Garcia (or rather Rowan) Lives!
I don’t know about you, but I’m pirated out (at least for today)…I feel like a change of pace. How about a sea story?
At the Boat School, a popular turn of phrase is “Message to Garcia.” Usually used in response to a plebe’s (first-year midshipman’s) excuse, it is a reference to Elbert Hubbard’s 1899 essay which refernces LTCOL Andrew Summers Rowan. For those unfamiliar, the gist can be gained by reading this excerpt:
It is not book-learning young men need, nor instruction about this or that, but a stiffening of the vertebrae which will cause them to be loyal to a trust, to act promptly, concentrate their energies; do the thing – “carry a message to Garcia!”…And the man who, when given a letter for Garcia, quietly takes the missive, without asking any idiotic questions, and with no lurking intention of chucking it into the nearest sewer, or of doing aught else but deliver it, never gets “laid off,” nor has to go on strike for higher wages. Civilization is one long anxious search for just such individuals.
I never really learned the true meaning of the phrase until I was a junior officer in the Fleet.
One day, we experienced a seawater leak in a system I had responsibility for. Your humble author was in the midst of preparations for a major inspection, and the leak would cause a dangerous loss of redundancy that both jeapordized not only the results of the inspection but the fair ship’s prospects for getting underway. Captains have a unique way of looking wistfully at a bulkhead and saying “we can’t help but have casualties from time to time” in such a meter and tone that drains the color from a young officer’s face. As I was in the midst of combating several other…ahem…issues, I was filled with outward conviction, maintaining a steady eye and inserting a “Yessir” in as gruff a tone as possible when I could get it in edgewise. Inwardly, I was a man overboard looking for a lifering as a haze grey silhouette shrinks on the horizon.
Don’t worry, dear readers, for that lifering came quickly in the form of a Hull Technician First Class who was only weeks onboard and with whom I had no personal relationship at all. I explained my predicament and he nodded quietly. He said that he had some other high priority repairs to do, but that I should check in with him in the morning and he’d let me know what he found.
I discovered later on that he finished those repairs and then went to the airport to pick up a young HTFA who was reporting to his first ship. After arriving back around midnight, he went to work. I literally found him waiting for me on the quarterdeck at 0500 as I trudged up the pier feeling a little bit sorry for myself. He excitedly escorted me down to the general workshop where I was astounded to see a huge section of piping laying on the work table. He taught me more about metallurgy in the ensuing fifteen minutes than I had ever learned in my life. He then proposed an entire course of action for repair – a repair that we didn’t have the right tools for and which needed several parts. All he said was that the system would be ready to test in six hours.
I still don’t know how he did everything he needed to in that time, but I thanked him heartily and let him do his thing. Six hours later, we were fully operational.
This HT1 needed no thanks and no prompting. He knew what needed to be done and he needed only the smallest direction to complete a task that I simply didn’t have the time to be involved with personally.
Afterwards, I got to know him a little better and one day he remarked that he regretted never getting a college degree like me. I imagined times when distant acquaintances asked about him and his family talked about how he had enlisted in the navy and the acquaintainces eyes got quite large and looked off to one side while mouthing a gigantic silent “Oh…” Experiences like that are the only way I could see someone coming to feel regret for something that seems so trivial when compared to this Sailors innate nature.
How tragic it was that this HT1 thought this! If this man were to be duplicated and those multiples crewed even the smallest corvette, it would be the most feared dreadnought in any fleet. He not only had all the skills to get an important, highly technical job done, but he had the will and the initiative to do it without thinking of reward or favor. He is an outstanding Sailor, but even if he were a normal citizen, a society built on people like him is truly worth the blood of our young people. To this day, I try to emulate him in everything I do.
Working with just one man like this was enough for this officer to keep at it. For those not lucky enough to find a Rowan yet, the reward is worth the wait.
