I had been on my way to the little weight room we called a gym on our relatively small ship for a quick before-dinner workout when the Captain spread the news of our fateful predicament. I remember thinking that this could be the moment, the moment that had sent out an occasional quiver of unrecognized fear at the bottom of my guts since the night I boarded the Roberts for the first time. That had been six months earlier on a brisk New England evening in October at pier-side in Newport, Rhode Island, the night I found out I, we, were destined for the Persian Gulf the following February. In the late 1980's, the biggest fear for a young man just out of high school joining the Navy, was the possibility of finding himself on a ship in the dreaded Persian Gulf. Well, here I was, here we were, and that nameless fear was about to thrust its horrible face into full view.
I hurried back into my uniform not quite sure what to expect, still holding onto the thought that things like this don't happen to me, all the while aware of the fear rising in me. I got to my GQ station, an engineering space called AMR1, which existed in the lowest part of the ship a little less than halfway from front to back. We were ordered almost immediately to get up out of the deepest spots and come up a deck or two just in case we did hit something. On the reefer deck just above the ladder leading down to AMR1, Tilley, Tatum, and I sat staring at each other, anxiety making us sweat, speaking idly to keep our fears down.
After a few minutes, a moment came when everything fell silent, still, like the moment the sun peaks over the horizon on a cool spring morning. Just a fraction of a moment, then the silence was shattered, the deafening boom shocking our ears, our bodies with its thunderous roar. Louder than anything I can compare to it in my experiences before or since. The deck seemed to toss me and the steel milk can I sat on straight up then catch us as gently as you please like a giant's hand had caught us in mid-air and set us back on the deck unharmed.
For one moment, the three of us stared at each other, not believing what had just happened and, momentarily, not ready for what lay before us. Then our months of shipboard damage-control training kicked in almost like instinct.
