Cambodia

Thursday, January 29, 2009
32nd day at sea, at -7° 35.9’ / -29° 9.2’, and our speed is 8 knots on a COG of 140. The barometer remains low, as is the rule near the equator, 29.77 and steady. Phones and internet went out again moments ago, and this one may be hard to repair.

Tim McElveen, the ET, has found a ground fault in the aft-looking antenna-receiver that can not be repaired. It is redundant to the one we have on the bow (forward-looking), so we can exchange them and probably come back online, but it will require a lot of work. This stuff was all supposedly replaced and the system upgraded by the vendor before we left. Fine job, fellas. Tim’s buddy, Jamie Ziegler, points out that he quit drinking about 35 days ago. I wonder if there is merit in abstention when it can’t be had, anyway. That is one for the ministers and philosophers to worry over: if lust in the heart is a sin, is desire for drunkenness also? Actually, I prefer a nap.

War has few redeeming qualities, but some men and women caught up in it see the world and reality differently. The world view is one of idealized beauty, without the taint of ugliness, or the sting of loss or fear. Their real world contains both extremes. It should be apparent from the previous story that I was awed by the country and the history of a place where blood and gore ran amok. In the real world, of course, events among cultures is always driven by politics, and politics must function without worry of truth or morality, yet office-seekers always appeal to those points. To me, that is why all politicians are dirty, some more than others. War, of course, is but an extension of politics, which most warriors rue. The impacts made on combat soldiers are much different from those made on diplomats. In the soldier’s world there is too much of two things: minutiae and the awesome, as in awesome firepower, or very long marches, or the daily frag order, or pointless formations. The term “your country” is also perceived differently. To a soldier, “your country” is an ideal, a conglomerate of home and siblings, school, friends, mom, and Uncle Sam. (Ever wonder why depictions of Uncle Sam are so benign, righteous, and innocent?) The diplomat knows that, and he uses the term to his advantage, while he himself realizes that “your country” mostly represents “your party affiliation” and has little to do with mom and apple pie, or good Uncle Sam. With that in mind, I shall presently write of some other areas of our special operations, Phnom Penh, Angkor, and Angkor Wat in what was once the principal power in southeast Asia, Kampuchea, and known to us then as Cambodia. Later, some soldiers serving kings over five thousand years ago will be targeted.

Some societies have become great, some will someday, some will fail, and many have failed. Great culturo-social orders have five things in common—four, according to Frank Herbert—but I added another one based on observations of many countries:

1. Proper laws made, then dispensed by proper judges:
2. Diligent study by their learned, that learning disseminated:
3. The applied industry of their masses:
4. Meaningful inculcation of their young:
5. The valor of their brave.

(Number 5 is not the one I added, but I would have…)If you have not read DUNE, by Frank Herbert, you have missed good literature and a very good education. Do yourself a favor and read that series, which is actually a lesson in ecology and over-population.
It is a private, deep emotion to stand at the utterly quiet base of a great monument that was built by teems of leading cultures and has passed beyond time and place, leaving art and architecture of tales and proceedings beyond our ken. Who will stand in our own country someday and wonder that? Will mankind, in its haste to murder one another, last long enough for us to pass into history? I don’t have the answers, but I can tell you about standing in the presence of one of heaven’s preferred cities—empty, beautiful, quiet, abandoned, mysterious, and impotent: Angkor. Others are Machu Picchu, Canyon de Chelly, Les Jarres, Chaco Canyon, Kasha-Katuwe, Aztec Ruins, Mesa Verde…and many more, strong, vibrant tribes and cultures now passed into oblivion, to be heard no more.

The five guidelines above provide a value quantity. If one be diluted, the whole is diluted, but so long as any persists, it is worth fighting—even dying—for. One certain pointer of failure in a culture is when that culture at large thinks that dying for any cause is foolish. They’ll be erased, one way or another (failure of all five rules, but especially number 5). Yet there is no honor in fighting without cause. When one checks out the thesaurus for “valor” all the synonyms are heroic and honorable. There actually is a right side and a wrong side in most conflicts, but sides should have predefined laws, societal mores, and judgments to assure the proper placement of emphases. Once the society has expressed its will, those goals should be tirelessly pursued. Society, not politicians, should be the great decision-makers, because it is populated by the five elements above. Political activity should be a streamline in that activation. It is always errant for one social/religious/political order to attempt to force its dogma on another. No reasonable excuse can ever be had for tyranny. No society should be subverted to the needs of the anti-social or criminal. Society must always be ready to swing its swords, whether they are of steel or of paper, and when the time comes, search out the enemy and nullify him.

Cambodia is generally flat, forested, and wet. It has a range of mountains on the border with Thailand, north of Siem Reap. A survey map reveals very large rivers and one variable-sized lake, Tonle Sap. The season determines the size of Tonle Sap. During the rainy season, water backs up out of the Mekong at Phnom Penh and fills the lake. The Tonle Sap River joins the lake to the Mekong, and it flows in the direction dictated by the season. Because the lake ebbs and rises annually, it constantly replenishes nutrients and is populated heavily by fish—enough to feed three million people as a staple. It has a large population of crocodiles, too. Those beasts provide the raw materials for food and leather. There are pens of the things at various bergs around the lake being fed and cared for until they reach the proper size, or breed. Then they become fashionable hand bags. There is also jungle, where monkeys, birds, elephants, and jungle critters of all sorts live, or hide. Those jungles hide armies, too, and have done so since before the Kingdom of the Khmer. When I was there, three armies vied for supremacy: the People’s Army of Vietnam (NVA), the Khmer Rouge, and the Khmer Army. Two were communists, but with differing goals. Up in Laos were also three armies: NVA, Pathet Lao, and Royal Laotian, of which two were communist with differing goals. Another neighbor of Cambodia was Vietnam, fielding four armies: NVA, Viet Cong, ARVN, and the US. There was a common thread to all this, the Ho Chi Minh Trail, where one terminus was at Sihanoukville, Cambodia. The other terminal was Hanoi/Haiphong. Note that there were sea ports at each end of the trail. The trail was the logistics system for North Vietnam to wage war on South Vietnam, while overrunning Laos and Cambodia to do so. The true antagonists were North Vietnam, who wanted to unify their country, and the United States, who wanted to prevent it. It embroiled four nations, discounting the USSR and China and minor allies, and eventually killed over five million souls. I doubted South Vietnam was worth it, and many felt that we fought on the wrong side. It goes back to the five elements, above, being violated—misapplied—by politicians on all fronts.

Friday, January 30, 2009
33rd day: -10° 21.2’ N and -27° 12’ E, 8.2 knots, track 144.

That is quite a preamble to a simple flying story. Sometimes I think that the war, the location, the losses, and the times scarred me, and I wonder if any combat soldier came back unscathed, and now I see the same things happening in Iraq and Afghanistan. Jean Larteguy (The Praetorians) wrote that an old glass-maker in Italy told Glatigny that sometimes the perfect glass in fine crystal gets a disease and, for no reason, just breaks. And we were crystal soldiers. In southeast Asia, we didn’t have post-traumatic stress syndrome yet. We were perfectly mentally healthy, without the least bit of depression. If one went to the shrink, or complained of nightmares, he was grounded or dismissed from the service, “for the good of the service”. I and people like me could not even wear name tags or rank when we fought the secret war, in order that the Government could have more “credible denial” (their term). If they claimed we didn’t belong to them, would they look after us when we were captured or shot down? No, but all its soldiers were emotionally well. That was the genre of the times, while we committed suicide, cried like girls, and muddled through jobs and marriages. That has changed now, thank God. When he comes back, your soldier will have a burden in his soul that he evermore must carry, this in addition to loss of limb or other injury. When we are young we control magic, and it glitters in our cupped hands. For each tragedy or heart-break that occurs, a glittering gem goes out. Finally, all the glitter is gone, and one is left holding empty hands in the dark, with grief and uncertainty his room mates—and the realization that life without the comforts of innocence and without your too-loved comrades is painful and empty. Combat is in no way similar to selling automobiles or insurance. War lives on flesh and blood, and whoever is close enough to combat will be devoured—maybe not eaten entirely, but at least partially so: every being—soldier, merchant, child, baby, monk, monkey, bird, tiger, tree, shrine... Combat is the most equal-opportunity vandal on earth: it cares nothing for anything.

War worries naught for shrines or holy places, either, and that is one of the great tragedies of any war. Cambodia—as did all Asia—possessed many fragile, lovely works of art and architecture, wats, museums, holy places, scenic places, ancient domains, wonderful mysteries, as you will see with the attached photos. Some of those wonderful things would catch one’s breath, inspire the mind, awe the senses, and the next week be destroyed without thought. Antoine de St-Exupěry wrote that he was astounded by the ambivalence of a 22 year-old lieutenant ordering that a stand of 400 year-old oak trees be cut down, so he would have a better field of fire against a transient enemy. Well, anyway…we were big boys when we signed on…now let’s go fly.

Phnom Penh is built around the site of five budas erected on a man-made mound that belonged to a wealthy widow, a grandmother. The mound was originally about 75 feet high and grassy. The Widow Penh invited certain monks and their followers to take up abode on her land, and thus the city began. It now has wide boulevards and a smattering of French colonial makeup, but much indigenous Asian archetecture and coloring. Flowers and trees grow lushly. The atmosphere feels of tropical coast, but it is not coast. It is two great rivers, the Mekong and the Tonle Sap. At Phnom Penh, the Mekong is perhaps two miles wide and 150 feet deep during the rainy season. It rises and causes the Tonle Sap River to back up, flowing in the opposite direction to fill up Lake Tonle Sap.

