These are a list of instructions written in a log book by the division officer to be carried out over night by the watch standing sections. In engineering our night orders were written by the Chief engineer. His orders covered all of the engineering divisions, AUX, DC, and Main. The book was kept in central control and each person who stood watch over night had to read and sign the book.

The orders mostly would tell us to keep things running smoothly. He would also have BECCEs, Basic Engineering Casualty Control Exercises, held in one of the two main engine rooms. You never do them in both engine rooms just incase something happened. If he noticed something that needed to be painted, cleaned, or fixed he would put it in those orders as well. But, a good sailor never let anything like that get put in the book.

Often each division officer would add his own couple comments in the night orders. Sometimes the strangest things were written in these books. Most of the strange comments are things I cannot write here for different reasons. One evening after reading the CHENG’s orders I jumped down to what our MPA had written. When I finished I turned and look over at him and asked him if he had gone off the deep end, sir. He just laughed. The scary thing is these books are all saved and eventually end up in the national archives.

Since we had to sign the night orders we had to follow them if anything was not completed that was in the night orders we had to write in the book as to why it was not finished. Our CHENG also wanted us to write anything in the book that we did that was above and beyond our regular watch standing. I was bored one night so I did something like that. The ship was running like a top and there was not much for me to do. I was training a new guy and he was able to watch things, so I pretty much had noting to do. So I went to my JP-5 pumping equipment and started to paint it. I also took a big can of never dull and gave the tops of the fuel filters a major shining. Since they were brass it made things look really nice. For this work I got my one and only BZ from not only the CHENG, but our XO. But that and 50 cents could buy me a Diet Pepsi.