– Deep Six Petty Officer Consumption –
Eventually, after weeks of dealing with the constant rocking of the ship, harsh weather, constant wetness, and countless other perks to a military cruise, the drama queen decided it was time to die. It didn’t seem fair she could decide to quit when nobody else could, yet quit she did. We spent a day trying to fix the problem, but with it mostly being a landing gear issue, the solution could only be found with putting the plane on jacks— something nobody is stupid enough to attempt underway. The pilots realized what this meant and I still remember the look of joy on everyone’s face as the reality of the situation came to light for each of us.
The only solution was to fly it off and take it to our forward operating base in EL Salvador. Luck would have it that we weren’t too far from the country at the time either. The pilots set out to inform the captain of this great and wondrous tragedy. The rest of us set to work to get the drama queen running for its short flight off the ship and to the small airport housing equipment for such a need as this. Of course, the helo could only hold four of us for a flight of this duration, so two of the aviation crew had to get to shore by a different means. A significantly less ideal form of transport.
As soon as we were within flight range the next morning, the plane took off for the airport in El Sal. Being one of the two left behind (I’m sure you are surprised as I was), I watched it take off and soar off into the horizon, just a little bitter to be left behind. Still, this was a great way to understand how the boaties did operations as the only way for us to get to shore now was to ride on the ship’s long range small boat.
Naturally, I was ecstatic at the opportunity.
After I packed my gear, I brought it back to the flightdeck to watch as the boaties prepped the smallboat docked on the side of the ship attached by a crane system. A flurry of shouts carried over to me above the absurd racket coming off the crane as it worked to get the boat up and parallel to the flight deck. This process took almost a dozen men working on top of each other to get the equipment ready and the lines tied off and on, working to position the boat so that the crew could climb aboard. Countless hours of endless training was in clear view at just how easy they made it seem. The Chief overseeing the operation paused his exuberant yelling to come over to the two clueless air-dales.
“Listen, you two just follow what the coxswain says and don’t do anything stupid. Last thing we need is someone to get hurt because of you!”
We both nodded nervously and accepted the life jackets and helmets he gave us without any argument. I had to admit to being more-than-hesitant about getting into the twenty foot long boat hanging off the side of the ship. I looked over the edge at the water thirty feet below and saw the smallboat jerk as it hung from the crane with thick (though not thick enough I’d argue) cables. Its movements were erratic as the seas tossed us around wildly. The crew and coxswain hopped onboard with the hesitation of a pirate crew that were finally given a chance to flex their sea legs and plunder, meanwhile I awkwardly climbed onto the boat like a kidnapped villager with a burlap sack on my head.
After I stumbled into the thing, I gripped the side rail with a death grip, and looked back at the Chief whose grimace wordlessly shouted that he just witnessed the most embarrassing display of unmanliness in his life. I turned to look at the coxswain who stared at me with a strangely similar look my dad gave me years before when he found out I had received a 35% grade in algebra.
Despite everything, I realized I did indeed want to live and fervently prayed that we wouldn’t be thrown from the cutter and smashed against the sea. Or worse: crushed by the very ship that had spent the last month trying to kill me any way it could. The crew worked some levers and the crane dropped us swiftly into the water. The coxswain gunned the engines to match the speed of the ship and as soon as we touched the ocean, the crew released the crane hooks and we sped off away from the cutter. As the seas tossed the small vessel around violently, I instantly became acutely aware this was the first time I had been in a small craft since my time in Atlantic City. I just as quickly remembered its effect on me and my iron clad stomach. Ever the gallant sailor I always was, I looked ahead and saw in the distant horizon the green of land and prayed we got there before I started to get seasick.
The noise of the engines spared us from having to make small talk, not that anyone was interested. The swells threw us up and down as we sped towards the ever increasing shoreline. Springs under the seats pretended to take some of the shock off being thrown around, and I couldn’t decide if I wished the guy driving us would slow down and give us a reprieve from our onslaught, or that he would go faster and get it over with. Salty spray soon covered us, and I tried in vain to keep my gearbag covered. To my great astonishment I realized that I actually missed the cutter in comparison.
