My first poop report story was about the tactical shituation aboard my first ship: ten shitters in a row that geysered saltwater up each shitter when one in the battery was fired. I knew then, and your dear readers may have suspected, that there would be a follow-up installment that involved the ten-shitter battery.

There was a time when the US Navy made regular port calls to Subic Bay, Republic of the Philippines. In the day, Subic Bay was an ideal place for Sailors to get their drink on and go wild before returning to civilization. Subic Bay is also home to half of the diseases and viruses that plague the earth.

I'd heard all the stories about the "P.I." from the old hands, but I was about to find out for myself after a ninety four-day stretch at sea. There was a malady referred to as the "Samagoo Squirts", which was supposed to be a result of drinking San Miguel beer. The old hands said everybody got it in P.I., and to be ready to deal with it. But I was a healthy twenty-one-year-old sailor with the requisite bravado of youth coupled with an indifference to warnings, so I didn't give it much thought.

Before we pulled into port, the Corpsman gave a brief about STDs, especially mentioning the viruses and other diseases to be had:

• "Don't drink the water."
• "Don't eat anything that doesn't come from the ship."
• "Cover up that spear, Sailor!"

It was all sage and heeded advice -- until a young sailor got a snootfull of San Miguel or a couple of pitchers of MoJo in the tank.

While in Olongapo and walking between bars on MagSaySay Drive, my shipmates and I passed many vendors selling various eats that smelled wonderful to somebody sick of shipboard chow; and after passing a bunch of vendors and consuming enough San Miguel, we eventually started sampling the local food. My favorite, hands down, was the monkey meat on a stick. (They called it "monkey meat", but I figured it for pork. Real monkey meat was an expensive delicacy in P.I., and we could buy a fistful of these sticks loaded with meat for next to nothing.) I ate a ton of it!

Drank me plenty of San Miguel, too! The first time I went to the bathroom out in Olongapo, I discovered that many of the restrooms were "full service" facilities. What they lacked in modern plumbing they made up with in ingenuity and human attendants. I walked in to the restroom expecting a trough and not much else, but boy, was I in for a surprise. The trough was there -- but not the trough I expected. Even though it was January, it was hot, so this one was filled with ice to hold down the smell. It was also manned by an attendant armed with a towel. That's right -- there was a man with a towel standing by the trough, waiting for me to piss. I stood at the trough and brought out my weapon, but I couldn't fire because he stood directly behind me and started to fan me with the towel! I could not get my firehose to release any firemain pressure.

He spoke to me about the weather, the beer, and the food; and finally the backpressure of all that San Miguel won out, and I did my business, left a tip, and stumbled out.

I staggered back to the ship, went to sleep, and woke up hung over. I then stumbled through the work day (healthy dump included), and repeated everything the next night, worse than before.

The third day I had the duty. I was hung over from the two previous nights, but still functional. I made my way through the workday in one piece, took another normal dump, and ate my shipboard food. No big deal. I'd lucked out and had the 16-20 watch (four to eight PM), so I even got to my rack early.

My rack -- my haven amongst the chaos -- was located in the forward berthing compartment, right behind the five-inch gun mount. It had a high ceiling, so instead of the normal three-high racks, ours were four-high to get the most men in the tightest space. Mine, of course, was one of the highest racks, above the light fixtures.

At 0200, I kind of woke up with an urge to fart. It felt like no big deal; there no warning of the impending disaster. Considering myself a hardcore sailor most of the time, I usually jjust let my farts rip. And to this day, I don't know why I didn't just let it fly like I normally did; but for some reason, I only let out a sample.

It felt a little damp.

Enough escaped to alert me to go to battle stations -- but not enough to qualify as a mass conflagration.

In the middle of the night, in a dark berthing compartment filled with snoring sailors, in a rack above the light fixtures, I faced the toughest challenge so far of my short Naval career. How was I to descend through the lights safely to the deck, walk through two berthing compartments, and then aim the barrel of my torpedo tube safely at one of the shitters in the ten-shitter battery so I could unleash my weapon of mass destruction without suffering a fatal self-inflicted salvo of friendly fire?