The Mekong comes down out of China from half-way up the Himalayas. Its head waters originate within a few miles, say a hundred, of four other major rivers of the world: the Yangtze, Brahmaputra, Ganges, and Irrawaddy. A bit further on begins the Salween, and further east, the Yellow. A lot of water comes out of those mountains.

By the time it passes on the east side of Phnom Penh, the Mekong is huge and lazy. The Tonle Sap joins it on the north side of the city, which thus lies in the elbow of two very large rivers. It is this that gives the atmosphere its sea-like quality. A hundred miles away, the south end of the lake begins and runs northwest for another hundred miles.

It was a beautiful city made up of people of small stature and friendly demeanor. They were industrious and arty, lots of French influence. French was still spoken there, with more and more speaking some English (American, actually). They were great admirers of Jacqueline Kennedy, and they prayed with their monks for a peaceful solution to the rebellion, and to be free. They loved Prince Sihanouk, as well as Elvis. There was, of course, a vibrant black market. Another industry was the making and selling of temple rubbings from Angkor Wat or Angkor Thom, perhaps other temples. I brought many of those home, and some of you have them. They are valuable now, so hang on to them. Always, there was the influence of great water, those two mighty streams that provided some security from the north and east, taxi, food, mercantile, shipping, and a hundred things. Otherwise, the city was surrounded by forests, and they were not secure. There came to be war brought to their doorsteps, great columns of black, sooty smoke rising up from the forest over there where a battle raged. Then, over there, was a pall of gray smoke—the burning oil of tanks and trucks, and over there was two columns of white smoke, victims being cremated, to meet sanitation requirements.

The US had no troops stationed in Cambodia that I am aware of, but we should have had, both there and in Laos, if we honestly wanted to make war on Hanoi. It was a poorly planned and executed war on our part, but this is for later. Our point in being in Phnom Penh was to plan an extraction of American diplomats in the event of sudden successful invasion of the city. That plan was built and titled Project Eagle Pull. We would fly into the soccer stadium with air support, etc, etc, and pick up all the dignitaries and VIP others, then fly out and abandon the city to its fate, which—as we know now—became one of absolute genocide: four million out of twelve million people were murdered by Pol Pot and his communist-backed regime. Pol Pot wanted to return to a totally agrarian nation, and his means were to eliminate scholars, builders, teachers, business people—anyone who had insufficient dealings with tilling the earth. His backers were the North Vietnamese. Pol Pot was a Khmer Rouge, a thuggish mass of poor-quality, but brutal, communist soldiers that required being propped up. It was also necessary, in keeping with communist dogma, for Pol Pot to “re-educate” the masses. Genocide was the solution. It was so bad, that in 1975, the NVA pulled the plug on Pol Pot and withdrew their support. His regime fell, but the damage was done. The Killing Fields really happened. Read The Killing Fields, by Christopher Hudson and look it up on the internet. Gruesome. (Jimmy Carter expected to PULL the Americans out of Tehran in a similar fashion, but that is a whole other book, too.)
As a special operations outfit, our chain of command was different. We frequently worked for/reported to the US Ambassador to whatever country we were working. We did, on occasion, support combat operations in Cambodia. We helped in a fight at Siem Reap, and again nearer Angkor Wat. I picked up the pilot of an A7 shot down between the combatants, but he’d been gut-shot and died quickly. I got into trouble for that one, since I was not on orders to recover that young captain. His boss, a brigadier general put a letter of commendation in my files, and my bosses backed off. We also recovered the cannon from his airplane. Later 1Lt Rocky Rovito, of the 40th ARRS, had an AFCS hydraulic seizure and failure on his HH-53. He and the crew rode it into Lake Tonle Sap, and none survived. We took divers (gutty fellows) to recover the bodies. They worked the wreckage while two or three choppers hovered overhead with guns ready to deal with crocodiles. None came, however, and we sent the bodies of those men to Graves and Registration, who sent them back home, where their service meant nothing and their deaths meant little, nor their lives, except to we few and mom and dad.

After the war, Jack Piroutek and Cliff Merrill both were killed in similar fashion in separate mishaps.

Plaine des Jarres

Tuesday, January 27, 2009
0600 LST, -4° 54.5’ / +31° 00’ speed 7.6 knots, course over ground (COG) 148°, 8522 NM from Dampier, 3282 NM to Cape Town, traveled 4339 NM.

So, we are something over half way to Cape Town, probably another 20 days. Today is our 30th at sea. Ahead, there is a hurricane in Dampier this morning. Daylight comes early, and night late, for a while anyway. March 21 is the vernal equinox, whatever that means on the equator. By then, I hope to be in Texas, so I won't have to deal with all this confusion.


Yesterday broke the sea-weariness of all. On the chart is shown a jumble of rocks poking up out of the water called Ferdinand de Noronha. When we passed them, it was a delight. One pinnacle jumped out of the water over a thousand feet. Others jumped and strutted their former volcano status, but somewhat less vertically. In all are twenty- one lovely islands that belong to Brazil. The little town of Noronha is quaint and colorful, bespeaking wealth, perhaps. Two thousand people live there, in aquamarine seas, both black and white sand beaches, tunnels and caves, sprites and mermaids. I am told that the principle crater is beneath the sea and is a diver’s paradise. Ashore are fresh water swimming pools and fountains, old gates and walls, lush growth of greens, speckled richly with orange, white, blue, red, and yellow. Some beaches still retain lava beds. There are a number of inns and hotels that promise a short time in paradise. It is funny that I never knew of it before. They speak Portuguese there, but in past times it has been Spanish, English, French, and Dutch (not sure about Dutch).

Wednesday, January 28, 2009
31st day, holding position on DP, taking on fuel all night long. Our position holds at -6° 18.15’ and 30° 2’ . Since we are all straight on the pluses and minuses, then everybody knows where we are. The tow vessel Alpine is along our starboard side and dispensing some 110,000 gallons of fuel to us. We did not really need it, but it mollifies certain onshore entities. We ought to get under way about 9am local, which remains four hours ahead of Central Standard Time.

John Keats, the English poet, was only 26 when he died. That deprived us of some very fine poetry, but before he expired, he knew a man like Corbin Richards, of my own time. In fact, he wrote about the man. Edwin A Robinson wrote about the same sort of gentleman. I’ll tie these facts together momentarily.
Corbin Richards was one of the smartest men I ever knew. He was lucky, good-looking, and well-liked. He was my age, but his life and talents were much superior to my more plebian military self: I found satisfaction in service; he by self-aggrandizement. By the time I was a captain, he was a millionaire and just getting started. We had been close pals as we grew into young men and continued seeing each other on occasion, exchanged Christmas cards, announced births, and such. He was interested in airplanes and the war, so we had that, too. He, in fact, made a good deal of money on the war, while some of us were losing our lives, or worse.

At university, Corbin drove a Corvette, and it always had a beautiful girl in it. He was president of the student body, Dean’s list for grades, lived in a palatial old home, usually full of fraternity buddies. He was generous and affable. Every man liked him, and every woman loved him. He was the kind of guy that could work all day in a Stetson hat and come in late with no hair out of place, no apparent sweat, and no odor. He wouldn’t ask a person if something were needed: he’d simply take care of it with money, or skill, or professional help. When we graduated, he had employers lined up for him, bonuses in hand.

He worked for a few years with a major energy company, then went on his own in a whole new field. He married Miss Ohio, a runner-up at Miss America. They toured the world, made headlines, and were received with honors. Then suddenly, they divorced. He became a millionaire on his own, and then the good life really started. He built a mansion in Georgetown and had a new office in Washington. All the while, he maintained a youthful, trim appearance and an ageless face. I began to wrinkle and get gray, but not Corbin. When we were thirty, I looked it: he didn’t.

The only time I ever saw him shaken was at Udorn RTAB, Thailand. He came to visit us after demonstrating a super-snooper spying device for the lads behind the fence at Nakhon Phanom. That was McNamara’s stuff, highly classified, very expensive. He figures he made a billion dollars on that stuff. Roger Carrol, Corbin, and I had lunch at the officers’ club and planned to socialize seriously that night. Roger had an afternoon sortie up in the Plaine des Jarres, Laos. We watched him board the flight line taxi and disappear into the forest of F-4s. An hour later, while attacking, he was shot in the face by a .51 caliber AA gun during a dive-bomb delivery. He died instantly, and the airplane continued at a 45° angle at 500 knots. The back-seater ejected and barely cleared the airframe, but went in face-first at a little over 700 feet per second. That was the end of Joyhop 01, their call sign. We got word of it quickly. When I told Corbin, he became ashen. That event seemed to hurt him. It hurt all of us, but we were more used to it than he was. That was his first and only foray into combat. He left the next day and went to Bangkok and invited me to come after we finished trying to recover the remains.

