Nation: Shaping Up

The Navy gets tough

Their cadence may still not be perfect, but Navy trainees are once again marching to classes and meals at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center.

Their hands snap salutes to officers, and none of them can leave the base out of uniform. For the 8,000 trainees at the base, located on Lake Michigan about 35 miles north of Chicago’s Loop, the watchword has now become the venerable Navy saw:

SHAPE UP OR SHIP OUT.

This is quite a change from the college campus atmosphere that was established at the center in the early 1970s to make Navy life more attractive to recruits. The Navy decided to get tough after hundreds of trainees rioted for two days in late June in a park and along the sleazy strip of bars, pool halls and prostitute haunts near the base’s gates. Complaining that they had been continually cheated by merchants on the strip, the sailors went on a window-smashing, rock-throwing rampage that ended only when the Shore Patrol and North Chicago police officers charged into the mob, swinging their billy clubs. Afterward, 58 trainees were court-martialed.

The new measures, which took effect last week, include: a ban on wearing civilian clothes on the base or when leaving it; a one-third increase in trainees’ duty time, to 24 hours spread over every four days; and the assignment of 100 extra petty officers, making a total of 1,700. The worst troublemakers were transferred to a new disciplinary division led by Chief Warrant Officer Joseph (“Gunner”) Cahill. Said the veteran Navyman: “Most of these guys will be good sailors. But they need someone to say, This is the way it is.’ We have to bring them up short.”

But more than discipline may be needed. While conditions on the honky-tonk strip helped to spark the riots, a more basic cause was the trainees’ anger over their dismal housing. They derisively call the aging barracks “Idi Amin’s Castle” and the “Haven for Thieves.” There is little privacy, toilets frequently do not work, and locker doors are so flimsy that thefts of cash, clothes and cameras are common.

Complained Seaman Edmund Griffin:

“Some of the barracks are real ratholes.”

Added a petty officer: “Drugs were everywhere, but the Navy didn’t do anything about it. Petty officers put trainees on report and nothing happened.”

The Navy has begun upgrading housing, and will send two additional senior officers to Great Lakes so that disciplinary hearings can be conducted swiftly. Petty officers have been assigned to each floor of the barracks to increase security and enforce discipline. Said Senior Chief Petty Officer Thomas Phillips: “The new rules have already changed things. This is finally a military establishment.”