The Ward Room

After graduating college, but before heading to my first assignment, I had to go through training. For me, this training was standard Surface Warfare Officer School (SWO) and Communications' Officer (CommO) School. Yes, my first assignment was to be the CommO. This was also going to make me the CMS Custodian. You don't really need to know the acronym, just know that CMS is the crypto that the military uses to ensure secure communications. In order to even do this it requires a Top Secret (Special Category) clearance which basically says you have access to whatever cryto you need. This is because you are responsible for getting, inventorying, storing, distributing, and destroying all cryto material on your ship and keeping a PERFECT record of all of this. Note: My then girlfriend, now wife noted that while I was the CommO I gnashed my teeth a lot in my sleep.  Anyway, to get back on track, this story takes place just before CommO School, while I was still in SWO school. There I

Welcome to The Ward Room. This will be a blog about my Naval experiences as a junior officer. I will not use the name of my ship and nor the names of people to protect the guilty.  What I intend to do with this is provide leadership examples of what to and not to do. As an officer, I was charged with handling my own division as a Division officer (DivO) I reported to a department head (DepO), who reported to the executive officer (XO), who reported to the captain/commanding officer (CO). Similar to what you've seen on Star Trek and other shows where a chain-of-command is emphasized, the CO had broad powers over his command. While they can't directly violate any order, they can disagree, and where the order is considered unlawful, outright reject it. I will be giving examples of all of this. Please note that the blogs are not necessarily in chronological order but more order of importance and what lesson I want to convey. Also, these incidences took place over 30 years ago, so t