Lieutenant Cain

A story of getting out by going through, by Ian.

They say Navy Surface Warfare Officers eat their young. I can attest this is not true, but it happens often enough that it feels true. 

As a young, lost junior officer on his first ship, I longed for good examples to follow. My first department head used all the right words from the latest business advice and never followed them, often taking the tongue-lashing he just received from the XO and amplifying it at his division officers. As the end of his tour drew near, my friends and I hoped his replacement would be our saving grace who’d show us what it meant to be a Navy officer.

Lieutenant Cain seemed promising. We heard he would come directly from his first division officer tour, skipping two jobs in the normal career path to take a department head role and earn a spot promotion to full Lieutenant. This new option had a tough screening process meant to quickly promote the Navy’s best young leaders.

Within days of his arrival, we recognized his professional competence and general bearing. He appeared to know everything about shipboard operations and seemed to remain cool under any circumstances. For a short time, we relaxed in the hope of being in better hands.

However, it did not take long for us all to see that his leadership toolkit contained only a large hammer and vise grips, which he often used simultaneously.

I did a personnel inspection with my division a few days after Lieutenant Cain took over as the Operations Officer. As the First Lieutenant – the ship’s officer in charge of seamanship and topside preservation – I led some of the youngest members of the crew with some of the toughest backgrounds. So periodic inspections instilled bearing and discipline. 

I thought the division looked sharp in their freshly pressed dress blues, with me and my Chief making notes on our clipboards. I felt proud, thinking I had shown myself to be a good officer and my division to be a group of … well … developing professionals.

When I finished, I saw Lieutenant Cain, whom I had spoken with only once before, standing next to the ship’s main gun on the forecastle, or foc’sle.

“Good morning, Sir,” I saluted.

He narrowed his eyes. “That was the most fucked up inspection I've ever seen,” he hissed as he shook his head, turned around, and walked into the shadows of the starboard break.

And so it began.

Once as we pulled in to anchor in Mazatlán, he told us to get to work preserving the aft capstan just as the ship entered a proper tropical rainy season squall. It came down in sheets. So, I informed him we would have to wait until the rain cleared. 

“Get some raincoats,” he growled. 

Of course, I intentionally dragged my feet passing that order down, hoping the rain would clear soon. Lieutenant Cain saw right through me, so he threw that order at my Chief and, before I knew it, four of my sailors crouched in the pouring rain grinding the capstan with exposed steel flashing back to rust immediately behind it. Just plain pointless and cruel, and I could not stop it.

His brand of leadership put me in moral dilemmas that should never be moral dilemmas. One time, while transiting out of San Diego in high winds and cold weather, my division stood in formation forward of the main gun, and only a third of them had jackets. 

My choices: (1) Leave them as they were and let two thirds of them freeze, or (2) have everyone take their jackets off for the sake of uniformity so they could all freeze. 

The obvious answer: no jackets for anyone. 

The third option of letting them all take shelter from the cold in the starboard break since we no longer needed them as line handlers … well, that would make the ship look bad. To whom, I have no idea.

At many times like this one, sailors suffered to save me from an ass chewing. I'm not sure they thought themselves so noble. I could only pretend I made the logical choice and act like I wasn’t suffering, too.

By late summer I had enough. 

Just as I arrived on the ship one morning, he ordered me to have the division preserve and paint the foc’sle. Fine. Then he sneered, “And I want you out there with them. Put on your painting coveralls and get out there and paint with your division. And meet me in my office at 1400.” 

Since he treated me like a deck seaman, I resolved then to act like one. 

When we finished our work, we put away our paint and tools, I got showered, put on my civilian clothes, and just walked off the ship. Damn him and his meeting. I did not care. This seemed to me the only form of feedback I could give him. Just a rigid, rage-filled middle finger.

When I returned the next morning, Lieutenant Cain called me into his office where I saw another department head, the chief engineer. No self-respecting CHENG would be caught dead in the Operations Office, so this had to be serious. 

“I’m giving you a Letter of Instruction,” Lieutenant Cain informed me. 

I had heard about these. A Commanding Officer could give them as the last administrative step before more severe consequences like Captain’s Mast. An LOI formally lists everything you did wrong and gives direct orders specifying how to correct it.

