The Longest 3 Days

It was a hot and dry day sailing through the Gulf of Oman. The last day of March was unusually scorching for this time of year. There were 146 of us onboard, merchant marines and U.S. Navy sailors combined. We were killing time in the gulf waiting for the aircraft carrier USS Kennedy to make its way towards us so we could offload their monthly supplies.
I happened to be up on the 2nd deck when I spotted something odd in the water approaching our ship. It was a common site to see cattle floating in the seas near the Middle East. As the object moved closer, I realized it wasn’t a cow or farm animal.
I notified the bridge and signal men onboard that something out of the ordinary was in the waters. After a few minutes I could hear and feel our engines come to a sudden halt. I couldn’t believe my eyes. This was a person in the water and it was evident that this lost soul was not alive. Floating 50 yards behind was another body, then another.
Our ship sounded two sharp blasts from their horn. Everyone onboard knew what that sound meant – man overboard. We were looking for survivors, wreckage, some clues to what had happened here in the middle of the ocean. The closest land was over 100 miles away. We asked each other, “What happened here?” “Where did these people come from?” No one knew the answers to these questions. We stood by in disbelief, waiting for direction from the U.S. Fleet Admiral in that operating arena.
As the hours went by more bodies kept appearing. That evening we received notification from the 6th fleet commander that we had to retrieve these bodies from the water. We knew our ship didn’t have the resources for this kind of operation, plus we only had two body bags onboard. What were we to do with all these people? As the crew scurried together we started the planning stages of this unusual rescue.
We had two SAR (search and rescue) swimmers onboard our ship and we had one RIB (Ready Inflatable Boat). As a supply ship, we transfer pallets of food and supplies from the warehouses on the pier by use of heavy duty cranes. We used these cranes to lower a pallet to the waterline. Our SAR swimmers in the RIB boat would then guide the deceased on top of the pallet with makeshift hooks. The crane hoisted up the pallet one body at a time up to the main deck. I was one of those people on main deck who guided the bodies from the pallet into a plastic-lined tri-wall (a huge corrugated container used for supply shipments).
There were a few onboard that could not stomach the site or smell of this catastrophe we stumbled across. My bunkmate Charlene scolded me, “Do not come into this room with your boots on after you’re done fishing out those bodies.” I told her, “We are wearing protective gear, even over our boots.” That answer was not good enough for her. I had a technician that worked for me in our shop, a big burly sailor. He tells me, “I’m sorry but I cannot help, this whole situation is making me sick, literally.” About one-half of the ships personnel volunteered; working long shifts during this ordeal. For those who didn’t volunteer they were not looked down upon nor reprimanded. This was not an easy task for anyone.
The stench was atrocious; the site of these people was surreal. The bodies had to of been in the waters for well over a week. Some of the bodies were so chewed up that it took several attempts to push the body onto a pallet. Innards were falling out of their mid-sections. Some were unrecognizable because pieces were missing. A few had bullet holes through their foreheads.
Day two we had retrieved 37 bodies from the sea. The majority of the casualties were women, one was a child. This was probably one of the hardest things for me. I turned to my shipmate Trish and told her, “My goodness this child is the same size as my four-year old son back at home.” “Who did this horrible thing to these poor people?” None of us knew the answers at this time. We were just following orders and doing what we thought was right.
These people lay in these tri-walls until we could pull into a port in Djibouti, Africa. The next day we received official word that we had to put the dead back into the ocean. No country wanted us to bring the deceased into their port. A proper burial at sea was to be given for these people otherwise they would be considered martyrs. All of us who worked so diligently to get them out of the water, now had to put them back into the sea. We were all frustrated and tired.
The 3rd day we had official visitors fly onboard. Several corpsmen brought body bags, a few Navy Chaplains, psychologists to help us through our ordeal, and a couple Muslim religious figures. They were here for support and also for the proper burial.
Next step was taking these people out of the tri-walls and putting them into body-bags. We were thankful these people were in the plastic. We had to scavenge for heavy weights to load down the body bags so they would not float when they went back into the sea. All the bodies were lined up on the flight deck on the starboard side of the ship. The interrupted delivery of USS Kennedy’s supplies still wait on the port side during this ordeal. The temperature was about 125 degrees Fahrenheit and rising.
We had a memorial service for these lost souls. There was a lot of religious chanting that none of us could understand; but we respected it for these people. We found out later they were victims of piracy. These people were Yemenis’ paying their fares to have a better life in Somalia. Instead they met their ultimate death on an overloaded boat. Unfortunately this happens quite frequently over in that area of the world.
This experience will live with me forever. It hit deep within me that life is so fragile, isn’t to be taken for granted, and can come to an undignified and unfortunate end in the blink of an eye.