Once more, I entered the water, not of my own volition, but simply lowered down like a descending spider coming to gently land atop the relatively smooth surface of the ocean rather than the spindly intricacies of a web. The umbilical I attached to my back somehow resembled to me, in my suspended but concentrating state, the earliest appearance of the alien creature in the stunningly effective horror movie of the same name. I was as helpless as the first astronaut who faced it in the movie, but hopefully with the likelihood of a better outcome.
For the dive, I was wearing special glasses, looking more like German tank goggles than anything else, but with no air between the lenses and my eyes. Something had to be between them, but nobody had said anything, and I had plenty of other things to think about besides such a seemingly trivial detail. I had to be able to see on this dive, even though the ROVs had to be providing clear and direct video from their cameras straight back to the science team waiting aboard the tender. I could not look up, so I merely lay face down and waited. Breathing the liquid in and out, like I was rapidly becoming comfortable with, I thought about my family being on a flight to the continental U.S., Marcinko probably still hanging around Albuquerque, and the mission.
My wife hadn’t asked me even one question about the previous mission, nor the one I was on that followed. In some ways, she was remarkably perfect, and I knew I was extremely lucky to have ever found her. Her silence, however, came with a price. I knew it meant that she was worried beyond words and that my importance in her and the kid’s life was immense, and that the loss of my own would be like the end of the world for them.
My body, facing down and flat, began to sink like a stone.
“Terminal descent,” the bone transmitter glued to the spot they’d cut out of my hair just above my right ear said.
I wondered why the divers used such strange terms. I knew that terminal did not mean the end, of course. The word, as they used it, simply meant vertical, so why not say vertical? It wasn’t my call, though. I was so inexperienced it was beyond unbelievable, although everyone thrown together for the project, as they called it, treated me with mostly silent respect, as had been shown to me near the end of my third week in the A Shau Valley. Silent respect was nice. It was also lonely. Nguyen and Kingsley were my solid supports, but they were not very talkative, particularly when others were around. Kingsley had whispered into my ear, just before they filled me with the liquid, that they were taking me immediately to Tripler Hospital when the dive was over. I tried not to think about why he would say such a thing. I was fine and had been fine after the first dive, outside of some PVCs, which were roughly in normal parameters.
I wore a quarter-inch-thick wetsuit top and bottom, plus the booties that went with it. My hands were uncovered, although I would be expected to touch nothing this time around. My pancake of a body began to descend, slowly at first and then speeding up. The wetsuit was for temperature control as the first mission had been relatively quick, just as planned. This time, I would be overseeing the lifting and transit of the device from its embedded state on or just under the sea bottom and into a special compartment or cavern of the U.S.S. Kamehameha, a ballistic missile submarine that was undergoing a conversion to become what Hitachi called a bottom dweller. In mid-conversion, this submarine had the capability of assisting and then loading the device into a protected part of its hull, enclosing it, and then sailing away. I’d been shown a picture of the big black submarine, but it hadn’t registered in my mind as anything emotional. Until I saw it.
The first dive had taken me into blackness at about six hundred feet, but not this time. I stared down. I wasn’t being lowered into proximity to the bomb this time. I was on the Oahu side of the angled plane where the device was embedded. There was enough light to see the object, the three ROV undersea robots, and the massive monster of a black submarine still in the water, its port side facing me as I brought my legs down to plant my booties on, or into, the soft seaweed morass of the bottom.
I thought to breathe, or surge, or do whatever it was I could now naturally do to take oxygen and nitrogen out of the constantly moving liquid. I knew I could stop breathing or making that effort with my lungs and muscles and simply let the stuff charge up my lung tissues, but I preferred to have some feeling in my chest. I was in charge of nothing but everything as I was the only tactile, seeing, and living human being there. The men on the sub were distanced by their steel hull and might as well have been miles away. I finally understood why the scientists wanted me back down on the bottom. Until that moment, standing like a crab with attachments running back to the surface, and staring at the unbelievably massive tube of metal in front of me, I had thought my role ridiculous, although I’d said nothing. I possessed no transmission capability. I could receive messages in one ear.
