The ship was like a morgue. No one spoke for a week, the rest of our time out there. Every job was accomplished in silence. Our voices were gone; our minds were numbed by disbelief. The Navy would not let us put divers in the water. Some, like the chaplain, died of exposure. Others got tangled in long cords 5 feet down. Some died when their packs got caught on metal tangs in the wreckage.
Eventually we got over it. Capt. Spillers was medevaced to Cherry Point, NC. He had two hairline vertebrea cracks, the thumb and a broken leg. We didn't know if we'd ever see him again, but he got better and came back in a cast and on a cane. He went to Group while he recovered; better than we all did.
Then we went on the float (November) and in February, about two weeks before the first Libya raid, we got a tape from someone back home that the skipper played on the ship's TV network — the Challenger space shuttle blew up before our very eyes. We'd not heard about it in our little metal world at sea. The ship's crew went back into morgue mode until after the first raid.
For me personally, the worst thing about our lost plane and comrades was that its crew chief and I had had a bad argument the night before (about a rack, of all things), and I hadn't seen him that morning to say hello and let it go. I never got to say I was sorry. For years, every now and then, I would just break down and cry at the memory of that dark, October morning.
I never told anyone else in my family about the wreck. One Christmas ('87) when my dad was down from Chicago, all of a sudden I just broke down and couldn't stop. Being an old PT boater, he watched me and waited for it to pass. Then we opened presents, like I was six again, instead of 37. He understood. He never said a word; never asked a question.
Over the years I found out that this also happened to other guys in the squadron, like a kitchen floor taking a roll out of nowhere. But it never leaves.
Funny thing about the Gulf War: The main terminal building was like a funnel for all the Marines that entered Saudi Arabia. Our little space was right next to the only door in, and for six weeks about every 10 minutes a Marine would walk by whom I hadn't seen in 10 years or more.
One day Capt. Spillers came by in his Charlies, walking with a cane and as cheerful as ever. He was in Intel now and looking for a ride. Pilots, they just want to fly, no matter what.
Aviation, the only way to fly. . .
It's good to be alive.
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About the author:
Cal Tobin, Jr.
SSgt. USMC
1972~1992
