Try to Set the Sea on Fire

By Scott Staron

“Does anyone want to know why I got into this line of work?” I looked out at my daughter’s class of fifth graders. No takers.

“I was stationed on a Navy ship and one time I set the ocean on fire.”

Now I had their attention.

Today was career day at school and parents were invited to talk about their occupations. It was my turn to tell the class about my first civilian job: working at a Navy laboratory to design systems to process trash (plastic, paper, and food waste) for more environmentally sound disposal.

Exciting for me. Much less so for the class. I was faced with being absolutely smoked by a video game coding dad. To be fair, he was smoking everyone.

And so far, the only question had been from a kid who wondered if the Navy had a special machine for SpongeBob. I thought I might have to pull out my ace card, a cardboard hand-held wheel my company designed to help lookouts identify whale species. I had no idea why a military ship would need to report that information, but it was colorful and might interest them. I had low confidence that it would.

I asked my “why do this” question and told my tale.

I was the Gunnery Officer on my first ship. The Gunner’s Mates who worked for me loved everything about guns with one exception: helping me keep track of the ammunition. Counting bullets was not their idea of fun, so I had to do it.

One day while at sea, in the armory inventorying the small arms ammunition, I found something unexpected: an ammo box filled with loose machine gun tracer rounds. A small pyrotechnic charge makes these bullets light up and visible to the naked eye to help the machine gunner stay on target. I was perplexed, because these rounds are normally part of linked ammunition, with a tracer every five rounds.

I voiced this confusion to one of my Gunner’s Mates who was in the vicinity.

“Petty Officer Green, would you mind telling me: WHAT IN HELL IS THIS?”

He calmly replied, “Well, sir, we ran out of M-14 rifle ammunition to take to the range, so we took apart the M-60 ammo. It’s the same bullet: 7.62 millimeter. We couldn’t use the tracers; they set the targets on fire.”

I was not shocked. I had experienced their creativity many times. But it left me with a problem: what to do with the (now) unauthorized tracer rounds. I would fudge my reports, but telling him to dump the tracers over the side seemed a touch too illegal. So I told him to load the tracers into M-14 magazines and I would schedule a time when they could fire them off the fantail (back of the ship) before we pulled into port.

A few weeks later, I was called to the bridge by the Commanding Officer. It was “trash call,” the designated time for all divisions to bring their clear plastic bags of garbage to the fantail and throw them off. As was his habit, the CO liked to have an M-14 brought to the bridge so he could shoot at the floating bags of trash from the bridge wing. I took the order and called my Gunner’s Mate Seaman for a rifle and some magazines.

The first tracer ricocheted off a bag of trash and into the air.

The CO looked at me with a raised eyebrow. I thought fast.

“Skipper, I know how much you like your target practice, and I thought this would help you with your marksmanship.”

He thought about this for a few seconds, then to my relief nodded and turned back to the bridge wing.

It wasn’t until he had put several rounds into each bag and reloaded twice that the flames began to rise from the first one. Soon they were all burning merrily, surrounding the ship, sending plumes of smoke into the blue sky. The entire bridge watch team looked on in amazement. I imagined it was like the days of the Roman galleys, with catapults sending flaming projectiles into attacking fleets.

He turned back to me. My new officer survival instincts normally provided me with a ready excuse, but in this case I came up blank. I could do nothing but shrug.

The CO considered retribution but decided against continuing the drama. Also, half the crew was now out on deck enjoying the show. He handed me the M-14 and gave the orders that would take the ship out of the burning ring of trash fire.

In turn, I gave the gun to my seaman. On his way from the bridge, he looked around to see if I was following, but I was already gone. I stood my watches on the bridge and knew quicker exit routes.

I finished my story and the class was at least paying attention. The only comment came from the SpongeBob kid.

“That was pretty cool. Way more exciting than your job, though.”

We looked at each other. I sighed and reached into my bag for the Whale Wheel.

Sometimes you just have to cut your losses.

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Scott Staron is a retired naval officer with at-sea experience on submarines and surface ships. He is currently a maritime consultant and contractor living in Northern Virginia. He is working toward his next career in teaching and writing, and is entering his second year in the Johns Hopkins MA in writing program.

As the Voice of the Veteran Community, The Havok Journal seeks to publish a variety of perspectives on a number of sensitive subjects. Unless specifically noted otherwise, nothing we publish is an official point of view of The Havok Journal or any part of the U.S. government.