When I walked on people to go to work

When I worked over in Great Britain in the Navy every year we had a group of protesters that came out to protest our presence. They were called the CND, Committee for Nuclear Disarmament.

Now at the tiny Navy base I was at I guess you could consider us a potential target, I guess that was their beef with us.

When I'd have to walk past them to the base they'd yell and scream at us. "Baby killers!" "You're worse than the Nazis at Auschwitz!" I mean it was amazing. These guys don't even know me and they're yelling this stuff at me.

It didn't make me mad, I just stayed quiet and walked on by. Part of what I'm defending is the right of free speech, so have at! I actually loved going to Speakers Corner in London to listen to some of the stuff that was said no matter how much I disagreed with some of it. I thought it was great that people felt comfortable enough to spout off about whatever there.

So this is the usual routine. Getting yelled at by these folks when they came and protested. But a few times they pulled some stunts to try to actually block access to the base. The most dramatic attempt occurred as my watch group was waiting to go in to do our shift

A huge group of these protesters rushed the gate and basically made a human carpet in front of it, the ground leading up to the gate was wall to wall people laying there. What the heck were we supposed to do? I can't remember who it was specifically, but a higher up in charge ordered us to go in. We were to walk over the protesters and go to work.

I have to say, it was one of the strangest experiences of my life. As I ventured through I carefully watched and tried to step on arms and legs rather than other parts, I figured this would be the least painful for the protesters and I apologized as I walked along to the gate stepping on person after person.

Some of my colleagues were not so kind. They hated these guys and took advantage of the situation to take some of that out on them by deliberately stepping hard on them and not caring where they stepped.

It was surreal. I can still picture looking at my feet as I carefully selected an arm to step on while I made my way across. Very Twilight Zone-ish.

Fortunately it was only that one time they tried that. I suppose since it didn't stop us from going in, it wasn't worth doing again. They occasionally stormed the fences of the compound laying carpet across the barbwire and climbing over. It was a huge security hassle and caused us to have to establish security watches and stand out in the cold.

The only good thing I ever experienced due to these protesters was one night standing on the roof doing one of these security watches I saw a barn owl glide across a field and land on a post. It was amazing. So quiet and large, it was all white and looked like a ghost as it floated over the field in stark contrast to the black night sky. It disappeared back into the dark just moments later, but left a permanent image in my head.

So these are two of the memories that have stuck with me from those days and what a contrast they are. One of ugliness and strife, one of calm and beauty. And yet I would not have seen the second if it hadn't been for the first.