In sixty-nine I went to sea, and I got out again in seventy-three. People ask me what I did. I’d rather they’d ask how I got through it all, those moments when the fear was inside me, the times I felt alone and small and helpless. The truth is I had help. The first time I heard, “This is not a drill,” was when an airman hit a fuel dump lever in the cockpit of a Phantom jet sitting inside our carrier’s hangar bay.
It’s a powerful expression: We are not practicing. We are not rehearsing. This is it.
Those words—urging me to go all in, to push through my doubts, and to do what I needed to do—they can be applied to everything in life, I found, and I haven’t forgotten. They became a part of me.
My marriage lasted fifty-three years when last February she passed away. Some folks ask, “How did you do it? How‘d you stay together the two of you for all those years?”
I can answer, but I don’t know if anyone understands me when I say, “This is not a drill.”
I don’t know what you’re struggling with, my fellow veterans, and I couldn’t fix it for you even though I want to. I can say this, though, if you have a night when the darkness closes in, and doubt is there with you like your own shadow, when you stand on the edge of panic, and you feel utterly alone, I say try to listen, and maybe you’ll be able to hear The Captain whisper to you too, “This is not a drill, this is not a drill” and something deep inside will take hold and bring you safely home.
