"The Watch Stands As Written": A Naval History You've Never Heard...Until Now!

The Sherpa screening room is a presentation of podcast picks with Jim the podcast Sherpa. These are episodes featuring interviews with artists and creators from various fields. Coincidentally, when the Sherpa tries to be entertaining, afterwards, he gets abandoned in various fields. Coming to you from Sherpa Shalai in beautiful downtown Mt. Podkastia, it's time for entertainment interviews in the Sherpa screening room, grab a Nile seat, and a bucket of popcorn but don't crunch too loud or you'll miss the show. Now, here's your host, Jim the podcast Sherpa. Hello there, Rebels of the Sherpa Lucian and welcome to the Sherpa screening room, it's a side project of podcasts picks with Jim the podcast Sherpa. That just so happens to be me coming to you from Sherpa Lou Studios, the newly renovated Sherpa Lou Studios. Here in the Sherpa Shalai, high atop Mt. Podkastia, where I overlook the millions and millions of podcasts. But in these episodes, we get to talk to the creators, you know, actors, singers, dancers, directors, producers, and authors. And we are speaking to some authors today. There's a new book that's out that was sent to me by my friends at Wild Blue Press. And the book is titled The Watch Stands as Written Voices from the Midwatch. And it is written by three gentlemen, David Johnson, Gary Gwynne, and Kenneth Keith. And this really discusses a naval tradition that I actually have heard nothing about up until I heard about this book. And it's really a fascinating story. So we get to spend a little time sitting down and discussing the book. And you'll really be fascinated when you hear about this story as well. I don't really think that it's something that's really been covered by the media or anything like that. It's not a earth shattering thing, but it's just a really fascinating little story. And it really sheds an interesting light on our society, I think, in a lot of different ways. But I got to spend some time and we chatted about the book. So you are going to hear that right now with conversation with David Johnson and Gary Gwynne and Kenneth Keith, the authors of The Watch Stands as Written Voices. From The Midwatch. Let's have a listen. Well, we can let that slide. That's okay. These gentlemen are the authors of a new book out that's called The Watch Stands as Written Voices from The Midwatch. And welcome to the show David Johnson, Gary Gwynne, and Kenneth Keith. Guys, welcome to the show. Oh, or should I say, oh, hoi. If you have a naval background, I know some of you, you know, obviously, did a lot of some tie-ins with the Navy, right? Well, I would say, a naval war month for six years, 1968-1970. So I have naval. Okay. Kenneth, Dave? I have not, I don't have a naval background in terms of service, but I have had great interest in it. I had an uncle of mine that was actually built in action during World War II in the Solomon Islands, and my father-in-law spent over two years on a destroyer in the Pacific during World War II. And it was his service that got me interested in the topic of our book. I can't have about you. I did not serve in the Navy, but I had an uncle who served on the USS Higby during World War II, and another uncle who served on the USS Manchester, which received nine battle stars in the Korean conflict. Okay. Well, we got to hear on camera. I want you to start and tell everybody a little bit about yourself. I'll go ahead and go ahead and start. I was born in Pennsylvania, grew up in Pennsylvania, but decided to go to New York for my undergraduate training, and received the bachelor's degree in psychology and sociology, decided that I wanted to leave the Northeast for a while, just to get to another area of the country and apply to graduate schools mostly in the Midwest and Southwest. And so I ended up at the University of Arkansas, and did my masters in doctoral work there, and stayed in Northwest Arkansas since I had moved there in 1976, so been there for quite a while. Okay. Gary, how about you? Well, I'm an old Arkansas boy, born and raised here. Got my undergraduate degree in my master's, my doctorate at the University of Arkansas, and in the middle of all that, I ended up dropping out of school and joining the Navy. So that's how I became a naval corpsman at 60. So after that, I came back, taught in higher education in English for about 35 years, and now I'm enjoying life. Okay, ten years up. Well, I'm the odd man out. I'm not an Arkansas. I grew up on the Iowa farm, and went to undergraduate school in Missouri where I was a math major, a bit of master's degree in psychology and Kansas and a PhD at Nebraska, spent a few years early on on the faculty at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, then twenty years on the faculty at Nebraska Wesleyan University, thirteen at the University of San Diego before retiring back in Nebraska. Okay, so now if we obviously are growing up in different areas and being educated in different areas, how do you know each other? Dave and I taught at the same university, so we got to know each other. We had off the three times a week and so on. Okay, I met Dave. I don't know exactly where, but I know that I've known Dave at least for thirty some years. Both of us psychology professors, we met through meetings that we both attended over the years, and we both spent many years as participants in the Advanced Placement Psychology program where we were readers, and eventually, I was the chief reader for that program. So I've known Dave for all those years, and I got to know Gary then through Dave. It's interesting when I was presented with the copy of the book, and we didn't really talk about the topic