The PDJ (Plain of Jars) is a beautiful place, shaped like an upside down T-bone steak about 22 miles long. Jungle forest ceases at the boundary of the “J”, giving way to lush, tall grasses and shrubs, and thousands of great jars. Those jars are six feet across and built of stone not found in the area. Many weigh more than 6000 pounds. No one knows from whence they came, but they are ancient. Some evidence indicates that the stone came from India. There are many limestone caves in the area, and several have been the sites of hot fires. Some include scorched human bones, and so it is propounded by one school that the jars held the ashes of the dead of some unknown culture, now dead and without trace. A major east-west road traverses the northern half of the Plain, joining North Vietnam with Louang Prabang, and a north-south road joining the north to Vientienne. “Road” is a pretty generous term, but they were sufficient to carry marching armies. Many streams cross the J and several significant rivers flow past it. The Plain lies in a bowl, surrounded by rough, wild mountains and deep jungle. It was the center piece of the unknown war, the war of guerilla units and special missions—kept secret from America, despite 60,000 of her sons fighting and dying there. Men who died there, or who earned distinguished medals, were summarily downgraded, because the US government could not tell the truth about whom we fought, where we died, nor what we did. About 20 miles west-southwest of the J lies the hidden city of Long Tieng, named by the CIA as Lima Site Twenty Alternate. It was the HQ for General Vang Pao and his little rag tag army of hard-fighting men and boys. It was home of the Raven FACs, Air America, and hangout for other special operatives, including us, 21st Special Operations Squadron. (Read Christopher Robin, The Ravens and John Plaster, SOG.) Lima Site 20A is one of the most remarkable places I ever saw, built into karst on three sides, with Skyline Ridge on the east and over which lay the PDJ. Flying into the city requires an approach that terminates in a mountain of karst at the other end of the runway and on the right. Departing requires that you go the other way, regardless of winds or weather. The south end contains the karst, but also a cul-de-sac where offices, guns, parking ramps, and barracks are located. The karst looks like a case of wine bottles with the necks broken off—sharp, hard, vertical rock. At the approach end was a gun pit with a 175 mm Howitzer, usually pointed at the J.

The two sides fought annually over possession of the PDJ. Vang Pao owned during the dry season, with the aid of US air. The communists owned it during the wet season, due to lack of air support. Many, many men died over the years, the red earth never even noticing the extra supply of blood. Roger was but the latest.

His target area was beside a south-running creek in a stand of trees. It was destroyed when we got there. There was the usual water-filled crater where the airplane went subterranean. The back seater, such burnt jelly as was left of him, lay outside the crater in 15 or 18 pounds of human goo, mostly contained inside the legs of his g-suit. Flesh festers up quickly over there, so the unfortunate guy was—for the most part—in some other realm. Roger was in the crater. We didn’t find anything, really, but a piece of the control stick into which was fused the splintered bone of a human thumb, both charred and defaced.

I didn’t get down to Bangkok: I still had a war to fight. Corbin was affected about the recovery and he was very upset. Then he went silent for two or three years. My DROS (date of return from overseas) came, and I went to a new base, a new airplane, a new job and continued to screw up my life without any delay whatever. I saw Corbin in some of the commissary tabloids, first with one lovely, then a rich divorcee, then…He bought a ranch in Montana to raise—protect—wild horses. When I made major, he flew down in his Gulfstream III and whisked me away to celebrate. I really was overwhelmed with the women, the money, the class and quality of location, board, and consumables. He was an absolute gentleman, but his fast living was now showing in his face, and his color was bad. Before I went back to being a government airplane driver, he offered me a job. It so surprised me that I had no answer, but he said not to hurry, he’d keep it for me. Thus, I thought, I had it made with one career in the pocket and another ready to go. I never saw Corbin Richards again. Three months later, he shot himself in the head at the table of his new condo in Georgetown and was dead when he hit the floor. There was no note, no reason to think he would do that, and to this day, I can not come up with any answer, except that Keats must have had it right: the good life killed him. Robinson knew, too. Read them below: it is worth it.

La Belle Dame Sans Merci
(The Beautiful Woman Without Mercy)
John Keats

I
O What can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.

II
O, what can ail thee, knight-at-arms!
So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel’s granary is full,
And the harvest’s done.

III
I see a lily in thy brow
With anguish moist and fever dew,
And on thy cheeks, a fading rose
Fast withereth, too.

IV
I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful—a faery’s child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.

V
I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets, too, and fragrant zone;
She looked at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan.

VI
I set her on my pacing steed
And nothing else saw all day long,
For sidelong would she bend, and sing
A faery’s song.

VII
She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna dew,
And sure in language strange she said—
“I love thee true.”

VIII
She took me to her elfin grot,
And there she wept and sigh’d full sore,
And there I shut her wild, wild eyes
With kisses four.
IX

And there she lulled me asleep,
And there I dream’d—Ah woe betide!
The latest dream I ever dream’d
On the cold hill’s side.

X
I saw pale kings and princes, too,
Pale warriors; death—pale were they all;
They cried—“La Belle Dame Sans Merci
Hath thee in thrall!”

XI
I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke and found me here,
On the cold hill’s side.

XII
And this is why I sojourn here,
Alone and palely loitering,
The sedge is withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.

To that I add another poet’s revelation of the privileged not coping;

Richard Cory
Edwin Arlington Robinson

Whenever Richard Cory went downtown,
We people on the pavement looked at him;
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean-favored, and imperially slim.

He was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still, he fluttered pulses when he said;
“Good Morning”, and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich—yes, richer than a king,
And admirably schooled in every grace;
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.

So, on we worked and waited for the light,
And went without meat and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.

Random Thoughts Along the Earth's Beltline

Sunday, January 25, 2009
We crossed the equator and have already seen the Southern Cross. Polaris has disappeared. The jury is still out on which way water in the lavatory is going to swirl. We should set a blue ribbon panel to work on that. Right now, we are at -1°(south) and 35° 22.1’ west. Before long we’ll cross the prime meridian (0° east, where the clocks start). When we get where we’re going, the coordinates will have changed in both signs, from north latitude (+) and west longitude (-) to south latitude (-) and east longitude (+):
Really, really lost is us:
It was a minus, not a plus.
So where we are, nobody knows:
Instead of heat, it really snows.
The navigator turned us right,
Which very nearly caused a fight
And left the entire crew bereft;
‘Twas not the right, but to the left. (I made that up myself. The end)



Monday, January 26, 2009
S 2° 50.6’ and W 32° 52.8’. Without the S and W, those coordinates are written -2° 50.6’ / -32° 52.8’. It must be entered into navigation functions in that manner, or you could end up half a world away. That is the point of the poem, above. At Cape Town, it will be -33° 52’ / +18° 14’
Signs are set in such convention
As to need a lot of mention:
Getting them wrong is filled with dangers
Of landing amidst unfriendly strangers.
Now east is least, and west is best
When altitudes are flown.
But east is hot when west is not
When position must be known.
Going north is positive, it’s really very sound,
But going south is negative—you’re standing upside down.
(I made that up, too; how do you think I always know where I am?…disregard that.)

The very finest cup of coffee EVER: an event known of but by few.
I do not guarantee the degree of truth in this story, but I know that at least part of it is true. It is about an event that caught up two pals, Glen Tisdale and Cooper Martin, ex-GIs, once-removed. Think of Alphonse and Gaston, or Laurel and Hardy. These guys had always been vagabonds and wayward boys. They were first to get into a “good deal”, always had an inside track and some get-rich-quick scheme, but they were true to their beliefs: they got into it first, and usually into trouble concomitantly. They were like two happy pups, always together running and tugging and finding trouble quite by accident. It was often a lot more trouble than they had imagined. Trouble never influenced them, though, because the only thing they could see was blue sky on the horizon. A trip from here to there was a piece of cake, because they saw only sky, and not the chasms, quick-sands, lawyers, and man-eaters to be encountered on the way. They were not stubborn in the sense of hard-headedness, but neither of them was in any way subordinate, so they were constantly banging their heads together, leaping before looking, and laughing like the devil. Neither was actually a leader—in the sense of “Follow Me”—but each had his own ideas. The problem was that sometimes the same fundamentally flawed idea entered each of those fertile noggins simultaneously. Then it was Katie bar the door.

Coop got into a high-stakes poker game in Tampa, and he won. That was unique to him, actually winning something, but he should have known immediately that there would be consequences to pay. He won a boat, a forty-footer with a single mast and a small diesel engine. It was made of wood planks, or so it appeared to me, and the accommodations included a glassed-in wheel house and a stairwell forward into a combination kitchen, bedroom, crapper, and map room. There were a couple of VHF radios and an HF, a small anchor on about 300 feet of chain, a rear-mounted winch, an air compressor, and an engine compartment. Most recently, a Cuban had owned that boat, so its history remained a mystery, although the Coast Guard, the FBI, and the drug-chasers all had it listed in their records. That sometimes indicates that the vessel had been seized for some illegality. (Could it have been drugs, or immigrants?)
Glen said, “Hey, Coop, that’s great: WE got a boat!”
Coop asked, “What’s this WE?”
Glen: “Because of the bet, Idiot.”
Coop: “What bet? What do you mean?”
Glen: “It was MY car and motorcycle that you bet against that boat. So WE have a boat.”
That’s the way they operated, never a thought of trouble, or losing, or consequences. Speaking of which:
They bought a book about boats and such, took some kind of exam that they were guaranteed to pass, registered the thing at the tax office and became mariners, more or less, in an impractical sort of way. “Hey, there’s Vega. We go north from here.” “No, that’s Sirius. We should head south.” There was no GPS available in those days.
Tapping the chart: “I think you’re wrong. Here’s where we are.”
Pointing with index finger: “No. We’re here.”
Looking aft: “ Well, we already passed that buoy.”
Looking forward: “No we didn’t. It’s up there.”
You get the idea. Life with those two would have been impossible for a wife or buddy.
“Did you get the oil changed?”
“No. You were supposed to do that. I was supposed to buy a compass.”
“No, dammit. I bought the compass.”
“Then we have two compasses. I bet mine’s better. Yours is the spare”
“Fine. What about the oil, Fool?”
“Oil, Shmoil. We can take out the filters and wash them in the ocean and use them again.”
“We can’t do that!”
“We can, too…”

For a year or two, they were fairly benign and learned a little maritime skill, mostly by shallow charter, fishing, maybe shrimping. But then, they began to go out into the ocean, out in blue water, deep water. I have often wondered how they paid bills, or if they paid bills, during the forays. I was not very close to them then, since I was still in the Air Force, and they had long-since separated, but I made a trip out there to see them after I read a note in the paper and then in the Air Force Times”
“ Guantanamo, Cuba: A USAF C-130F airplane has crashed in seas 100 miles south east of Guantanamo Bay, where the aircraft was scheduled to land. Two American fishermen witnessed the crash and have been identified as Cooper Martin and Glen Tisdale, both of Tampa. They searched the area for survivors and recovered one body. Sources refused to comment on the origin of the flight or its mission…”

Glen and Coop were in the area just above the deep trench parallel to and south of the island, but they refuse to say what they were doing there, except fishing. I do not believe that, and the Air Force does not really buy it, either. Their story is a good one, though, despite the legality or illegality of their presence.

