No Higher Honor (30 page)

When the mine went off, Doc Lambert picked himself off the sick bay floor and considered his options. The frigate had two spaces intended as emergency treatment wards: one was far aft under the flight deck; the other was farther forward but surrounded by racks of DC gear.
¹³
Neither was usable in the current circumstance, thanks to passageways full of smoke and hoses and equipment. So Lambert consulted with Rinn and Eckelberry about setting up a triage area atop the deckhouse, just behind the signal bridge.

It was hardly an ideal location for a makeshift infirmary—two levels up from the main deck and only a few dozen yards from the hose teams that were pouring water on the smoke-belching exhaust fire. But at least it wasn't inside the ship, which looked as if it might sink at any moment. It was also close to the whaleboat. If Matthews and his mechanics couldn't get their helo running, the
Roberts
might have to send its most severely wounded out by motorboat. So Eckelberry got on the 1MC and told anyone with an injury to make his way to top of the deckhouse. Privately, he thought,
We're going to lose some of these guys.
¹⁴

Lambert had already begun treating several of the hurt men below-decks. In engineering's Central Control, he applied burn salve to Wayne Smith and Dave Burbine, who was shivering uncontrollably despite the blanket wrapped around him. He sent others up to the triage area behind the signal bridge. They were met by Lambert's phone talker, Master-at-Arms 1st Class Stanley Bauman, and Ens. Steven Giannone, a disbursing officer who had arrived aboard during the deployment and become Lambert's medical assistant. Giannone and Bauman took in the new arrivals and tried to make them comfortable.

Forty minutes after the blast, Lambert joined them. He checked on Bobby Gibson, who had been tied to a stretcher and carried up to the aid station. The boatswain's mate had tried to join a repair party after the mine blast had flipped him from his lookout's chair, but the pain had soon debilitated him. Lambert bent over Gibson, sweat dripping from his brow.

Chewing ice chips to keep himself hydrated, Lambert moved from patient to patient, applying Silvadine antibacterial cream, pushing IV needles into their arms, starting drips of Ringer's lactate to replenish their fluids. As his supply of bandages dwindled, Lambert sent a junior personnelman, Charles Morin, and a seaman named Richard Klemme down to his sick bay for more.
Just cut the lock off the medical supplies
, he told them.

Several of the burned engineers eventually arrived. Lambert worked to stabilize them. Severely burned patients are at great risk of shock, and Lambert knew that their chances for survival depended on better care than he could provide on the frigate. But he took hope in the news that the ship's Seahawk might become available for an evacuation flight. Leaving Lt. (jg) Robert Chambers, the ship's electronic readiness officer, in charge of the IVs, Lambert headed down to the hangar to establish a medevac station.

The supply officer, Lt. Bradley Gutcher, had beaten him to it. Anticipating the need, Gutcher had raided the aft battle-dressing station, gathered up all the first-aid supplies he could carry, and hauled them in a blanket to the hangar.
¹⁵

Eckelberry passed the word over the 1MC, and injured men began to show up at the hangar. Several dozen had wrenched their backs and limbs, either in the initial blast or by slipping on the various liquids that were being tracked around the ship: water, fuel, AFFF. Some had gotten oil and smoke particles in their eyes, yet had been unable to bear to use the ship's eyewashes to clear the gunk out. Lambert slit open saline bags and gently cleansed their faces.

Presently, the sailors began to make their way down from the deckhouse aid station. Bill Dodson, an electrician's mate third class, was working in the midships passageway when one badly burned shipmate hobbled past. “Everyone was yelling and we were moving ammo around
or something. Lots of heavy things. And I looked up to see two people escorting GSM Welch aft to the helo deck. He was naked, and completely burned and bloody. He had a gray blanket draped around him. It was a bad scene, and everyone hushed as he walked slowly by. I couldn't believe he could walk.

“After he went by, I think our efforts took on a new sense of urgency.”
¹⁶

Outside the hangar's aluminum roll-up door, an aviation mechanic gave Matthews a thumbs-up as the aviator powered up the Seahawk. The cockpit lit up green, and he twisted the cyclic, willing the aircraft off the deck. It shuddered, lifted, and came to a hover off the starboard quarter.