I held my butt cheeks together as tightly as possible as I eased through the lights like a snake in a tree. I stepped on someone's hand as I climbed down, but he never stirred or even noticed, due to his current state of oblivious inebriation. When I reached the deck, I thought I was home-free. I figured since I was able to hold my fire during the descent from the Tower of Death without cooking off a round that the transit to the head would be a snap.

That's before I felt the impact of the main invasion force.

I didn't even get out of my own berthing compartment before the assault on the shit canal loch began in earnest. Waves of turd torpedoes were banging against my number two torpedo tube in an attempt to break free of their fortress before I could determine a safe firing solution. I attempted to halt fire by grabbing my butt cheeks with both hands and pressing as hard as possible. I took on the running style of a crab, side-stepping through the other compartments as fast as I could to get to the bombing range. And as I ran through the passageway with both butt cheeks clamped in my hands, I passed the sounding and security watchstander making his rounds. His shit-eating grin betrayed that he knew exactly what was wrong with me and why I was heading to where I was. He stood to the side and let me pass, a damned good thing, too; I'd have shit on him if he didn't.

I made it to the head, and because it was two in the morning, only one other shitter was engaged in combat. I entered the first shitter of the battery and thought I was in good shape, but then I realized I had no other choice but to take my hands off my butt cheeks in order to lower my skivvies. As quick as I could, I let go of my cheeks and ripped my skivvies down while simultaneously plopping my shit chute down on the breech of the number one shitter.

Upon releasing control, my torpedo tube immediately commenced launching ordinance. Some of it landed in the approved target, some didn't. When my butt made contact with the seat, I intimately discovered how much didn't make it to the target.

I figured I was lucky because I was close to a sink and didn't shit on any of my shipmates while making the dash of death through the berthing compartments. I remained on the firing line for thirty minutes easily. The other fellow engaged in combat must have had Samagoos, too, because I could hear his battle cries, and they were the same as mine. He finished before I did, and in his haste the asshole didn't give me a "fire in the hole" courtesy notice before he flushed. This resulted in a saltwater wash of my poop chute while it was spewing liquid magma.

After the battle, I had to treat the wounded. My ass was empty of ammunition but definitely neither ready nor able for further doody. Not only that, but also I had to clean the collateral damage off the shitter and inside the stall; turd terrorism is dealt with very harshly in a close shipboard living environment. My name was stenciled on my skivvies, so if I simply put them in the trash I'd have them stuffed down my shirt by the person forced to clean the next day, and rightfully so.

So I cleaned up the shitter stall and myself. I put the waste in a securely-tied plastic bag, hid it in the cleaning gear closet, and took the bag to the pier trash bin first thing after I got up in the morning.

Keep in mind that we'd been to sea a long time and felt very pent up. Two nights of my drink on followed by a duty day of rest -- even with the 'doody' night --- and I was ready for action again. The only drawback was I still had the Samagoo Squirts and had to hit the shitter every forty minutes or so for a follow up skirmish. No problem, I figured, and left the ship with a roll of toilet paper in my front pocket. It was then that I noticed some front pocket bulges in my shipmates' pants while walking to the gate for another night in Olongapo. I was in good company.

Of course I reloaded my beer ammunition magazine with more San Miguel, but this time out in town I had to hit the shitter to continue my battle with the Samagoo Squirts instead of a urinal. This is where I earned my permanent Shameless Shitter status. Remember the restroom attendant who fanned me while I sprayed a geyser into an ice-filled trough? Well, his contemporary held the stall door open and fanned me while I continued my regular trips to the shitter for my contribution to the Samagoo Gods.

The first time I was very self-conscious about another human being in the same room with me as I tore that place up -- he was fanning me with that towel and talking, too! After a few more San Miguels and just as many trips to the shitter, though, I appreciated the cool breeze he generated and the clean toilet paper he provided when mine ran out. I gave him a nice tip when I left.