Their heading was north when the C-130 first appeared, leaving its tell-tale exhaust against a lively blue and animated white sky. It would pass several miles east of them on its original course, but suddenly, the number four engine flashed and caught fire. It threw a prop into the inboard engine, apparently destroying it also. Coop saw the flame retardant spray out, but it had little effect on the external fire. The craft immediately turned toward their boat, descending. It was obviously going into the water. They could see the pilot fighting for control, but there was some damage to the flight controls. Just before they landed, the aircraft pitched up, pulled the wing off, and crashed on its back, sinking immediately.

The fuselage ruptured along its spine. Fuel tanks ruptured and there was fire on the water. The left wing continued both burning and floating. There were bits and pieces of flotsam—seat cushions, webbing, olive drab stuff…and a scattering of $100 bills.

They speculated immediately on what they saw: that airplane was carrying the payroll for the US military at Guantanamo. As the fires permitted, the two friends motored closer to the point of impact, Tisdale putting on SCUBA gear. They searched for survivors, but there were none. I believed them when they told me that their first concern was for survivors, because the payroll issue was nothing more than an idea, a spoken speculation. That money could have come from somebody’s wallet. They knew that the trench was virtually right under them because the water became suddenly blue. The airplane may very well be in that abyss, but they had to try to get to it, to get bodies out of it, even to secure anything that might be classified: they were very near Cuba, after all.

Tisdale tied a guy line around himself and went in. He could easily see the chasm, and he could see what might be airplane shrouded by mud. It was right on the lip of the abyss, almost tipping into it. This could be dicey. He swam down to the plane, which was entirely demolished: both wings off, belly up, rips and tears in a fractured fuselage. Oil and hydraulics percolated up, with a lot of debris: maps, cloth, a piece of orange and white parachute, canvas…Tisdale rolled the parachute canopy up in order to keep it from trapping him inside. At the end of the shroud was a staff sergeant. Tisdale pulled the body out of the plane and took him and his parachute up to the boat, now with the unlikely moniker Timid Terrapin. Coop took the dead man aboard as Glen started back down. This time, he got inside the airplane and could see the crew, all dead. An eel was already working its way inside a man’s mouth. Other eels were coming to lunch. He saw the strong box. It had been crushed but was still in one piece. Suddenly the airplane lurched and rocked, settled again, but it was going over the side soon. Tisdale worked his hand into the box several times and pulled out a wad of C-notes. It was in his mind to pay them selves on one trip, then come back and get a body, alternating until they were done. He found a helmet bag floating nearby and stuffed it with money, and the fuselage growled again.

He was reaching for another fistful of dollars when the sea had enough. Her great abysmal maw took the airplane and started down with it. Glen yanked back his hand and struggled to make the exit. As quickly as he was out of the airplane, it rolled over, closing off the escape route, and down she went, bumping and growling for thousands of feet. She was tipped over by a shift in current, maybe, or a tide, perhaps a flying fish happened by and tripped the equilibrium. Glen, though, had a sack full of money. He surfaced and handed the bag off to Coop. They spoke a few minutes, and Tisdale went back down to survey the area for bodies, loot, or equipment.

He heard high speed screws coming, but stayed down to finish policing up the area. He filled a sail bag full of gear, small stuff. In a short while, half a dozen divers came down toward him, US Navy guys. Overhead, the keel of a destroyer was alongside the tiny Timid Terrapin. Glen surfaced with an escort on either side of him. All three rolled onto the deck of the little boat. A navy man confiscated the bag, searching through it. A cop of some sort was also aboard and giving Coop a tough time. Coop offered Tis a cup of coffee, which tasted of brine, seaweed, old coffee, and…something unusual.

“You call this coffee? This is crap”
“Yeh. That’s what the nice policeman said, but I like it strong like that.”
“Well, I don’t.” and he threw it over the side.
“As long as I make the coffee, I want just like that.”
They haggled on, answering insinuating questions. Divers searched the underside of their little boat, the policeman the interior. Glen had to answer many questions about the attitude of the airplane when it went over. where was the staff sergeant when Glen found him? What things were pulled down with the airplane? How many men did he see on the airplane? What time, which direction, blah, blah. They would be called to testify, they and their boat were subject to search and seizure. And so on.

At last the Navy departed.
“What did you do with the money?” asked Tisdale.
“It’s in the coffee pot.”
“Man, that’s a really great cup of coffee.”
“I thought you didn’t like my coffee.”
“I love your coffee, but next time cut the seaweed.”
“How much did we get?”
“About two-hundred thou.”
“That’s not bad. We know where nine million more is.”

A Love Story at the Equator's Edge

Saturday, January 24, 2009
In six or eight hours, we’ll cross the equator. As I write, we are 0° 47’ north and 37° 37’ west. I am proudly wearing half a mustache, having shaved the northern half off earlier--since I am departing the northern hemisphere. Of course, I must face east for that to work, but I have taken out an option. I hope to send photos of this face, but may not for thinking it actually looks prettier covered in hair. Someone else should judge, but lacking a jury, I’ll wear half a mustache until it can be resolved. I shall tell you if the toilets flush backwards in the southern hemisphere when I find out. Coriolis effect, they call it.

What follows is a story about Benny, the Dragon, and Raul, his brother. It is a love story, I think. When you have read it, please let me know.

On an end table of their little home, there was a wedding picture of Imelda, Toya, and Raul Villego. Imelda was pretty and obviously very happy, seated on a high-back chair. Her three-year old daughter stood next to her mother. The child was radiantly smiling and clutched a little blue pony. She was dressed in frills and lace, with curled hair, and paten leather shoes, and showing sweet little baby teeth. Next to her was the groom, her new dad, dressed in a cheap suit with a poorly tied tie, offering a gentle smile of utter joy. The little girl was the centerpiece of the photo and of age and demeanor to be the show piece, but she wasn’t. Imelda showed perfect white teeth in a lovely smile, luxuriant black hair, and flawless, creamy skin on a strikingly pretty woman. She was not the center of attention, either. It was Raul, his eyes. They almost glowed in a benign face that brought something into the viewer’s mind, something almost spiritual. He seemed to be seeing something wonderful, something no one else knew was there. One did not notice that he had no hands.

He also lacked the left leg from the knee down, and his body still carried shrapnel from the mine that rendered him thus. There were two pocks on his face from the explosion, but his stomach and legs were hashed and criss-crossed with shrapnel and surgical scars. Raul should have died, almost died, but he did not. He was 26 years-old: he looked 20 in the face, and 80 in the body. He used a modified cane, or a crutch. His arms and hands were synthetic, prostheses of stainless steel, nylon, and rubber. His left leg was aluminum, as was the foot. His heart was human, though, and much tougher than the metals that made him semi-mobile and semi-functional. That heart was large, and it lived in a small Latin man who seemed not to notice any disability.

Raul was drafted for the war in southeast Asia. Like most of the soldiers of his ilk, he was made a rifleman in an infantry outfit, the most over-worked men on earth. He was new to the outfit and was on patrol with his platoon when the man in front of him stepped on a mine that blew him all to hell. The man if front of him was seriously injured, and Raul should have been killed. I happened to be flying nearby, having accomplished a dedicated mission and was returning “home”. The call came through on ABCCC, and we were nearest and available. We loaded five WIA and one KIA and started for the hospital as the monsoon enveloped us. Our own paramedic was at work on Raul and the other badly wounded man. When I asked him how they were doing, he told me one might make it and the other would not. Both were given morphine. Blood rolled up the floor, then down again as the helicopter changed attitude. The next cycle brought more blood, and so it went. I could smell them, the cordite, the burned flesh, the blood and sweat, and the stink of overworked men. I managed to find the hospital, where those men were quickly carried to triage and surgery; then I flew to the ramp and shut it down. We needed fuel and a break in the weather. We got the fuel. I am not an openly prayerful man, but I pleaded with the Maker to help those boys, they were only boys, and that they had to have help beyond mortal capacity. I didn’t really know whether that meant bringing death to the one, or letting him live in god-knows-what condition. Those things affect soldiers, forced to be tough…There was a common saying by grunts in those days, “it don’t mean Nothin’” It was less a statement of macho than a whimper of pain. Don’t mean nothin’, Bro.