“Touchdown,” had come when I made contact with the bottom, making me think of Paul Hornung or Jim Taylor of the Green Bay Packers running the ball into the end zone.
The signal device I had was strapped to my right wrist, like the detector had been last time. However, this device was different. There were no lights and only one button. The button, if pushed, meant stop. The mission was over, and everyone would retreat to regroup, surface, sail away, or whatever if I pushed that button. Until that moment, I didn’t realize just how huge the importance of this mission was and my tiny but potentially monstrous role I might play in it.
“What am I looking for?” I’d asked Hitachi.
“Nobody knows, that’s why you’re going down,” she replied, not looking up from her clipboard but making a note of something.
There was no point in moving anywhere, not that I had much of any freedom of movement. I was controlled by the umbilical, not the other way around, and I very much felt that. The hoses of continuous liquid coming in and the exhausted liquid going out were my whole life, and any interruption in that, at whatever I knew, would not be something I could recover from.
I waited, able to see but only in shades of gray and black, until the subs’ lights went on. Suddenly, it was like the sun had risen above a horizon that remained invisible. The light concentrated on the object. I could make out the marks in the mud where my hands had disturbed the mud or much to the point of leaving trails, like an artist might do with a thin trowel or a hard brush.
I felt the sub. I knew there was nothing else mechanical down at the bottom with us. The strange humpback of the sub continued to open. The hydrolic metal moving parts of the hump’s opening door transmitting nearly silent but deep sounds that seemed to flow down from it and along the bottom until reaching me. I knew sound in water didn’t work that way, but that’s what I was feeling, as the door stopped and what seemed like a tracked machine came through the door and moved halfway down the huge sub’s upper surface. All I could do was stare at the giant underwater ship and the contraption on top of it.
A derrick rose from the top of the car, cart, tank, or whatever it was that had come to a standstill. It extended itself out, section by section, looking almost exactly like it was made of parts like what I’d put together as a kid using an Erector Set. I continued to stare, totally drawn into the silent drama going on right in front of me.
The tip of the extended derrick reached a point just down and above the center of the armed nuclear weapon.
A cable began to wind a semi-circular piece of material toward the bomb, but stopped when it made contact.
There was a strange swishing sound, and a small cloud of debris burst out and upward before slowly clearing. The derrick retreated just a little and then performed the same operation. I blinked my eyes and thought as the derrick moved again. I got it. The device was encircling the outer covering of the device with a cable each time it stopped, the mud flared up, and it moved on.
I felt like backing up. I was within only a few feet of the operation, and only the ROVs, gently bobbing and weaving, were closer. Before I could pull my mind together and analyze what I was seeing, however, the machine abruptly stopped, and the boom it had extended retreated.
I waited. Liquid in, liquid out, in, out, and so on for what seemed like a long time. I wore no diver’s watch, so I had no idea what my ‘bottom time’ was, normally a vital statistic when diving, but of course I was a long way from normal diving. No communications were being directed to me or at me. I heard nothing except what was transmitted through the water from the submarine and its attachments. I looked at the button, and suddenly realized that I was looking at it for the first time since landing. It hadn’t occurred to me that I might push it simply because I had no real idea about what was happening right before my eyes.
The derrick ran back out to where it had started and then stopped. Very slowly the end of the derrick angled upward. Very slowly. I was pumping liquid in and out of my lungs as regularly as I could, yet feeling like I should be doing it faster.
In what seemed like an instant, many cables surrounding the device, from one end to the other, all pulled taut, and my vision went away.
I blinked, brought my hands to my eye coverings, and then stopped.
