There Aren't Any Slimy 'Wogs Here, Are There?

Lubber's Line's post on stealing the XO's door got me thinking about other common pranks on the boats. The most common time for pranks was, of course, during the "'Wog Rebellion" leading up to a Shellback initiation. I crossed the equator five times both ways, and went through three actual ceremonies; the last two as a trusty shellback (both of those were "Golden Shellback" ceremonies, where we crossed the Equator at the International Date Line. My old boat USS Topeka made the news 5 years ago when she was at the intersection of the equator and date line at the "turn of the millennium" -- simultaneously in four hemispheres and two millennia, if you believe that the millennium turned on Jan. 1, 2000, as opposed to a year later.) There are several other types of ceremonies; a fairly complete list is here.

The "Crossing the Line" ceremony is quite entertaining; my profile pic is of me becoming a shellback (wearing my underwear inside out and backwards, just got eggs broken on my head, and about to drink the "truth serum"). During the days leading up to the ceremony, the slimy wogs will frequently try to pull pranks on the trusty shellbacks -- pillows get put in the freezer, guys get pinned up in their racks, etc. I had to stop the wog ELTs from dripping silver nitrate onto the faces of sleeping shellbacks (it leaves a stain that looks like you've been crying -- I said it might get in their eyes). Then, when the ceremony comes around, all the shellbacks get to pay the guilty wogs back, in spades.

For my last ceremony on the Topeka, the XO was a wog. A hairy wog, at that. We shaved the letters "XO" into his back. Several of the more aggressive wogs had half of their eyebrows shaved off. And woe betide the wog who won't confess his sins when brought before King Neptune and his court! (The court includes Davy Jones and "the baby" -- traditionally the fattest shellback on board. You had to eat a cherry out of his peanut butter-covered belly-button; no homoerotic overtones there! Background info on the origins of the court can be found here.) Everyone got to drink the "truth serum" as a matter of course; failure to confess meant you got more. Do this day, I still can't eat okra because of that...

I also observed the ceremony on USS John C. Stennis (CVN-74) in 2000; either because of the new Navy "anti-hazing" policies, the presence of alternately-gendered crew members, or both, the ceremony was quite lame; basically the wogs had to crawl through garbage and get washed down with a fire hose. Seeing over 2,000 wogs on crawling around the deck at one time was quite a sight, though -- you won't see that on a submarine!

Here's a good account of a shellback ceremony on USS Cincinnati in 1981. Please put your own memories in the comments...

Going deep...

Bell-ringer 1733 25 July: For pictures of USS Drum's Shellback ceremony, check out here, here, and here. They're quite disturbing... (especially this one, which claims to picture a Chief Sonar Technician of the United States Submarine Force wearing makeup and with what appears to be a license plate covering his bare ass. You normally only see that on liberty...)