In Memoriam: Unfair Winds and Swallowing Seas

Two groups of men come to my mind each Memorial Day.

The first is a small group, three very young guys who died while serving on the aircraft carrier USS Forrestal, where I was stationed for three of the five years I spent in the Navy.

The second are the 134 seamen, firemen and airmen who perished in a nightmarish series of explosions and fires aboard that very same ship, on an awful summer day in the Gulf of Tonkin, in the same year I was born.

Many have mourned the latter group. Books have been written, films made. The lessons learned from that terrible day—July 29, 1967—are still taught, basic tenets in damage control training and ordinance safety. Another 161 were injured, while the entire crew fought to save the ship and each other. The dead are part of the wrenching legacy of Vietnam. I salute them anew this day, and always will.

But I try especially hard to recall the lives of the three from the years I was aboard, from 1988 through ‘91. Their individual deaths were lonely ones, occurring in peacetime. Pre-9/11, it is certainly possible, even likely, that they were not eulogized as “heroes.”

Dave, a boiler technician, had just turned 19. The others, Mike and Rakeem, died off the ship, but not far from it. (I have changed their names on the chance a family member might discover a stranger’s personal ruminations of their lost loved ones.)

Each of their deaths was brutally senseless, sudden, and arguably avoidable. Dave was crushed by a large hatch, weighing hundred of pounds, which gave way above him as he worked on repairing something in a tight space. Rakeem was murdered while on shore leave—shot in the port city of Marseille, France, after he wandered into a hostile part of town.

Mike’s death was particularly hard to take, as it happened just days before arriving home from a six-month cruise. An airman who worked on the flight deck, Mike had no reason to be up there, alone, that night. The jets had all flown off the ship several days earlier.

He may have been swept overboard by a strong gust of wind. Or, rather than return to what might have been waiting for him on that pier a few days hence, he may have thrust himself into the carrier’s enormous, churning wake. Sadly, the latter scenario, though rare, was not rare enough among young Navy men, at least when I was on active duty.

His body was never found. It seemed like the whole ship’s company was up all night, as helicopters swept and circled, spotters searching in vain with powerful strobe lamps, illuminating nothing but very cold, gray—and empty—patches of the Atlantic. The mounting, palpable enthusiasm of imminent reunions with families, wives and lovers came to a sickening halt for a day and a half.

One helicopter pilot, a man who did not know Mike personally, gritted through tears the next day, during a prayer service at the edge of a large elevator platform that served to lift aircraft from the hangar bay to the flight deck. The sun blazed in the late morning heat, but there was a chill among the silent crew.

Taps was bugled, and seven Marines, in their stifling but razor-crisp dress blue uniforms, rifled off three volleys each at the horizon, the report echoing rapid-fire around the steely, gaseous hangar bay. There was no comfort to be had, no noble Navy tradition or toast to soothe. There was no raised glass of rum and a “Fair winds and following seas” for Mike.

EVEN WITHIN THEIR immediate families, memories of Dave, Rakeem and Mike become fewer, and more diminished, with each passing year. There have been more than 20 Memorial Days since they died—about as many years as they lived.

None of these sailors was married, or had children. Their brokenhearted parents may well have passed away since then. Their siblings may have gotten married and had children, themselves now in their 20s. I like to think that their portraits, and maybe the flags once draped on their coffins, are still prominently displayed.

It has been said that you really die twice. The second death is the last time someone who knew you speaks your name. I hope Dave, Rakeem and Mike are remembered and spoken of for many more decades. 

I know one thing. As long as I’m alive, their names will be said aloud, usually to no one in particular, at least once a year. This year, I say their names to you.

I’m no hero for doing so. In fact, I’m simply following orders from my commanding officer.

Our captain, a good, affable man from western Pennsylvania, struggled to find words during that hangar bay memorial service for Mike. It is tough going for military people to leave one of their own behind, even when something as big as the ocean has conspired against them. So, in a breaking voice, he asked us to be the pallbearers that Mike would never have.

He told us to carry our shipmate with us for the rest of our lives.