| This is what I have done so far, besides removing "I'm not a boatswain's mate. Don't call me a boatswain's mate!, not listening, lips, and I am not so sure about this one"
I spend my nights fighting crime and cleaning the streets. Other than that, I'm a deck ape in the navy. The only difference between me and those hard charging, old time sailors is that I clean up ten times better. Jokes aside, the military is a tremendous opportunity on so many levels, and intend to take full advantage of it.
Boatswain's Mate is one of the three remaining jobs in the navy that have existed since the Revolutionary War, the other two being Quartermaster and Gunner's Mate. In a nutshell, Quartermasters are in charge of navigation while Gunner's Mates, who originally loaded and fired the cannons, now are clean, maintain, run training... basically everything involving firearms, as well as certain larger guns.
The way I, and some people see it, BM's are the closest thing to that image of the old, salty, crusty, dirty, hard going, classical sailor. They take charge of everything on the deck, and general structure of the ship. Removing rust, painting, bringing in other ships and helicopters for supplies, ammo, fuel; launching and operating the small boats, dropping the anchor and tying the ship to the pier (which is actually really fucking dangerous) BM's make up the ship's deck department, HOWEVER... Deck department is also made up the undesignated seamen, also known as the deck seamen, or deck apes. All deck seamen go to deck dept. Deck seaman have no designated, permanent job. This happens if there are no available jobs at the time of enlistment, as was my case, OR when a sailor goes to, most commonly, nuke school, SEAL or any special warfare school for example, fails and drops out. We are Boatswain's Mates in all, but name. Being a deck seaman is a blessing in disguise because we can choose our job if available after we put our time in deck or stay to become BM. My dream is to become to become a FMF hospital corpsman, basically the medic in a squad of marines, and then on to study physcology.
NOTE, I'm in Virginia Beach. Military men here are a dime a dozen. And its annoying to explain what a BM is and even after that, some people still don't get it. A lot of deck seamen get offended about being called boatswain's mate, hence the "I'm not a boatswain's mate. Don't call me a boatswain's mate!" I figured not too many people would get it. Anyway, thanks for the input. More is very much welcomed.
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