Korea
In September, we visited the port of Pusan Korea where I had a few days of liberty. On the last day, I hung out with my friend AK2 Tyrone Mosier and did some last minute shopping. We were supposed to get a tour of a Korean shoe factory, but the tour was canceled when it was announced that Nike had bought the factory and no longer allowed for visitors. At the time, I had never heard of Nike and how ironic that I would eventually own a Sporting Goods store and sell the very product that was made in the factory I wasn’t able to visit.
As we were heading back to the ship, a storm was approaching and conditions were deteriorating quickly. Since the Vinson was at anchor, we had to take Liberty Boats that would hold a few dozen sailors at a time. The photo to the left is from my Cruise Book that shows a Liberty Boat at the fantail of the Vinson.
The Liberty boats would pull up to a floating dock that had a gangplank to get back onboard the ship. As we were tying up to the dock, there was a commotion behind me with a lot of yelling. I turned around to see that a rather large sailor was being held upside down with his head under water and was being crushed between the Liberty boat and the dock. Apparently the sailor had fallen overboard and a couple of guys were trying to pull him up on the dock but he was too heavy. I gave my camera and wallet to Tyrone and proceeded to lunge across the Liberty boat and dove in to the ocean. As I swam back under the Liberty boat, I could see the sailor upside down with his arms flailing and his camera still around his neck. I popped my head up to tell the guys on the dock to let go so that I could bring the sailor around to the side and not get crushed between the Liberty boat and the dock. As the sailor was being lifted out of the water, I saw that three other sailors had fallen in the ocean and so I went to rescue each of them successfully.
Where my story goes dark is that I have no recollection of contemplating making the rescue. As I told my Therapist, it was like an out of body experience where I was witnessing the rescue and not actually making the rescue. It was as if something was controlling my actions and I was just going along for the ride. I never had any flashbacks to the incident, never dreamt about it, never talked about it, and I had actually forgotten about it until Tyrone came to visit me in Michigan just a few years ago.
As I went up the gangplank following the incident, the Chief Petty Officer of the Watch started yelling at me thinking I was one of the (drunken) sailors that had fallen overboard. Tyrone explained to the Chief what had happened and so I proceeded to go to my berthing area and take a shower. As I stood in the shower trying to get my body temperature back up, all I could think about was the fraud, waste, and abuse I was exposed to and how massive it was. I was traumatized by all the corruption (that would only get worse) while being unfazed about what happened the last night of Liberty just off the coast of Pusan.
The following morning, Tyrone came to see me and he brought with him a copy of The Eagle which is a daily newspaper for the Carl Vinson while on deployment. On the front page, there was a picture of two Hospital Corpsmen who were given credit for making the rescue the night before. Ty commented on how amazing it was for the Corpsmen to have made the rescues without ever getting wet. Lt. Betts attempted to have me credited for having made the rescues however the powers to be wanted to sweep the incident under the rug as “much alcohol was involved”. It turned out that the three sailors who jumped in the ocean thought the Liberty Boat was sinking when they saw me dive in to the ocean.
Drunken sailors do stupid things.
Less than a month after the Pusan incident, we pulled in to Hawaii where I met up with my father for the Tiger Cruise to Alameda. In an act of retaliation, I was ordered to continue to work full time (12 hours on, 12 hours off) while every other sailor who had a family member on the Tiger Cruise had the time off. Though my dad and I were able to spend some incredible time together, it wasn’t the same and I became even more resentful towards the Navy.