A Life Wasted

Bonus Story (Fire at Sea)

The confrontation with the Russians and anger from the crew over my role in the danger adversely affected me to the point of causing depression and a more than a little paranoia. I started believing everyone hated me. This was the backdrop for the most significant event from that Arctic deployment.

Less than a week after the close call with the Russians we were in open water north of Iceland. As is often the case in the North Atlantic Ocean in February, the seas were brutal. At the time a large percentage of the crew were disabled with sea sickness. That I don't get seasick was often a mixed blessing in that I was among a small group of sailors able to stand watch, work, and respond to an emergency call to General Quarters. On this day it was a serious shipboard fire.

As soon as the fire started the general quarters alarm sounded and the Captain turned the ship north to put the ship on to the ice cap. At the time I thought we ran hard for the ice so we could abandon ship on to the ice, rather than into the cold and brutal Atlantic Ocean. I later heard that we went on to the ice cap to escape the rough seas while fighting the fire, which is exactly what happened. But I think it was for both reasons. Eight-foot-thick ice did block the ocean waves and provide a stable deck to fight the fire from, but it also gave us something to stand on if the fire won the battle.

Having joined the ship after it sailed, I wasn't on the fire fighting crew and didn't know my way around the ship. I had never been to the engineering department, or even below deck in that part of the ship. So, when ordered to fight a raging fire in the boiler room I had no idea where it was.

In the ship wide panic that the fire caused, I followed a guy I didn't know to a gear locker, where he grabbed a breathing device from a locker, saw me then handed me one. I'd seen the breather in a boot camp class, but had never been trained on one and never had one on my face. When we reached the smoke filled corridor he put his on, then showed me how to engage the oxygen device and put mine one. I had trouble breathing immediately which I told the other sailor. He said that was normal, its always hard to breath with the device, that I'd get use to it. I was panicked and scared, but I couldn't run away from the fire so I followed him deeper into the ship, through bellowing smoke.

As we got closer the heat was too hot to tolerate (it was -60 F outside, so I was overdressed for a fire). The smoke was too thick to see anything and the guy I followed said he was lost. He said something I couldn't hear then ran in a different direction. I was totally disoriented, unable to see and unable to draw a breath. Even without the smoke I would have been lost, but with it I couldn't guess at a safe direction to run. Panic made breathing through the mask worse, so I pulled it off and threw it to the ground and ran away from the heat.

At some point I passed out and woke gagging. It took me a minute to realize a sailor had just stopped giving mouth to mouth while another leaning over me from the other side had been giving me chest compressions. I was laying on the steel deck, still deep in the ship with smoke billowing above my head. One of my rescuers said they had pulled me out of the worst of it, but the smoke was still dangerous. He pointed in a direction and told me to stay low, under the smoke, and to crawl because the air was clear enough to breath down low.. He said something about a ladder up ahead. Then both men put their breather mask over their faces then cautiously crawled deeper into the smoke while I crawled in the direction indicated.

I crawled a very short distance before panicking. I stood and ran. Again, overwhelmed by smoke I fell down. I was still conscious when a chief petty officer tripped over me. He tried to help me stand up, but I was so panicked he had to shake me to get me to focus. I was still crying as he walked me up two flights of steps to the main deck. He left me there and went back below. Desperate for fresh air I went through an exterior hatch, exposing myself to the -60 below zero Arctic air. I'd left the door open, so a different chief spotted me outside, exposed to the elements.

The chief who found me outside told me the rest of this story, which I have no memory of. I didn't respond when he called so he went outside after me. When I tried to fight him off he hit me in the jaw. He said I was crying and hysterical. Also that when he hit me I dropped and he fireman carried me all the way to sick bay. That is where I woke with a corpsman holding something under my nose. The chief asked me why I was outside. I didn't know why as I had no memory of that day. Several days later the first petty officer that helped me came to sickbay to check on me. When I didn't remember him he told me what he knew and that brought back some of my memory.

I was an immature seventeen-year-old with no idea what I was doing. Not only had I not been trained for what I experienced I was so new to the ship that I didn't know anyone and had yet to learn my way around. Before this event I don't believe I'd ever really known fear, but through most of this event I was terrified to the point of being unresponsive and unable to control my emotions.

I was so messed up from the experience that I was allowed to sleep near an outside porthole (window) in sick bay for a week until I tried to go below decks to my bunk. When I finally returned to my rack I couldn't sleep. The bunks were canvas tied to a pipe rack and stacked six-high with very little room. The space was so tight that when the sailor above me moved his weight pressed against my chest. Before the fire I had a difficult time tolerating such a tight space, but after the fire it was impossible for me to even crawl into my rack. After several sleepless nights on the floor of the rec room, a petty officer took pity one me. He showed me how to get into an enclosed small boat tied to the ship's deck. It had two bunks and a small heater. More importantly to me, it had windows and there was nothing above me for several feet. I slept there in the cold every night for the rest of the deployment.

A lot of things that happened on that trip terrified me, none related to this issue, but my experience with the fire and smoke made all the other issues worse. When the ship returned to port in Baltimore, I went AWOL on May 19, 1975. My parents convinced me to return, and the Coast Guard was sympathetic. Even the captain knew the fire messed me up so bad I had to sleep in the deck boat, so all I got was two weeks base restriction.

The Coast Guard sent me to a psychologist at the U.S. Public Health Service in Baltimore. After meeting with me the psychologist's recommend the Coast Guard transfer me off the ice breaker. The Coast Guard transferred me from the Ice Breaker to Coast Guard Station Taylor's Island, Maryland, a small search and rescue station on the Chesapeake Bay. That base had a 40 foot boat, a 32-foot boat, and an open deck Boston Waller.

My problem with tight spaces, fire and smoke began with the shipboard fire in the Arctic. I never had a problem with close spaces before that. I also developed an abnormal fear of walking on a frozen lake or river, regardless of how thick the ice. This is likely the result of the fear I experienced of being stranded on the Artic Ice Pack due to the fire.

I was 68 years old when diagnosed with PTSD related to this incident. I still can't tolerate the smell of smoke and have difficulty with enclosed spaces. In 2020 and 2021 I was sick from the COVID-19 virus four times. After COVID, all of my phobias became far worse. A neurologist diagnosed me with Long-COVID and attributed my worsening PTSD symptoms to that.