They stood in a small circle Tuesday morning in the parade staging area at Longfellow Square (Portland, Maine).

From a distance, they looked like typical Navy veterans - their uniforms old, their hair white or gray, their marching skills eroded by the passage of time.

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But these guys were different.

"I've been around the world twice," said Larry Ferrell, 60, of Newport. "Under water."

They call themselves the "silent service" because, unlike most military veterans, these guys were at their best when they made no noise. They spent years serving their country not on open battlefields or sprawling aircraft carriers, but in the elbow-to-elbow existence of the U.S. Navy's submarine fleet.

Now, the Maine chapter of U.S. Submarine Veterans Inc. was about to surface for its first-ever Veterans Day parade. And, good submariners that they still are, this unit could not have been tighter.

"I call him old fart," said a heavily bearded Steve Adler, 50, of Damariscotta, pointing to retired Chief Petty Officer John Wilson, 72, of Hope.

"And I appreciate it," Wilson replied as the group exploded with laughter.

Then, without missing a beat, Wilson held out his pinky.

"Want to sound the horn?" he asked.

Another volley of laughter.

They would not have been here had it not been for Ed Cockburn of Enfield, who served as an intelligence officer on various submarines from 1955-78. Two years ago, frustrated that Maine did not have a chapter of USSVI, he put an ad in Uncle Henry's that read: "Wanted, submarine sailors . . ."

Adler, a second-generation submariner, was the first to respond.

"How many guys you got?" Adler asked on that first call.

"Well," Cockburn replied, "I've got me . . . and you."

But submariners have a way of finding one another. The chapter, which meets monthly in Augusta, now boasts 60 members - a community woven together by names like the USS Hardhead and the USS Sea Dragon and other vessels that spent much of the Cold War playing cat-and-mouse with their Soviet counterparts in the deepest of darkness.

How did they know they were cut out for this kind of thing?

"They'd give you a psychological test and a claustrophobia test before you go on," explained Ferrell. "And they'd only take you if you flunked both of them."

More laughter.

Actually, Ferrell is only half-joking. If you think subs are filled exclusively with robotlike sailors who don't mind living like sardines for days on end, think again.

"I once saw a guy like this for 47 days," said Bill Baxter of Pittston, crossing his arms tightly across his chest.

A straitjacket? For 47 days?

"We weren't coming back for awhile," he said matter-of-factly.

More laughter.

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Yes, these guys love to laugh. But when a man in an American Legion hat came over and told them it was time, the 16-man contingent - several had never, ever done this kind of thing before - quietly took their place in the parade line.

Truth be told, there's more to this than fun. Most of these men vividly remember where they were and what they were doing on April 10, 1963, when the THRESHER sank 200 miles off Cape Cod with 129 sailors aboard. And again on May 22, 1968, when the SCORPION and its 99 men went to the bottom in the mid-Atlantic.

"Half of the guys I went to sub school with were on the Scorpion," said Ferrell. "You asked me earlier why I'm here? Well, that's why I'm here."

Al Childs, who went from a submarine to a second career as a forester in northern Maine, nodded.

"When a sub goes down, generally you lose 100 percent of the crew," he said. "We're not marching for ourselves today. Each one of us represents a couple of hundred other men who were on the boats that didn't make it home."

As he spoke, the band began to play. Adler and Wilson, both in full uniform, took their positions out in front of the USSVI banner with the Maine chapter's name proudly emblazoned across the top. Up went the U.S. flag . . . the State of Maine flag . . . and the blue submarine- veterans' flag.

They march, it turns out, for the same reason they laugh.

"We're the lucky ones," Childs said.