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1999 #511
Date: Tue, 27 Apr 1999 16:47:48 -0500
From: Anders Backman
Subject: re: Flashes
>ObTrav: gotta love them unit-specific traditions.
>I'm thinking of the ritual in the US Navy where they do a kind of hazing
>for new crewmen the first time they cross the equator on a Navy ship.
>Would Marines in the 3I have a similar ritual for troopers on their first
>jump? Something to pass the time in the hole.
>
>I have this image of a rookie climbing into a drop capsule while the old
>hands fill it up with something festive, yet unpleasant to be doused in. <G>
IMTU fresh SDB crewmembers are ordered to do some mundane EVA job such as checking the passive array for static buildup or somesuch. When the newbie is out the lock they'll accelerate away from him making shure he didn't get a safety line and keep going until the ship is invisible to the poor sucker. Then they'll wait for perhaps an hour before coming back to get the poor sucker.
This tradition is illegal due to some unfortunate deaths happening now and then. The official policy is to stop it but all officers turn the other eye and pretend they don't see it as they secretly like it (as in all similar abuses after being subject to one one tends to like to inflict it upon the newbies).
I had an adventure spinning around this about a rookie cremember that was dumped this way over Efate just prior to 5FFW. The SDB had to abandon their comrade when the Zhos attacked and when they returned he was gone - picked up as a prisoner of war by the Zhos.
After the war he was POW exchanged and started looking up his crewmembers one by one and killing them. Sort of an Agatha Christie in space.
/Anders Backman
Game developer and Lead Kibitzer at Aniware AB
anders.backman@aniware.se