After a while, we finally came close enough to shore that I could make out the port. But as we got closer I realized something was wrong.This wasn’t some beach-lined dock, instead it looked like a reject warehouse district with large concrete piers, perfect for criminal organizations to offload metric tons of illegal substances. As we got closer it only got worse, my first impression was it was the perfect filming location for some 1800’s industrial grimy period piece, and I half expected to see child laborers going about their tasks. The warehouses all looked long forgotten, and the land was barren of anything resembling civilization. I realized suddenly (my situational awareness is unmatched), that the boat crew escorting us were all heavily armed with rifles and body armor. I looked down at my bright orange life jacket and stark blue uniform, absent of anything resembling a weapon, and realized I might as well have brought a large poster that read “Yes, I am indeed an American service member and oh golly, I don’t have a weapon!”
The coxswain looked around in unease, as there was nowhere to actually drop us off. There wasn’t a soul in sight to ask where to go either. Ultimately the crew voted (my partner’s and I’s votes didn’t need to be taken into consideration) to simply take us to a rusty ladder sticking out of the water leading up one of the concrete piers. The ladder looked like the last time it was used would have been when the Spanish colonized the area and the pier deck loomed a good thirty or so feet above us, having lucked into arriving at low tide. The boat crew considered the ladder and sympathetically decided we could keep the life jackets and helmets on until we reached the top. Bleeding hearts of the world unite.
“In for a penny, in for a pound” I figured, and courageously let my partner go up the ladder first. Seeing him make it all the way up, I hoisted my gear on my shoulder and grabbed onto the ladder when the boat gave me a decent swell. To my surprise the ladder held my weight and I climbed up as quickly as I could. At the top we tossed down the life jackets and helmets to the crew below, who didn’t even wait until the gear was in hand before they rocketed off back towards the ship. I told myself they just wanted to be far away from the sick guy, not that they, the armed ones, were uncomfortable in this environment. We stood up and looked around, and despite all my earnest pleading to God to be back on dry land for the entire last month, I found myself wishing I was back on the ship.
After checking our phones we accepted the fact we weren’t likely to get a signal any time soon. At least the direction to go was clear, as the only way off the pier was towards the low mountains covered in dense forest. Regardless of the illness, I was embarrassed at how tired I soon was, realizing it had been a long time since I had walked so far. The glaring sun overhead didn’t help anything, nor the constant uneasy feeling we had at our surroundings. I’m sure a brave man could have felt confident in the situation, or at least trudged through without doubt. In case you haven’t been paying attention up to this point, a brave man is likely the last thing I could be accused of being. Yet again, I cursed that foolhardy kid who sought adventure out of high school (The fact that no college was looking to snatch the 35% algebra genius notwithstanding).
Finally, after walking the full extent of the port and past many abandoned warehouses, we found a small shack at the entrance that actually looked occupied. We knocked on the door and the man who answered looked like he was trying to decide if he was more startled or angry at our presence. My fellow aviator happened to know some Spanish, and explained the situation to the man who looked every inch to fit the location well. Eventually he agreed to let us use his landline (truly a place from beyond time) to call one of the pilots. The pilot informed us that one of the flight crew was on the way to pick us up now, but it would be a long time as the road through the mountains was sketchy.
“Sir, everything in El Salvador is sketchy apparently,” I said into the phone. Realizing the shack man was staring at me, I prayed that English was as difficult a second language as I had always been told it was and tried not to eye the gun on his hip.
After an hour or so (spent away from the shack and its grumpy inhabitant), a small van could be seen driving up the road, a cloud of dust following its arrival. When it pulled up, our fellow crew member hopped out and greeted us. Loading the gear into the tiny van proved difficult, as somehow it was smaller on the inside than it looked.
The drive through the mountains was sketchy in that quirky way swimming with hammerhead sharks in a frenzy is sketchy. The roads were as narrow as the Appalachian trail, and as steep. Always a sheer cliff off to one side or another. Despite this, you would have thought the driver was training for formula one given the speed he took impossibly tight turns and wove in and out of traffic. Of course, now I realize with the wisdom time provides that he was clearly training for Rally racing. All the while the man had his humble radio speakers on full blast playing the national anthem of all South American countries: reggaeton1. Of course, just to prove that God isn’t without a sense of humor, all this weaving around and stress of falling off a cliff soon found me carsick, not that it made that huge of a difference to how I already felt.
