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My name is
Latrabia Wright. I'm GM3, Surface Warfare, on
the U.S.S. Inchon. GM3 stands for Petty Officer
Third Class, Gunner's Mate.
[The Surface Warfare addition
to Wright's title basically means that she is
a qualified enlisted surface warfare specialist
in all aspects of operating and protecting the
ship and its systems, including weapons, navigation,
damage control systems.]
Basically,
I train shipmates onboard the ship to shoot
weapons. I also do maintenance on weapons, clean
guns. And when I say train, I'm involved with
other shipmates in my rating to help personnel
onboard the ship basically learn how to shoot
a gun, load it, what to do in a - any type of
situation that will put their lives in danger.
The rating is the job description
that you would do. That's where you get your
title from, GM, EW, ET, SM. Basically what you're
going to be doing in the military. So I - see,
I love attention so I figure gunner's mate,
female, really didn't mix because there were
- at the time there were no female gunner mates
and so I was like, okay, I'll give it a try.
My responsibility onboard the
Inchon is basically to train people and watch
how to handle a weapon, basically do maintenance
on the weapons because you know, you can't protect
yourself with a weapon that really doesn't work
or a weapon that's not clean. Basically, we
- I'm a part of the security team that they
have onboard. When I say security team, you
have to have somebody - a team that's onboard
to protect and the people that are on there,
the materials that we have onboard, we're there
to protect. You know, we're trained in that
field and people depend on us to do that. And
if we're not knowledgeable as to how this gun
works or how to load ammunition into that gun,
then people are not going to trust us. And then
in this rating, you have to have confidence,
trust. You have to be honest basically because
people depend on you to do that. You walk around
a ship and it's like, oh, that's the gunner's
mate. How do I take this jammed bullet out of
this gun?
It's very routine. It's not
difficult, but it demands a lot of patience,
a lot of teamwork, basically, because you have
to train people. You're dealing with people's
lives basically. You have to have patience.
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