For, it seems, an eternity the ebb and flow of the tides has been the analogy for the lives of human kind. If you spend any time near or on the high seas you will find this one of the deepest forms of poetry, a life. Nothing turns the mind into jello more than staring at the horizon or, if one is out at sea, the lack of land day upon day. In the middle of the ocean is not a place for the timid as the seas act upon their own whims, influenced by nature, seasons, and circumstance. Kind of like we who are lubbers now and have not been to sea for more than a one week pleasure cruise.
I spent virtually four years at sea in the U.S. Navy. Twice I went to war and received combat pay for risking my life. If memory serves, it was forty dollars extra per month in the combat theater. Forty dollars to risk everything so I bought a Nikon camera, professional model FTn, in Sasebo, Japan with part of my combat pay. It was with that camera and a roll of Agfachrome color slide film that I took the accompanying image of a helo landing on the deck of our ship just off Haiphong Harbor, North Vietnam.
That helo brought with it special forces to be put ashore by small boat. This put us in easy range of both missiles and guns so we had to be sneaky about it. The ship I was on was 547 feet long so being sneaky meant all radiations of the ship had to be turned off. Dicey at best but that is just the way things are done and the reason the Navy is so picky about who serves in it.
All these years later I ruminate as to how we did what we did and how none of us got seriously injured or killed. Where we went and what we did was easily dangerous and of great risk yet we carried on with our duties and saw one another come home intact. Teamwork of the highest magnitude. We never saw it as teamwork only as doing our jobs in each different circumstance we encountered and you can’t imagine what the ocean itself dished up for us. Seas running thirty feet with waves exceeding forty feet. Walking partly on the deck and sometimes with one foot on the walls as the ship rolled to the extreme. Not for the weak of heart but things that made me and us, into who we would eventually become. We were children when we enlisted and men when we came home. A good many of us never fit back into society after the trials of the sea and combat. All in a day’s work.
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