Eventually we made it to the small town that housed the airport, its haphazard layout and claustrophobic streets normal for a small South American town except for the armed guards everywhere. To be clear I don’t mean armed guards around the military base at the airport. No, I mean the armed guards that seemed to be everywhere, including in front of grocery stores and even the churches. Our driver told us that they were there as a theft deterrent for the most part, but seeing as most of the guards carried everything from large shotguns to assault rifles, one could only assume this wasn’t a simple Doritos thief or collection box swiper.
I found myself missing the ship yet again.
Making our way to the airport, I was surprised at just how small it really was. Still, I could see the US military facility that was located near the hangar that held our equipment. While my crewmates took off for the rest of the team, they found It necessary to insist I go straight to the sickbay, as if I hadn’t been anticipating doing that very thing for the last 2,500,000 seconds of my life. I found myself walking with more excitement than I had felt for a long time. I practically skipped towards the place where I could finally get some medicine for this accursed sickness.
Having been exposed to plenty of Navy facilities over the years I knew not to expect much, but even with those dire expectations this place was abysmal. It was also practically barren, with just the random occasional Navy pilot seen walking around. I asked one of them where Medical was located and they pointed in a vague direction then headed the opposite way I was going—just a coincidence, I’m certain.
Medical, as it turned out, was a small office hidden away in an unassuming dark hallway. When I knocked on the door, I was amazed to be greeted by someone who actually seemed happy to see me.
I was immediately skeptical.
He stood staring at me with the door open, wearing scrubs and the signature stethoscope around his neck. He smiled and beckoned me inside. I was taken aback at the size of the room. Several beds were off to the side surrounded by medical equipment, while the walls were lined with books and countless other things doctors surround themselves with to appear impressive. It effectively impressed me too, and for the first time in what felt like years, I actually stood a chance to get better.
I sat on one of the beds and he pulled up an old office chair that looked like it should have been replaced during the Reagan administration.
“So, what brings you in today?” he asked.
“I just arrived from a Coast Guard ship, I’ve been sick onboard for the last few weeks with a nasty flu.”
The smile dropped from the doctor’s face, and he attempted to appear casual as he hastily put a mask on. “What are the symptoms?”
“Horrible headache, constant cough, endless mucus, groggy, ache all over—”
“How long did you say you had this for?”
“Oh, It started about a month ago when I first got onto the ship.”
The man’s eyes started to grow bigger and shift around. I was feeling less confident I would get better soon. “How much coughing would you say you do?”
Placebo worked its magic and I coughed in answer.
“Man, that is a nasty cough…” He pulled off his stethoscope and listened to my breathing. All the while he began to look more and more grave.
“What is it? Does it sound bad?”
“I don’t know how to say this, but I think you have…” He looked at me terrified, but with a touch of sadness, “Tuberculosis.”
Now, a properly educated man, certainly one who never received a 35% in algebra, would have been struck with fear then. “Oh uhhm. What’s tuberculosis?”
“Oh man, uh… Well you see, it’s an old disease. One that unfortunately killed a lot of people. It actually killed Eleanor Roosevelt and Doc Holiday.”
“I-I thought Doc Holiday was a fictional character?!”
My mind was racing.!? People died from this disease that tortured me for the last month!? Suddenly I was cursing my dramatics about praying that God would kill me. I was just being facetious God! I don’t want to die like this! Please!
“Oh man, this is really bad,” the doctor continued. “You said you were deployed? You arrived on a ship? We are going to need to contact the ship immediately and have them quarantined. Tuberculosis is very contagious. Did you arrive with anyone else here?”
He started moving around the room and gathering supplies and pulled out his phone to call someone.
I shook on the bed and began to have trouble thinking straight. My emotions ran frantically and my hands began to sweat. Of course since being told I had a deadly coughing disease, my body decided it couldn’t stop coughing.
“Are you sure it’s tuberculosis? I. *cough* …I’m not exactly popular on that ship, but if you contact them and tell them THIS!? *cough* That they have to quarantine, and I might give them Tuberculosis!? Let’s just say if I don’t die from one thing, I will from the other!” *lots of coughing*
“Hmm, I suppose it’s possible you don’t.” The doctor shrugged helpfully. “Let me do some tests.”
