My son was a plane captain on an Air Craft Carrier...He said you could always tell the ones that worked in the bowels of the ship...They stuck their heads topside once in a while...and there was nothing like green scrambled eggs, and getting in line for chow with 5000 other guys......(maybe a little hyperbole)
Did a couple of 6 month tours in the Med. playing games with the soviets during the cold war..
Being a proud mother, I got a lovely letter from the navy when they had a plane crash on deck and my son was one of the first to man the hoses..
I asked him what he thought at the time (a 20 year old) and he said "I thought what the fuc* am I doing here, I'm going to die" They fished one of the guys out of the drink and the other one's shoot landed him in the middle of the crash scene...Both survived to talk about it....
Your son summed it up about as well as it could be done.
Naval aviators, plane captains, yellow, green, red and puple shirts (purple shirts pass gas with a smile) all have one thing in common. they share inthe most dangerous job in the world ... going to flight ops on a carrier.
Mothers are better off NOT knowing what their sons are doing on a flight deck. Dirty little secret ... it wasn’t uncommon to have a sailor blownover the side during peace time flight ops. .. not often, but enough to remind everyone that they were one step away, or one rollout away from dire straits.
And if you think going over the side is dangerous, you should see the ones that put themselves in harms way as SAR’s (rscue specialists)that go after them.
God bless proud mothers.