[meadsjn]

Boatswain's Pipe Calls

We never forget the sounds of General Quarters, fire, collision alarm, security alert, etc.

General Quarters, General Quarters.
All hands man your battle stations.
Up and forward on the starboard,
Down and aft on the port,
To your battle stations on the double.
Now General Quarters.

[LonePalm]

There are actually three Bosun's calls that precede the spoken word for General Quarters, two long attentions followed by an all-hands.

If you weren't expecting anything at that time, such as the middle of the night, you would already be moving for your GQ station before the bosun ever said a word.

One day in the Med we were having morning officers' call in the wardroom due to heavy rain. The XO had just finished explaining that there would be a GQ drill in 30 minutes when the Bosun started GQ. The XO exclaimed, "Damn it, Randy (the 1^st LT who was OOD) jumped the gun." I piped up, "He didn't say this is a drill."

We emptied the wardroom in less than 5 seconds. I was last man out and still made it to Combat in under 30 seconds. That was 100 feet forward and two decks up. Seems there was a fire in AUX1, that's the generators. We were buttoned up in record time.

WWG1WGA

Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)

[stylin19a]

ThankQ for that.
Supposedly, the Marines “oohrah” is an outgrowth of a submarine claxon during a dive - “ar-uga”