Lost Art of Pipe Smoking in Military

It's summer, so TopD is on the lake. He's the master of military pipers - look up his posts for stories and great meerschaum pics.

There are a group of 4 of us that smoke at our squadron. We get together during those long weeks in the field and smoke our pipes as a way to relax from all the other nonsense that happens around us.
We got a few comments, but nothing malicious.

In the Navy -- 1968 to 1972 -- smoking meant cigarettes almost exclusively, which I didn't smoke. I'd have an occasional

cigar on liberty away from the ship, but never maintained a pipe. On board ship, I observed an especially neurotic guy, who

had a little enlisted rank, who compulsively bummed cigarettes to chain smoke, entirely on everyone else's dime. It went

beyond being a filch. He had a disorder. He virtually never bought cigarettes and he smoked continuously, and he was

making more than many of his soft touches.

mso489 et alia, I too was in the Navy from 1968-1972 and smoked cigarettes and the pipe, smoked Flying Dutchman in the tin. When we went to Counterintelligence Training at Little Creek prior to being shipped to Vietnam we did 6 weeks of extensive training.
The last two weeks were forced marches, actually trying to evade our instructors simulating being on patrol. These consisted of 10K, 20K and 30K with objectives to find using the skills we learned reading maps, using a compass etc. We were allowed 2 each of an item such as a candy bar, granola bar, dried fruit in a packet and once we finished making beef jerky over a camp fire we split it 8 ways among our group. If you smoked you were allowed 2 packs of cigarettes, 6 cigars or one pouch of pipe tobacco, I had to have my tin approved as a pouch which was not an issue.
Each time we were given an objective to reach there was always the possibility of being captured, if captured and an individual could escape and remain hidden for more than 15 minutes they would announce "Academic Situation" which meant the instructors were no longer the enemy and the hidden person could come out. We got caught once and they had us remove our boots and place them on the opposite foot, then lined us up 2 abreast and we tied our boot closest to the person next to us boot then they began to march us. I carried a hatchet so I cut the boot lace of my boot and we kept marching as if we were tied. Up ahead was a deep hole I knew about so I opted to drop to the ground and roll down the embankment into the hole, I told my once tied partner to wait until they either spotted me missing or they had rounded the upcoming bend before he announced "one of our prisoners has escaped".
They didn't find me in the allotted 15 minutes and for that we were brought to a spot far closer to the objective than we would have been had we still been in evasive mode which allowed us to make the objective early. We sat around and I lit up my pipe and except for one cigarette smoker everyone else had smoked up their supply so I offered the pipe to one of the smokers next to me and we ended up passing it around in a circle smoking it and did so anytime we were at rest and allowed to smoke until the end. I'd like to think one of our guys late picked up the pipe although of the 88 of us that went to Vietnam 13 didn't return which was above the 9 count they had given us at graduation.

I smoked in the service too, but I mostly stuck to cigars for the convenience of it. I did enjoy a cob every once in a while on deployment though; my first pipe that I still have and use. I just recently got very interested in pipe smoking.

fishnbanjo, that's some high adventure, and only in the training phase. You sound like a resourceful young guy.

I might have washed out of that rigorous training. I think, even as a radioman, I was given a social promotion in

Morse Code school. The minesweeper I was on ran a typhoon evasion in the South China Sea. We had good liberty

ports in Taiwan and Hong Kong. Mostly patrolled up near the DMA at the mouth of the Cue Viet River. Eventually

I changed rates to Journalist and served on Midway Island, which was like the Garden of Eden. Mighty nice.