Rinn radioed the pilot and asked him to circle the ship. Against the setting sun, Matthews could see the orange glow of flames through the deckhouse cracks and sparks floating amid the black smoke that still boiled from the stack.

When the helo set back down, Lambert had picked his first medevac patient: Welch, who had second-degree burns over 40 percent of his body. Volunteers loaded their burned shipmate onto the helicopter.

About 6:15
PM
, the Seahawk took off again and bore away into the darkening east. His destination was the amphib
Trenton
, which was making its best speed toward the wounded frigate.

Years later, Matthews told Rinn that as he flew away with the wounded man, he never expected to see the ship afloat again.
¹⁷

T
he sun set at six o'clock. “I swear the sun went down faster that day than I ever saw it,” firefighter Ted Johnson recalled. “It got so dark, so fast. And sea snakes, they were everywhere when you looked over the side.”

With the new moon just two days away, the coming night would be dark indeed. Lookouts on the bridge wings played searchlights over the water, straining to spot drifting mines. All they saw were the five-foot snakes.

Lester Chaffin figured the ship's moaning had drawn every terrifying resident of Davy Jones's locker to the scene. With a start, the ship's Protestant lay leader remembered that he had neglected to read the evening prayer over the 1MC the previous night.
¹

The damage control effort had continued nonstop for an hour and a half. Belowdecks, electricians checked power connections while engine specialists tended their diesels. Shoring teams worked to strengthen strained bulkheads. Everyone who wasn't passing 76-mm shells from the magazine seemed to be humping pump gear and hoses from place to place or helping their injured shipmates move toward medical aid. The captain moved around the ship, dispensing “attaboys” and drawing inspiration from his crew. On the quarterdeck he watched passing sailors touch the bronze plaque, brushing their fingers across the raised names of their predecessors on DE-413.

Up on the deckhouse the hose teams were still doggedly throwing water on the pillar of spark-flecked smoke coming from the stack, and pouring it through the cracks under their feet. Under the direction of Chief John Carr, the hose teams had begun to add fire-smothering foam AFFF into the water. The flow of AFFF through the permanent reels was
intermittent, thanks to uncertain electricity and fluctuating water pressure, so the firefighters had rigged their nozzles to draw the soapy chemical straight from the blue five-gallon drums. From time to time Carr sent word down to Reinert, who interrupted the flow of 76-mm shells to send more blue canisters up to the roof.
²

The twin needs for firefighting water and drainage had nearly exhausted the ship's supply of hoses and fittings, so much was done with improvisation. Chris Pond yelled to Johnson, “Ted, Ted, I need a two-and-a-half-inch plug and I can't find one! What do I do?”

Johnson responded in true sailor fashion: “Just use a two-and-a-half-inch nozzle and shut it,” he said.
³

Still, the crew was making progress with the stack fire; the smoke from the starboard vent seemed somewhat dissipated. But the hose teams were becoming increasingly frustrated by the on-again, off-again flow of water. Sometimes they would get only five or ten minutes of continuous pressure before the hoses ran dry. AFFF refused to foam up at less than 150 pounds per square inch, and some of the more irritated sailors had taken to pouring the stuff straight from the can into the cracks.
⁴

Down in Central Control, Van Hook and the engineers were trying to figure out what was causing the problems with the water pressure. All the clues pointed to a major fire-main leak in the main engine room. The engineers tried various tactics to deduce the exact location of the leak, turning the water on and off, experimenting with various cutoff-valve settings. Unless the damaged pipe could be found and cut off from the others, the firefighters were never going to get the smooth flow they needed.

Finally, a repair team in the still-smoking engine room spotted a bubbling trickle of AFFF under the oily water. That suggested a leak in the fire main's port upper loop. The sailors closed valves to cut the flow to the damaged pipe, crossed their fingers, and applied pressure to the entire system. It worked. Four minutes after they'd shut down the fire main, there was pressure again—at least in the starboard lower loop. The repair crews decided to detour the water around the leak, and began the forty-minute process of rigging jumper hoses to restore pressure in the port upper loop.

