Arriving to my 20-years in uniform means that I am eligible for retirement! Also, that means that I’ve been in the Navy about 1/5 of a century, that’s a lot!
Today Sunday, October 15, 2023, is my 20th anniversary since I Joined the mighty U.S. Navy
This will also be my last anniversary in uniform. I wanted to take a moment jus to bask in the realization of this milestone. As I write this, I am in the Chief’s Mess onboard USS COLE DDG 67. I am on duty, and my watch station is section leader – a 24-hour shift (times 2). We have all-weekend duty, so my shipmates in the section and I have been spending the last couple of days together.
The ship is getting some routine shipyard updates and maintenance. Which is good because we have put a lot of milage on this ship. I am actually pretty close from my actual home, but of course because we are on duty and in the shipyard our families are not allowed to come over to visit. Among other things because it is an industrial environment, and it is a pain in the caboose to go through all the required security steps. I am in either case so close, yet so far away from my two girls – my wife Alicia and daughter Sammy. But at least when we are in homeport, they can come over to visit me and hang out with me for a bit even on a duty day. That is not the case today.
And today, just like it was 20 years ago, home is out of immediate reach. The faces of who was my family at the time have changed, and so much has happened in 20 years. It is mind-bending just thinking about it. But soon enough, at the end of April next year (2024) I will be retiring from the mighty U.S. Navy.
© 2023 Marcelo Baqueroalvarez / HLC | At the CPO Mess onboard USS COLE DDG-20 on my 20-year mark of Naval Service.
So much has happened…
I can’t even start to recollect everything that has been going on in the last 20 years. To be honest, I might very well write a whole book about it – full of lessons learned. Because there have been a lot of good and some very bad memories associated with my time in uniform in the last 20 years of my life. And some of those very bad were also full of tragedies. The faces that were with me at the beginning of my Military Career are not the same faces as those meeting me at the end of this journey.
I almost remember it as if it was yesterday. The recruiter, a Petty Officer who was going to pick me up from my house in Fort Lauderdale, Florida was arriving to see me and take me for the first step of the process when there was still pitch-black darkness outside the house. The last person I saw that day was my grandmother. She is the only person in my family at the time who waved me goodbye. That was also the last time I ever saw her alive.
Back in those days I was in a crux in my life. I was not getting along at all with my mother and my siblings. This along with many other decisions in the crossroads of my life prompted me to make this change. In reality, one of the reasons why I joined is because I needed to change from the same bubble I was living in that city. Eventually the relationship with my mother and siblings mended, but ironically it was the death of my grandmother what truly brought us all together, essentially a year after I joined the U.S. Navy.
All the women who raised me; my grandmother, my mother, my great-aunt (my grandmother’s older sister), they all died in the last 20 years. And because of being in uniform I was unable to be by their side. Not even to one, none of them, I was always away. And although I won’t enumerate the circumstances over here, I just will say that the circumstances would not allow me to be by their side. Even though in every instance I already knew they were going to die several months before their last breath. They all understood why, and as far I understand from secondhand account, they did not harbor resent against me on their final hours. But I have never forgave myself for not being able to be there for them. That feeling won’t change, and I don’t want it to change.
I cannot turn back the past, but I sure can plan for my future. My present is also something I cannot change. I do what I can, but the uniform comes with a lot of tethers and restrictions. It is part of the commitment to be on this service. That is why it is called a “Military Service,” and not a “Military Job.” The service implies sacrifices that sometimes are above your control, with the understanding that your team and chain of command have a viable plan to ensure these sacrifices are not gratuitous, or in vain. 20 years of service seem fair for me to close this chapter in my life.
A month of anniversaries
Tomorrow is my actual wedding anniversary with my wife Alicia. It has been 13 years since we got married, but in reality, it is about 20 years we have been together as a couple… that is a long time too. Alicia is the mother of our daughter Sammy, and today they are both my world. Both my wife and daughter are my two girls, and the people who are waiting for me at the end of that pier. And soon enough, they won’t have to wait anymore.
Especially my daughter Sammy, she has been the most patient of them all. It is insane people might take for granted when they don’t know what it is like to be separated like this. Even for weekend duty, instead of spending that little bit of time with my daughter while she is not at school, or to do any activity together… I am here, and she is patiently, as always, waiting for me to return. But I won’t return today… finally I will see her tomorrow after she returns from school. But realistically, how much time does that gives us together? Again, Sammy is the hero in the story, because she is the one that also sacrifices her dad’s company, while the time slips away so fast while we are so close, yet so far apart.
