Master Chief (26 page)

Unfortunately for crew number one, the temporary
patch was a weak one and leaked. That meant that the damaged main tube could not be inflated much above 1½ psi—Eberle would have to periodically reinflate the IBS with the small hand pump throughout the day. The IBS was certain to be very unstable when entering rough waters because of its tendency to fold up from bow to stern due to low air pressure. During the next six days, Kleehammer’s boat crew would spend a lot of time swimming in the 45-degree waters.

On the morning of the second day and just before we approached the infamous Rock House rapids with our small rafts, we pulled over and visited with the civilian coxswains—River Rats—who were absolute professionals at piloting their boats and pontoons safely through the canyon’s violent rapids for their thrill-seeking clients. After they had examined our IBSs, one of them casually commented, “It was just last week that a lady fell from her pontoon”—three military-type U-shaped rubber pontoons were secured together and powered with an outboard engine, and were rarely upset when descending the rapids—“and was killed when she was smashed against the Rock House boulder.” The River Rats advised us to maneuver to the left of the boulder, which was as large as a house and positioned in the center of the rapids, and warned us to remain in the center of the narrow stream. Otherwise, the current would overpower us and take our boat into the canyon wall where the river violently doubled or washed back upon itself, similar to a twenty-foot plunging (pipeline) ocean beach wave. Because the river’s water level was temporarily moderately high, the rapids were not rated at their worst. Trung Uy Kleehammer and Eberle assured the River Rats that we would have no trouble getting through because of our vast experience in dealing with southern California’s seasonally large surf. The River Rats smiled and wished us all the
best as they and their customers sat down on a high spot, got out their sandwiches and soda pop, and prepared their 8mm movie and SLR cameras to document the Navy’s best at descending the ominous rapids.

Trung Uy and his Cocky Crew decided to take the starboard channel while “Dumb Shit” Smith and unwitting crew went to port. One of my favorite sayings in those days was, “It’s good to be humbled.” Little did we know. Boat crew one with its noodle bow managed to get as far as the first pothole, where the IBS doubled, throwing its occupants into the air and floating downstream, where it remained in a back eddy. Boat crew two didn’t realize the power of the current until it was too late. Despite our best efforts, we discovered that we were powerless to avoid the huge backwash off the canyon wall and, consequently, were flipped upside down in the midst of huge waves, potholes, and deep surface foam. I remained underwater for at least ten minutes, it seemed, before my life jacket brought me back to the surface and, unfortunately, underneath the IBS. The water was so violent, I had a difficult time getting out from under the IBS because of my life jacket’s buoyancy and entanglement with the bowline. Once I extricated myself from the hectic mess and reached the surface, I found that I couldn’t breathe, because the water was so cold that my lungs refused to function, and two feet of foam lay on the surface of the violent water, keeping me from the air. For a while I thought I was a goner. As I was gradually washed downstream, the foam disappeared and I began to regain my breathing. Eventually I noticed several heads with helmets appearing above the waves. After a long, cold swim for our rafts and paddles, we managed to get back under way with a much healthier respect for the deceptively powerful Colorado River and the Grand Canyon’s walls. The consensus of boat crew two was, “We’ve got to get our act together!”

After a bit of brainstorming, the three of us decided to secure the bowline tautly to one of the stern D-rings. This would raise the bow somewhat, and the line would give Doc and me a handy lifeline to grab with one hand, while we gripped our paddles with the other and the main tube with our legs. Doc and I moved forward to the number-one position for better control of the boat and an improved view of upcoming potholes, whirlpools, and boulders. Also the coxswain would have the bowline to hang onto when all else failed.

Interestingly, one of the consequences of our bad judgment at the Rock House rapids was that the canyon wall had cut a foot-long gash in the bottom of our DBS floor, which flooded the boat with water. During the next couple of days, after we had survived several more rapids, we (Humble Crew Two) learned that the six inches of water that always remained inside our boat added much needed ballast to keep the DBS stable during our passage through rough waters and potholes. We never turned over again during that trip. Conversely, we lost most of our maneuverability when trying to dodge obstacles. In the end, Humble Crew Two decided to sacrifice maneuverability for stability. We urged Cocky Crew One to cut a slit in the bottom of their noodle-IBS and we received sneers of “pussies, nonhackers, gutless wonders” and worse from Seaman Eberle. Consequently, they dumped a total of six times during the first six days of the trip. Sometimes the best way to convince people is to let them have their own way.

