Jim Staack

Shipmates Jim Staack

This is a novel about serving in the US Navy in the Vietnam Era as recounted through the eyes of three servicemen, all serving on the USS Neptune, a minesweeper tender or repair ship. The sailors, Starkey, Brodsky and Whitney are friends aboard the same ship. Frustrated by the special treatment afforded the officers on board, the three plot to give the officers a taste of the discomfort shared by the enlisted men. This was a time when many citizens felt it was more important to disclose military tactics than it was to win a war, especially when the war was conducted by a different political party. Because of politics, our traditional values were torn and discarded. Disclosure supplanted pride, integrity and honor. Petty outrage trumped valor. Protest was popularized. Traitors became heroes. Our service men and women were vilified, even those who had lost friends on the battlefield or had themselves been wounded or given their lives. With that state of the nation as a back drop, Starkey, Brodsky and Whitney deal with the day to day drudgery of serving aboard ship away from the combat zone. They had to deal with life aboard ship and growing to adulthood in that community. And they had to deal with hundreds of little things, piled one upon one which made military life tough to deal with, but they all dealt with it in their own way. Hopefully, Shipmates, captures the feel of this time in history, at least one slice of it as it was aboard one ship and to relate the story of the sailors on board and their time with compassion and humor. In many ways it is a raw and unfinished story about raw an unfinished men, struggling for maturity through the lens of the US Navy. We are introduced to the diversity of the Shipmates serving on the Neptune and how they cope with military life and life in general, some more successfully than others.