Suddenly my fear turned into something else entirely. “SUPPOSE” it’s possible?! How could a doctor not be sure of something this serious, especially when they were so certain of it a moment ago?
“Have you ever dealt with someone with tuberculosis before?”
“Good grief! No! Actually, if you can believe it, you are one of the first patents I’ve had to treat here by myself.” He smiled at me as if expecting I would congratulate him on this great achievement of his.
“I…thought you were a doctor?”
“Oh! Well thanks! I’m just the duty medic for the base here and Saturdays are my duty day for the time being. This is actually my first month here!”
I didn’t know if I was more full of rage or relief.
“Look, I’m pretty sure this is just a bad case of the flu. Could I get some antibiotics and you can check up on me this week to see if I die or not?”
He made a show of checking my breathing again and looking at some papers.
“Hmm, you’re probably right. Yeah, I’ll get the doctor to write you a prescription when he comes in on Monday. Of course you will have to be evaluated by him, first. I can’t just go writing prescriptions for people.”
– Bitter End–
That fateful Monday I did end up getting the medicine, thankfully this time without being diagnosed with the Bubonic Plague. Between that and the week I spent on solid ground with actual food and a genuine bed, I managed to return to a reasonably human state surprisingly fast. So taken aback by my experience with the “doctor” was I, that I foolishly told my crew, and found myself the rest of the deployment referred to by such creative names as “Petty Officer Tuberculosis” or the much more elaborate “TB.” The work on the helo proved far easier on land without a ship to fight every action, but the unbelievably hot weather and lack of anything resembling wind in the airport found us actually missing life at sea (at least until we got back to our hotel each night).
El Salvador proved as interesting and strange as any country I had been before. Traveling from the town into the cities only found us facing even more armed guards everywhere, with hardly a street corner absent. Trash littered every space, and the air stank of a place that had long given up.2 As always, our arrival anywhere meant a parade of scammers and pickpockets trailing behind us. Yet despite all this, the land itself was full of beauty, and as I had found in most of my travels in South America, the people (for the most part) were a joyful and kind bunch. Once in a bad part of town (which we always found ourselves in somehow), we noticed a lady had been following us for a good while. Being the courageous men that we were, we just walked faster to get away from her. After a while one of my crewmates realized he lost his cellphone and frantically went to search for it, only to find that the lady had been following us because she saw him drop it and had been trying to return it since. I of course assumed it was a scam but then as soon as she gave it to him she smiled, told us that we need to go to a different part of town, and walked back the way she came. I chose to believe it was just an incredible act of kindness.
On our last day off the ship most of the crew decided to hike a nearby mountain, and while I normally would enjoy that sort of thing, especially faced with another month at sea to look forward to, I couldn’t pass up the chance to spend the day by myself in our hotel and recharge before going back on the cruise. I’m very thankful I did, because I learned the hard way that day why you don’t drink water in South America. The bathroom and I became very good friends.
The trip back to the ship was much less adventurous given the fact the pilots took two trips this time. Flying instead of enduring the small boat felt luxurious, almost to the point that it made me not frustrated it wasn’t done the week prior. Back on the ship, days passed much the same, except now that I wasn’t sick, things seemed so much easier. Probably the most remarkable thing was how quickly I forgot the misery of the sickness and lost the gratitude of its absence. It was hard work to maintain my status as a curmudgeon, but it’s a responsibility I took very seriously.
Time seemed to move even slower as the days grew ever more oppressed by boredom. But, like always, time did march on. Miraculously, only one other person ended up sick and ended up in his rack for an entire week SIQ. I heard many complaints about how lazy he was, but I took no pleasure in knowing how little enjoyment the man was getting on his “vacation.” I glacially managed to move from public enemy number one to a more “younger brother everyone can’t stand” situation. Emotionally intelligent minds would probably suggest it had more to do with the fact that I had, for so long, been a walking phlegm monster that haunted the decks of the ship and sneered at any passerby’s, than consider any of the ship’s inhabitants to have ever actually hated me personally. I distinctly remember a few times where I loudly argued with the ship itself, yelling profanities about how much I hated it, thinking I was alone, only to find that several people stood nearby gawking at me. Yes, one could even suggest that even if I had been ol’ Douglas Munro3 himself, I still would have been justifiably disliked on that ship given my demeanor.