By the third day, the River Rats and their clients never failed to gather at the next rapids to wait for the two small, black dots to appear from upstream. For them it was amusement time; for us, Humble Crew Two, it was serious time. After pumping the River Rats for their advice and studying the best approach to the rapids, Cocky Crew One soon amused the cheering crowd with
their speciality—acrobatic dumping: crewmen flying one way and the floppy IBS sailing through the air to another. Humble Crew Two paddled their asses off trying to rescue their retarded teammates from the frigid waters. Someone had to do the dirty work.

We generally departed camp shortly after daylight. Within a couple of hours we passed the River Rats’ camping place, which was located in a large concave place or sandy knoll adjacent to the river. Most of the Rats and their customers stood around their fire, leisurely drinking hot coffee and eating bacon and eggs. This was their usual routine. At about 1000 hours they would pass us in their motorized pontoons and continue downstream until approximately 1400 hours, when they set up camp again. They occasionally stopped during their four-hour journey to watch Cocky Crew One demonstrate their specialty at each major rapids. Each day, we paddled for approximately sixteen hours. The reasons were simple: if we were to remain on schedule for our rendezvous with the SEAL team’s truck, and if we didn’t want to run out of food—LRRPs and C-rations—we would have to keep our paddles in the water.

By the fourth day we were beginning to get very sunburned from the reflection of the sun’s rays off the water. We continually rubbed oil over our bodies to prevent second-degree burns. Later that afternoon we were moving along nicely without a jutting rock or rapids in sight—all we had to do was occasionally steer the boat to keep its nose pointed downstream. Suddenly, without warning, the nose of our IBS took a six-foot dive into a hole on the downside of a boulder beneath the surface. All I had time to do was tuck my paddle under my right armpit, place my face on the main tube, grab the taut bowline with my left hand, and grip the main tube with my legs. Our IBS totally disappeared underwater into the backwash and
eventually returned to the surface like a surfacing submarine. Somehow Doc and the coxswain had managed to hold onto the bowline and maintain their positions inside the boat until the IBS surfaced. On the other hand, I was completely out of the boat and barely hanging on to the bowline with my left hand. Doc quickly reached out, grabbed my left arm, and pulled me aboard. Fortunately, I hadn’t lost my paddle, otherwise Eberle would have ribbed me to death. Our boat’s water ballast definitely kept the IBS stable throughout the whole experience. That was one treacherous river. Mr. K. later commented, “One minute you guys were taking it easy, and the next minute you had totally disappeared from view.”

On the sixth day we slowly approached the worst rapids of the canyon—Lava Falls rapids. We soon spotted the River Rats and their cheering clients on the left bank, atop a rock outcropping just upstream of the rapids. As always, we pulled over and discussed the best approaches to the rapids with the River Rat coxswains, studied the two routes, and made our decisions. The left approach offered many large and small boulders scattered throughout the rapids, and assorted potholes that would require some fancy boat maneuvers and a lot of luck. The right approach offered fewer boulder obstacles and potholes but had a canyon wall somewhat similar to the one at the Rock House rapids—if the coxswain misjudged the current, the IBS would be pulled into the backwash off the canyon wall. Humble Crew had had enough of canyon-wall backwashes and took the left approach. Having had enough of potholes, Cocky Crew lived up to their name and took the right.

Strangely, one of the River Rats naively begged Trung Uy Kleehammer to take him with them. Mr. K. readily agreed and shoved off with the passenger. Once their IBS was committed to the current, on the right-side approach,
there was no holding back. If the crew could keep the IBS moving faster than the current, then they could potentially control the direction of the boat. If the paddlers slowed their pace to the point that the current became faster than the boat, then the crew forfeited a high percentage of the boat’s maneuverability. Their survival and success would depend on the discipline of the paddlers, the leadership of the strokeman, and the management of the coxswain.