Several months later, I received a parcel from a Raul Villego in fine hand-writing. It read: “I am writing this for my boy friend. He says that on June 17, you flew your helicopter to help some injured soldiers. I am Raul, and I was badly injured by the mine. You saved my life, and I am now in rehab with new arms and a leg. I still have some surgeries, but I am happy to be here to have them. God bless you, Captain Griffith. I am sending you my Buda, since I don’t need him anymore. I hope you never need him. And I hope you will come to see me someday. Mostly, I hope you don’t get hurt over there, and none of your friends, either. Me and my family, we pray for you, and I am very happy. Someday that war will end. Sincerely, Raul Villego, ex-pfc. (Imelda Herrera)”. There was a small, bronze Buda wrapped in tissue paper with a card in Vietnamese and English, “For true good luck, rub the Buda’s belly.” The superstitious say that a Buda brings luck only to those who are given a Buda. A bought Buda has no luck. I never got hurt, but Buda was not my only good-luck charm: I had a St Christopher, a rabbit’s foot, a horse shoe, a laminated ace of spades, a new testament, and a shaker of salt. One of more of them worked!

Within a few days, I received PCS orders to a base very near the town from which Raul had written, so I wrote him a nice (sterile) get-well card, enclosed a squadron patch, and told him where I would be stationed and hoped to see him “up and about soon”.

After I got settled into my new assignment, I had the occasion to visit a friend in the VA hospital. I was in uniform, thinking of nothing when a slight little man in a wheelchair greeted me by name. It was Raul. He weighed maybe 120, was swathed in bandages. The stump of one arm was visible, purple, and unnatural-looking. He only had one foot showing on the wheelchair. Despite looking so bad, he had a radiant smile as he reminded me who he was:
“Those wings you wear: they mean a lot to me, Captain.”

I promised him that it was I who was blessed in being able to save his life with the machinery at my control. He assured me that he was well, could walk okay, and was learning to feed himself, but that there was a setback because his stumps were raw from ill-fitting prosthetics. That would soon be fixed. He was friendly, happy—even jovial. I can not—even today—know how his attitude was so high, his morale excellent. He had glistening eyes and a serene smile that made me know it to be the truth. I pushed him around as we chatted, cordial, positive. He actually made ME feel better. He was such a remarkable man. When we came to his room, which he shared with three other veterans, a lovely young woman greeted him: Imelda. I could see immediately that there was special bonding there.

Raul was easy to know and good to be around. In time, his arms and leg worked well enough for him to find a job, one of which was offered at the VA. He was able to reach into flower beds and shrubs without worrying about nettles, thorns, or critters, and he was a very good yard man. He worked hard, gave it all he had. Soon, nurseries were putting him to work. It was modest labor, but it suited him. I came to know the family.

Benny, the Dragon, was Raul’s brother. He was also in love with Imelda. He tried not to show it, but failed miserably. Imelda knew it; Raul was oblivious to it. Benny was crazy about his brother, almost worshipped him. He told me, “Raul is a damnfine war hero. We have a letter from the General, and that’s what he said. The whole Secretary of the Army wrote him a letter, too, and we framed it and hung it up. Raul? He don’t even look at that stuff. Raul got a lot of medals, more than I ever saw anywhere, but he don’t ever wear them. I would. I’d wear my uniform and all my medals if I was a hero like Raul is. Raul don’t even talk about it. We don’t even know what happened, except what the General told us. He talks a lot about you, though. He remembers watching you fly. He could see you when he was conscious. He told me God sent you with a fine, great helicopter that you flew, and you took him from his death straight to a hospital, where he didn’t die. You might be a hero, too”. I told him I was no hero, but Raul surely was, and that General was certainly right about his brother.

One time, Benny was called Benny, the Dragon Man. “It was my car,” said. “It was a TransAm, green, with flames. Fast: that car was really fast, and I never lost a race in it. It was the car that was the dragon, but they called me Dragon Man. When I lost that car, my name got shortened to Benny, the Dragon.”

“What happened to the car?” I asked.

“Well, my cousin, Felipe, he borrowed it, and he wrecked it. He didn’t have no insurance, and mine didn’t cover him as a driver, so I lost the car. Bad deal. But I got a pretty good car now. It’s a green Pontiac, but it don’t run like that TransAm. Nothing does. Someday, I’ll get another one, but it will be an automatic, so maybe Raul can drive it. Some day. Maybe.”

Raul and Imelda were to be married. They announced it at a family dinner with great and obvious excitement. It was jubilant and happy, except for Benny, who tried his best. Good will and salutations were offered all around and the family was beside themselves. That announcement is the reason that I had been invited to dinner. Later, I saw Imelda take Benny’s arm and lead him outside. They were gone for a rather long time, and then she came back inside and went straight to her fiancé. She was completely smitten by her man, and it showed. Benny did not come in, and after a time, I went outside to find him sitting on the curb in the dark. I sat beside him and asked if he were okay. He gulped a great big sob, and nodded his head yes.

In a while, he found his voice. “I am a failure. I been trying not to cry. I never wanted her to know how I felt. She saw me cry, so she probably thinks I am weak. I couldn’t help it, and I wanted to be strong for her, for Raul.” He sobbed, quivering, miserable. “I got to go in there and congratulate my brother, but I can’t right now.”

“She told me, ‘Benny, I DO love you, but not the same way. I am IN love with Raul. It isn’t pity, but it could be. He has no arms to hold me, like you can. He has no legs to dance with me, like you. He has no hands to caress me, nor to dry my tears, nor to hold our baby. He is not healthy, but he is happy, and he makes me happy. He is completely honest with me: he will never tell a lie because he can not tell a lie. His heart beats with a strong message: he loves me. But you know what? He loves you, too. I will tell you a secret that you must keep. Raul will not live long, like you will. After that, we’ll talk again, but you must accept this, Benny. You are my second favorite man, and we need you. You’ll find a lovely lady soon, you’ll see…’ But I don’t want nobody else, and I don’t want to want her, either.”

He was inconsolable, so I left him, tears streaming down his cheeks, ashamed of himself for a sin not committed, miserable.

They had a lovely marriage for a short time. Raul died in 1975 from injuries received years earlier in an Asian war. His service meant nothing, and neither did his death, except to a few of us. His body was lying peacefully beside the lovely roses he was working on. His tools lay neatly aligned. He had one arm draped over his chest, and his face was serene and calm. His eyes were closed, and that quiet hero slipped away from the living as gently as he’d lived. He remains the most remarkable man I ever knew.

I’ll write the second part of this story later. Was this a love story?

Slow Going

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Our position at 0412 hrs CST is 3° 55.5’ north and 41° 38.4’ west. Water is becoming shallower, about 6.000 feet. There are several rocks poking out of the water ahead of us. I never noticed them before, just about on the shoulder of Brazil. I shall get coordinates later. If you are following this exciting journey, look on your map and find them: I have christened them the “Surprise Islands”.

Fernando de Noronha Islands

In local news, the bread is getting moldy today. Crewmen are pinching off the green and purple patches and eating the bread, but methinks the mold is hungrier at the moment than the men. Tomorrow, all of our bread will be green. Then what? Naturally, Moony can make better bread, or rolls, or pastries than those guys can, so we won’t miss a thing.

This old tub is holding up amazingly well, if misdirected by our betters. The tugs have each had some late trouble, beginning with one of the crewmembers being knocked off his feet by a wave and driving his head into a steel bulkhead. He is now okay, but was beaten up pretty badly. The Sherpa then lost a generator, resulting in a flash, loss of generator, and loss of a fuel heating element. They repaired it. This morning the Sherpa lost an air line to a fuel pump and fixed it. Later the Alpine lost an injector and repaired it, also. Meanwhile, we are just ginning along, thrusters and diesels purring. Rub-a-dub-dub, Thirty men in a tub…

An hour ago, we passed a very small motorized fishing boat some three hundred miles from the nearest land. Two guys waving and hollering out in 15-foot seas. Who knows where the live—Brazil, I guess. By the stack, it appeared that it was a little gasoline rig. That little boat almost disappeared behind waves, then gamely reappeared like a cork.

It is 4100 miles to Cape Town, 9400 miles to Dampier. The trip is dragging now and getting boring. Our management only allows us to run two generators “to save fuel”. While saving all that fuel, we are moving at 6.1 knots—more or less—which translates to much more time at sea, which means burning much more fuel. They desire to save enough fuel crossing the Atlantic that they can continue on to Australia without buying fuel at Cape Town. That, is possibly stupid. Being in charge of marine operations must be very rewarding and easy for non-mariners. Life at sea can be difficult under such tom foolery. One doesn’t have to be a scholar to run a ship, but stupid doesn’t help as much as one might think. I know from experience that being stupid is harder than I thought it would be. We are on our 25th day at sea, and at the current rate of speed are still 29 days to Cape Town

If I seem to be rambling, I am. I keep thinking that if I continue to write, something will pop into my head, but it may be like seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, and when you get there, it says “No Exit.” While I remember it, referring back to good titles for books, I always thought From Here To Eternity, by James Jones, was an exceptional title, as well as book. It came from the words of The Whiffenpoof Song, adopted by Yale after a Harvard man, Guy Scull, wrote the tune. Meade Minnigerode wrote the lyrics, and both the lyrics and the tune are memorable. In part:
Gentlemen songsters off on a spree,
Doomed from here to eternity.
Lord, have mercy on such as we….
When I was a lad, my grandmother had a 78 rpm record of Bing Crosby and Fred Waring doing that song, and I loved it. Some of you may remember Bing Crosby: some anymore. I do not know that Minnigerode’s line was original, but it is a fine one. “From here…to eternity”—it cranks up a lot of possibilities in one’s head. I think there almost has to be an element of mystery in a title to make it appealing, like The Well at the World’s End, by William Morris, or Horseman, Pass By (McMurtry). I would write a book if I could think of a title. Perhaps, if I could come up with a great title, I could find a story to match. Nah. I suppose I’ll put this down and read a real book for awhile. Maybe tomorrow we’ll go flying. G’night.

