A Life Wasted

Arctic Chase

The next morning I woke to the ship's movement. This was unexpected as we were scheduled to be in port for another week. I'd been up until the early morning hours doing International theft, so had less than two hours sleep. I was pretty out of it when I stumbled out on deck to see what was going on. The deck was a hive of activity as sailors were running back and forth, pulling and storing mooring lines and securing everything that needed to be tied down before hitting the North Atlantic. When I spotted the petty officer who was my immediate boss I asked what was going on. He rudely suggested I knew what was happening. I thought he meant it was obvious we were getting under way so I asked why he hadn't woke me for a detail. He said he didn't wake me because he didn't want me seen on deck and that he still didn't want me seen on deck, then ordered me below. With nothing else to do I crawled into my rack and went to sleep.

The second time I woke it was to the familiar pitching of the ship in heavy seas. Not sure how much time had passed, I went back to sleep. The third time I woke it was to the annoying sound of the ship's alarm calling everyone to quarters. It took several minutes to realize it was the collision alarm. On deck it was absolute pandemonium. Sailors ran everywhere, some with lifejackets in hand others with them on. While I took all of this in our ship took a hard turn to port. I looked in that direction and realized we were headed towards the icepack, which we had been running alongside. When I finally managed to ask someone what was going on he pointed at a ship far to our stern and said, "That crazy Russian is trying to ram us." He then suggested I put on a coat, then a lifejacket.

I didn't witness a great deal of what happened. Some of it I missed because I slept through it the rest I missed because I stayed below decks. From what I pieced together the Russians were upset over the flag. A dustup had occurred that morning between our officers and theirs which led to our hasty departure. The Russian ship soon gave chase. Being faster than ours, the Russian ship was closing when we turned into the ice. The Russian Captain used poor judgment when he fell in our wake and chased us into the ice. Not being an icebreaker, the Russian ship had to rely on the ice we broke to keep moving. What their captain either didn't know or didn't consider is that in the extreme temperature we were experiencing, the ice we broke froze again rather quickly. The Russian ship was about ten miles into the ice pack when it stopped, frozen in place. Our ship then made a wide turn and returned to open seas. We left the ship full of Russians stranded in the ice.

When we reached open sea I went topside, with my coat on this time, and looked back towards where I was told the Russian ship was stuck. I couldn't actually see the ship, but I did spot a rocket flare as it climbed high into the air. Seeing their distress signal drove home to me that my prank wasn't so harmless. Like every American I had a vague idea that a Cold War was going on between the United States and Russia, or the Soviet Union as it was known then. But knowing about the Cold War and experiencing it are two different things.

One of the snipes (engineers) had a large tool bin on deck repairing something so I walked over to it looking for something heavy. I found several large bolts of about a pound each. I took three of them down to my rack. The Russian flag had become my sheet, hidden below an army green wool blanket. I pulled it off my bunk and tied it in a knot with the the three bolts inside. I hid the big red flag in my jacket then went up on deck. It was without ceremony or fanfare that I dropped the troublesome flag into the ocean.

An hour later a junior officer searched my belongings, looking for contraband. The only thing I had that was illegal was an aspirin bottle that held a hundred hits of acid, purple microdot, of course. Fortunately the officer was looking for a big red flag, so my little drug cache was ignored. He did scold me because my bunk wasn't made.

Later that day the alarm sounded for battle stations. Unfortunately, as one of the ship's helmsman, my assigned battle stations position was on the bridge's starboard exterior wing. I didn't want to go anywhere near the Captain or any of the other senior officers, but had no choice. While running up an inside passage towards the bridge I passed a gunners' mate who, doing his job, handed me an M-16 machine gun and a small bag full of loaded ammo clips. When I ran through the bridge to reach my assigned spot the Captain noticed me and looked like he was going to say something, but I moved out of sight before he had a chance. The officer assigned to our little cluster of armed sailors informed us that radar picked up an unidentified aircraft bearing down on us from the northeast. Because we were young and stupid he further explained that from our position in the Arctic Circle, a Russian aircraft diverging on our position would come from the north and east using the Great Circle route.

