Was just thinking about my time serving on battleships while I was in the Marines...
USS Guam
USS Tarawa
USS New Orleans
USS Okinawa
USS Bonnehome Richard (pronounced Bon-home Ree-shard)
...a couple of others
I recall they didn’t let us take daily showers. There wasn’t enough fresh water on these battleships for every Marine and Sailor to take daily showers.
So they would tell us something like if your last name is from A to D, then you can take showers on Tuesdays and Saturdays. All the days in between you needed to use something like Baby Wipes to stay clean.
On your shower day you would get 1 minute to shower and there would be a line of smelly Marines and Sailors waiting to get into the shower. If someone went over their 1 minute, fights would often break out in the shower room. And let me tell you... There is almost nothing like a big shower fight on a Navy ship. Imagine a bunch of smelly naked Marines and Sailors slugging it out and getting physical over shower time abuse. Also... no hot water.
Needless to say, there were lots of smelly Marines and Sailors of all ranks on all those ships. The Docs (Corpsmen) were always treating us for things like skin rashes and heat rashes and athlete’s foot and crotch rot.
Ahhh fun times... NOT!
By the way... Just because you can’t smell good, it doesn’t mean you can’t look good.
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