We spent another month on the ship without so much of a hint of a Go-Fast (or anything else resembling a real reason to be out there) before we made the long ride home from the Pacific theater. We made the long journey through the Panama Canal and up the West Caribbean without much fanfare beyond the normal slog of each day.
I did manage to read a great many books though, and a few days out from Florida, the pilots and gunner decided to fly the helicopter back home (this was done by hopping from island to island to fill up on gas), leaving me completely and blissfully free from the drama queen for the first time since I first laid eyes on it. The three of us aviators left behind were truly ship riders at that point with nothing at all to do. We even got desperate enough that we attempted to see how many games of Catan we could play in one sitting. I lost count after the 12th game, for once agreeing with the repugnant looks on the faces that passed us by.
I doubt anyone has been, or ever will be, more happy to see Miami than I was (probably not a high bar though). When I stepped off the boat for good I didn’t so much as glance back at the thing, and I prayed that I would never have to step foot on one ever again. Even now, years since this experience, I still find myself having nightmares about being trapped on a ship.
Like with all my experiences, I wish the Lord would sit me down and do a play-by-play overview. So thick is my skull, it’s probably obvious what He was trying to teach me and for what purpose it was all for. Unfortunately though, most times I look at a situation like this and have to guess what it was all about in the end. Honestly, sometimes I think we go through Hell just so we can see what we are capable of surviving, and—more importantly—what God’s grace is capable of handling.
When I returned to HITRON, I promptly volunteered to switch to the weekend shift. A move which many would not have done as it cost me my weekends, but it came with glorious immunity to the deployment roster. Something which, at that point in my life, I would have given anything for, perhaps even contracting tuberculosis.
Endnotes
- Reggaeton, as I (the pale white guy from small town America) understand it, is an evolved version of reggae music. It features more of a hip-hop sound with many tracks having rap incorporated into the music, always spoken in Spanish. The signature sound of reggaeton is a very VERY simple beat that every single song has in the background. To my Latin friends, I’m sorry to speak against something that is so clearly popular, but I really don’t get it. Someone once told me every reggaeton song has the same beat so it’s easy to dance to. It’s truly a modern supernational phenomenon as no matter where you go in South America, from El Salvador to Cuba, Mexico to Porto Rico, reggaeton can be heard coming out of every single speaker. ↩︎
- El Salvador in 2019 was one of the most violent and dangerous places in the world, since then it has seen radical change to become one of the safest in the Western Hemisphere. That process wasn’t an easy one and there are those who claim it came at too high of a cost to their democratic system (amongst human rights concerns). As an ignorant American, all I can really say is that I’m glad its people are in much safer living conditions than when I was there. ↩︎
- Douglas Munro is the only US Coast Guard member to have been awarded the Medal of Honor. He is arguably the most famous and most revered Coastie and is used as the template that all Coast Guard members strive to be like. He gave his life protecting the lives of 500 marines in the Battle of Guadalcanal. ↩︎
Author’s Note: While I prefer to not be so direct, it has come to my attention that it may be necessary to clear up a few things. The first, and most important thing, is that anyone who would surrender their own well being and time for the betterment of others is someone I greatly admire and hold in high esteem. That is, of course, not limited to members of the armed services (far from it), but that is who I am explicitly referring to here.
Speaking critically of those (who, Lord willing, I have only ever discussed in the most vague of ways) I served with in the Coast Guard is in no way meant to dismiss the hardship, sacrifice, and achievements they each hold rights to claim. While I love to sarcastically remark on just how absurd so many of my experiences have been, it’s never meant to be at the expense of others (truly some of the best people I have ever met have been fellow Coasties). As long as there are humans within a system, it’s going to be a very broken system. Yet it will also be full of people trying to make it work as best they can.
Finally, while I’ll never be able to look at it with pure satisfaction or achievement, I am thankful for the years I spent in the Coast Guard. Was it hell? Absolutely it was. But it was also fun, exhilarating, boring, challenging, painful, captivating, disappointing, and rewarding. All of it assembles into something beyond my capacity to explain, but undoubtedly as something that the Lord has (and will) use for His good.
Leave a Reply