When I was a child my parents had a subscription to those Reader’s Digest magazines. Remember those? They were little book sized magazines with all types of articles in them. They always ended up on a shelf next to the toilet in our bathroom. So while I did my business, I would often leaf through them. Most of the articles didn’t interest me but some of the stories did. Of particular interest to me was the section called Humor in Uniform, short funny stories about things that happened to our military personnel. I was recalling this memory the other day (yes, while doing my business) and I got to thinking that I was in uniform for ten years. Surely there were some humorous yarns I could tell from my military days. Guess what? There are, and this is one of them.

I was in the Navy serving aboard USS Monterey (CG-61), a guided missile cruiser. We were deployed and currently in port in Naples, Italy. We were scheduled to get underway (head out to sea) on the morning of this tale. I was a second class petty officer and was the work center supervisor. This meant I was in charge of one of the three work centers in our division that was responsible for operating, maintaining, and repairing the main radar weapon system for the ship, the Aegis Weapon System. The division had broken up from quarters, which is kind of a roll call for the lay person. I had just given out assignments to my subordinates and was at my desk doing some paperwork when I heard one of my guys, petty officer third class Vining say he needed to tell me something.

I turned around and looked at him expectantly. “What’s up,” I asked.

“Transmitter four has a fault,” Vining told me.

I groaned. This was not the news I needed today. We were headed out on a multi-national war gaming exercise, and to have a problem with one of the four radar systems my work center was responsible for was not going to sit well with the chain of command, especially when we had a big admiral embarked to view the exercise.

I got up from my desk and walked over to transmitter four where, much to my surprise, I didn’t see any red fault lights on the control panel. In fact, it was working just fine. “What the…” I started to say.

“April Fools!” Vining shouted and pointed to me laughing. “Got you!”

Up until this point I had forgotten what today was, which was in fact, April 1st. I chuckled a bit. “Ha! Ha! You got me fucker. Now go get some work done.”

Vining shuffled off to other parts of the ship to work on his duties and I went back to my paperwork. Soon, a thought started forming in my head. We were supposed to get underway in a couple of hours for the exercise. What if I got all three work center supervisors to report a major problem in their area of the weapon system before we got underway? That would make some people sweat and be a killer April Fools joke. I picked up the phone and called the other two work center supervisors and asked them to come back to Radar Room 4 which is where I had my office.

The other two work center supervisors were petty officer Cate, who was responsible for the main radar system, and petty officer Johnson, who was responsible for the computers that ran the weapon system. Together, we hashed out a plan to report, about five minutes apart, a major problem with each of our systems. Normally we would report these types of issues to our division leading petty officer, who was petty officer first class Magnes. However, our aim was to ruffle some feathers a little higher up the chain, so I called Magnes and filled him in on what we were doing. He loved the idea and told us to report directly to our division leading chief petty officer, Chief Roberts and tell him that he directed us to give him all the details.

We executed the plan by giving the Chief a call five minutes apart. I reported that a cooling system leak had developed which had flooded our two radar systems on the aft part of the ship. Cate reported that the signal processor that received radar signals from the main radar was down. Johnson reported that the Command & Decision computer that was needed to control the weapon system from the consoles in the Combat Information Center was down. With these level of problems there was no way we would be able to complete our mission during the exercise.

So far our joke was going along smoothly. The Chief should next report these problems to our division officer. We wanted the Chief and the DIVO to be the brunt of this joke but we didn’t want it to go any further than that. That’s where petty officer Magnes came in. He was hanging out around the DIVO in maintenance central, where the status of the whole combat system was monitored. When the Chief came in to inform the DIVO, Magnes was going to let them both sweat it for a bit and then step in to tell them it was a joke before the DIVO reported it up to the department head. Should have worked just fine. Should’ve…

It had been maybe twenty minutes since we had reported all the problems when the phone rang next to my desk. I picked it up. “Radar Room Four, this is petty officer Lovelace,” I said into the receiver.

“Hey, it’s Magnes.” Awesome, he was calling to tell me all about how well the joke went.

“Did they laugh,” I asked, “or get mad?”

“Uhmm, I haven’t seen Chief come in here to tell the DIVO yet.”

“Really? He should have done that by now.”

Just then an announcement came over the loud speaker system, called the 1MC, that was wired into every space on the ship. “This is the Captain speaking. Due to some unforeseen problems, we are going to be delaying our underway time. Depending on the resolution of these problems, we may not be getting underway at all. I will make a further announcement on the status later, but as of now, cease all preparations for getting underway. That is all.”

“Oh shit!” I said to Magnes who was still on the phone. “Was that us?”

“You better get down here,” he told me. “I’ll call the other guys.”

I double timed it down to Maintenance Central where I found Magnes, Cate, and Johnson grouped together with the same look of concern on their faces that I’m sure was on mine. Before any of us had a chance to say anything Chief Roberts walked into the space.

“Was the delay in underway due to our issues?” Magnes asked him.

“Yeah,” the Chief replied. “What’s the status?”

“How does the Captain know already? The DIVO doesn’t even know yet,” Magnes inquired.

“I’m training for Junior Office Of the Deck and I had to go up to the bridge for under instruction training on the duties for getting underway,” the Chief said. “I had to go before I could talk to the DIVO. The Captain was on the bridge so I informed him of our issues in case he needed to make a decision about getting underway.” None of us had known he was doing training for getting underway on the bridge this morning. The Chief had technically broken chain of command but I had seen why he did it when the opportunity had presented itself.

