Needle

Perhaps it was that we were in the midst of a recession and the navy was only taking, they believed, the cream of the crop, recruits with high IQs . Anyway it didn’t take the novice sailors long before they figured out that they were different, smarter, except for one contingent which came in from the Boston area. Be that as it may, this was to be a different recruit training company and it wasn’t long before it began to show in the number of awards these fledgling sailors were amassing during their weeks of training.

Soon the company flag was draped with all sorts of ribbons and even our chief petty officers, all veterans of World War II, seemed somehow less convinced that we were the dregs of young America and “God Save the Republic” if we were what they had to depend on in case of another conflict. We were informed at our first formation that we were “lower than whale shit,” and that once, the United States Navy “had ships made of wood and men of iron.” Now, the chiefs insisted, “The ships were made of iron and the men were made of shit.” Other such remarks were designed, presumably, to convince us, for once and all, that we were indeed lesser forms of humanity and had only joined the navy to get three meals a day and a place to “rest your lazy asses.”

But still there were all those awards, which we seemed to garner as a natural part of our training, and a growing sense of pride in our achievements . Of course there were other forms of this superiority with darker, more devious turnings. Anyone in the service can tell of the long lines of fit young men awaiting inoculations, the tight faces and, invariably, a few who literally fainted at the thought of “the needles.” There are many jokes about “The square needle in the left nut,” designed to inflict the most pain, that sort of thing.

While this wasn’t John Paul Jones’ Navy, this all happened some years ago, before the invention of canned aerosol deodorants and insect sprays. In those day the big seller among bug-killers was “Flit,” and the slogan was, “Quick Henry, the Flit,” when a nasty mosquito whined around your ear. The Flit gun was just a long, metal canister with a cylinder inside and a pump handle, very similar to the bicycle pumps still around. It was two days before our next round of shots, when the idea occurred to me; what if we took a flit gun, removed the yellow paint on its barrel thus exposing its shiny metallic surface, put centigrade markings on it and affixed a corkscrew on the front end? The Flit Gun was easy, but where the hell were we gonna’ get a corkscrew in the United States Naval Training Center in Great Lakes, Illinois? Well the answer was almost instantaneous, the Officers’ Club, where else? In forty-eight hours we had the cork screw and it was affixed to our shiny, super syringe when the fateful morning rolled around.

When I got my “shot” I squeezed the small puncture until blood ran down my arm. I took my jumper off , my cohorts lifted me to their shoulders and I was carried, head rolling, down the line of the hundreds of stunned sailors. Following me was another recruit carrying the super needle over his shoulder. The hundreds of others saw the results of the inoculation with the needle which was at least six inches long.

The results were remarkable. Guys started dropping like flies, some deserted ranks as we kept the procession going the entire length of the line. Some of the more savvy amongst them laughed and carried on like maniacs, but many succumbed to the great needle caper. Serves the navy right for putting together a group like that.