Stenciled Clothes

Everything I personally owned in the Navy was stenciled with my name and service number on it. This was especially true for any clothing or towels. One of the very first things we were issued in boot camp was your stencil. Your seabag, carryon bag, hats, underwear, uniforms, everything had your name and service number stenciled on it. We would use the stencil with large black crayons which we would rub our names and numbers on to our clothes or other possessions. It was all very efficient. The photo here is off my stenciled seabag.

That certainly made sense when you lived in a very tight environment like a warship with other people in very close quarters. In boot camp we learned to take care of our uniforms and keep them clean. We were issued little sewing kits for mending problems. Polishing our shoes and boots was always very important. We learned to wash our clothes by hand the proper Navy way. Later while in A school training we did our laundry personally in a laundromat type facility on the base.

On a ship things were very different. There was a small laundry and some guys were there everyday as their job on the ship. They were part of the ship's service team. We had mesh net bags that we would put all of our laundry in for cleaning. Each crew member had a bag with their name on it and all of there clothes would be laundered in that bag and come back cleaned and dry.

I carried that stencil around with me for four years.