yet. We're building up suspense here, and I was really surprised about this. The watch stands is written because I had never actually heard of this naval tradition about doing the poems. So how did you guys stumble across it? Dave can tell you that story. But that had to do with your father in the last napkin ring or something like that? Was it? What I read? That's correct. I just recently posted on my blog a post about how this all started, and I titled it. It all began with a napkin ring. I noticed that almost from the first time I visited my wife's family, that her father had this napkin ring on the table, and he would pull his napkin out of this ring, use it, and then he would put it back in the ring, and would use it then at the next meal. And I found this very curious, but never really asked about it, and didn't know anything about it until after he passed. And the napkin ring came into our possession, and it turns out that it had information on it about his ship, on which he served during the war. And as best we can document it, we believe that it was the napkin ring that he used while he was on that ship during the war. That ship was actually in Pearl Harbor during the attack on December 7, 1941. And so if we're correct, that napkin ring had a lot of miles on it. And the reason why the officers had napkin rings was because they wanted to make sure that each officer had their own napkin to use, and they couldn't use enough fresh water to wander them every time that they used them. And so napkins were reused and they were linen napkins. You know, if you were an officer, you got the high class, you know. And as best we could tell, that's the story that started this. And while I was researching his ship, I found a poem in a deck log. And I was just totally stunned by that. I couldn't figure out why there was such a thing. And I did more research and that's really how I got started. And yeah, the book covers the from World War II through 1970, but they believe that the tradition of the poems over the watch that actually started well before that, right? The tradition, we know it is more than a hundred years old because we have an actual deck log poem from 1926 from the USS Idaho. And we know that based on some things that were mentioned in the deck log by the captain, that this was a tradition that preceded 1926. We don't know exactly when it happened, when it started, but probably in the late 1800s. Wow. Well, in 1894, a group of midshipmen from Annapolis spent their summer on a ship in the Atlantic. And they decided to write poetry and they eventually put it in the Academy Yearbook. And later of course, they served in the Navy. And I don't think it'd be too much of a stretch to think that some of them might have had something to do with it, but we don't know that. Right. So yeah, because it's interesting that, you know, that I just, you know, naval traditions probably being being very formal, kind of cutting loose from that one night, a year to do, you know, poetry. And we never really know what types of form that those poems would take, because I mean, your book has like so many of them and all different styles of poetry as well. Yeah, that's, that's correct. We, we looked at for this, this particular book, we looked at over 10,000 poems that came from logs from the 19, mostly the 1950s through the 1970s. And there was, there, there really were a lot of different kinds of poems. Very different in many ways from the ones that we found from World War II. But, yes, they're, as you said, we cataloged a wide variety of styles and a wide variety of sentiments being expressed by the officers who wrote the poem. I mean, you've got to figure, you know, these were all young men too and, you know, especially around World War II, that they were probably wondering like, am I going to make it out here alive? Yeah. Yeah, that would have been true in World War II. And something, the first book we wrote, Midwack in Berks, dealt with only the poems written in World War II. And the fact is that more than one of those poets ended up dying later in the war. And, unfortunately, I guess they, they kind of knew the, the grim realities of it. And, and it even carried through probably even to, I'm sure, during Vietnam as well. Oh, yeah, really? Yeah. We have a lot of fun in Vietnam. And one of the captured book deals with all the different feelings and the responses that be gel off standard as they were involved in the Vietnam War. And, we're in the middle of the danger, but they still wrote this poem at the backlog so interesting. Is it still strictly upheld? Do you think in the Navy right now that where it's like you have to do it because it's tradition? You think they, they kind of tie that into the, the naval atmosphere? Well, one of the problems that, I don't know whether I call it problem, but one of the things that, that we saw in the history of, of mid watch deck long poems is that by, oh, maybe 2010 to 2015, there were only maybe a dozen and a half or a little more of poems that showed up in deck long on US Navy ships. And, in fact, the naval history and heritage command started a competition back a few years ago and asked current sailors who were officers of the deck on the mid watch on New Year's to send in their, their poems that they wrote. And, and their reprises and so on. And that's been going on for several years. So I think we could say that the tradition sort of almost died during the 50s to the 70s was really the height of this tradition. I mean, that's where most of the deck long poems were written. And then it started dying out and now the Navy is trying to get it going yeah. And I guess really what you think about from like the 50s to the 70s, that then society