I couldn’t see because I was inside a giant cloud of muddy water. And then there was movement, not initiated by my umbilical, but by the water around me. Fear shot through me for a few seconds. I fought it. Pump, pump, pump, my source of air was secure. I felt my fingers with my other fingers, and everything was as it should be. There was no pressure or tug from above recalling me, so I remained standing where I’d been planted. I didn’t push the button because I didn’t understand what pushing it would do anymore. I worked to calm my mind. If out of the water, I knew I would be taking long, deep breaths, not something possible using the system I was using. I could not use physical cues to calm myself down. I had to wait, but the waiting seemed like it would never end.
The night, after the day, when I’d been informed that my brother was dead, I’d been taken to a movie by one of my former lifeguard partners on the San Clemente Beach Patrol. The movie was called ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’. I never understood the end of the movie, with Keir Dulay sitting there as an old man, just there, just being, and the earth turning, and then the whole thing had faded away. I could hear nothing. I could see nothing. I could feel only the contact of the water. I finally understood the end of the movie, written by a man who wrote the first science fiction book I’d ever read while sitting in detention in the library at Thornton Fractional North Township High School. The character written about in the movie had been waiting. My job was to wait, although I could not stop thoughts about the HAL 9000 computer on the ship being slowly disabled after it failed.
I could not speak or mouth the words, but the song the computer sang while its brains were being disassembled would never leave me. “Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do, I’m so crazy, all for the love of you…” playing ever more slowly reverberated in my mind. Were the liquid leeching portions of my brain out as it circulated through my body like in that so predictive movie?
I settled onto the soft bottom of the sea floor, glad it was soft and not coral or rock. My thin wetsuit protected me from the elements around me. My liquid gave me life. All I had was reverie. How had I gone through almost forty years of life to wind up on the bottom of an ocean sitting next to monumental powers that were the very building blocks of my species, my planet, my solar system, and so much more beyond?
Reality came into my back and grabbed me by my mental stacking swivel as I was jerked to my feet by a sharp tug on the umbilical cord that was my lifeline. I spread my arms out, as if to say ‘okay’ and get back at it, or maybe like the dealers do in Vegas or Reno, symbolically meaning they are done with the table, with the game, with the night. In seconds, I was being pulled from the near-total muddy darkness at the bottom, the weapon’s recovery by the Kamehameha being abrupt, violent, and mission-oriented. I was cast off as debris in a game of chess where I didn’t know where the pieces were, much less what they meant, and what moves might affect my own.
My only move was upward, as light and more light entered my visual area. The liquid that gave me life also kept me from death, and although I had made not one move of any kind during the mission, I knew it was one of the most definitive moments in my life.
Light was everywhere, and with it came warmth and life. I had been cold but hadn’t known I was cold at all until I was warm again. Surfacing wasn’t like a cork popping out of a champagne bottle at all. It was thrusting up slowly through salty, clear Jello until my ankles were secured, and I was suspended above the water. Hands once again were all over me, removing and withdrawing attached and inserted tools and equipment that had been insinuated on and into parts of my body.
Hoisted upward to be swept over to the main body of the tender, I saw Waikiki Beach and Diamond Head from upside down before the machine pivoted me aboard and lowered my body to the waiting arms of the recovery team. Unlike after the last mission, this time the medical people were all over me, and my transport was a regular gurney. For some reason, I had to be tested immediately instead of riding the longboat back to Ford Island and being treated and tested there. Unaccountably, neither Kingsley nor Nguyen was anywhere to be seen.
I was quickly stripped out of my wetsuit and booties before having a towel wrapped fully around me. The towel was pre-heated from somewhere, and a nice comforting touch.
There was no needle penetration for setting up an I.V. or any of that, just one deep plunge from a painful needle into the center of my right wrist.
“Arterial oxygen detection,” the sympathetic attendant said, before pulling away with her sample and disappearing from my view. The doctor, if he was a doctor, appeared at my side.
“You’re in good shape, no more PVCs down there or up here, and that’s a good thing. As you proceed, be aware that there are no studies available about how the liquids you were breathing might affect you over time. If you have respiratory issues, then check in with a physician as soon as possible.”
“What about the heart?” I asked, the three UDT failures are still very much at the front edge of my thinking.
