Every sailor on board knew and feared the span wire.
It’s one of two things on a fleet oiler that can kill you in the blink of an eye.
(The other being the vats of aviation gasoline we carried for propeller-driven aircraft. On our ship, lighting a cigarette at the wrong time and place was a court-martial offense.)
But it was those braided-steel span wires we sweated the most. Once they were strung across the water and secured to the warship that had steamed alongside for refueling, and once several thousand pounds of counter-weight tension was applied–enough so our big hoses could be slung underneath and trolleyed across like laundry on a clothesline–at that moment every man understood that, as we used to say, “It’s your ass.”
Once those suspension cables were hooked up, connecting two 12,000-ton ships steaming in parallel just 50 yards apart, all it would take to get you or your buddy cut in half was a little absent-mindedness.
The chief petty officers used to call it “skylarking.” Maybe the helmsman up on the bridge might bend over to tie his shoe. Or the boilerman down below might reach for his Coke and instead yank the throttle. Or maybe a boatswain’s mate, up on the cargo deck, might mistake a hand-signal from the receiving ship and start the hose across before the wire was ready to take the weight.
Disaster could come in a hundred ways. Suffice it to say that, unless 100 or so young people stayed focused–often for several hours at a stretch, and sometimes through the night–there was a strong possibility that somebody would get hurt.
Why recount this sea story?
Because it’s Memorial Day, for one thing, when graying veterans like to reminisce.
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But mostly because we at the Tribune have been talking (and sometimes editorializing) about the role of women in the military. Some say women can, and should, do it all. Others say ladies should stick to rear-rank jobs in administration, logistics and medicine. Still others say yes to sea duty and flight crews, but no to infantry and armor.
Me? I keep thinking about that span wire.
We didn’t have women aboard ship in the early 1970s. I wish we had, for a couple of reasons.
First, I’m convinced they would have had a civilizing influence on shipboard life. Having broken up fights on Shore Patrol and organized disciplinary proceedings as ship’s legal officer, I’m here to tell you that young men can get a little crazy in all-male groups. (But you probably knew that.) It has also been my experience, gained mainly in boys-only high school classes, that post-adolescents are less likely to make fools of themselves in the presence of the opposite sex.
But back to that span wire. The more important reason women belong on ships (and in cockpits, and at radar consoles and on carrier flight decks) is that they can perform the most crucial military tasks just as well as men. No, make that better than men.
It’s dangerous to generalize, but the women I know bring to their work a constancy and attention to detail that not many men can match. Ask youself which partner in a typical marriage stays up all night with a sick child? Which keeps meticulous track of family birthdates, anniversaries and graduations and organizes the celebrations? Which keeps the family on its daily routine, making sure homework is completed and bedtime rituals observed on time?
If you answered “the guy,” either your family is an exception or you’re the type who thinks the laundry fairy keeps filling your sock drawer.
But don’t take my word for it. Industrial sociologists discovered long ago that women have superior powers of concentration, make fewer mistakes and are less prone to all manner of “skylarking.” The literature of management and productivity is full of references to female traits such as “patience,” “orderliness,” “intutitive problem-solving” and “risk-aversion.”
That last trait cuts both ways in the military, though, because some people think women are incapable of the macho fury required to, say, charge a machine-gun nest. And maybe they are. I don’t know because I never had to charge a machine-gun nest. Most veterans never shot at anyone.
But I did spend a lot of time pacing the deck under those infernal span wires, reminding my guys to stay alert and mind the business at hand. They were a fine bunch, my guys. But if, instead, we had had women at those winches, throttles and helm, I suspect I would have done less reminding. Certainly not more.
Look around today’s military and what kind of jobs do you see? Bayonet assaults? Or identifying and tracking incoming bogeys on radarscopes? Hand-to-hand combat? Or computing food and fuel requirements for extended overseas deployment?
Sure, there are problems mixing men and women in the military. And there will be more scandals such those that occurred at Aberdeen Proving Ground and Minot Air Force Base. The military is in a period of adjustment, not unlike that which the civilian workplace has had to work through.
But it’s the right thing to do. . . and it will be very much worth the trouble. Once women take their full and equal place alongside men in our armed forces, we’ll wonder how we ever survived without them.
Some of us wonder already.