Friday, January 23, 2009, fish day with Moony (it’ll be good), 26th day.
We are 2 degrees north of the equator and shall cross it in the morning at a diagonal at about W36° 39’. That gets us east of the big Brazilian shoulder at 35 degrees. Once a few degrees south of the equator, we’ll come to a stop and refuel off one of the boats. Speed is up to near 8 knots today, thank heavens. Temperature outside is a balmy, tropical 83°. The ocean is not blue today: it is battleship gray, like quick-silver. One might describe it as beautiful, mysterious, ugly, lovely, mean…mostly it is seemingly infinite and unknowable, and utterly indifferent.

El Capitan Rises

Sunday, January 18, 2009
Still hanging above Brazil and I am in a writing mood about as much as I am in the mood to get a tooth filled. We are 500 or so NM north of the estuaries of the Amazon River. That water flows in its own mud and freshness more than 200 miles out to sea. Drilling there is difficult, because the current is four knots, enough to bend pipe. The Orinoco also muddies the sea for many miles.

Monday, January 19, 2009
Still bogged down with blockage between head bone and finger bone. Spent good part of the day researching and reminescing mountains and rivers, so I shall start a monolog tomorrow and for a day or two on some particular pieces of nature. Today was the roughest day we’ve had, actually having spillages and falls. Finally, we ballasted down into the water to smooth the ride, which it did, but also costs us speed. We are down to 4.5 knots, which adds a lot of days to the trip. At 2130 hours, we are at N 6° 48.1’ and W 44° 26.7’ in a bit over 18,000 feet of water.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009
N6° 11’ / W43° 43.6’, CMG 140.
I was a freshman in college at Christmas, 1961, and weighed 166 pounds and stood 6’2”. (now I stand 5’10”. It seems all my vertical characteristics shrank, while the horizontal ones got bigger.) My brother, Bobby was a couple inches taller. He and Bob Andrews and I took a sabbatical of sorts to the Guadalupe Mountains. This was several years before it was made a national park by Lyndon Johnson. They were really remote, with one little store at a place that called itself Indian Springs. I remember it as being called Nichols, but can find no history of it, and It may have been spelled differently. Anyway, it was run by an old woman who lived alone and made her living at the little store, which was located on the south side of the highway. The park is on the other side. Later, when the National Park Service took over the land, they tried for years to evict the poor old thing, but she beat them hands down in court until she died. Then the Feds bulldozed the place, and her little bit of property and history were buried in the megatons of the government’s National Parks Bureaucracy. That is not the only property that Lyndon took: he transferred the best part of Stonewall to his legacy.

The old woman had gasoline and cold drinks, some lunch meat and bread, matches, water…not much, but there was a part-time telephone there, if you needed it. It is about 70 miles east to Carlsbad and about the same south to Van Horn. I don’t remember anything to the west except Hueco Tanks, until El Paso, about 200 miles. Hueco Tanks is a state park about a hundred miles west of Indian Springs. Nestled in the elbow of mountains at the base of Guadalupe Peak was Del City, where New York City now dumps its sewage . There were not a hundred people within a hundred miles.

This abutment is an ancient marine reef that now sits sentinel over the Sonoran Desert. I have found marine fossils high up in those mountains. Now, it is desert country, big and open, and one can peer far enough to see the earth curve. What one actually is seeing is the bed of the Permian Sea from 300,000,000 years ago. Thus saith the geologists. My dad literally had a ton of fossilized anemones found in that country, and a slew of crustaceans, fish, and other swimming things. That includes petrified wood, and later him, and now me. Actually, being a fossil is pretty easy, and I don’ mind it too badly.

It was really cold that Christmas when we arrived at the foot of El Capitan. Wind was high and temperature was in the twenties. There was snow in light to heavy patches all over the mountains, so water would not be a problem during the climb. We found a creek bed about twelve feet deep that took some of the sting out of the wind. There also was an abandoned bridge that offered a little protection against rain or snow, as we were to sleep in the open, with chill for a bedmate and a rock for a pillow. Walls of the creek were stone, and near vertical, so we parked on the bridge and tossed equipment down into waiting arms. Soon we had a respectable camp, and it wasn’t dark yet. To the north lay the great prow of El Capitan, with westerly winds blowing snow off the top. Wood gathered, I built the neatest fire pit. There was an abundance of flat rocks of one-inch thickness, fifteen inches long and eight wide. A whole house could have been built. Since it was cold, even numbing, we elected to have a hot meal and not waste all these great architectural rocks. I had a nice fire going, we were warming our bodies, the stew was coming to a boil, and coffee was perking when the rock shelf upon which all that stuff was sitting blew up. It blew stew and sharp rock particles all over everybody. I thought someone was shooting at us, so we all took up guns and scattered, looking for outlaws or gunmen. About the time I climbed out on top, the whole fire pit blew up. Those danged rocks were full of gas, and when they became hot, they blew. Now we had stew, coffee, and rock dust all over our warm sleeping bags, and the culprit had been found, and he was us.
I don’t recall what was for supper that night, but it wasn’t hot.

That should be the end of the story for a night of tough luck, but it isn’t. We stoked a big fire to go to bed by, and maybe to have some coals in the morning. I laid my boots near the fire in order to have comfy, warm feet to begin the climb. Nothing gets as cold as leather. Andrews stoked the fire during the night, and it caught my sleeping boots unaware, and they burned up—everything but the eyelets. It looked bleak for my climb, but I considered trying it bare-footed for about a second. Fortunately, Andrews brought a pair of work boots that I had given him as spares, so I managed to shoe the jackass who had dreamt up the bright idea of having warm boots. Those boots had spent the night in the pick up, and they had polar ice caps on the toes.

The climb was remarkable, beautiful. We went up the east side to the east face until we came to vertical rock. The east face looked less daunting than the west face, and it was. We found foot holds and hand holds for a bit, and –thank the fates—a parachute chord tied to the top of a 40-foot escarpment. After that, the ascent was manageable, but steep. Vertical pieces were easy enough. There was snow, so moisture and hydration were simple. On top were scrub pines and junipers, dead grasses and trees, There have been fires up here over the eons. There were fossils at such elevation as to overlook a magnificent vista in any direction. To the north, less than a mile, was Guadalupe Peak, rising another seven hundred feet above us, but that mountain is less imposing, less inspiring than our El Capitan.

El Capitan’s west face is spectacular. It is a vertical massif of some 2000 feet. That distance is my own guess. We threw a big rock over the side and timed its fall and calculated as best we could what the distance was, only guessing at the speed of sound. Now I do not recall any of the numbers, but it was a fur piece. We held each other by the ankles as each of us in turn peered straight down for half a mile. It was dizzying and wonderful. And we stank. The day was sunny and cold, but not too much wind. Humidity was almost non-existent, so we could see for perhaps 70 miles, before the world melted into infinity. The south face presents a spill-way, or so it appears. It should create a water fall in a hard rain, but I’ve never seen photos like that. It is a place I’d like to go again, but I can not.


As A.E. Housman wrote in A Shropshire Lad:
“Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue-remembered hills?
What farms, what spires are those?
It is the land of lost content—
I see it shining plain—
The happy places where we went
And can not go again.”
It was isolated: the whole planet was lonely-looking to us. I do not recall any highway traffic, although there was bound to be an auto now and then. I do recall looking at the ribbon of highway glistening gold in the westering sun until it disappeared. Not a lot of people had been up here, and it would be a bad place for a misfortune. On the way down, I happened across a set of car keys about half-way down the mountain. I wish I could have mailed them home, although it might have been thirty years too late.

We packed up camp, ate quickly, and headed south for the Davis Mountains. It was in our heads to climb Sawtooth and the Rockpile. We arrived at the mountain late, and it was exceedingly cold and windy. No campsite could be made, so we drew straws: two would sleep in the pickup bed, and number three would sleep in the cab. This was before the days of extended cabs and such. We managed to get the canvas tarp wrapped over the top of the pickup bed and secured, to act as a wind break for the two Bobs. No one knows how cold it became in the night, nor how much the wind blew, but it was sufficient. Bobby said he was trying to cover up with a pork ‘n bean can. No one really slept, but we were able to be still, except for shivering. I think we all ended up in the cab with the heater on, but it has been so many years…

At dawn, we started the climb, and it was a tough one. It wasn’t because of the grade, nor vertical walls, but the mountain was covered in rotten rocks—weak, non-load-bearing rocks. Step on one and it would break. Another would skitter. You ended up knee deep in voids with rocks cutting your legs, smashing your toes, sliding into the guys around you. The view was beautiful, but we never got to the top. We heard a great clattering of rock and became still and quiet. It was a herd of mule deer, numbering 128. It was the greatest thing I ever saw. We were downwind and were able to watch that parade for several minutes before one of them spooked.

None among us were accomplished climbers, but we were outdoorsmen and knew how to start a fire, climb a rock, fix a snake bite, and trek. Those climbs are not included in the annals of really high, difficult climbs, but they are different enough and remote enough and old enough to serve the purpose. One could still fall for 7 or 8 seconds before he hit anything. Anybody else falling would likely land feet first. Not I, I would land chin, elbows and knees first, with a following boulder headed straight for my noggin. I love that country and its remote quietude. In subsequent trips, I have seen the elk herd, the sun trout in McKittrick Canyon, a black bear, and a hundred skunks. I hiked Dog Canyon, McKittrick Canyon, Hunter’s Peak, Guadalupe Peak, and the rest. I would like to have my ashes spread there, but they would finally wash down into the sea, and I don’t like the sea, so I think I will just have them flushed.