really changed a lot too. Oh boy. So, you know, the poems, you know, whether as long as short as they were, a lot of them that you feature in the book definitely reflect a lot of the events that are going on. Yeah, right. Quite a few of them deal with cultural issues. Of course, the Cold War and civil rights and the idea that these guys were serving in Vietnam and there were people at home protesting the war at the same time. You have the cultural revolution of the 1960s that shows up. We have a whole chapter, you know, that focuses on how these guys were bonding to what was going on back in the States with pretty interesting stuff. I was curious out of, you know, gathering all those poems if each of you had like a favorite portion of like a favorite style of poem that we're collected. What about you Gary? We'll start with you. Well, the Vietnam chapter is the one that I work on most I think. And that really, you really grabbed me because these were guys that were contemporary when I was in the Navy. And although I didn't serve in Vietnam, I did serve at a naval hospital where the meta back the wounded were sent. So it was a personal thing for me. So those times were very meaningful to me and I think they were probably my favorite. Yeah. Okay, okay. You're there? Well, I was moved by a lot of the Vietnam poems in the same way that Gary was. All the Gary, as he said, did the bulk of the book on that chapter. But I lost friends in Vietnam. And of course, I was the right age to be sort of in the midst of it at that time. But in terms of favorite poems, I really got a kick out of some of the poets who tried to emulate the writers like Robert Service, his poems, you know, memorable and a lot of people probably can recite portions of them. There was one that I thought was really great called, to see or not to see, that's a good question, which is a hamlet soliloquy and naval terms. So those are some of the things I got a big kick out of in reading the poems. Okay, Dave. It's really hard for me to choose what are my favorites in terms of the categories. But I sort of lean toward Ken's suggestion that when deck log poets tried to emulate famous poets, we had some excellent poems that mimicked, pose the raven. And we're just extraordinarily accurate in terms of the meter and so on. But I think one of my favorites, which actually led to sort of a funny scene, I'm sure if anybody who had been looking at me, one of the poets, and I think this was from the 1950s, he actually wrote his deck log poem in the form of the modern major generals thing from Gilbert and Sullivan's Pirates of Pinsant. And it was so, when I read it, it was so accurate in terms of how that song is sung, that I, and I actually was in the Pirates of Pinsant once, along with Gary, by the way. And I was there in front of the computer singing the modern major general song with the words of a midwatch poet. And I'm sure people would have thought I was crazy, but I had to do it because it's just reading it. It seemed like it was so close to what we actually hear in the operettas. I want to make, I want to make clear I did not perform in the show with these two guys. But one of the things that I think really comes through in a lot of the poems across the years and across the various subject matters is that a lot of these guys were very well educated and literate. They showed a knowledge in many cases of classics. We have poems with repeated reference to Greek and Roman mythical figures. Lots of reference to famous poets. I'm not sure most people would think of naval officers as being highly educated, but a lot of these guys showed a lot of awareness of literary history and such. I would say the poems that I liked were the poems written by the ones who didn't want to write poems. Yeah, because it was so funny. I mean, they were like, well, I don't know how to be clever. And in doing so, they were clever. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I would say, oh, I can't do this. I'm no poet. And then they would do a marvelous job of writing a poem. Yeah, very time. If only I was like that with being funny on my podcast. That they take a little more years, guys. I'm not sure. Maybe the tricks to relax and don't try too hard. Trying with what is trying. Only at 400 episodes, I got to try and get it right sooner or later again. So I noticed that you guys also have a website that contains like a huge sampling, just like the book of the poems too, if you want to check those out. And they have your stories on there as well. Yeah, yeah. Basically, I opened it up on the website. If anybody wants to get a poem from a particular ship or wants to see if a particular ship had had a poem in its deck log, I am more than happy to go through our database. And like I said, we have over 10,000 poems. And I don't have them as searchable as I would like, but I can find them fairly easily. How long did it take for the three of you to compile everything and do the book as well? How long did it take? Well, I have to admit that I'm pretty, I'm fairly tied into this project and have been for a number of years now. So I was the one who went through about 16 and 17,000 deck logs to find the 10,000 plus that we have of poems. So out of 16 to 17,000 deck logs, a little over 10,000 actually had poems in them for New Year. And I looked at every one of those own log. It took a few months working a few hours a day. What did you have to get permission of to get the information from the logs? Was there security clearance involved with anything like that or? No, these are these are posted by the National Archives. Okay. They are available publicly. They have been declassified. In fact, some of them have been from World War II era. We're