I Pledge Allegiance by Chris Lynch

Author:Chris Lynch [Lynch, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-545-38849-8
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Published: 2011-08-17T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWELVE

Life and Death

Fragments recovered from the rocket attacks on the ships indicated these were friendly fire attacks. Nobody has been able to put two plus two plus two together to find out who was there firing at us and why it happened.

Two Australian seamen from HMAS Hobart were killed. Seven more wounded.

Five American seamen from the swift boat PCF-19 died. Two were injured.

We got off easy. Nobody got killed, injuries were not even worth mentioning. Or at least by military standards they were not worth mentioning.

So why am I shaking so much?

Every time I think I have the experience to make some sense of all this, I am shocked all over again. I thought I knew war and shooting and danger and adventure, but no, I didn’t, and I don’t. See, there is a big fat difference between being taught to shoot at targets in training and doing the real thing in action. There is a difference between being told about injury and death and fear and all the well-known nonsense of battle, and feeling it.

And more to the point, there is a whopping great difference between dishing all this stuff out and being on the receiving end of it. Sounds like simple common sense, right?

Then why are even my eyelids trembling, not even blinking, but dried and petrified like they will never close again?

I know why. Because the war, the power of it, the wicked reality of the death-and-dismemberment aspect, are coming my way now.

And what do we get for our troubles? We get a vacation. We get to go home. USS Boston is taking me to the port of Boston just when I need it most. I could kiss them both.

We are to lick our wounds, repair our holes (just a scratch, everybody keeps saying, just a scratch). Our “holes” are a fairly mangled bridge area, a radar tower compromised to the point of dysfunction, and a lot of twisted and burned structural material across the ship’s once handsome nose. While we get all that cosmetic upgrading, we will also receive a refit. We are to go from “Guided Missile Heavy Cruiser” to “Heavy Cruiser, Attack.”

It seemed like we were already a heavy cruiser, and attack was our specialty. But what do I know?

What it means, really, is that our Terrier missiles are being decommissioned. It is all moving so fast. The Terriers, those impressive, hot killer rockets that first caught my attention at the aft end of the ship, have gone from latest thing to yesterday’s news before our very eyes. The Navy has decided technology has passed the Terriers by and they are now obsolete. To me they look just as murderous and handsome as they did yesterday.

I know it’s stupid, but I’m going to miss them.

I’m standing, like I did on the trip over, in the middle of the night as we steam through the endless open sea. It’s breezy and warm and you can definitely tell the difference sailing home west as opposed to sailing to war east.

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