A Life Wasted

Iceland

Icebreakers of that era were designed to ride up on the ice to crush the icepack with the ship's weight. To accomplish this the ship required a round bottom. The hull looked like a football cut in half. Though this design worked fine on the icecap, it didn't do so well in heavy seas. It was winter when we crossed the North Atlantic, and as is always the case the winter North Atlantic was an angry sea. I'd been on the Atlantic numerous times, but always off the coast of Georgia or Florida where a five foot sea was a large one. In the North Atlantic winter seas were considerably larger. On an easy day we ran into thirty foot seas. On a bad one we often saw better than fifty foot seas. It was a brutal trip, hard on ship and crew. It would be much later in my life, in the Gulf of Alaska before I again witnessed seas as brutal as what we encountered on our way to the Arctic.

Seasickness is a horrible thing to experience. It is something you have no control over. Today we have "the patch" to fight seasickness, but back then you either got seasick or you didn't. If you got seasick, especially in unrelenting seas that we experienced, you were in misery to the point of wanting death. Far too sick to function. A seasick seaman could not stand watch, he could not steer the boat, he could not navigate, he could not cook or clean. Few were immune to seasickness on that horrible trip north, but I was one of those lucky fellows. It meant that I wasn't sick, but it didn't mean that I wasn't miserable. Us few able bodied sailors immune to seasickness had to do the work of those sick in bed. We had to drive the ship, keep the engines running and the boilers hot. We had to cook and feed the crew and give aid to the sick. We had to do countless other things and we had to do it on a platform that bucked and twisted like a wounded wild thing.

I have hundreds of stories related to the rough seas from that trip, but one in particular sums up them all. I had just completed a twenty hour shift doing what had become my standard job: radar, helmsman, and lookout. I would pull twenty minutes on lookout, which meant being outside, tied to the rail with thousands of gallons of sea water pouring over my head with each crashing wave. It was so bad that I had to hold my breath with the rhythm of the wave for fear of drowning on deck. Then twenty minutes on radar, where I watched a blurry green line continuously circle our ship. Radar watch's real function was to give the lookout a warm room to recover from the wet and cold. Next was helm, where I sat in an elevated chair on the bridge, seat belted in place to drive the ship.

At four A.M. when I came off my duty I was exhausted, hungry, and crusted with dried seawater. I would have loved a shower, but the seas were so rough that attempting to do so would have been suicidal. It was possible to eat, but the stoves hadn't been lit in more than a week, so all that was available were cold cuts and crackers. So when I finally got myself strapped into bed at ten after four I was looking forward to the only relief I could get. Sleep. The end to a typical day.

Just as I began to drift off to the rhythmic rocking of a football hulled ship being tossed in an unrelenting sea, I was startled by a sudden and loud crashing sound, immediately followed by a rolling clang, then another crash. Rolling clang, then crash. In the dim red light of the crew quarters I was able to spot a large metal trash can rolling by inches from my head. It rolled to the port side of the ship when we rolled to port, then to the starboard side when we rolled to starboard. It was normally tied to to the port bulkhead, but had busted loose. It was not going to stop until the seas abated or the ship sank. Or until someone got out of their rack and secured it. I was completely spent, so I waited for someone else to capture the trash can. But most of the sixty guys sleeping in the cramped crew quarters were too seasick to get out of bed. And as was evidenced by the painful moans and renewed vomiting, the noise had woke them and was adding to their misery.

I had earned my sleep and did not want to deal with this thing, but it seemed the only other option would be to listen to it for two more hours when the engineering crew went to bed. I was literally cussing like a sailor as I unfastened the straps that held me to my bed. Dressed in my underwear stepped out into the trash barrel's path with designs on catching it as it went by. When the ship rolled to starboard the barrel hit me in the legs, knocked me down, then continued on to the opposite side wall. Before I could recover it came back and ran over me. Anyone examining my injuries would have assumed I'd been beat hard by an angry mob. But everyone on the ship knew the story. I got my butt kicked by a trash can. It was just another day of rough seas, but funny after the fact.

Everyone was relieved when we pulled into the sheltered fjords of Iceland. It was a beautiful and memorable sight. We hadn't been scheduled to port in Iceland until after our Arctic patrol, but the ship had been damaged enough that we had to port for repairs. We spent five days cleaning and repairing our ship, but on the sixth day we were allowed to go ashore for shore leave. Before leaving the ship our Captain called everyone to quarters and gave us special instructions. The Captain explained that even though Iceland was a NATO member nation, the country's politics leaned heavily towards socialism, and that they favored Russia more than the United States in the Cold War we were involved in. He told us that the Icelandic people were friendly, but very political. Because the Watergate scandal was in full swing, it was bound to be a topic that would come up. To avoid trouble, the Captain gave us a direct order not to talk politics, Watergate, or about President Nixon. This gag order was directed towards Icelanders, but also to any NATO member soldiers and sailors we encountered.

On the first day I explored the island with a few crew mates. Iceland was so different from anything I had known that it could have been another planet. It was interesting to see, but one day was enough. The next day three of us went into town to explore. We ended up in a small neighborhood pub for dinner. It was the kind of place where everyone knew each other, but they were happy to have a few new faces. As the Captain said, they really were a friendly bunch so we enjoyed good company and lots of laughs. One Icelander of about thirty was making fun of me because I didn't drink. I was only seventeen but that didn't mean a thing in Iceland. Here five year olds drank hard liquor. But I didn't like to drink so I politely refused. When he gave up getting me to drink the conversation turned to politics. "Tell me about your criminal President Nixon," he said loudly. My friends all heard this and looked at me expectantly. "I'm sorry," I said politely. "But we're not allowed to talk about politics." The guy looked at me and I watched his demeanor change. Enough so that my guard went up, expecting a punch. But he didn't punch me. He said, "Filthy American pig," then spit in my face.

I punched him. Bob would have been proud. I didn't say a word, I didn't even take the time to wipe his spit off my face, I simply attacked. I'd like to say my friends and I won that fight, but the truth is we were far outnumbered and they were some pretty big fellows. I did some damage to the first guy, but by the time the Icelandic police arrived to arrest us I was glad to see them.

Icelandic jails are rather civilized affairs. It was the first jail I'd actually been in so I didn't fully appreciate just how nice it was until years later when I'd been able to sample a few in my own country. We weren't there long. In less than an hour the executive officer from my ship arrived and took custody of us. The only condition given by the Icelandic authorities was that we three were not allowed back on Icelandic soil. It was one of the better places I've been kicked out of.

As per the conditions of our release, my friends and I were restricted to the ship. Given the circumstances of the fight, the Captain and XO weren't upset with us, but there was so much repair work to be done we were given extra duty to be practical. So we worked our butt's off. After a few days of this we were growing increasingly bored. This boredom nearly led to an international incident.