Leather Dog Tags
I’m writing down some memories.
You can start at Chapter One if you like or just keep reading here.
Growing up in the 1970s, whenever you filled in a government form, they would ask your religion — similar to how they ask your ethnicity or gender now. Mum taught me to write CofE (Church of England) on the forms and that’s what I did for many years. I stopped believing in God on the 5th of September 1973 but I carried on writing CofE because that’s what everyone did. When I joined the Navy, they stamped CofE on my leather dog tags which I had to wear all of the time. Pretty much everyone I knew was CofE except maybe a handful of folks who were RC, CofS or METH.
After five years in the Navy, I was promoted to officer.
When you become an officer, as far as the Navy is concerned, you have left the Navy, rejoined and are starting again from the beginning. You have to fill in the forms all over again and I remember sitting in the Senior Rates mess on my submarine and my messmates heckled me as I filled in the forms. When I got to the religion question, I was overcome by a sudden rebellious streak and instead of writing “CofE”, I wrote “atheist”. My friends were shocked and said I was crazy. “They will give you such a hard time!” they said.
When I got to Britannia Royal Naval College at Dartmouth, I was assigned a Divisional Officer (D.O.) who was responsible for the pastoral and administrative aspects of my service. As I had already been in the Navy for five and a half years by this point, I found most aspects of the training pretty easy: I was super fit, pretty knowledgeable and I could keep my kit clean and tidy. By contrast, almost everyone else was barely 18, straight out of school and didn’t know anything about the Navy. While they were ironing their uniforms for hours on end, I was usually at the bar drinking treble Glenlivets with Craig. Even so, my D.O. was quite proud of me and put me in charge when he wasn’t around.
One time, we were at some divisional function involving drinkies and my D.O. decided that he wanted to look at my dog tags.
“What’s ATH?” he asked?
“Atheist.” I replied.
Without saying a word, he turned his back on me and walked away. I don’t remember him ever talking to me again.
I’m wearing my hat properly. I’m wearing dolphins.
For reasons that I’ll explain in another post, the whole point of going to Dartmouth was to get out of the Navy. If I had stayed as a submariner, I had four more years return of service to complete. But when you join the Navy, you get a grace period where you can leave at any time. I was having such a good time at Dartmouth that I stayed until the last possible moment and finally quit on the day Her Majesty the Queen came to inspect us at our Passing Out parade.
I had wanted to go travelling for many years — that was kind of the point of joining the Navy in the first place — but you don’t get to do much travelling on a ballistic missile submarine. After I left Dartmouth, I spent the next year travelling around the world with a backpack and that’s what I’ll write about next.
I’m writing down some memories.
Click the SUBSCRIBE button below to receive the next episode.
I am so delighted you had the guts to say atheist. Once in the 70’s I asked for affirm when on jury service. Later ALL the others said they wished they had affirmed!
It was tremendously freeing for me to come out of that particular closet (encouraged by my mother of all people). I have been surprised by how many people “feel sorry” for me and how hesitant they are to accept my assurances that, “No, seriously, I am happier and less fearful believing what I believe than I was when I tried to believe what you believe.” I’m ok with it, really! Am going to read this more thoroughly now for all the details but your first couple of paragraphs got me all distracted LOL
How durable are the leather dog tags in salt water?
It is remarkable that you remember the exact date of that you stopped believing in God.
In Ken Burns documentary, War, an American Jewish soldier tells the story that he was told to wrap his dog tag around his hand and wear a glove. Then if he were captured by Nazis, he could drop the glove to avoid instantaneous death if captured. His dog tag had an H for Hebrew.
Dog tags last forever, I think. Looking back, it’s a little bit weird that my D.O. looked at my tags. That had never happened before and I had already been in the navy five and a half years by then.
I’ll write about the ‘stopped believing’ story one day soon.
‘Stopped believing’ reminds me of the passage in Mark Twain’s novel, Huckleberry Finn, where Huck is trying to decide between revealing the slave Jim’s location or not. In the end, he decides to go against the Bible and protect Jim. “Alright, then, I’ll go to hell.” Beloved passage in American literature
I will be interested to read your story
That’s amazing that your D.O. never spoke to you again. Now I’m wondering what would have been acceptable. Was any religion okay? Did it have to be an Abrahamic religion? Would Hinduism have received the same treatment? Or was it simply having a lack of belief that was offensive or incomprehensible?