When we started home, it was obvious that bodies had not been washed in several days, and hideous flatulence was a thing to be proud of, because it was too cold outside to roll down the windows. It was night, and we were headed east when we happened across a new car broken down with three women and two men at loose ends as to what to do about it. We stopped to help (you could safely do that in those days). We had come back up to Highway 80 (now I-10), but there is a scarcity of towns up there, too. There was nothing to be done about that car, so we offered to carry the people, who turned out to be TCU students, to Pecos, or Odessa. Naturally, three pretty girls got in the cab, where it stank of dirtybody, but it was warm. The two unlucky lads were in the pickup bed, covered in tarps and stew-spotted sleeping bags. The comment was made that somebody stank, but it was better than waiting in the cold. And it WAS cold. We took addresses and promised to see each other and blah, blah, blah. Never heard from them again, and haven’t even thought of them in 40 years.

Wednesday, January 21, 2009
5° 35.0’ north and 43° 18.15’ west. 3.7 knots. We made 60 whole miles today! We should be in Cape Town by New Years’ Day, and we’ll all be really skinny.

Columbus gathered together three hard-used ships, none of which were ever meant for exploration. They were the Santa Maria de la Immaculada Concepcion (Santa Maria), the Niňa (the “Girl”, a play on the owner’s name), and the Pinta (the “Painted”, as in too much makeup). The Santa Maria was the largest, at 70 feet in length, and it was the slowest, being a carrack. The other two were caravels. The Santa Maria was about the size of an 18-wheeler. Her construction was of pine and oak, with a single deck, and three masts. Her crew was up to 40 men. The pontoons on the vessel I now ride are 290 feet, and it is over 200 feet from the keel to the derrick top, and we are considered small. The Santa Maria was TINY. The Atlantic Ocean that we have ridden from Barbados has been very rough on steel and diesel engines. We are not threatened, but the ride is rough and the seas are large. I try to imagine those poor, scurvy sailors in twenty-one foot heaves and twenty foot waves in a stout northeasterly wind, day after miserable day. Well, they did it, and they survived the wreck of the little Santa Maria at Mole St-Nicolas, Haiti on Christmas Day, 1492.

The Santa Maria was 25 feet wide; we are 229 feet wide. It displaced about 300 tons and could carry 100 tons of cargo. Her draft was considered deep at six feet. We drill at a 60-foot draft. The Explorer drilled at a 32-foot draft at about 50,000 tons.

We are in 16,000+ feet of water and the seas are lying down somewhat, so we are ballasting up to increase speed. We lost two days milling around at less than four knots. I have 30 days of meds remaining. We are out of milk and some vegetables, but Moony knows what to do: the lad is a chef. He is also a very fine man and friend. Several men out here have special diets (diabetics, heart patients, hypoglycemics, and so on), and Moony takes care of them, just like family. He is one of the ones who was not paid on time, and that made the entire crew angry at the trash hounds in town who don’t do their jobs, to wit, payroll. We have been sailing for 24 days, and some pay is still in arrears. Those people ought to be run off.

Gremlins on the Tow Boats

Saturday, January 17, 2009
Yesterday was different by occurrences. I lost one of two GPS units to clock error. The redundant system was fine, but it becomes a sob story when all your electronic where-are-we devices fail. The electrical technicians were up to the chore and got things repaired after an hour or two. The Sherpa lost a generator and blacked out, and we quickly began to overrun him. It was very dark outside, and he was, too. His emergency radio may have been the difference between his survival today and having been sent to the bottom by us during the night. It was necessary to quickly stop the E7500, which is not an easy sudden job, as recounted earlier. He is evaluating damage and has so far found some disturbing things. The flashed generator not only took out his lights, but also the fuel heaters. He runs on heavy oil which is too thick to pump unless heated and made less viscous. Right now, he is burning diesel which belongs to us, and we do not know what other ailments he may discover. He has about four days to his point-of-no-return to either stay with us—at the risk of going dead in the water 2500 miles from land—or to go to land now for fuel and repairs. Unhappily, it is our fuel being consumed. That not being enough, the other boat, Alpine, has sustained a plugged or damaged injector on his number three engine. For crying out loud: I may end up pulling those two boats to a safe haven somewhere. Added to this sob story is our own minor struggles, to wit: two thrusters which are apparently bored with producing thrust.

I stood outside the squadron commander’s office, waiting to see him about a personnel problem. He had a second lieutenant in at the moment, and it amused me to hear him say: “I know I told you to keep that evacuation safety plan brief, Lieutenant, but I expected a bit more than ‘RUN FOR YOUR LIVES! “ He waited for the lieutenant to say something, which finally came as a tiny “yes, sir.” Then the Lt. Colonel added, “ and HEAD FOR THE HILLS, won’t do, either.”

I have been using the term “sob story.” During the BMEWS days, the US had a radar station squarely in the middle of the ice pack of Greenland. When they saw an airplane coming, they started talking…about anything. They were so lonely and so remote that it made no difference to them who you were: they just wanted a piece of the outside world. Each man there had a chance at the radio. Its name was Sob Story Radar.

At 6:45 pm tonight, we are at 9° 31.5’N and 49° 10’ west, doing 8.8 knots, a good rate. Moony had rib eye steaks, grilled chicken, brussels sprouts, hot rolls, cheese sauce, mush rooms, baked and fried potatoes and a salad and dessert bar. Don’t you wish you were here?

Rockin' and Rollin'

Wednesday, January 14, 2009
I slept little last night: too much violence of motion, too much noise of smashing water and complaining steel. Pitch was worse than roll, but—beds being aligned with the long axis—roll tends to throw us out of bed. There are little fences to keep one from going to the floor, but it does nothing about letting one sleep. About 9 a.m. the ride smoothed out enough for me to doze for a couple of hours. When I came to work, we were doing 6.5 knots again. That puts Cape Town about 33 days from here, but that beats the 56 days required at 4 knots. Hopefully, the Atlantic will ease back a bit and we can get up to 8 or 9 knots. The duration becomes important, because food, medications, and tempers are running out. There is some small hope that we will recover telephones and internet. If not, it might be Murder, He Wrote.


Two of us young captains were each flying an F-A across the north Atlantic to be delivered to Turkey. Ready to depart Goose Bay, Labrador for Sondrestromfjord, Greenland, the briefing we received from Major Huoni had the weather, distances, magnetic deviations, approach anomalies, and so on. Shepard and I were dressed in our poopie suits, rubber things that were supposedly water-proof, to keep us alive for a few minutes if we went down. Huoni, by way of survival, said: “If you go down and survive the ejection sequence, you’ll land in ice water, or on ice. The time of useful consciousness is three or four minutes, so get into your raft fast. If you don’t freeze to death first, there will soon be a polar bear come to eat you, and he can. He can out swim you, out run you, and out climb you. If this occurs, we recommend that you take out your survival knife and stab yourself in the heart.”

The F-5 squadron was based at Williams AFB, AZ, a tenant to a Training Command base. Two of those beautiful little fighters were engaged in air-to-air combat maneuvering and collided. One pilot ejected, his parachute opening at 14,000 feet. Dangling beneath him on a string was his seat pack, followed by a survival kit, followed a yellow dingy. He landed in the desert, and when rescue folks got there, he was taking a drink of water in the shade of his life raft. The other pilot did not survive.

If you do not know what an F-5 looks like, it was the Mig in “Top Gun”. Two twenty-millimeter canons, one on each side, the pilot looking right down the barrel, they have. It is small, smokeless, highly maneuverable, and really fun to fly. They didn’t have enough engine (a variant of the GE J-85), until the F and G models came out. The Air Force wanted no competition for its Lightweight Fighter (now the F-16), so they forbade a big engine in the F-5. The F-20, with the GE F-404 engine, was an outgrowth, and that was one of the finest fighters ever built, according to Chuck Yeager. When I win the lotto, I am going to buy an F-5, paint it grey and red with white stars and a portrait of Robert E. Lee on one side of the vertical tail and Stonewall Jackson on the other. Then I’ll start a fight with Detroit. But…alas; this is a sea story, not one of airplanes ( but to tell the truth, I’d rather fly than float, with me doing the chores in either case).

Thursday, January 15, 2009
I came to work today with an empty slate. There doesn’t seem to be a single thought in my head, which slept way too long and which had not enough discipline to get out of bed and go run. I feel like I haven’t justified eating. Yesterday my weight was 196 to 212. Today it is 198 to 210, so the seas are lying down some, and so am I. It is actually difficult to find anything social to do. Even the gym is tough, because the motion is pronounced and erratic, a good way to end up with barbells in your teeth. Some years ago, I was in really good shape (running 5 to 10 miles a day) and we were bringing a spanking new ship out of the yard in Belfast, Northern Ireland. It had a lot of problems, as all new ships do. I was running 7-minute miles on the treadmill when the vessel experienced a sudden loss of all electrical power and subsequently blacked out. The treadmill stopped suddenly, but I didn’t. I ran over the thing and landed on my chin and knees, with one knee being skinned by the treadmill belt. I started a habit of hanging onto the machine when running and have since had two similar occurrences. However, pitch and roll do to the treadmill what they do for the bathroom scales, and hanging on is a chore. That ship, the Luigs, and its sister ship, the Ryan, were both built in the Harland and Wolf ship yard in Belfast, the place and company that built the Titanic.

