Christopher Brownfield - My Nuclear Family: A Coming-of-Age in Americas Twenty-first Century Military

Oil on Landscape:
Art from Wartime Contemporaries of Baghdad

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

Copyright 2010 by Christopher J. Brownfield
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
www.aaknopf.com

Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Brownfield, Christopher J.
My nuclear family / by Christopher J. Brownfield.1st ed.
p. cm.
This is a Borzoi BookT.p. verso.
eISBN: 978-0-307-59428-0
1. Brownfield, Christopher J. 2. Iraq War, 2003Personal narratives, American. 3. SubmarinersUnited StatesBiography. 4. Hartford (Submarine) 5. Nuclear submarinesPersian GulfHistory21st century. 6. Nuclear submarinesUnited StatesHistory21st century. 7. United States. NavyOfficersBiography. 8. United States. NavyMilitary lifeHistory21st century. 9. Energy policyIraqHistory 21st century. I. Title.
DS 79.766. B 76A3 2010
956.7044245092dc22

[ B ] 2010011833

v3.1

To the memory of
Captain Richard Gannon
United States Marine Corps
and
Haitham T. Yaseen
Ministry of Electricity, Republic of Iraq

To the perseverance of
my dear Iraqi friends throughout the world

To the hope and commitment of
Sergeant Larry Lloyd, United States Army,
who volunteered for duty in both
Afghanistan and Iraq, that he may better serve
the people of the United States
as their future president

You can always count on Americans to do the
right thingafter theyve tried everything else.

Winston Churchill

Memory is the perfect liar. I did not begin my naval service with the intent of writing a book, which means that some of my account is based upon my imperfect memories and personal notes. Furthermore, a great deal of my experience was classified, which means that certain details of my story must remain absent out of respect for the law of the United States and concern for the security of my former colleagues. Wherever possible, I have listed open sources that corroborate the details of my account, and I have also sought advice and criticism from numerous colleagues who served alongside me in the submarine force and Iraq. For most of my friends and colleagues, I have altered their names to preserve their privacy, while allowing myself to be completely candid about what happened. Finally, Ive listed the numerous works that have influenced my opinions and illuminated the contexts of the situations Ive presented.

In the twilight of my childhood, I swapped my mother for the navy. It was a clean break, made less painful by the uncanny similarities between the woman and the war machine. In the navy, it was, Sir, yes, sir! At home, it was, Yes, Mommie Dearest! My mother took me to the doctor when I was sick; the navy gave me free cough syrup and eye exams. There was no sex allowed as long as I still lived under her roof, and no sex allowed aboard their ships. Both my mother and the navy considered it their solemn duty to prescribe exactly what I would wear, and who was I to argue? I knew my place in the pecking order, and besides, they both had pretty good taste.

Im glad you picked the navy, Mom confided after I joined. Their uniforms are the nicest.

I never wanted to be a jarhead or SEAL or Ranger or Delta Force or Batman or anything else that the local beer-bellied wannabes claimed they were gonna be when they grew up. I wanted to be a naval officer, a gentleman of liberal education, refined manners, punctilious courtesy, and the nicest sense of personal honor, as John Paul Jones described the profession.moaning or chains or spooky frivolities unbecoming of a gentleman. Instead, Jones haunts me with dignity, sporting a freshly starched navy blue uniform bedecked with gold buttons, a gleaming saber at his side. In his confident colonial British accent, Jones paints the naval officer as the soul of tact, patience, justice, firmness, and charity. At first our relationship disturbed me, but that soon passed; now, after all weve been through together, were practically family.

Over the years, I realized that instead of joining the navy, the navy had actually adopted me. At the beginning of the twentieth century, some of my real ancestors fled Eastern Europe, leaving behind the bulk of our heritage. I know very little about these people except that my mothers side of the family might have been Jewish, which would make me Jewish by default. The Roman Catholics among us were not particularly eager to upturn that stone, so I inherited a somewhat truncated family history. Regardless, a familial navy rabbi offered to arrange the surgery if I ever decided to convert. The gesture flattered me, but I declined; in the navy, there were plenty of surrogate ancestors who didnt require circumcision. It was these adoptive forefathers like Stephen Decatur, Oliver Hazard Perry, and, of course, John Paul Jones, who gave me a sense of pride and belonging in the service of my country.

My official nomination to the United States Naval Academy arrived from Spencer Abraham, a Republican senator who soon received his own nomination to the cabinet post of energy secretary. Everyone was moving up in the world. I loved the Naval Academy for its rigidity and its clarity in separating right from wrong. Three of my roommates were thrown out while I attended, one on account of mediocrity. John didnt fail to make grades or physical standards, but he didnt exceed any of the standards, either. What kind of draconian school treats people that way? I knew full well, and I loved every minute of that draconian school from Induction Day till the day I shook President Bushs hand, swore to support and defend the Constitution, and walked off the stage with my diploma.

I practiced what I vaguely considered to be strong conservative values and supported President Bush in 2000, though my absentee ballot was lost in the mail en route to Annapolis. During my training, John McCaina graduate of the Naval Academyspoke repeatedly to the Brigade of Midshipmen, recounting tales of torture at the hands of the Vietcong in the dreaded Hanoi Hilton. My heart swelled with pride over McCains perseverance and the fact that he was a member of my extended naval family. When Oliver North waved from the stadium stands at the Army-Navy football game, the entire brigade erupted in applause and chanted his name in unisonOl-lie, Ol-lie, Ol-lie. More than anything else, we kept unquestioning faith that those who had marched before us had done the right thing. An austere memorial in the central rotunda of our campus enshrines the names of our alumni who paid the ultimate price through their service. It is a large memorial, and the names are quite small. Like a half-filled family gravestone, blank space on the bottom allows room for future expansion.

It took me years to realize I had come of age in a world where energy and violence met, but it was at the Naval Academy that I cut my teeth on these principles. For years, my classmates and I pored over texts of strategy and thermodynamics, war doctrine and weapons systems, while between our classes we debated the ethics of combat. The question was never whether we were capable of killing; we simply explored the methods and rationales. While my civilian counterparts studied Karl Marx, we joked about killing commies and calculated the optimal altitude for detonating a nuclear weapon to maximize the effect on unarmored personnel. The latter was part of a three-credit course; I scored an A without much effort.