Death at Sea

A sad subject to bring up but it did happen, and when you lose a friend, it hurts for a long time.

One guy in mind I am sorry to say I don’t remember his name was only 19 and on his first tour to Vietnam while I was on my third.

He thought he knew better than we did about safety and paid for his foolishness with his life.

They were opening the covers off of number 3 hold....each hold cover weighs in at about 2,000 pounds. The Lift operator always yells out to make sure no one is under the crane deck or on the covers....wouldn't want anyone to fall in.

Anyway this guy was preoccupied reading a comic boo and failed to tell the crane operator that he was under the deck, right in front of the 12 inch pad eye that held the cover upright as it was locked into place.

Anyway the crane operator opened up the hatch covers and slammed them into position....One of the guys on the side with a locking pin in hand noticed a lot of blood coming down the towards him.

He immediately yelled out for the crane operator to pull the hatch cover off of the guy....To his horror he found the guy alive impaled on the pad eye with most of his lungs and heart hanging out of his chest.

The guy was crying for his mom and saying he did not want to die, as the medics rushed up on deck to try to save him...but like a man aught in between two railroad cars they knew he would die as soon as they moved him off of the pad.

We held funeral services later that day, and a chopper from Da Nang flew out and picked up his body...His grieving parents did not want him buried at sea.

Everyone was in shock but we had tin cans and a carrier to rearm so we had to go back to work....The XO came on the IMC and said there would be a talk in the morning about his death and safety precautions not bang followed....but it never happened...The captain decided that rearming ships was more important especially to a crew that most of us had already been on ships for over 3 years....The lecture would be handled by the deck Chiefs and then only to the new guys...But I noticed a lot of the old guys listening in...I guess a certain amount of smugness can only go so far....gdh