Bronze Man

Saturday, January 31, 2009
It is 0630 hrs on the 34th day. Local time is GMT-1; CST = GMT-6, so I am five hours ahead of home. I finished writing the comments above this morning. I hope this material is entertaining reading.

Sunday, February 1, 2009
35th day: 0315 hrs LT We are 700 NM from the nearest land, which would be Recife, in Brazil. It is north west and lies slightly closer now than Fernando, and we are on course for way point 11, yet 260 NM from here. Equatorial environments are being left behind. The barometer is rising, and we expect seas to become rougher and swells longer and larger. The end of the trip, however, is in sight, and it looks as if Cape Town on February 15 is good. Old one-legged Ahab would be stumping merrily in these seas.

Dennis Lange was “Bronze Man”, a surfer from Nebraska, unlikely as that sounds. He wore a gold medallion around his neck, and longer than regulation blond hair. He made captain, and that was enough. When his war was over, he was leaving the service (AF) and going back to school. His aim was to be a college-level track and field coach, himself having been a fine 400-meter man (that event had recently been the 440-yard dash, but track went metric) and a champ at the discus, which I believe was still measured in feet. He was engaged to Patrice, whose last name escapes me, and he had 37 days to DROS.

That became an eventful day. He was in a two-ship, carrying supplies and ammunition to a local indigenous unit along the Laotian cordillera. That was always a dangerous place, owned by the bad guys. He saw a group of men gathered near his landing zone (LZ) and preceded his wingman into the landing. The group of soldiers came running to the chopper, all carrying AK 47s. Dennis told the crew to start throwing stuff out, as if resupplying them, and to yell that they would be back with food and water in an hour. It was indeed a platoon of communist soldiers, who immediately began opening Christmas. As the helicopter lifted off, the crew waved and blew kisses to the motley gang below, who waved back and grinned hugely. What a haul, and more coming! The unit that was supposed to have received those supplies lay dead a quarter mile away, victims of the gang and its company. The friendlies never even got a radio message out, and it was days before they were found. Two survivors hiked back to a base camp and reported the event: ambush by superior numbers and high explosives.

The gang was supposed to ambush the resupply unit, but was not in place when that weird scene went forward. As it became apparent that the second helicopter was not going to land, they opened fire on both aircraft, which were at the limit of AK range. However, down in the woods was a .51caliber heavy machine gun, and a single round from it plinked through the thin aluminum skin of Acorn 22 and struck the pilot, Bronze Man, behind the right knee. It mangled the leg, most of which was butchered. The calf was joined by a slim piece of flesh inside the knee cap. Most of the calf was blown out, and this severed the femoral artery; Captain Lange was bleeding out.

Any really good military unit is that way because its NCOs make it so. Acorn flight had such a man aboard, and he saved Captain Lange. He pulled Lange out of the seat as the other pilot flew the aircraft. Lange was laid on the floor, where a tourniquet was applied tightly to stop the bleeding: the leg was lost, anyway. Saline and blood plasma were administered, plus a sizeable dose of morphine. The Bronze Man lived all the way to the hospital, where he was met and where the NCO washed his blood out with a hose. Captain Lange made it home.

He was in Denver, and I was at Colorado Springs, so I drove to Denver to visit him. He seemed to be doing well, still had some rehab going and had just received a new prosthetic that morning. It was more comfortable and easier to put on and take off. He removed the false leg while we were at his condo, setting the limb high on a book case. His remark was that he had a leg up on everybody else. Meanwhile it was cloudy and rainy outside and getting worse. We decided to take a cab downtown for dinner. By the time we got there (natives will know the place: three train cars stuck together in a very good restaurant), it was well and truly raining. The street was flooded, but we wore rain gear. I allowed Dennis to precede me, and he tried to run, old track star that he was. The street was slick and deep in water, and the wind blew hard out of a thunderstorm cell. It was enough to bowl him over, and he went sliding like a baseball player into the curb. It was not only a curb, but a storm drain. His bad leg went into it. I ran to help him, took him under the armpits and pulled him up, and we pulled the darned leg off. It, naturally, submerged immediately and was swept away—leg, foot, shoe, and sock—leaving two men standing there on three legs, wet as drowning puppies, and so surprised that nary word was uttered for a long moment and both of us stared at the flooded storm drain. “Well,” he said ruefully, “that takes me out of next week’s butt-kicking contest,” and we both howled, slapped our flanks, and hammered each other’s backs.

