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For
the Submariners out there especially the dying breed of diesel boat
sailors someone has rewritten Genesis.
In
the beginning was the word, and the word was God and
all else was darkness and void and without form
So God created the heavens and the earth.
He created the sun and the moon and the stars, so that their light
might pierce the darkness. And the earth, God divided
between the land and the sea, and these He filled with many assorted
creatures. And from the slime, in a land called
Lympstone, God made dark, salty creatures, that inhabited
the seashore. He called them Marines, and dressed them
accordingly, in bright colors so that their betters may more easily
find them in the holes and burrows that they'd scoured out of the
ground. And God said, "Whilst at their appointed
labours they will devour worms, maggots, C & K rations and
all creatures that creep or crawl". The flighty creatures
of the air, He called Airdales, and these He clothed in uniforms
which were ruffled, perfumed and pretty. He gave them great
floating cities with flat roofs in which to live, where they gathered
and formed huge multitudes. They carried out heathen rites
and ceremonies by day and by night upon the roof amidst thunderous
noise.
They were given God's blue sky and their existence was on the backs of
others. And the surface creatures of the sea, God called
Skimmers, who supported the Airdales and with a twinkle in His eye and
a sense of humor only He could have, He gave them all gedunks, polluted
with much stickywater, to drink. God gave them big grey 'targets' to go
to sea in. He gave them many splendid uniforms to wear. And
He gave them all the world's exotic and wonderful places to visit. He
gave them pen and paper so that they could write home every week, and
He gave them Ropeyarn Sunday at sea and a laundry so they
could clean and polish their splendid uniforms. (When you are God it is
very easy to get carried away with your own great and wondrous
benevolence).
And on the seventh day, as
you know, God rested from his labours. And on the eighth day at
0755, just before Colors, God looked down upon the earth and He was not
a happy man. God knew
He had not quite achieved perfection, so He thought about
his labours, and in His infinite wisdom, He created a divine creature,
His masterpiece, and this He called a Submariner.
A
child of heaven. And these Submariners, whom God created in His
own image, and to whom He gave his most cherished gift, great
intelligence, were to be of the deep, and to them He gave more of his
greatest gifts. He gave them black steel messengers of
death called the "Smoke Boat" class in which to roam the depths of his
oceans, and He gave them His arrows and slingshots, the
Mark 14 torpedo of burnished brass and black, and the Mark 37 of green,
to wage war against the forces of Satan and all evil. He
heaped great knowledge and understanding upon them, in order that
they may more easily win their greatest challenge, to pass their
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