Leaving The Royal Navy
I joined up at 16, and left when I was 22. At the time (mid 90's) the cold war was coming to an end and the RN was downsizing, lots of people were getting made redundant and the good deployments to the far east, etc were getting cut back. There was a lot of negativity amongst the junior rates at the time, everyone was moaning about how **** the Navy was, it was a **** job, everyone thought we were scum, the pay was **** (as a 19 year old in 1996 I was on over £18,000 a year, that wasn't a **** wage at all!) etc, etc. So having just turned 17 by the time I joined my first ship I met a group of people who were pretty much negative to a fault about the job. So as time went on, and still only being pretty young, still getting all the **** jobs due to my age, I began to think they were right. My time in the Navy would just be scrubbing, cleaning and painting the ship, interspersed with 4 hours sat in the ships operations room looking at a radar screen. Then if I'd done the exams & courses and got promoted I'd get to stand around watching other people scrubbing, cleaning and painting the ship, interspersed with 4 hours sat in the ships operations room looking at a radar screen.
By the time the first few years had passed, I was getting good at my job (not the scrubbing & painting
) radar operation, gunnery drills and the part of the job I started out hating the most, what we called seamanship evolutions, such as getting the ship alongside in port, anchoring, Replenishment At Sea. So as a 19/20 year old I was working with guys who were on their first ships who were older than me. There were plenty of guys in their late 20s joining who I knew more than, and I didn't twig on that I'd got years on them and had so much time to make a real career out of what I was doing.
Looking back I wasn't mature enough to look at the people who were the vocal know it all's, and did all the moaning (they were known as lower deck lawyers) and know that they were wrong. It was their mindset that was ****, not the Navy. If you put bog all effort in you could expect a career of painting, scrubbing and watching radar screens. If you put the effort in, looked to better yourself then it could turn out to be an amazing career. For instance there are career paths where if you train as a Clearance Diver you could be working with a NATO team, using deep sea submersibles, specializing in rescuing crews from submarines that have crashed under water. During the gulf war there was a multinational group of coalition divers that worked with sealions and dolphins that were used to detect mines or enemy divers while the big American aircraft carriers were in port.
I remember as we were leaving training, one of the Warrant Officers saying to our group, "When you get onboard your first ship do not listen to the ****ing lower deck lawyers!" He was a placid, really good humoured guy, but when said that, you could hear the venom & contempt in his voice. And he was right.
Now, I've got a great job, I'm pretty well paid, especially where I live, but looking back I wish I'd stayed in, remembered what that Warrant Officer had said, knuckled down and forged a career (and lifestyle) for myself, instead of jacking it in and spend the rest of my time doing lesser work. I'm not blaming anyone else for my failings, I let others poison the job for me, I could've ignored them and looked to better myself, but I didn't, and that's squarely on the younger me's shoulders (he was a dick).