These last few years have been brutal for Sammy, I see the photos in my phone that I’ve taken just a year ago, and she’s so much bigger. She has changed so much – and a lot of those changes became very evident as there were times when I did not see her for several weeks or months, and when I come back, she was a whole other person. Once again, today – I am on duty… and she is home with her mom, and it is just like usual – another time far apart, even when we are literally only a few minutes’ drive form each other – today.
I don’t know if this is worse than when we are separated by miles, or while we are in the middle of the ocean… because when you are in the middle of nowhere or in a different port, you really can’t just go home. I mean, it is not like you can jump off and swim to your house. But being so close, yet so far it is tantalizing – in the sense that you can almost touch it, but yet remains out of reach. And of course, I am not the only person in uniform who has to live a similar reality. Especially for many of us who have a family, which includes a spouse and kids that are all entangled in this reality. Make no mistake, the families and loved ones also serve along your troops.
Speaking of which on Friday, October 13, 2023, the U.S. Navy celebrated its 248th birthday. And this is always a source of celebration. I’ve attended a few “Navy Balls” before – when we dress very nicely and have a fancy dinner, etc. I have not done that in a few years, but it was cool whenever we did. Oh, the memories.
On a much sadder note, and relevant to the USS COLE DDG 67, this ship, on Thursday, October 12, 2023 – we had a ceremony in remembrance of the attack against USS COLE in 2000. It has been 23 years since the ship was attacked by terrorist in the port of Aden in Yemen. 17 Sailors lost their lives, there were more than 36 wounded, and many others took their own lives after the attack suffering from what is known as survivors’ guilt. I will write about the USS COLE history in a different book at some point. There is a lot to talk about. I want to make it justice by dedicating the proper bandwidth and level of solemnity it deserves.
Today, I have a good duty section
My duty section is the best. I’m not trying to be disparaging or intent to underappreciate any other section, but I am very fortunate to share the duty days with a phenomenal team. My duty section works in automatic mode. My doctrine is very straightforward, I like big people rules. Everybody is treated like an adult unless somebody would give me a reason not to. Surprise-surprise, everybody is a functional adult, and I have literally zero gripes about the team.
Everybody understand the need to be on time, they help each other out, they have ownership over their many spaces, and when I do my walkthroughs, everything is working fine. When we have some situation that we have to take care of, we get a great turnover where everybody supports each other. In return, I give them the most valuable gift I can think of, time.
We are all “stuck” here – literally on the same boat. That does not mean that because we have duty this has to be unpleasant or make from this duty day indented servitude. We have a plan, we finished all our required training events, and our required musters… then it is just maintaining the good thing we have going on. Everybody on watch is vigilant, and most importantly they like each other as people and have professional respect from each other. No matter how senior or junior, we are all a team. And if we can get something to make things better, why not?
For example, it is Sunday and some of the Sailors wanted to watch football in the mess decks. We figured a way to ensure the game was on because of some temporary technical limitations. Amongst each other they figured it out, and there they have been enjoying the games (apparently there are a bunch playing today) after all the required tasking for the day was accomplished flawlessly. And because it was already well maintained, it moved by super-fast. Everybody is on time to their watch stations, and I am able to just walk around and ensure everything is as it should be. Which is part of my watch-station. Afterall, my watch is a 24 hour a day watch, or this being a weekend in reality I am on for 48 hours straight – though I can actually control how I can best manage those hours effectively.
And you know what? I am grateful to my duty section. Being here on my 20th years of service – on duty again it is not where I would voluntarily want to be. But some of the other Sailors did need to take some time off, and we had to “Tetris” our time and schedule effectively to ensure we are all able to find the best available solution. And you know what? That is a situation about fairness, the golden rule if you will. Every person has a need to get some respite. This upcoming week I will be working on more steps about my upcoming retirement… so this weekend I am on deck, and this decision to stay this weekend helps somebody else have some time off. But when I do need to take care of some issues, I’ll be off myself. And that will happen this next duty day, I will be on leave.
I took a bit of a break from writing this article as I was doing another walkthrough. This is not only a requirement for my watch standing, but more importantly it gives me a chance to have conversations with different groups on watch. Everybody has a unique story, and I feel very honored when they voluntarily share their story with me. I also get to hear about some of their concerns, and they are kind enough to hear me when I have some advice to offer.
The world as I celebrate 20 years in the U.S. Navy
The world is a mess, and that includes even our political discourse. I will be probably writing another article for my “Today in America” series in this same website www.halflifecrisis.com – when I go in exuberant detail about what is going on at this point in time. But there are also a lot of very volatile and sensitive conflicts around the world. The latest one the full-on war in Israel after the violent extremist groups attack last week.
