Never really had an issue with swabbies either. (there were plenty of other guys to fight). And, I spent a lot of time floating around on those big gray boats. Sometimes, those swabs were a pretty darn welcome sight. I recall one particularly foul weather night off the coast of Southern Lebanon...I think it was in like late January, early February 1984...I was soaked to the bone, cold as a frozen side of beef, and hungry enough to eat the south end of a north bound mule. When those sailors on the USS Ft. Snelling hauled me and my little IBS boat crew (IBS: Stands for "Itty Bitty Ship") out of the ocean in the middle of the night, the mess deck squids had either got up early or stayed up late and had made us fresh hot cinnamon rolls...dang, those were the best dang cinnamon rolls ever! If my memory serves right, the Ft. Snelling was shortly thereafter decommissioned. That Med Cruise was I believe her last. And don't even get me started on those old Stinkin' Corpsmen! Man, I had some of the best guys in the whole stinkin' navy serve as Corpsmen in the units I was in. I never had a bad guy wear a Corpsmen's uniform. You wanna talk about tough? Those guys are tough. They did every thing the rest of us did, plus they would give you a band aid if you got a boo-boo, or an aspirin if you got shot or had the sniffles or something. Corpsmen rock. Period.
