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USCG Honors
First Women at Sea
by
Julz Carey
Vice President, American
Veterans For Equal Rights |
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37
years ago this did not seem to be such a big deal. The Coast Guard had
decided to permanently assign women to US combatant vessels. There
would be 2 vessels, one on the west coast and another on the east. I
was 17 years old, a young BM3 not long out of "A" school, and with a
month of small boat training at CG Station Humboldt Bay, CA. I had
received a call from my recruiter asking me if I would be interested in
a shipboard assignment. It was an experiment that may or may not have
lasted and I jumped at the chance. Summer 1977 found me reporting
aboard Coast Guard Cutter Gallatin, homeport: Governor's Island, New
York City.
There
were 12 women, 2 officers and 10 enlisted. The officers shared a
stateroom and the enlisted were berthed in the starboard engineering 10
man berthing. We had a lot to learn, especially those of us in
traditional seagoing rates, but we banded together to make this
"experiment" work. Over the next 2 and a half years I experienced
boring North Atlantic patrols punctuated by 30 foot seas, "jaws"
sightings, hours spent beating ice off of the superstructure, and the
occasional fishing fleet inspections. We spent much of our time
patrolling the Caribbean, stopping in San Juan, Puerto Rico at least a
dozen times. Ocean liner fires, volcanoes, vessels loaded with
marijuana and cocaine, lost fishermen adrift on the high seas were some
of the adventures that came with the hours spent on flight ops and
endless drills. We were dogged by the press and DACOWITS, uniforms
became an issue and the inevitable shipboard romances happened. In
time, we figured out that we were a crew, didn't matter the gender, just
the ability to do our job. We went to Gitmo for war games with the
Navy and conducted ourselves pretty much like any other crew. Well,
maybe our sea stories were a little more colorful.
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I can't breath |
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Imagine the uproar that would erupt if a black
police officer shot a 12 year old white boy to death in suburbia because
he was playing with a toy gun, alone, in an empty playground.
Imagine the uproar if a black police officer took down and killed a
middle aged white man with a choke hold, in suburbia, suspecting him of
selling something on the street in front of his house without a license.
With the roles reversed, these and other similar killings took place in American cities
in recent
weeks and months. Now, imagine if you, as an invisible gay person,
had lavender colored skin which clearly identified you as a queer to
anyone with two working eyes and particularly to police officers who saw
gay people as universally suspect and dangerous. Imagine how you
would feel as a lavender colored person who was followed by security
the moment you walked into a store, throughout your life! This was
the experience of the President of the United States of America, before
he had his own national security force following him around.
Now, you might thank God that no one can tell you're
gay anytime you walk outside; but think of the fact that not a day
passes that some Transgender American isn't assaulted and murdered just
because of who they are. Imagine if your skin was black or
lavender. In 1930s Germany, the Nazis had a law that required all
Jews to wear a yellow star, which entitled the Gestapo, police, and any
bully and bigot to stop, question, viciously assault, and arrest you
just because of who you are. Six million Jews were murdered across
Europe by the Nazis before and during WWII, along with one million gay
people, and millions of Roma just because of who they were. When
the victorious allied forces liberated the survivors from the Nazi
death camps, they kept the Pink Triangle (gay) prisoners in the camps
and later turned them over to German authorities who re-imprisoned them
and tortured them; there were no survivors.
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