I have been debating with myself about actually writing an article regarding that topic. And I decided against it. Not because I don’t think it is important – on the contrary, it is very significant to our world history. It is more because of the volatility of the topic. This tension has been brewing for so many years, so it is not unexpected that the tensions would evolve into this type of violence. However, I would be very careful as far as how I choose my words – although I always choose my words carefully – this situation requires an even higher level of care.
With that said, this weekend a few Sailors were interested in understanding the situation in Israel. We discussed about the region’s history. And yes, there are so many twists and turns that these became a long conversation. They were of course informative, and because of our context being uniformed people, we can speak in a context that is not normally for public consumption. Nothing nefarious, it is more about context we have from our military experiences. I am just going to leave to the fact that I condemn violence in any form. Some reports in the news, depending on the outlet, tend to skew the storyline one way or the other. It is important to be very objective when understanding this situation. I still have not fully decided if I will dedicate a full article about this. If you see one posted is because I was able to articulate in a way that is factual and prevent any incendiary context.
But talking about conflicts, there have been so many different conflicts occurring in the last 20 years since I’ve been in uniform. We had the Global War on Terrorism, which lasted almost two decades – and that was my first deployment. I was just a few months into the Navy, and suddenly my first ship, USS SEATTLE AOE-3 was in the Middle East supporting the USS JOHN F. KENNEDY CV-67 Deployment. It was one hell of a first year.
In the years after I got to serve and live in some phenomenal places. My second Command was USS LAKE ERIE CG 70, when they were home-ported in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. It was pretty awesome living three years of my life in Hawaii. Then I lived almost four awesome years in Italy. How cool is that? Well, it was even better – because at that time I got married to my wife Alicia and Sammy was in her belly. Sammy was born just a bit after we left Italy. We have lived in Virginia ever since.
But living in Italy was not only great because this is such a beautiful country. We also got a chance to travel, a lot! That is both flying to other countries and made a bunch of Euro road-trips. At some point I’ll write or hopefully get a chance to edit videos from our trips around Europe. It was wonderful.
I have grown so much as a person ever since I joined. I am not the same person I was when I left that day. That day is very vivid, but a lot of details are almost a blur. If I remember well, the Petty Officer who drove me to Miami for the first part of the process on my first day in the Navy – had me present there so freaking early in the morning. But then the day moved pretty fast, I met some of the shipmates who were going to go to Bootcamp with me from Florida. They drove us to the Miami International Airport, and from there we landed in Chicago, IL. From there they picked up after hanging out in the USO for a little while. Then the bus arrived at the Recruit Training Command in Great Lakes, Illinois.
My life forever changed that day. Today 20 years later – I would have not recognized myself. Nor would I have expected to be doing what I am doing at this exact moment. My military career has had some insanely mazing moments, and some opportunities to do things that are just mind bending. I have been given so much trust by the U.S. Government to perform my duties and responsibilities. I am grateful, but as expected every story comes to an end. This next chapter is about my two girls.
Yes, my two girls came to my life as part of my life in the U.S. Navy. But the Navy will exist regardless of whether I stay or leave. My daughter only has one dad, and my place is now giving her the time she has so patiently been waiting for. Even if the circumstances for having her waiting for my return never really gave her a choice but to wait. That is why I am retiring. I promised my daughter that wherever the 20-year mark arrives I will be leaving. Of course, the closest I can leave is a few months after that, but I won’t have to stay 21 or more years in.
I would be remiss if I did not mention that going to the “Fleet Reserve” could imply that the U.S. Government would want to yank me back into service, should a country recall would be imminent. And I bring this up because the world is going off in a hang-wire. I don’t know for sure what the future will bring, but what I would say that nothing that has happened have really surprised me. That does no mean it is not disturbing.
That is actually one of the reasons why I have been writing my manuscripts in the last couple of years. My first book “Authoritarianism & Propaganda, The Puppet Master Tools” will be released very soon. And it is one of the many books I’ve written that are intended to foster Critical Thinking and Intellectual Honesty. A lot of the problems in the world that I have observed, most certainly in the last 20 years, do get boiled down to the fallacies in those factors I mentioned.
There are always more solutions than what seems immediately obvious. The new generation is Sailors are going to be all right so long we afford them the opportunity to capitalize on that critical thinking and intellectual honesty. And from the conversations I’ve been having with our Sailors, I know we are in a good path. In the last 20 years we have been evolving, some things for the better, some will need some adjustment. But I’ve been doing my part, and I know that the generation who will be driving this effort will do the same. Thank you for spending this time with me. HLC