The doctor looked away before rising to his feet.
“Not my specialty,” he said, but with a smile, as if he understood my underlying concern about how some had reacted to the liquid along the way but knew of no real negative side effects.
I slowly sat up and shakily got to my feet. Everyone was wrapping up and departing around me. There was no Hibachi for an after-action report, and Herbert wasn’t there either. I’d done nothing, truly nothing on the mission, and I felt a little bit like I’d failed in so doing, but there was nowhere to take those feelings. Despite not being active under the water, I was once again totally fatigued, not only physically but mentally. Relief flooded through me as I realized the affair was over and that I wouldn’t be going down again. If I never breathed a liquid in place of air in my life I I’d be just fine with that.
The coxswain of the boat was different, the original two UDT Frogmen having given way to others on the staff. The pilot was a large man of thick substance, obviously a weight lifter as well as no doubt equipped in other physical pursuits of prowess as well.
Neither man helped me get across the transom of the boats curved hull. I climbed in on my own as the other man slipped the lines and the coxswain engaged the burbling inboard motor.
I stood up and held on as I worked my way to the bow. The boat ride was short, but I wanted to feel the wind in my face and entering my lungs as we motored across the short distance.
“You’re the hotshot spy guy with no underwater experience running a mission in our own backyard, are you not?” the big man laughed out as I went by him.
I looked across the harbor toward where the submarine pen was, noting that the propellers of all the boats were covered over with huge canvas tent-like structures. Someone on the UDT team had commented about the fact that the number and shape of the fins were a closely held secret,t as their shape contributed to how silent U.S. submarines were to others out there in the world. I turned away from the coxswain and moved further toward the bow. I was deeply fatigued again. All I wanted was to get to the Royal Hawaiian, climb first into a hot shower and then into a cool, comfortable bed.
“Can’t handle the heat?” the coxswain said from behind my back. “Little pipsqueak like you, well, I think we all can understand that. Supposedly, you’re a lieutenant in the Marines, but you are a little long in the tooth for that rank, or is that all made up too?”
I reached the bow, but had to kneel to grab other curved surfaces of he hull that came to a point to make it a bow. I squinted my eyes against the low and wonderful passing air from the ocean water, the aroma better than any perfume. I breathed in and out several times and stared toward where the landing was. I saw two figures emerge from the shadows of a nearby quonsut hut. Relief swept over me. I didn’t turn around again until the boat nosed in and nudged itself into the side of one of the low-lying piers.
I turned back to get my bag but the coxswain moved from his place at the helm to stand between me and the bag.
The big man stared into my eyes, a great fake smile running from one side of his mouth to the other.
“Think you’re man enough?” he hissed out, bobbing his head slightly forward to make the comment more expressively threatening.
“No,” I replied, in my normal voice. As I did so I turned my head and looked up on the pier to see what I expected to see, Kingsley and Nguyen standing at the edge not more than six feet from myself and coxswain.
“This man could well prove to impede the mission. Might you go ahead and remove him from service for a while?” I said, stepping back slightly toward the bow to give both men room to come aboard between me and the macho UDT frogman.
“After you’re done with him, would you get my bag. My clothes are at the center, and I need to dress for the hotel.”
“The chopper is on the tarmac waiting,” Kingsley said softly, jumping aboard.
I wondered what we needed the chopper for, but then concentrated on climbing out of the boat, slowly and awkwardly, as the gantry hadn’t been adjusted to the side of the hull. I got onto the asphalt, but on my hands and knees, almost too weak to stand up. Finally, I was vertical, in time to hear two splashes, one after another. I looked back. Nguyen stood holding my bag next to the helm. Kingsley was behind the controls, and I heard the ignition start the inboard motor.
The coxswain and his assistant were both yelling something from in the water behind the boat.
“Shut it down,” I instructed Kingsley gently.
“Just moving them offshore a bit,” he said, turning the key to kill the engine.
