I guess I lead a sheltered life. It was common for the parents of "baby boomers" to try and shield us from the harsh realities of life; most of them survived the Great Depression, and never wanted their kids to have to want for anything. Prosperity was booming in the 1950's, but you wouldn't have known it in our house. Dad was still in the Navy, and we really didn't have much. We had what we needed, and very little else. It didn't matter, though, because there were millions of other kids going through the same things in their homes. The Greatest Generation knew what it meant to be poor, and so they buoyed away money whenever they could, "just in case..." I don't want to call them "cheap," because that wasn't it at all, they simply wanted to be prepared should the bottom drop out of the stock market again. This is all beside the point that our parents did a lot to shield us from the "ugly stuff".
I got through life pretty easily, trauma-wise, the most traumatic thing in my life, up until I was 20, was having to move from Vallejo to Vacaville after eight years, EIGHT years, in one house. We had moved so often before, and I finally had some friendships that spanned years rather than months, and we were moving again. But that was it. That was the most traumatic thing I had to deal with in my first 20 years of life. I lost a few acquaintances, and a couple of friends before I joined the Navy, but I never saw their bodies, so I was a little insulated. To that point in time, I had never seen a real dead person. That would change on a summer's evening in 1973.
I was on the carrier USS INDEPENDENCE, on deployment to the Sixth Fleet, headquartered out of Naples. I was working as an E-4, assigned to the ship's Intelligence Center. I had met a lot of people in a really short time, and became friends with some of the Boatswain's Mates, the guys who drive the Liberty Launches, etc. When we first hit port on this deployment, I spent some time learning how to be a Coxswain, or the absolute "last word" on that 100-man utility-boat when it was in motion. It was a lot of fun, and I even got to drive the boats, a few times, on supply runs, etc. I actually became quite skilled handling the 40-foot launches..
Some Arab group put a bomb on a Pan-Am flight out of Rome, and detonated it over the Mediterranean between Rome and Malta. The "Indy" was called into service for a Search and Recovery mission. It took us less than an hour to reach the "crash site," and within another half-hour had every boat on board in the water, and the ship was "drafting" volunteers to help recover whatever we could. I was actually working, at the time, we had just finished serving "mid-rats," and my crew was cleaning up in the aftermath. A call came in to the galley, and the Cook came out and told me to report to the Hangar Deck, to help man a boat. I found out it was one of the Boatswain's Mates I had trained with, and he asked for me because he knew I could drive the boat should it be necessary. I ended up holding a "battle lantern" (a yellow lantern seen almost everywhere on Naval ships), and a gaffe (a long pole with a little hook near the end), working the port-side.
My lantern hit something bobbing up-and-down in the dark waters, and I called out "Got something. Port side." Boats maneuvered the launch around slowly, expertly, getting us right next to the object, and allowing me to hook, what turned out to be a seat, with my gaffe, and draw it towards the boat. It seemed a little heavy, for a seat, as I pulled it close aboard. I unhooked my gaffe, and plunged it into the water near the foot of the seat, pulling upward to roll the seat over. A woman and her young daughter were still seat-belted in place, death attested to by the blueness of their complexions. I dove to the starboard-side of the boat, and deposited the contents of my stomach into the Mediterranean.
With the help of another boat, we managed to get the seat, and its gristly contents, onto a "collections" boat, where human remains were processed, tagged, and bagged. It would be a very grim morning on the Hangar Deck, as the remains of nearly 100 casualties, laying in body bags, in a corner of the ship's main deck. Still others were laying in bags on the other ships called to render assistance. Two hundred fourteen, if I recall correctly. Two hundred fourteen people just exterminated by a terrorist. I just couldn't get my mind wrapped around that. Hijacking, I could see, but bombing? To me, it was the worst day of my life. That distinction wouldn't last long.
Later in that same deployment, I had been working the "mid-shift," from 1930 to 0730, for our longest period out of port, brought about by the October War between Egypt/Syria and Israel. Some cute jokes came out of that, and we had some really close calls over a month at sea, but Israel prevailed, and earned it's right to exist. For most of that month, I rarely saw the sun, which can be done very easily on a ship the size of a small city. When the hostilities ceased, and it looked like we'd be able to duck into port somewhere for a little liberty, I went up to Vulture's Row, four stories above the Flight Deck, to observe the morning operations, take-offs and landings, the movement of planes around the deck, all just before sunrise.
It was going to be a glorius morning to be at sea, the sun, from below the horizon, colored them a bright yellow, it was chilly, but promised to be a fine southern Mediterranian day. I thought about spending some time on the weather decks that morning, just to break-up the daily "at-sea" routine. Just being on Vulture's Row that morning was a start.
Sitting below us, and forward of us, was an A-7 Corsair doing "low revs," sort of like idleing for a jet plane. The A-7 is a unique airplane, that kind of resembles a shark, with a wide, mouth-like intake for the engines. On normal occassions, an A-7 would not be started, for non-flight purposes, without a screen (for lack of a better word) that covered that grinning maw, and it certainly wouldn't do an "on-deck high-rev" evolution because the engines will suck down anything within a 25-foot radius of the intake, including a 180 lb. man. Three mistakes were made that morning, The last one, fatal.
I won't go into detail, it happened so fast, a guy was running across the bow of the A-7, and then he wasn't. The sound will haunt me to my dying day, as the blades of the turbines were introduced to body and bones. Worse, however, was that the young man had been reduced to "ground beef," and sprayed against the island of CV-62. Right directly at the six. The material was forced up and out, sprayint into the winds, and right into my face. That was the day I grew up.
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