all the enlistment stories can be summarized as either, I joined the Navy to straighten out my life, or I joined the Navy because I wanted something more. Speaker 3 (9:38) Okay, I'm Jessica Phillips. I got here six days ago. So I'm going through training right now. So everything's still a blur. How long ago? I don't even know what day it is. Wednesday? Thursday? Speaker 2 (9:51) When I asked Jessica Phillips my question about how she ended up on this ship, she looked up at me and said, do you really want to hear this story? It all began, she said, two and a half years ago, working at the mall in a Barnes & Noble and living in the same small town where she'd grown up, in Ocala, Florida. Speaker 3 (10:06) Before, I never even paid attention to military people. You know, it was, so what, you're in the Navy, you're a drunken sailor, or a Marine, you know. People call you bullet sponge. You're not, why would you do that, you know? And I'd understand why people, I never personally, for me, I never thought I'd be in the military. It was a split-second decision. The place where I live. it's considered a black hole. Nobody gets out of there. Most people live and die there, and that's just the way it goes. You grow up with the same people, everything stays the same. I couldn't take it anymore. So I told him I had two girl roommates at the time, and I looked at him and I said, you can have all my stuff. I packed up a suitcase, and I was like, I'm leaving. And I left that night, and I left him money for that month's rent and everything. I was like, you need to find a new roommate. I get in my car, which was an 89 Mustang, and just putter away. Speaker 2 (10:55) Jessica had no idea where she was headed. There were vague thoughts of finding someplace cool and applying to college. She made her way up the coast to Raleigh, North Carolina. Jessica ended up stopping in Raleigh, moving in with friends. But without a job, she had to find other ways to make ends meet. Speaker 3 (11:09) You know, I used to go gas station to gas station, and... asking people for money pretty much. I'd be like, listen, I'm on a road trip. Most people hand me money, you know, five bucks or something. But you only do that for so long. So I was just like, I'm sitting there and I was trying to figure out what I did this for, first of all. Like, I gave up all my stuff. I'm almost broke. I went, you know, I was just like, I need to figure out what I need to do. I need to do something with myself. Speaker 3 (11:43) So everybody was, we were having a party, and everybody was like partying, and I'm sitting outside, and some guy comes up to talk to me, and he said something about like, what are you doing tomorrow? And I said, I'm going to go home and join the Navy. And he was like, what? Like, he was just like, what are you talking about? I was like, I think I'm going to pack up and go home and join the Navy. I was like, this is what I need to do. Speaker 2 (12:05) And how, why did the Navy pop into your head? Why Navy? Speaker 3 (12:11) You know, I have no idea. I think my manager at Barnes & Noble was in the Navy for two years. She was a yeoman, but that was like 20 years ago. And that kind of like came back to me. And I think this sounds so cheesy, though, but it was like a Navy commercial came on in between television or something. It's the one where they say that the C is our classroom. They use the intro to some hardcore rock song. I think it's a Limp Bizkit song. Maybe not. Maybe it's a Godsmack. I don't know, but there's the carrier, and it's racing across, and they've got the jets flying over, and they've got the people all smiling in their nice uniforms and sitting in class doing their schoolwork, and the people who are sitting in front of the radar and looking at the picture. And then they're like, most people go to school, but this is our classroom. Then it says gonavy.com. So then I was like, hey, you know, maybe I will. Speaker 2 (13:10) From the time you told that guy at the party you were going to join the Navy to the time you were in the Navy, how many days passed? Speaker 3 (13:16) Six, five. That was a Friday, and that Wednesday I was in boot camp. Speaker 2 (13:26) When I got back, I actually got a copy of the commercial from the Navy. The entire thing takes 15 seconds, and Jessica's memory of it is pretty much perfect. Speaker 4 (13:36) Why should you consider getting an education in the Navy? Speaker 4 (13:40) This is one of your classrooms. Native. Accelerate your life. Speaker 2 (13:48) And how was it for you? Once you were in boot camp, did you have second thoughts? Speaker 3 (13:53) Did I ever have second thoughts? First get on the bus, it's a whole nice trip, everybody's polite to you and everything else. Then you get on the bus and you're sitting there. Some guy gets on the bus and tells you you're not home anymore and starts yelling. It's the basic boot camp thing. I'm not your mama, your papa, you know, stop talking, I don't want to hear it. So I was just like, okay, they're just trying to scare me, whatever. You know, I'm sitting there laughing, I'm like, God, this is such a movie. I was like, how stereotypical is this? So they get us, they bus us to the Navy boot camp. in Great Lakes and we get off the bus and it's the middle of the night, it's cold and they're yelling at you to stand against the wall and why can't you stand still and everything else and they were, when I call your name you yell at your social and they yell out my name and I'm standing there yelling my social security number,