XBradTC

Seriously, a Commander and a Command Master Chief see their careers ended over this?

An East Coast-based chief hazed his female shipmates by forcing them to march in formation to the end of a pier carting plastic bags of their own feces, a Navy investigation has found.

The Navy removed the executive officer and top sailor aboard the destroyer Jason Dunham on Friday after the investigation concluded they failed to examine or report the hazing of 13 female sailors. Each was forced to carry a bag of feces down the pier Oct. 15 at Naval Station Norfolk, Va., a case of collective punishment gone too far after a few sailors used inoperable toilets.

This demeaning march was observed by many, but Cmdr. Kenneth Rice and Command Master Chief (SW/AW) Stephen Vandergrifft failed to report or investigate the incident. They were fired by Capt. John Wade, the commodore of Destroyer Squadron 28, Fleet Forces Command said Friday.

That’s not hazing.

It may be collective “corrective training*” and it may or may not have been a good idea. But it wasn’t hazing.

The Navy (and to be sure, the other branches as well) are pushing hard for enlisted leaders to instill discipline and high standards in their enlisted charges.

So here we have a case where someone deliberately used toilets that were tagged out for maintenance. That screws up a lot of things. And so the unidentified Chief takes steps to fix the problem, and provide a little motivation to keep it from happening again.

You know why the XO and the CMC didn’t report it? Because there was nothing to report.

But apparently one of the ladies in this Butthurt Brigade dropped a dime to Squadron, and set off an investigation. Really? My investigation would have taken one phone call to establish that it did in fact happen, and then dismiss the complaint as frivolous. The next call would be to MY CMC telling him he’d better talk to the CMC’s of the ships in the squadron, and make it clear that life in the service isn’t always pleasant, but that cleaning shit beats the hell out of cleaning up blood and guts, and maybe they’d better get back to training for war, instead of playing poop games.

And if you’re going to fire the XO and the CMC, you need to fire the CO on general principles.

Cmdr. Michael Meredith, the ship’s skipper, was not disciplined because he was unaware of the hazing until DESRON 28 started its investigation Oct. 21, explained FFC spokeswoman Lt. Cmdr. Reann Mommsen. “We’re holding the CMC and the XO accountable because, hey, they didn’t even tell [Meredith] about it. So he didn’t even know.”

The CO is responsible, whether he knows or not. And the fact that no one in his command gave him a heads up that Squadron was coming down on him says that his Goat Locker (the ship’s Chief Petty Officers) weren’t looking out for him. That’s a firing offense in my book, far worse than anything the XO or CMC did.

I knew the rot of Political Correctness was strong in the Navy, butt this just stinks.

*Only commanders may award punishment. When a Chief or other Petty Officer or NCO gets up in your shit, if you’ll pardon the expression, it’s either corrective training, or motivating the troops.