I sat directly across from Lieutenant Cain with the CHENG as a witness while he read the four-page letter verbatim. He began, “Your continued substandard performance has created turmoil for your Chain of Command, degraded the material readiness of the ship, and, most importantly, caused the sailors for which you are responsible to waste time, rework tasks, and lose morale.”

I just glared and listened to the sound of my boiling blood. He concluded, “You must find the motivation and use the skills you have been taught to lead.” 

Something inside cracked.

Find the motivation to lead. I could read between the lines. He meant: “Learn to achieve your objective no matter the human cost. Bonus points if you enjoy it.” In other words, to succeed under Lieutenant Cain, become Lieutenant Cain.

I signed where he told me to sign then deadpanned, “Are we finished?” Seeing his nod, I stood up and walked out with my copy of the letter.

I found the motivation to resist him to the end.

For the next few months, I learned how to get things done in a way completely contrary to Lieutenant Cain’s methods. The result always met what the ship needed but never finished on time. I got my beatings for consistent failure to meet impossible deadlines, and this frustrated him to no end.

About one month before the end of my tour, Lieutenant Cain told me to bring the division in on a weekend to do more topside preservation. I perceived his order as unnecessary and refused to carry it out.

We were underway. It was late, maybe close to midnight. The ship’s passageways glowed with red light, as they always do to preserve the night vision of watch standers. I made my way to my stateroom to get a few hours of sleep before my watch at 2:00am and, as I walked by the Operations Office, Lieutenant Cain asked me about the plan for the weekend. I told him I did not make plans for the weekend.

His jaw dropped. Rather than berate me, he came out into the passageway and almost pleaded, exasperated, working to hold back anger. 

“I don't understand, First Lieutenant. I tell you to do something simple and you don't do it. You have people who live on board and would volunteer to do that work. You have so much potential, but you're not realizing it. How can I get through to you?” He smoldered in the red light.

I wanted to tell him to stop being a sociopathic asshole, but I stayed silent. I could not let him break me. I would not let myself become another Lieutenant Cain.

He muttered under his breath and slammed the door behind him as he returned to the office. I made my way up the ladder to the XO’s passageway then stopped, to lean against the bulkhead and catch my breath, on the edge of a breakdown. I felt trapped. If I could only succeed by becoming Lieutenant Cain, I chose failure with integrity over success without a soul. 

A sailor saw me as the frustration pooled in my eyes. He asked if I was alright. I told him I was fine, just trying to do my best. He stood there silently for a moment, touched my shoulder, then walked past.

I made the slow trudge up the ladder to my state room to get a few hours of fitful non-sleep.

A month later, I transferred to Nuclear Power School. I had earned my Surface Warfare qualification, a Navy Achievement Medal, and an evaluation ranking me just below average.

I was not a great division officer. Pretty terrible, actually. But I was not a complete failure. A few days before I left the ship, the Captain gave me a book, Success is a Choice, by Rick Pitino. He knew about my struggles with Lieutenant Cain. On the first page, he wrote a note: “Never stop learning – and never stop caring. Your passion and compassion are huge assets.” 

That book came with me to every new ship for twenty-five years.

For a long time, I could not understand why the Navy would select someone like him for any leadership position. I can only conclude the selection process looks at results, not the means, and by that measure, Lieutenant Cain was a spectacular officer. He got things done, and quickly. 

Eventually the Navy made him a ship’s captain twice: a destroyer (whose people, based on the stories I heard, remained traumatized years after he left), and a cruiser (from which the Navy ultimately fired him for abusive leadership). I could have told you twenty years earlier that’s where things would end up.

For all his “results,” I’ve always wondered about the true cost. How many people left the service? How many people broke down? And how many more Lieutenant Cains did he produce? How many of them would go on into the future to cause more of the same damage just to “get things done”?

In Lieutenant Cain’s defense, I did learn from him. He taught me to aggressively pursue problems to resolution, to develop creative ways to overcome obstacles, and to speak truth to power. And he gave me a perfect vision of who I did not want to become.

This is a fictional post based on true events.

⚠️ Note: I'll be taking a break next week, so expect the next post in two weeks. 😌

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