REPOST: Rescue, 17 July 85
Gordon
after seeing Drewe's comment but not finding the story itself.
v/r
Gordon
==============================================
Probably in the top 5 of the worst visuals I have in my memory is my best
friend Danny Davis at the far end of our hoist (about 75' down, in order to get
clearance from kingposts, etc. on the SS Tomoe) and watching the ship cork
about under him. I was absolutely certain I was going to kill him. The
Freighter was rolling so heavily, he would start out above one deck rail, and
the ship rolled so far he was out over the water on the other side. Somehow,
LT Kikla* (who went on to command HSL 41, the Fleet Replacement Squadron for
the West Coast Crash hawk squadrons) held the hover with a kingpost doing a
metronome thing directly in front of his eyes -- I honestly do not know how.
We just had to get this guy off Tomoe or he was going to die; his fever was at
105 when we arrived over the top. I tried to convince myself that I wasn't
going to kill Danny, all the while, he keeps giving me a thumbs up sign (our
personally signal for "YOU DICK"). Another second would decide if he died, and
the ship rolled out from under him again, so quickly that it was impossible to
get him clear -- he saw
the guy wires and deck rail coming at his torso and did a flying trapeze move
that allowed him to kick off from the railing as he sailed out over the ocean.
My hands just froze on the controls, not knowing if I should doom that unknown
sailor to death or take another chance at killing my best friend. Two
hammering heartbeats later, the ship wallowed back and there was Danny, shaking
off the stun and getting to his feet, "safely" aboard the freighter. He
detached and ran from view, reappearing moments later with the nearly dead
Burmese sailor. He slipped out of his survival vest and in another minute, I
plucked him without difficulty. As I pulled him in the door, I yelled at him,
"Get into that seat - we gotta git out of here NOW!"; he replied by going into
total shock, foaming, the whole bit. I picked him up like a small wet dog (he
must have weighed about 80 pounds at most) and literally tossed him the
seat, knowing he had a couple minutes before he went brain dead. I sent the
vest down as quickly as I could, sweating through my clothes and hating the
thought of what I was about to do to Danny. Looking down across that same 75'
of life and death, Danny gave me that same thumbs up, hunkered down, and
focused on that railing that was going to be coming for him shortly. I
swallowed hard and hit the [REEL UP] switch, trying to time it on the rolls of
the ship. At that moment, Tomoe entered a trough and practically dove out from
under Danny. I yelled at Kikla to MOVE LEFT, NOW NOW NOW and he did a combat
break to the left, with us trailing Danny like a sonar dome in trail. Fifteen
seconds later, he and I were eye to eye again, working on the little sailor and
trying not to think about what just happened. The little fucker lived, after
exposing us both to typhoid fever. Danny chuckled and said, "Was that payback
for last week??" (we rescued LCDR Twister J.M Twiss a few miles further north)
and I remembered he had banged my skull into the bottom of the helo. I told
him if he ever fuckin' scared me like that again, I'd cut the cable. I'm
sitting here trembling, remembering his acrobatics at getting clear of that
rail. Some things you do in your youth come back to haunt you, yanno...?
>Where do we find such men (and women)?
In the dictionary, under "Young and Dumb". ;)
>>> All rational people stay as far away from them as possible.
>>>
until needed, yep :))
*LT Kikla and I never got along, in fact he was furious when I was promoted to
E-6/Petty Officer First Class at the tender age of 25. That stated, he always
had my total respect as a pilot. Prior to meeting up, he had saved an entire
Seapig full of people during what should have been a catastrophic crash. At
altitude in an H-3 cargo aircraft (I assume HC-1), something exploded and the
aircraft fell out of the sky like a set of car keys. The cabin and cockpit was
filled with dense smoke, making it impossible to see or adequately control the
rapidly falling anvil. Lots of "O-faces", screaming, requests for Mother, etc.
going on all around him, because folks knew they were on their way to hell.
Kikla never let go, never stopped "flying the damn plane", as the old saying
goes. The dropped like a rock toward a hilly/valley landscape below but they
actually started to see a little of what was coming up at them. Kikla knew
this was one autorotation that he could NOT screw up, as it was clear he was
going to hit a hill with a steep angle. Control was adequate for him to yank
backward and nearly arrest the fall and in that precarious position, the
Seaking slammed into the hill, engulfing itself in dense smoke. It rolled
backward and creaked to a stop, miraculously not all squished and filled with
bleeding squidlies. Very few pilots in my experience could have pulled that
little trick off and I credit that to Kikla's stubborn streak about 3-foot
wide. He "flew the plane" and never let go... Now, why he had to be such
an unmitigated jerk at times, I'll never know -- we just chalked it up to his
position as Maint. Officer. :)
Gordon