I smiled as I walked toward the building in the distance. Either men would have done anything for me, I knew, but the ten thousand apiece probably made any boundaries to what that might be pretty unlimited.
I made it to the center, went to the locker room, and found my stuff. I changed and felt better in doing so. I’d shower at the hotel where they had expensive nozzles and plenty of hot pressure in the water. I smiled at the thought as I headed back to the entrance. Kingsley and Nguyen stood just outside the bank vault door into the place, like two lions on pedestals guarding the entrance to a museum. The two UDT guys were nowhere to be seen. I didn’t bother to ask about their condition as, if they’d been injured, Kingsley would have reported it already.
A Navy Jeep appeared out of nowhere, its brakes slightly squeaking as it came to a stop. The three of us climbed in. The trip to the tarmac lasted a whole five minutes, if that.
Tiredly, I climbed out just outside the wash of the whirling blades of the CH-53. Mack walked out from under them and motioned us forward, toward the lowered cargo ramp. I walked up the ramp and almost fell into one other what passed for seats along one side of the fuselage, the nylon webbing not comfortable but definitely doing the job of helping to allow me to begin to relax.
The blades of the chopper began to spin faster and faster. Mack leaned into me when I motioned for him to do so. It was too loud for normal conversation, so I cupped my right hand over his left ear.
“The Royal Hawaiian doesn’t have a landing pad for this thing,” I yelled.
Mack leaned forward toward my ear as the machine jerked us all up into the air, and hearing anything became almost impossible.
“We’re not going there,” he got out to me in a muffled form.
How did that thing get down there anyway? Some rigger step on his richard or what? Just wondering
Popeye
Jay, please reference me as to what got down to where and I’ll respond.
Semper fi, and standing by.
Jim
Jay, standing by for you to fill me in on what you are asking. What went down to where and then an answer to how ‘it’ got down there…
Semper fi,
Jim
The bomb or whatever it was that you went diving after in Hawaii…how did it end up on the floor of the sea…did some rigger screw it up tieing it off to what ever it get tied off too or did it fall out of a plane or what?
Stupid stuff happens when rigging…ask me how I know Ive done some heavy rigging and some and have been involved in some crazy unbelievable bullriggin stuuff in my day. Some of it was pretty scary…its a wonder im still alive
Popeye
I don’t know Popeye. I never found out. Broken Arrows, as those things are called, are never discussed anywhere at any time and their data is so classified that the secrecy is never been invaded, not that I now of anyway. I’m do question the revealing of this incident by me might be considered a breech of that long held confidentiality. I do not know for a fact that the event is or was classified however….about my only defense if called or visited. My wife did not want me to tell it at all but what the hell…I’m 80 and the reading public truly needs to know stuff like this in my opinion.
Thanks for the great question and I’m sorry I don’t have a better answer.
Semper fi,l
Jim
Jim,
Well, glad everything worked out mission-wise.
“Breathing the liquid in and out, like I was rapidly becoming comfortable with,”
“comfortable with”? Apparently, as you made no mention of this part of the process. Hopefully, you made no mention of this to anyone. I am quite sure the “powers that be” would have liked to add this scrap of information to their back pocket/future operational needs – ie: ‘So he’s comfortable with it now? Well, no hurry to get someone else trained up on this now is there? Especially based on what happened to those other 3 UDT guys.’
“I knew it meant that she was worried beyond words and that my importance in her and the kid’s life was immense, and that the loss of my own would be like the end of the world for them.”
Yup.
“I possessed no transmission capability. I could receive messages in one ear.”
What? You couldn’t tell them, topside, in the sub, on Howdy Dooty, anyone, if you, the only human on site, that you, up close and personal, saw something you questioned or saw something that you knew was FUBARED? I do not understand that at all. Well, I guess they ran multiple computer scenarios on this semi-important mission of ensuring: the nuke was in the ‘un-armed’ condition; that the coordination of the 3 ROVs was perfect, in their computer simulations along with actual practicing on a ‘copy’ nuke, in lifting up/balancing of the nuke; and finally coordinating the delivery and securing the nuke in a ‘storage’ chamber on the sub, which I’m sure the sub’s crew has practiced multiple times, all perfectly. Obviously, they did all these things and decided there was no need for you to have “transmission capability”. Plus, they saved some money, a la a pre-DOGE review. Ok – I realize that we/I don’t have all the ‘prep’ work that was done for this, but still – Unf___ing believable.