“Chief,” I said putting my head in my hands. “It was an April Fools Day joke!”

“What?” he demanded of me. “Nothing is broke?”

“No. We made it all up as a joke. Magnes was going to let you in on it when you informed the DIVO. We never meant for it to go any further than that!”

“Are you fucking kidding me? They called off all the line handlers and tug boats. Now I have to go tell the Captain that he did that all because of a joke? This is going to be fun. Thanks a lot mother fuckers.” With that he stormed out of the space.

The conspirators just kind of stared at each other a bit then we slowly drifted back to our work spaces, wondering what would become of this. Half an hour later I was at my desk when I heard the Captain come on the 1MC again.

“This is the Captain. We have resolved our issues and we will be getting underway. We need time to get line handlers and tug boats back so we won’t be setting sea and anchor detail until a couple hours later than we had scheduled. Make any further preparations for getting underway. That is all.”

Oh shit, we had caused the actual delay of getting underway. There was no way we were not going to hear about this. An ass chewing was definitely in our future. Over the next several hours I heard nothing. We eventually got underway and about an hour after being at sea the phone rang by my desk. After identifying myself I heard the voice of Chief Roberts ordering me to come to his office. Well, here comes the ass chewing.

When I walked in to Chief’s office he handed me a blue folder. I opened the folder and inside was a report chit. The paperwork informed me that I was being written up for communicating a false statement and sabotage.

I had expected an ass chewing. I had not expected this. A made a little nervous chuckle then said, “Right Chief. Ha. Ha. April fools right?”

He shook his head. “Nope. The Captain ordered me to write you up.”

“Yeah, just me? The ring leader of the joke? You are just getting me back. Nice one.”

“I’m serious. He was so pissed about the delay in getting underway that he ordered me to write you all up. The other guys already signed their chits. See?” He showed me three other folders with the same charges and signatures from my co-conspirators. “He’s holding a special Captain’s Mast at 1300. You all are ordered to report in full dress uniform to the Master at Arms at 1230.”

Captain’s Mast is a form of non-judicial punishment held aboard naval vessels. The Captain reviews the charges, hears from witnesses, then acts as judge, juror, and executioner. He can impose punishment ranging from restriction to the ship, to forfeiture of pay, to loss of rank, and even sentence you to the brig. I was starting to get a little nervous but I was still 75% sure this was a joke to get back at us. So, I signed the chit and went on my way. Surely they’d let us off the hook before 1230.

Lunch time rolled around and I never heard from anybody so I made my way down to the mess deck to get some chow. As luck would have it, my co-conspirators were eating at the same time and we took a table together. We discussed the probability of all this being a revenge joke and were relatively confident it was. The general consensus was that they would tell us we’d been had when we reported to the Master at Arms office. Making us get all suited up in our dress uniforms was their way of getting back at us. However, when I looked around the table, I could see flashes of uncertainty in all their faces.

1230 rolled around and all four of us reported in full dress uniforms to the Master at Arms office. There was no one there but the Chief Master at Arms, and he didn’t inform us that we were the brunt of a joke. Oh, no. While we stood outside his office at attention, he dressed us up one side and down the other, barking at us about the way we were expected to conduct ourselves during the Captain’s Mast. Many sailors were walking by at the time looking at us and it made me feel like the biggest criminal in the world. My level of confidence that this was a joke quickly dropped to 50%.

The Chief Master at Arms then marched us down the passageways to the starboard torpedo magazine. This is where Captain’s Mast was held because it was a big space and could accommodate all the people involved. They actually had us stand at attention just around the corner to the torpedo magazine door to wait until they called us in. As we were standing there I could catch glimpses of our Chief, DIVO, Department Officer, and even other higher ups that were not even apart of our division, milling about around the corner. I thought I could even hear the voice of the Executive Officer (XO), who was second in command of the ship. My confidence level that this was the ultimate form of payback for an ill conceived April Fools joke plummeted to 25%.

Even though we weren’t supposed to be talking, I slightly turned my head to Cate, who was standing beside me, and whispered, “We’re either going to be telling the story of the greatest April Fools joke ever for years to come, or we are about to get royally fucked.”

Just then we heard the booming voice of the Chief Master at Arms, “RIGHT FACE!” We complied. “FORWARD MARCH!” We complied. As we rounded the corner to the torpedo magazine we saw a big sign on the door reading…

Yup, they got us! Everyone was laughing and pointing at us. The XO was taking pictures. Some of the most hard ass sailors I knew were almost rolling on the deck laughing. When realization dawned on the four of us that we were not going to get royally fucked, we started to laugh too.

The XO, came up to us and said, “You guys are lucky. The Captain wanted to come down and actually hold the mast before he let you off the hook, but he was too busy!”

Wow, as frightening as that sounded it would have been pretty good. As it was, they had me almost shitting in my skivvies. So that’s the tale of the one and only time I went to Captain’s Mast. I often tell that story to junior sailors I now train as a civilian, and I’m still friends with my co-conspirators on Facebook. We’ll reminisce about it from time to time, still getting quite the laugh out of it.

So do you have any noteworthy April Fool’s joke? It doesn’t have to be military related. Any tale will do.

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