Last Saturday night I was sitting at the office off-base.

It was very busy throughout the Yokosuka honch. 

Well, about 1:30am, there were (3) sailors walking past the JB Yokosuka office.  I saw them holding the guy in the center up by his arms helping him walk.

I grabbed a water bottle from the fridge and ran outside to give it to him. 
As I am going over, there I see Blue lights from the Yokosuka shore patrol, pulling them over near the elevator off-base.

I stood there, waiting to give the guy the water bottle, not understanding if this guy did something wrong at a previous bar, or just got in a brawl, or something...

Well it wasnt that.  It was just the guy had a little too much to drink.

The (2) shipmates told the shore patrol "we are taking him back to the ship, and we got him..There is no trouble.  He just had a little too much to drink, but we are with him, and we will take him back." 
Isnt this what we are suppose to be doing, is looking after our buddy?

Standing there, I couldnt agree with the guy more.  I remember countless times back in 2001-2004, that me and my friends carried back our friends.  No harm no foul.  We took care of each other.  But now, it seems like when you have a guy drunk, they want to give him a courtesy turnover.

These (2) guys that are being good shipmates, they are being stopped, it just seemed wrong. 

I was able to give the guy the water bottle, and he stood up straight, drank the water, and after about 60 seconds he looked pretty normal. 

He was standing up straight, and I just felt it wasnt my place to get involved, so I walked away.

I am unsure what happened after that, or what the outcome was, but its been on my mind ever since that night.

Its really strange how the Navy is changing. 

If the guy was to be escorted back to his command with a courtesy turnover, he would more than like face some sort of punishmeny by his chain of command. 

I have seen it happen many many many times...

Not officially straight to DRB or MAST, but internally within his division, they will discuss it, and remember the situation come EVAL time. 

He may also have to attend and talk with a dapa counselor, etc..

I understand the position the shore patrol have for keeping the sailors in line, but sometimes, it would be nice to let his shipmates be good shipmates.

I agree wholeheartedly. Shipmates taking care of shipmates is the way it should be. I am encouraged to hear that that that spirit still exists. My shipmates took care of me on more than a few occasions and I did the same for them.

What makes it worse is the ships actually tell their guys to do exactly that, helping the guys back to their quarters. The XO of the GW actually offers special lib for it. I think that base security takes their job a bit more seriously then they should, in that regard at least.

Actually, base security just wants to make sure that sailors get safely back to thier commands. That is really all that a courtesy turnover is. Anything other than that comes from inside the command and is probably the CO's policy. Navy policy is that anyone who drinks to the point that they can't get home by themselves has abused alcohol and likely needs some help learning how not to get that drunk again. That is what the DAPA is for. If a sailor knows that getting in that situation will get them in trouble at work, then he should not make the choice to drink to the point where he can't make it across the quarterdeck. Shipmates who really wanted to help would keep this sailor from getting to the point where he gets into this situation.

BZ to the two Shipmates. I think it was proper for SP to at least verify the 2 other guys were good to go. 3 overly intoxicated guys is 3 times worse than 1.

Just the continued wussification of the Navy. Drinking is "discouraged" so no one knows how to handle alcohol any more. So because they don't drink much, they have like 2 or 3 drinks, get happy and now they are "an abuser of alcohol" and everyone is out to ruin their career. Courtesy turnover, that term is a joke, everyone knows what it is and the people who are doing it to their own shipmates know what it means. Dont try to hide behind it and blame the ship when people FROM the ship were handling it.

I think leadership would be happy if no one even left the Fleet Rec. Its easy to be a leader when everyone you are supposed to lead just sits there and uses Skype or plays online games in the nicely controlled environment.

Been in this situation on shore patrol before, but agree that they should not have even let him get to that point. Most of the time the other shipmates are intoxicated as well. Drinking is not discouraged, just responsible drinking should be the norm. I think felinious made the best point in with the last two statements of his post.