“However, this device was different. There were no lights and only one button. The button, if pushed, meant stop. The mission was over, and everyone would retreat to regroup, surface, sail away, or whatever if I pushed that button.”
Again, you being able to tell them why you pushed the button wasn’t important? Maybe it might have been a ‘crossed cable’ you could have fixed in 5 mins. And things could continue. What if a Meg shark had swum by – I think the guys on the sub might have found that, umm, interesting. Just sayin’.
“What am I looking for?” I’d asked Hitachi.”
“Nobody knows, that’s why you’re going down,” she replied, not looking up from her clipboard but making a note of something.”
Nobody even had guess? Now I realize this isn’t true, but so far, I think I could have read off a checklist to you, even after having a couple Manhattans.
“I had no real idea about what was happening right before my eyes.”
Do you think it might have been a good idea if they had run you through the entire operation, step by step, so nothing that happened surprised you? “What am I looking for?” I’d asked Hitachi.” “Nobody knows, that’s why you’re going down,”. Soo, don’t worry, you’ll know when you see it. Oh, and this button will stop the entire operation, though you won’t be able to tell anyone ‘why’ you stopped the entire operation, because we figured you didn’t need the ability to talk with anyone. You remember what I told you about the Meg shark, right? Right about now, I’d be starting my 3rd Manhattan.
“As you proceed, be aware that there are no studies available about how the liquids you were breathing might affect you over time. If you have respiratory issues, then check in with a physician as soon as possible.”
“As you proceed,” You mean get on with your life? No studies on ‘long term effects’? How about ‘short term’? Oh, if you have any lung issues, see a doctor. Thanks for the advice. ‘And my heart?’ Not my job man. Mission is over. The ‘tool’ can go back to the toolbox.
“We’re not going there,” he got out to me in a muffled form.”
So you’re not going there – Mission complete – No more need for a hotel. No AAR? – No final talk with Doris? Nothing? Hopefully the next chapter starts off with you in a nice pool, after spending some time with your folks.
As always, sincere regards my friend,
Doug
Those days were not laying around in the sun by the side of the pool days, no matter how much I wanted to do just that so many times. Even drinking was severely limited as I had to be at the top of my game all all times. Not a whole lot different that way these days, I might add, although danger now seems to come more from aging medical issues rather than outside adventures…not that I haven’t been very luck there too. The survivors body thing. As usual, nobody matches you for the length, breadth and depth of your commentary and I, as well as the readership, sure as hell enjoy reading your stuff about my stuff. from the heated porch of your place down there in Florida you pound away, the the 12,000 BTU window air conditioner reversed to blow cooler air over your moist fetid surfaces. Lovely image for imagining. Thanks for that and the comment here.
Your great friend,
Jim
Jim,
“your moist fetid surfaces”?
FETID Definition & Meaning – Merriam-Webster
Fetid means having a strong unpleasant smell, especially a foul or disgusting one.
I leave the windows open: the AC running; and use one of those ‘air freshener’ spray cans. Takes care of most of it. Just sayin’.
Regards my friend,
Doug
I am so sorry Doug. I mis-typed that. I meant rancid which has a much more positve connotation but does allow for the fact that so few women seem to drop by and if they do they drop dead.
Semper fi, my great odiferous friend,
Jim
Well, well, well – My Dear friend …
“fetid” “rancid” — You’re killing me :))))))))
Regards,
Doug
Thanks for your laughing understanding and participation in all this.
My great friend…
Semper fi,
Jim
Jim,
Interesting, to say the least.