I am currently in the Royal Canadian Navy and there is a culture shift to anti smoking. The rumour (anyone military will know all about how accurate this is) is that they will soon be banning smoking on ships all together.
I had never heard/seen anyone smoking a pipe though until I was posted to my current unit where I have run into at least 4 other guys. We manage to get some time to smoke on occasion, but only being allowed on the upper decks makes smoking a pipe tricky...especially in decent sea states...Once alongside though we have no issues. The number of "pipe smoking sailor" jokes gets a tad tedious after a while though...
I'm hopefully going to get a port visit to Boston soon-ish and have time to visit L.J. Peretti.
My dad was a pipe smoker when in the British Army before I was born, but my mother hates tobacco and all associated so he gave up to keep the peace...
Funny story, My dad was a platoon commander in an infantry company, and they were doing a tour/drive around in APC's for a class of female nurses. Well my dad, trying to be the pipe smoking suave young officer he thought he was, thought this a prime opportunity to impress . At one point he was in the turret explaining away when he popped his pipe in his jacket pocket. No more than a minute later there were plumes of smoke engulfing the inside of the carrier. They stopped the APC, evaced everyone out, and started to find out what the issue was...Well as you may have guessed my dad had forgotten to put his pipe out before pocketing...too busy hitting on all the young nurses. So needless to say, he was quite embarrassed when one of the young ladies pointed out that his jacket pocket was half gone and smoldering! To this day my mother still makes fun of him for it.

mso489,

We had 3 wash out one almost within minutes of the US Flag dropping down from the POW Camp they had us in, I felt both sad for the guy and relieved since nobody would have to see him come apart under real conditions. I spent the first part of my tour in the DaNang region with Security where we were the perimeter grunts for various bases in the area. The last part was spent at PBR Mobile Base II down in the Delta where I ran an LCM and the 16' Skimmer, aside from a 38 day TDY to ATSB Vinh Gia in Cambodia April 1970 which kind of beats Pres. Nixon sending troops to Cambodia in July by a shade. After I came home I ended up on the USS Orion AS18, a sub tender then moved on to being Submarine Squadron 4 driver and assistant to the 1 star, even drove Adm. Rickover once. Went on to work for the Navy later and retired in 2005 after over 30 years of service, was certainly an adventure. I salute your service.

Some of the Command in S1 were cigar smokers but a few of them retired; me and a SSGT are the only pipe smokers around Los Al.

I've been in the Corps for 12 years and have known roughly 6 pipe smokers. And I have gotten one guy started on smoking a pipe. He rotated so I don't know if he still is or not. He will be in Afghanistan in the next few months so I am going to send him some cobs and Capt. Black.

fishnbanjo, what a wild and various career! You actually had face time with the amazine Hymen Rickover!

What a fascinating character. Nutty and abusive to his officer underlings, but I think mostly pretty good to

enlisted guys. He was a key character in the development of the nuclear sub, building a prototype in the

desert, to illustrate that it could be safely done. I think he copped a lot of glory from others who developed

it, but that was his nature. I think he took a lot of hassle for being Jewish when that was a new thing for

the officer corps in the Navy. But your life in the Navy was pretty exotic, for four years worth; sounds like

you did it all. I bounced around from Navy boot, to A school (and C school), to a minesweeper off the DMZ,

as part of the configuration called Market Time (carrier, hospital ship, destroyers, 'sweeps, oilers, etc.).

Then back to home port in Long Beach CA. Then to Midway Island for 8 months, finishing up in Navy

Recruiting in Milwaukee, mostly doing direct mail letters and communications type work. Thank you for

your service, and for your work on the civilian side. I have a cousin, a woman, who spent her careers working

for contractors who develop the next generation submarines. I'm fascinated by the new Littoral Combat ships,

which is the next generation minesweeper. When I was aboard a sweep, there were scores of the in the fleet.

Now they're down to a few dozen.

I first smoked a pipe in about 1973. I stood engine room watches with a CPO who was a pipe smoker. After I expressed an interest,he gave me a pipe and a Half & Half pipe tool and a pouch of Borkim Riff Whiskey. I smoked it off and on until I got out of the Navy in 1974. Don't remember what happened to the pipe but I still have that pipe tool. By the time I re-enlisted in 75 I was smoking cigarettes only and didn't pick up a pipe again until 2005 as a means to get away from them.