Directly in front of us, on the corner, was an upscale ladies apparel shop. Here comes the irony: the sales clerk and her manager were Vietnamese. We went into the shop to shed a little water and to figure out what to do. The tiny sales lady approached, cynically, but here she came:
“I hepp you, yes?”
“No, we need to rest a minute. He just lost his leg.”
“No; no hab legs heah”
“Well, do you have any knees?”
“No, no knee.”
“Well, what do you have?
“Got panny. Got boucoup pannies.”
“Then show us your panties.”
“No. You bad GI!”
That got it started, the banter:
“You got big shoe?”
“No, got little.”
“You hab lettuce heads?”
“No. Got nice leddies hats. No heads.”
“You got fish heads and lice?”
“No. You numbah ten. You go home now.”

This reminded me of a similar conversation in Thailand, at the NKP officers’ open mess. A young and somewhat attractive Thai waitress came:
“I take you ordah?”
“BLT, please.”
“Any ting else?”
“Coke”
“You want one, two BLT?”
“One”
In a little while, here she came and deposited a slim-looking sandwich in front of me. I opened it up to find no bacon on it, and there was a glass of tea:
“No bacon. I want BLT…and a coke…”
“No hab B” she said, “No hab C,” and she walked off. I ate an LT sandwich with tea, no B, no C.

At any rate, the Vietnamese/Nebrakan sales lady had a point. We called a taxi and returned to Dennis' condo, soaking wet, hungry, and generally put out, but we had shared a few laughs. He had a spare leg, his old one, so we drove to Burger King and finished less finely than planned. Oh, Patrice? She didn’t want an invalid, especially one hurt in that Asian war. Bronze Man finished his PhD at Kansas and was a professor at Nebraska, last I heard, and down to his last leg.

Monday, February 2, 2009
Our location this morning is -16° 38.4’ / -22° 42.4’ at 8.2 knots. Barometer is rising slowly, 29.89. Tempers and patience are short among the crew. Men are working hard; chipping, painting, welding, repairing, cleaning, replacing…This is the 36th day at sea for people who are used to working 14 days, and then going home. It is, in my estimation, a very good crew and completely dependable.

Plotting our progress will reveal a short distance traveled yesterday. There was trouble. At 0742, the starboard towline broke at the chain. It occurred just as I reduced thruster power upon direction from town. This, naturally, increased the tension on the line, and it separated. An emergency line had been attached to the towline (?), and it was attached onto the main deck hand-rails and wench. It was pulled loose, taking the hand-rail and cutting wiring, lines, and rope with it. It was amusing to see the dance unfold as to what happened, what failed, whose fault…that’s where the tap dance began, shifting the blame to something more inert. At the time, no one KNEW what had happened, but speculation was strong. It was certainly not the tow master’s fault, nor the sudden added tension, nor the tow vessel’s, so what’s left? Fatigue failure. When it first happened, there was a loud metallic bang and the vessel rocked suddenly: I thought the column had partially collapsed—a foolish thought, but this is political. My own considerable expertise in structural failures must go untapped as an opinion not wanted, nor do I wish to poke my head into the briar patch, so I did my job and left off my opinions after the first few moments. In truth, I have not seen the failed steel, so can not be sure. It probably was deficient, but the incident that broke it was tension.

That left us with a single tow vessel. We plugged along at 5 knots while recovering the broken tow line, and we still ran only four thrusters moderately. At 1106 hrs, that boat, the Sherpa, experienced a total blackout and lost all power. We quickly over-ran him and had to take evasive action, requiring additional generators and thrusters. I stopped the ship, but there was current, and the powerless tow was being pushed by it, and the heavy towline joining us together pulled at it significantly. That ended up as waltz around the south Atlantic until about 5 pm. Again, the crews are good and certainly up to the tasks. No one was injured and the only loss was a few hours.

When I came back to work at midnight, all was well: both tows towing, parted line repaired, two EMDs pulling at 70% on all thrusters. The separated Kinter links were replaced by new Kinter links, and we were steaming ahead. It is probable that those links were—and perhaps, ARE—faulty. These are the same tow lines that towed the Ensco 8500 from Singapore to Galveston, and then us from Corpus Christi to here.

Oh, they tried to pull this thing
With a silly piece of string,
Ginning little kilowatts—
Hardly worth their vacant thoughts.
Now I hate to sound too gruff,
But it wasn’t quite enough,
So the string was pulled in two,
And it stranded I and you.

--------------------------------------I made that up, too; can you tell?--------------------