I can see no logical or beneficial reason to send you down for this capture of the bomb by the sub. They could have cameras on the ROVs to monitor what was going on, instead of relying on you to “see” and be their eyes on what was happening down there. Had nobody thought of the mud slurry that would be kicked up during the snatch?
Also, why were you not equipped with two way communication? One button?
Puzzles to me…
Staying tuned for enlightenment…
THE WALTER DUKE. Some missions were thrown together with the common Rumsfeld so aptly said about going to war. You go to war with the weapons you have not the weapons you want or have in planning or pre-production. If it’s epoxy, chewing gum and bailing wire as your only tools then you must fashion them into something usable and effective. I don’t know, I could use to answer seveeral of the questions you put forth. Why did not not know that there was a submarine to be involved until I saw it? Why no kind of at least push button communication? Why no hint at what I might find that would cause me to pickle the mission when thousands of lives on Hawaui beaches might be the price for doing so? I am still plagued by such questions to this day. And why me, maybe the biggest one.
Thanks for the depth and even the very healthy skepticism.
Semper fi, great griend,
Jim
LT, so you went to the bottom of the ocean again, breathing a liquid of some unknown nature to stay alive for no know reasons. Makes perfect sense. You weren’t need down there for the mission, you were needed down there as a test dummy as a follow up to how your body reacts after two deep dive missions. Who knows where your headed next. Still a entertaining read so keep thrashing away for us.
I must admit that the idea that I was a very successful test dummy for the liquid breathing occurred to me, although I never got the post medical anaysis I presumed they would have given me to see how I had held up. In fact, only many years later a neugrologist at Lovelace Medical Center (where the astronauts all went and tested) in Albuquerque, asked me how all that had gone. I was pretty mute, asking him back “all of what?” I wanted to make sure that I revealed nothing about that old mission as I was certain that many careers might have been on the line if that had gone public, even years later. Thanks for printing that thought.
The answer from me is I don’t know, of course, as was the answer to so many questions arising out of that service.
Semper fi,
Jim
Despite the seriousness of your mission , I had a good laugh at what happened to the two frogmen afterwards! I wonder what caused their little snit in the first place ? Your “friend” Marcinko perhaps ? So on to a new adventure and your parents were unaware that you were even in Hawaii
Elite forces. From the SAS in Britain, the Legion in France, the Navy Seals, Force Recon, and more…all of those sub-cultures are very aggressive, very proud, and very protective of their unit dynamics and social order. They do not take to fucking new guys coming in without crdits or training and taking over their shop, if you will. It wasn’t the last time that would happen, as you shall see. Those units were always, for me, difficult to deal with no matter what the mission. I prefer men who offer up the evident fact that there is a tone they do not know…like me. Missions are clay pots being formed and the final setting of the pot after firing is not as predetermined as either planned nor expected for the most part.
Thanks for the great comment.
Semper fi,
Jim
“Either men would have done anything for me, I knew,” think you mean either man
“There was no Hibachi for an after-action report,” Did you mean to say “Hibachi” isn’t the name Hitiachi? Is that a “pet name” or something?
I think there are others, but I didn’t want to stop reading and lose the continuity of the story (Wow!) An edit read-through might be a good idea, but what an experience!
Thanks most sincerely for the help and I will correct as we go along here after I get this chapter coming up on the site today.
Sempere fi,
Jim
Cruel! I know how much you were looking forward to that shower at the Royal Hawaiian.
It wasn’t that they didn’t care…it was sort of like how most customer service is today…in that there was simply nobody to reach to make something like a short break for me happen. If I could not reach Herbert there was nobody to talk to and acting unilaterally on something like that can be disasterous when traveling on the company’s cards and dimes. Anyway, thanks for that thought. Better to get home anyway in case I need to be observed for a bit.
Semper fi,
Jim
Again I am over whelmed with emotion. Your experiences are sooo inspiring! I’m grateful to have you as a friend SF. 🦇
Batman, always smiling good to read your short but so meaningful comments on here and never forgetting your part in all of that back then. Nice to have players form that time writing in on here.