not declassified until like the 60s, 70s. But these have been declassified and are freely available online. And of course, we want people to see it in your book and on the website as well to send a little attention in your way. You know, are you guys, is there going to be like a further project or you think like, okay, we've we've capped off as much as we can possibly include in here. Okay, Dave. Well, I have to say that Gary has nobody to blame but himself for getting involved in this. Because when I started writing on my blog about it, actually after the first post that I had on my blog about this did watch poetry, Gary wrote a comment on my post saying, I think you're on to something here. There might be a book in this. And and I said, well, I'll do one if you, if you'll join. So he has no one to blame but himself on the first book. And after after we finished that and started on the second one, I knew that that Ken was the perfect person to come on to our team because he's extraordinarily knowledgeable in poetry and is is an excellent editor. And if you're writing a book, and is the guy you want on your team. So Ken was was gracious enough to come on and join us. But I I'm sort of finished at this point. Okay, fine. But by the fact that we've sort of hit the wall in terms of publicly available deck logs. After the 1970s, you almost have to go into the archives in person to be the log. So can't do that remotely. So speaking for myself, this is probably the end of this project. Right. I know you would also reference that some of the poems were included from the was it the Air Force and some astronauts as well. Oh, yeah. There was one point that was written on the space station, I think it was. Yeah, one of the US astronauts who was in naval officer wrote the log and did it as a point. So that's the only one of those we found that it was pretty special. Maybe the astronauts have to start some sort of tradition that you guys can follow up on. Okay. We want everybody to know like where they can find more about your you guys work. If you want to share some of the fights and links that you have where you're available. If you can let everybody know you can start whatever order you want to start. Very very out of web page. It's just garygoing.com. All one word, you know. And Amazon, Facebook, different places like that. I think you can find some of my stuff because I've published a couple of novels and this is the second of fiction book. Okay. Okay. Most of my work has been in psychological circles. I'm represented on the web page of the Department of Psychological Sciences at the University of San Diego and I'm on Facebook Kenneth D. Keith. But I'm not as active as certainly not as much as Dave on social media. Okay. Dave. Well, I guess we should probably say that in terms of our mid watch poetry books. The first book was that Gary and I published his is available on Amazon, it's, uh, It was published by McFarlane Press back in 2023 and of course our It was booked The watch stands is written is published by wild blue press and it's also available on Amazon and Our website as you mentioned is Pretty simple to find it's just www.vidwatchinverse and there are hythns between midwatchinandverse.com Other than that, that's that's pretty much what What I've been doing since my retirement nine years I guess I guess we all have author pages at Amazon too. Yes, yeah Great again, so everybody the what the book is called the watch stands as written Voices from the midwatch and we've been talking to authors David Johnson Gary Gwen Kenneth Keith Gentlemen, thanks so much for coming on the show. Oh, thanks for having it. Thank you Listen and subscribe on podcast apps everywhere and we're on YouTube and show evolution. Sorry. No video. You're welcome Thanks so much to David and Gary and Kenneth for swinging by the Sherpaschallet and a little time here in the Sherpascreening room. I'm glad we got to do some Sherpascreening room stuff I was thinking wow, it's been a while here and it's getting mighty dusty in here, so I will be cleaning up after these guys leave And there's a lot of dust that's kicked on around here But I hope you have enjoyed the show and of course if you would like to Check out the book the watch stands as written. We have provided a link to you in our show notes as we always do with books that we like to check out So I hope you do check it out and that you do enjoy it also So you can hear this show on Podcast apps everywhere or also on our YouTube channel, which is called Sherpa Lucian and You could follow me on social media on Instagram threads TikTok, which is Sherpa Lucian one I think that covers it And we're here every Wednesday with uncore episodes the Sherpa selects on Saturdays If you'd like to check it out those are the ones from our earlier seasons We are actually venturing into season eight. I actually know where we are this time because I've been saying season seven for about Five and a half years now But I finally got it right So swing by and have a listen I think it's stuff that you may really enjoy I got to spend time with some really good guests and these are the shows that I really Enjoyed personally and just kind of give you a little bit of commentary in the show notes to see what I think of these shows and Maybe try and catch up with some of these guests and hopefully some of these folks will come back on the show and we can do a little bit of Catching up, which is what we like to do every while so until then I say to you Viva Lusher pollution Thanks for listening to the Sherpa screening room Don't forget to subscribe Right review and share this podcast. I'm Mr. Bruce and this has been a Sherpa lose studio's production Viva Lusher pollution