(I've highlighted the passages that relate to the Bash)

A nine year old's perspecive on submariners

My son Thomas was about to watch his VCR tape of "Down Periscope" with his friend. It is one of his favorite movies, i.e. he knows the script verbatim.

He told his friend "In this movie, there are two submarines. One is a nuke boat and one is a diesel boat. They are kind of different. In the nuke boat the crew is happy because all their stuff is new and everything works real good. They can go real deep and real fast. They all wear these blue coveralls that look like they have been ironed."

"The diesel boat is way old. All the stuff is worn out and broken. The crew is happy because they can fix stuff when it breaks and keep going. They wear whatever weird clothes they want."

"In the movie, the diesel boat is the good guys and the nuke boat are kinda the bad guys, but they aren't really. My dad took us to this Bash thing, which is a big party for submarine guys. These guys tease each other and call each other names, but nobody gets mad like in real life. They just laugh. They have this really long list of all the submarines that sank and didn't come back. One guy reads the list, and another guy rings a bell. It's like in church… everybody is real quiet and some guys get tears in their eyes. If one of these guys only had ten dollars, he would give it to his friend. You can't really understand this stuff because you weren't there."

Bash Memories