These days my life is split between two vastly different worlds.
Most days are spent in the offices of this newspaper, preparing the next issue for our readers. But every few days, I exchange my slacks, ties, dress shirts and loafers for dark blue Coast Guard utilities and boots.
I’m an Auxiliarist, or volunteer Coast Guardsman. Since the terrorist attacks on the East Coast , and with the support of the management of this company , I have been standing extra duty at Coast Guard Station San Diego, the small boat unit where I have served on a reserve boat crew for nearly five years.
Since Sept. 11, the two worlds seem light years apart.
For the eight years I’ve been editor of this newspaper, I have been amused by the business world’s way of describing itself in militaristic terms. Business leaders talk of themselves as “road warriors of the economy” and as being on the “front lines” of finance. Business books talk about applying Marine Corps tactics to business operations or adopting the philosophy of the Chinese tactician Sun Zu for business planning.
There is, of course, similar talk among the men and women of Station San Diego, but there it is punctuated by the constant presence of fully loaded side arms, M-16 rifles, shotguns, even M-60 machine guns. This is a peculiar little war where the battlefront and the home front are not always indistinguishable.
Each day, 7/24, boat crews from “the station” board every ship that enters or leaves San Diego Bay. Under the Coast Guard’s new Sea Marshal program, no major vessel moves unless it has been secured by armed Coast Guardsmen, and escorted by Coast Guard patrol boats.
I won’t discuss how merchant ships are secured, but the reasoning is clear: Many of the merchant crews are from countries where terrorist cells operate. While most of the merchant sailors are honest seamen, there is the possibility of their ranks being infiltrated.
The Sea Marshal program is designed to prevent a merchant ship from being taken over and used to block shipping channels to prevent Navy warships from leaving the harbor , or worse, from being used as a floating bomb. The lessons of maritime disasters like the destructive explosions in Canada’s Halifax Harbor in World War I, or Texas City, Texas, in 1947 still resonate among maritime security officials.
There is little exciting or glamorous in the work. War, it’s been said, is long periods of monotony punctuated by moments of stark terror. The boarding teams know that should their moment of terror come, they could well end up names on some future memorial. Still, they go out each day, 7/24.
Half the personnel at Station San Diego are mobilized reservists. Unlike other military reserves, Coast Guard reservists are assigned directly to active duty units rather than to reserve units. They make up a major part of the operational force of the Coast Guard at all times. They are highly experienced and well trained, and for many, this is not their first war.
Since a presidential order isn’t needed to activate the Coast Guard Reserve, most of the reservists at Station San Diego have been on duty since shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks and they are likely to remain on duty for at least another year.
While the business community is urging “patriotic” spending by consumers, the reservists at Station San Diego , as reservists everywhere , are hoping just to keep their heads above the economic waters. This is another aspect of the glaring differences between my two worlds.
The difference between the reservists’ military pay and civilian pay can be thousands of dollars a month. Despite protections offered by the federal Soldiers and Sailors Act, many of the reservists will have a difficult time surviving financially.
As a result, a couple of the reservists use whatever time off they get from the Coast Guard to report to their civilian jobs, thereby keeping at least some of their civilian income. Another uses every spare minute to keep his own one-man company alive. Another is buying a new home and is waiting to see if he has to pull out of escrow.
Television commercials urge Americans to buy, buy, buy, spend, spend, spend. Call it the New Patriotism. Meanwhile, the men and women of Station San Diego practice the old-fashioned kind of patriotism, and despite the boredom, the dangers and the personal hardships, continue to gun-up and go out each day, 7/24.
Hill is editor of the San Diego Business Journal.