Thanks and God bless you my great friend,
Jim
You know I haven’t commented on every chapter. Sometimes I just don’t have words to describe the affect reading each chapter has on me . This one was no problem, as at 87 yrs old, it has taken me thru the history I have lived and provided a meaning for a lot of it.. Thank you immensely..
Thanks for the grandly terrific compliment my friend. Most writers never dream of getting feedback like this and it recaches a place inside this writer that few can access. My thanks are weakly expressed here. But you sure as hell have them.
Semper fi,
Jim
The things you go thru are amazing! Can’ wait to see what is next!
Thaks for the great compliment William and I am hard into the next chapter for the week ahead.
Semper fi,
Jim
So, a deep, deep dive, “breathing” a liquid instead of good clean air, and nothing to do. Sounds like there wasn’t any kind of after-action de-brief – just a swift hustle back to the world. To what purpose was that final dive?
Super glad your friends were there – the rest of the outfit seemed to say, “Well, all done – Goodbye!”.
What in the world were the two UDT guys up to? Just playing the “mine is bigger than yours” game? Whether or not you were a Marine officer, you were still a vital part of the operation, doing something that seemed to be necessary, and possessing the ability to do something no one else was physically – or mentally – able to do.
Another excellent chapter, Jim. That memory you possess, the ability to recall even minor details of long-ago events, surely is a blessing.
Thanks Craig for the supportive words, the compliment and also your musing.
Elite forces resent all outside players who have any control over their missions and they hate most of al to be sidelined in their own backyard. That this is real common would establish itself inside me as time went by. Try going to Sturgis Harley Heaven meetings on a Kawasaki H2R (top speed 249 MPH) and see for yourself just how cycle riders do not accept all riders into their fraternities.
Semper fi, my friend,
Jim
Truely amazing! It reminded me of a relatively trivial incident from 2003 Iraq. Some of the USAID “Tree Hugger” who we were housing in Ah Hillah, asked me if I was frightened by our situation? I thought about the experiences that had gotten my attention attempting to kill Vietnamese and said no!
Hard to compare….
USAID was great to pass off as working for and with! Catholic priest and internatiuonal school teacher, both verboten, were also very effective. I agree. I was seldom frightened but probably should have been a bit more than I was here and there.
Thanks for the accurate and great comment my friend,
Semper fi,
Jim
I enjoyed the chapter. I had to go back and reread it as it was not clear that a submarine would be recovering the device. Had you been told about that or was that a surprise? From my reading you could not see the device being loaded. In rethinking the burst of water, I gather that it might have been from the propulsion of the submarine and I wonder why they didn’t recover you before that? One other editing note, you misspelled hydraulic.
Anxiously await further reading.
Kemp
Thanks H. Kemp for the interesting comment and the compliment at the end too
I don’t know is a phrase that covered so many of my missions as far as decisions details went.
Operatives like me were only given a bare minimum of detail,like piece of a mosaic without being shown the image they fit into.
Semper fi,
Jim
Ok, wonder where you’re going to end up now?? I’m guessing hospital somewhere and debrief. How did you survive all this,??? I may have to drive down to visit you one day. I’m sure conversation would be interesting
Peter, God was not on my side, rather He was standing to side from time to time and rubbing his bearded chin murmuring “Well, okay, I guess I’ll still back your play even in this one.” Good fortune and this survivors body had a lot to do with it plus I was able to convince some truly great men and wome to follow me when the chips were down. Thanks for caring and would hope that you will one day come. We’ll have a a helluva time.
Semper fi,
Jim
The hydrolic metal moving parts of the hump’s opening door
* The hydraulic
the shadows of a nearby quonsut hut.
* quonset
I walked up the ramp and almost fell into one other what passed for seats
* into one of what passed ??
Thanks Don for the help here. Don’t know what we’d do without you
Semper fi, my friend,
Jim