Around 6:45
PM
, about two hours after the mine blast, the hose teams had one good source of water again. The return of pressure set one hose
to jumping. The nozzle had somehow jammed or been left open when pressure went down, and now it whipped around on the deck, spraying water like a spitting cobra. As firefighters backed away from the nozzle-turned-wrecking ball, Lt. Dave Llewellyn pounced on it. Rinn, who happened to be on deck, watched in horror as the heavy nozzle smacked his ship's control officer square on the forehead. “I thought he was dead, but he just shook it off and got up,” the captain said.
⁵

The pressure stayed steady for a half hour, flickered for a nerve-wracking minute as two teams hunted for another suspected break in the line, and then held steady.

NOT LONG AFTERWARD
, a bit of help appeared on the horizon, in the form of helicopter running lights. They belonged to a CH-46 Sea Knight, call sign Nightrider, flying from the
San Jose
, the replenishment ship
Roberts
had been slated to meet that eternity of two and a half hours ago.

Lambert had heard about the inbound CH-46s, but he didn't see how that was going to help. The double-rotored Sea Knights were even bigger than the
Roberts
's ten-ton Seahawk.
That's not even going to fit on the flight deck
, he thought.
⁶

Nevertheless, Lambert and his helpers readied eight of their patients for evacuation. The corpsman used a marker to scrawl treatment notes on the sheets of their bedding, a technique he'd picked up during a stint in an emergency room. Headed out were the badly burned Perez, Burbine, and Smith. Gibson, who had been diagnosed with a concussion, would go as well. So would Radioman 2nd Class Doug Thomas, who had become dizzy while moving 76-mm ammo; Gunner's Mate 3rd Class Randy L. Thomas, who had strained his back at the same task; Fire Controlman 3rd Class Jack Paprocki, who had been thrown against the bulkhead of the CIWS control room by the mine blast; and Seaman Recruit Richard A. Bailey, who had been carried to the hangar bay by two shipmates after his legs went numb.

Sonar Technician 1st Class Joseph D. Boyd, “J. D.” to his friends, had been fighting the stack fire for hours when a team leader sent him forward to the bridge to rest. It was only when Boyd sat down that he felt the pain in his midsection, a possible hernia. After a quick check from Lambert, Eckelberry told the sonar tech to grab the next helo flight to the
San Jose.
⁷

The
Roberts
's air traffic controller got on the radio with the Sea Knight and told its pilots to be prepared to evacuate as many men as possible. The pilots replied that they were carrying a large fuel bladder on board. It had helped them make the long trip from the
San Jose
, but it was really more a redundant safety move than a necessity. They asked whether they could leave the bladder with the
Roberts
.

Negative
, the
Roberts
controller replied.
We're on fire here
. So the crew of the Sea Knight kicked the flexible rubber tank out the helo door instead. It landed with a splash near the ship and began to float as the CH-46 came in for a landing.

Sandle was in charge of guiding the aircraft to the flight deck. As it approached, the boatswain's mate realized that the deck was fouled by the RAST gear, the harness that had saved Matthews and the Seahawk. Sandle decided to land the helicopter crossways, giving the forty-five-foot-long helo about six inches of clearance on each side of its landing gear. He had seen Sea Knights perform aerial ballet, but he'd never seen one land with so little room to spare. Guiding the helicopter down with illuminated signal flashlights, he stared at its wheels until they touched down less than a tire's diameter from the safety nets at the deck edge. The pilots kept the rotors turning, ready to lift off if the ship took an unexpected roll.

As Lambert and his helpers lifted their shipmates into the big aircraft, one of the CH-46 pilots snapped a photo. That irritated the corpsman.
What the hell are you taking pictures of?
But when he turned around and stepped out of the aircraft, the reason became clear. The ship was lit up like a Christmas tree, every floodlight and spot shining away. All the doors were open, with hoses snaking this way and that. Atop it all, the stack was still belching sparks like a chimney.
I guess that
would
make a good picture
, he conceded.
⁸

A little after 7:00
PM
, the twin-rotor helo lifted off, bearing the eight
Roberts
sailors toward the
San Jose
and a doctor's care. The aircraft would return in less than an hour with hoses, DC gear, food, and water.