After serving only a few weeks at Naval Station Everett’s port operations center, one master chief volunteered for a duty assignment that would take him half way around the world and plunge him into one of the most dangerous places on it.

That was six months ago. Today, Master Chief Operations Specialist (SW/AW) John Gross, NAVSTA Everett training department, has returned safely from Afghanistan with armloads of stories and yet another “chapter” added to his Navy book.

While in Afghanistan, Gross worked as the non commissioned officer in charge for the joint operations center in Kabul, compiling and distributing battlefield information to the higher authorities in the combat zone. 

“From medevacs (medical evacuations) and the number of captured bad guys to weapons caches found and battlefield engagements, we assembled all that information and sent it on to the battlefield commanders,” said Gross.

At the end of the day summary report, Gross and his team made sense of information gathered from 26 different Afghan provinces, often working from 6 a.m. till midnight.

Despite the grueling work schedule and war zone headquarters, Gross said one of the toughest things to get used to was the high-speed deployment schedule of other services.

“We spend time getting underway and separating from our families,” said Gross. “Then getting accustomed to being underway with that crew and the training that happens all the way across the ocean and up into that theater of operation.

“With these type of deployments there isn’t any of that time. You go right from training and you fly into theater so it gives you an appreciation for how the other services live,” he said. “Coming back was the same way. You don’t get the smells of the water or the view of the coastline. It’s a unique experience.”

With the air of a man who’s obviously packed a lot of experience into his 21 years in the military, Gross said his entire Navy career and all the training involved is what prepared him for his six months in Afghanistan. He described it as “both humbling and an honor at the same time to take part in this operation.”

Gross said his time there made him realize the resourcefulness of the Navy in a foreign combat zone.

“It instilled an incredible amount of pride in me to watch how my Navy brothers and sisters operated in a situation that was completely unknown to them,” he said. “I heard on a constant basis from other services input on how the perception of the Navy had changed so much.”

While in Afghanistan, the military slept in tents or small safe houses with three men to a room. At night, the Afghan insurgents would sometimes fire mortars or rockets over the security fences in a blind attempt at striking any building on the security compound. Explosions were something you learned to live with, said Gross. But the closest call occurred for him while convoy commander during a routine haul from Kabul to Bagram to pick up some new replacements that’d just flown in.

“We’d seen some local national activity that seemed very suspicious about 20 miles from Bagram,” said Gross. “I reported that they seemed to have things in their arms. When we got to Bagram, we found out that the other part of the convoy had been stopped because those bad guys we’d seen were setting up an improvised explosive device (IED) on the side of the road.”

The military was able to deploy a quick reaction force to the scene to apprehend the insurgents and disable the IED. Gross said that was one of the scariest days he experienced while in Afghanistan.

“That was a close call,” said Gross. “Maybe not for our vehicles, but if we’d been ten minutes earlier that could’ve gone a different way.

“Those are the close calls that you see. Who knows how many go by that you don’t realize,” he added. “You train to react and be proactive about anything that might cause you harm. You’re always on the alert for those things. It’s still a very dangerous place and people are losing their lives there. But it’s getting better.”

Gross said that Americans should be very proud of the way U.S. troops are handling the situation in Afghanistan.

“We’re doing good things over there and it was awesome to be a part of that,” he said.

Gross returned from Afghanistan in early April. Soon after stepping back onto U.S. soil, he was promoted to the rank of master chief (E-9) and frocked during a ceremony in the station’s Jackson Plaza. Gross said he was “humbled and overjoyed” to achieve the highest enlisted rank in the United States Navy, but he was also mindful of all the people who came before him. 

Today he serves in Everett’s training department sharing his vast Navy knowledge with Sailors fresh to the fleet and enjoying his time out of the war zone.