When I came to Belfast, they were attempting to conclude a treaty between the internecine parties of Orangemen and Catholics. There has basically been a war going on in Northern Ireland for 400 years, since King John invaded from England in cahoots with his Scottish fellows. The invaders won, and they took all the prime land, waterways, forests, buildings, and so on for themselves. This relegated the Irish to a permanent position of poverty and inferiority, and that brought rebellion. The Irish still saw the Orangemen as invaders after 400 years. When I showed up, the two sides were attempting to reach a peaceful agreement, and one can frankly thank the women on each side for bringing enough pressure on their men folk to stop killing each other’s kids, and then each other. Street corners were still armed blockades and screen wire covered windows and doors to deflect grenades and bombs. Murals of masked gunmen were prominent on buildings and windows. Angela’s Ashes is assuredly not a made-up tragedy. There were burned out buildings all over the Catholic side of town. For the most part, Northern Ireland has no hardwood forests remaining: they went into British sailing ships at 60 acres of trees per ship. They became English or Scottish mansions, and they were chopped to eradicate hiding places for armed rebels.

And so—Forrest Gump-like—here came Griffith. The two parties were collected en masse in a nice, modern opera house/theater in Belfast. Agreements and wording was being hammered into a document to stop the killing and to rebuild a fractured nation. As it happened, the following week the Bolshoi Ballet was to be in the building for a major production of Swan Lake by Tchaikovsky. It is some of my favorite music so, unaware of the political doings all around me, I walked right up to the ticket window to buy a ticket. No one was in it, but the foyer was bustling. In I went in search of a ballet ticket, making first one inquiry, then another. At last, two big, red-haired policemen attached themselves to my arms and asked for my credentials. My explanation apparently wasn’t germane to their expectations. We were quickly on the way to the paddy wagon or the nearest exit, and I was hoping to be thrown out on my keester and forgotten. One said, “Yoink, are yeh?”
“Yessir,” I sirred.
“Wott in ‘ell’s machinery are ye doon ‘ere wi’ no credentials?” he asked.
“Trying to buy a ballet ticket,” I bespoke as humbly as I could grovel.
“Boi a BOLLAI ticket! ‘dja ‘ear that, Patty? Ee wants a poddiedoo!”
“ho, ho, har, har; poddiedoo, heh, heh,hooie” and so on. Disgusting. I thought we might break down into a tap dance and shuffle: “hideedoo, poddiedoo, hey-diddle, diddle and rollyvay, too.” tap, tap, tippytitippity tap.
At last the door approached, and they set me back down on my own feet, which apparently had been off the floor the while. One opened the door politely. He went on:
“Come back nex’ week, Yoink. Thissiz a political thin’, lots of s’curity and stuffed shirts, if ye know wott oi mean. Ye canna’ come in here just noi. God speed ye.”
I’ve been thrown out of a few places, including my own home, but this was tactfully done, and their peace has lasted: it may be because of me. The ballet was superb.

Finally, we are doing 7.5 to 8 knots and the period on swells and waves is such that the motion is slow, not violent. We move around a lot, but it is manageable. We just passed the 5,000 mile marker to Cape Town, so we are counting down steadily. This day has been vanilla; nothing in it, no to-do items, few original thoughts. Thus I close my missal this night at 11° 50.5’ N and 53° 40.1’ W. Before long the latitude number will become zero at the equator, and then become negative numbers. By the by: this is deep water beneath us.

Friday, January 16, 2009
11 degrees north and 52.1 degrees west—rough as the dickens today, especially in roll. My weight is 194 to 216, so the seas are up again. In a fighter plane, the pilot’s weight can be zero to1600 pounds for a man of 200 pounds pulling zero to 8 g’s. I did manage a decent workout today by hanging on the treadmill handles vigorously, hoping that tomorrow my weight will only be 195 to 205.

Unhappily, I am not inspired or quick-thinking today, like the young corpsman was at the Naval Infirmary when the Admiral came in for a check up. The Admiral quickly admonished the young corpsman:
“Corpsman, I am an officer and a busy one, so please get on with these proceedings.”
“Yes, sir,” said the corpsman, “Just drop your trousers and lay down on your stomach so I can get your temperature.”
“Oh, all right then, but hurry it up.”
The corpsman disappeared for a few minutes and then came back and inserted the rectal device. Then he walked out, leaving the door open.
The Admiral lay there with his derriere looking skyward when a nurse walked by, stopped and looked.
“What are you looking at?” barked the Admiral; “Haven’t you ever seen anyone have their temperature taken before?”
“Yes, Admiral,” she said, “but not with a daffodil.”

The finest ship that I ever saw is the Glomar Explorer. She has an interesting history and was built strong, really strong. In 1968, North Korea intercepted the USS Pueblo in international waters and hi-jacked it, holding its crew hostage and stealing all the secrets from the super-secret intelligence ship. They acquired crypto books, electromagnetic instruments, and spy information of immense importance. Naturally the US did nothing whatsoever about it. Everything that was stolen was given to the Soviets. The United States had no idea about the amount of intelligence compromised or of the damage done, and so the State was in limbo concerning many strategic items, including the Strategic Arms Limitations Talks II (SALT II) with the Soviets, and so we did nothing. Seven months earlier, the Israelis attacked the sister ship of the Pueblo, the USS Liberty, killing 34 sailors in the Mediterranean. That crew fought back and saved their ship. Its commander, Captain McGonagal, was presented the Congressional Medal of Honor. Both attacks were surprises and completely unsuspected. However, Captain Bucher of the Pueblo was apparently less prepared and less courageous than Captain William McGonagal.

The capture of the Pueblo completely unsettled the government: this was in January. In May, a Soviet Golf-class submarine went missing in the north Pacific. The US knew about this event by virtue of a great array of sea-floor listening networks. We were able to triangulate a precise position of a vessel that had exploded, or imploded, some seven hundred nautical miles north of Oahu in 16,000 feet of water. The Soviets launched a massive search and recovery effort, which validated what we already thought we knew: the K-129 had catastrophically failed and broke up and lay on the sea bottom at a location known only to us. The USS Mizar and the US research submarine Halibut, searched for and found the sunken vessel, taking many photos of the wreckage. This work came to the attention of the White House and the CIA.

Nixon authorized a black program to build a vessel to retrieve the submarine wreckage, and the CIA was the operator, for security reasons. The ship was built in the Sun Shipyards, near Baltimore. They spared no expense. The main deck steel plating was two inches thick, and three inches in load-bearing areas. Hull was three or more inches. The vessel, as my memory serves me, was 618 feet long by 116 feet wide, and it displaced 50,000 tons at operating weight. At the bow were three 2,000 hp tunnel thrusters. Aft were two 2,000 hp skeg thrusters and two reversible main screws, rated at 13,000 hp each. The moon pool was 199 feet long by 75 feet wide with water tight doors that could be closed or open. A moon pool is a void in the vessel that gives access to the ocean.

Delco Electronics was charged with the engineering solutions and was ram-rodded by a great mathematician named Mason. He worked out the basic mathematical model to drive a ship by dynamically positioning against the sum of environmental forces by applying exact opposing forces via thrusters and screws. (I found a copy of his work on the secure bridge of the Explorer and it is a treasure to me. Mason was good.)

The vessel was to be dynamically positioned by navigating on seabed-mounted acoustic beacons. Beacons transmitted a pulse on its assigned frequency. Ship-mounted equipment measured each pulse and triangulated the ships position relative to the beacons. If environmental forces were not too inclement, it was possible to hold the ship dead still in the water over a pin-point location and maintain it. It was in this manner that the Explorer could hold itself directly over the submarine some 16,500 feet below it, and thereby recover portions of the sub.

That is exactly what happened. Under guise of mining the seabed for manganese, and fronted by Howard Hughes (the ship was named Hughes Glomar Explorer), the CIA, with a special drilling crew, sailed the boat to the location of the dead submarine and picked up portions of it. The official story from the government is mostly disinformation, and some denial, coupled with failures that limited the work that could be done, but it can be correctly presumed that very valuable knowledge was taken. Six Soviet sailors were recovered with the wreckage, but they were highly contaminated with radiation. They were encased safely and buried at sea, and the ceremony was taped. Later, those tapes were turned over to the Soviets, who naturally accused us of sinking their boat. If you are interested in this tale, of which I only touch, read The Jennifer Project, or go online for Glomar Explorer. You’ll be lied to a bit and mislead, but the SALT II accords were signed immediately after that mission.

In 1997 Global Marine (Glomar) Drilling, Inc., leased the Explorer from the Navy. The ship will always belong to the Navy, but it has been modified with the removal of all the cloak-and-dagger stuff, closing in the moon pool (now 47’ X 75’), adding four 3,000 hp fully azimuthing thrusters, four 20-cylinder EMDs, and a full drilling package. It is capable of drilling in approximately 10,000 feet of water. It remains the best-built and most substantial ship I ever saw. I never thought highly of Global Marine, however, so I did not remain there.
One more short tale about this storied, tough ship: we took it into the ship yard at Mobile and were being pushed slowly by tug boats. One boat failed and left us drifting a very few feet per minute toward a steel-reinforced concrete berth, eight feet thick. The bow struck it at maybe 20 or 30 fpm, and pier just peeled back, like rotten wood. We drove eleven feet into that thing and the only thing that it did to us was to ruin the paint job for four or five feet.