Today a kid would have said, "Whatever", but I just shrugged, having no idea what the Great Circle route was or even having a clue where Russia was. My peers seemed just as ignorant as I, so the officer went on. "Seems there was an incident in Reykjavik", he said looking at me. One of the scared seamen asked what good would these do, indicating the .223 caliber carbines we held. The officer again pointedly looked at me and said, "We have no idea what they are up to. It could even be commando raid, in which case the M-16's could be useful.

Believing the Russian's were going to attack our ship with commandos to get their flag back, I rammed a full magazine into my rifle. Seeing me do this, the other sailors did the same. The officer nodded his approval. We didn't have to wait long. A few minutes later a very large low flying airplane came into view. It came in low and fast. I dropped to one knee, loaded a round in the chamber of my M-16, then took aim. The officer pushed my barrel down and calmly said, "It would be better if you didn't shoot the Russian nuclear bomber." The plane was called a Bear, and in that era its only payload was nuclear bombs.

The Bear buzzed over us low and loud several times, then left as suddenly as it arrived. When I passed back through the bridge with my weapon the Captain stopped me, looked at me for a minute then said, "Never mind." My impression was that he wanted to ask a question, but realized he didn't want to know the answer. I think this was the case as I was never officially asked that question.

A week later with the Russian incident behind us I decided to break out my stash of acid. During my quick trip home from North Carolina I stopped in Coca Beach and located Captain Purple in his usual spot at Ron Jon's. Not knowing what to expect on my "Antarctic" trip I only bought one bag of acid. I kept it hidden and secret, even from the guys I hung with, in hopes of making a tidy profit when the time was right. Early in the trip someone else had acid to sell but he only had a few hits and it went for twenty dollars each. There was also a large supply of pot on board, some of which I sampled, but it too had become scarce. Well into the trip and deep inside the Arctic Circle I figured it was a good time to cash in.

As I began thinking about a price I kept coming back to the fact that most of the crew was upset with me for nearly getting them vaporized by a Russian nuclear bomb. I decided to give the acid away as a good will gesture. The free acid didn't bring much good will, but it did make for an interesting few days inside the Arctic Circle.

It was early morning and I was doing my twenty minutes as lookout on top of the bridge. As it always is on the polar icecap, it was cold. It was also a beautiful night. The sky was crisp and clear, one of those nights you could see forever. I popped a hit of acid before going on watch so I wasn't feeling the cold so much, but I was enjoying the view. The ship was moving north, plowing through a section of "young ice", which is soft and easy to go through, which is an amazing sight at night by itself. But what really amazed me, and does to this day was the acid induced light show in the sky. Brilliant lights, every color you can imagine filled the sky and reflecting on the white snow of the polar ice. In the wake of the ship's bow, where large chunks of ice overturned the sky lights reflected off the ice like light off a diamond.

My wonderful trip was interrupted by a voice. I hadn't seen anyone come up the ladder, but when I looked to my right a man was standing there. I couldn't see his face because of the protective coat's wrap around hood, no more than he could see mine, but I could see the bill of his cap. He was an officer, but even more it was an officer with "scrambled eggs" on his hat. It could only be the captain, but he never came up to the lookout spot.

He spoke to me again and this time pointed off into the sky. I still didn't hear his words, so I said, "Sir?" Again he pointed and said, "The lights, they're beautiful tonight." All the time he was talking he was pointing at my acid induced lights. My first thought was that the captain was tripping too. My second thought was that he knew I was tripping and was trying to trick me into admitting it. So I said, "What lights, sir." He pointed again and said, "The aurora borealis." I must have said something stupid because he turned to look at my goggled eyes. "The Northern Lights," he said. "Surely you've heard of them." I said I had no idea what he was talking about, which caused him to leave the flying bridge mumbling something about kids.