To hear “River City” announced over the ship’s intercom is to know personal despair without the reassurance of its purpose. That pair of words heralds the immediate cessation of any communication with the outside world. The ship’s internet, email, AT&T payphones, and all other means of telling one’s wife, mother, or siblings why one has stopped responding mid conversation are crashingly forestalled, and the average sailor or Marine never knows why or for how long the abortion of speech will continue. Like a mason at Babel, the enlisted man is suddenly altered in his capacity to express himself. All at once, it’s just you and 5,000 souls aboard the ship — a mute, steel-clad leviathan that defies God by swimming above the waterline.
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