Cocky Crew initially seemed to be doing well and had just dodged a large rock when they hit one of the hidden potholes. Because of their IBS’s butt-bucking habit, Mr. K. flew high into the air and landed in the river just aft of the boat’s stern. Eberle shoved his paddle toward Trung Uy for him to grab, and was pulling him back into the boat when they hit another pothole. The crew and boat disappeared. The IBS eventually surfaced upside down, and shortly afterward the whole ball of wax was pushed into the large backwash off the right canyon wall. Within a minute or so we began to spot helmeted heads bobbing on the surface here and there while the IBS rapidly headed downstream upside down, like a snake crawling on uneven ground.

By that time Humble Crew was making their approach on the left. Once we had maneuvered to our chosen entry point, the current committed us. There would be no turning back. As luck would have it, we managed to survive several potholes, bounced off numerous boulders without bursting the spray tube or the main tubes, slid over large subsurface juggernauts, and made it to calmer waters. Our next concern was to proceed immediately downstream looking for Cocky Crew One and their unfortunate passenger. All of boat crew one, except Trung Uy, had swum to the bottoms-up IBS and were busy trying to turn it over. After we signaled to them that we were going downstream to locate Mr. Kleehammer, we heard yelling and spotted Trung Uy’s hand waving as he floated into deeper and
calmer waters. Deeper water and steeper canyon walls sometimes meant numerous back eddies—and so it was. We paddled our butts off for forty-five minutes before we were able to reach Lieutenant (jg) Kleehammer. The poor fellow was suffering from hypothermia and was unable to talk for several minutes. We quickly reached a large sandbar and beached until the remnant of Cocky Crew and the River Rats and clients arrived.

Later, the River Rat that accompanied boat crew one commented, “I have never truly experienced the absolute power of the river until this day! It was an incredible ride!”

The last three days were uneventful, and on the afternoon of the ninth day, we pulled out on the east bank, where we rendezvoused with one of our teammates and his five-ton truck near the western edge of the Hualapai Indian Reservation near Lake Mead.

During that trip, several of the River Rats offered us substantial amounts of money for our IBSs. Somehow, I couldn’t imagine even drunken clients being crazy enough to proceed down the canyon any farther than just below the Rock House rapids. It’s been fun, I thought, but I never want to do it again.

By October of 1972 I was attending the EOD/Scuba Diver Course at the Naval Station, Key West, Florida. During the three-month school, RM3 Bruce Keyston—another Navy EOD student—and 1, along with three other students, took the standard scuba course followed by the Second Class Deep Sea Diving course. The deep sea diver’s course taught us the basics in the use of the old Jack Brown Shallow Water and MK-V Deep Sea surface-tended diving systems and, for the EOD students, the MK-VI mixed gas scuba system (nonmagnetic type) for deep diving while working on magnetically influenced underwater ordnance. CPO Jessie Lively, an old, humorous deep sea diver, was our class instructor.

During the scuba phase, our instructors occasionally took us a mile or so off Key West, cast out two lines, and slowly towed two of us behind the LCPL MK-11. Our mission was to watch for rock outcroppings with likely lobster havens, free-dive down to the bottom, and bag as many lobsters as possible with our Hawaiian slings. The more lobsters, the more pleased were our instructors. The more pleased our instructors, the less miserable were the students. It was always a day of fun, and the students were graciously rewarded with box lunches in return for several bags of lobsters for our instructors.

On one particular October night our scuba class was tasked to go on a 1,500-yard night swim by pairs. It was a beautiful starlit night with calm seas and warm water—an EOD/UDT/SEAL diver couldn’t ask for much more than that. Each swimmer wore his UDT swim trunks, web belt, diving knife, with MK-13 day/night flare, UDT life jacket, fins, and face mask. About halfway through the swim I had my first and last encounter with a Portuguese man-of-war jellyfish. Fortunately, I was the only swimmer to get hit. The jellyfish’s body is approximately six inches in diameter, with tentacles reaching a length of fifty feet. I never saw the varmint, but I knew he was around when I felt intensely burning stings around my neck and shoulders, arms and chest. By the time I finished my swim, my upper body felt as if thousands of needles were being stuck into me continually. I went to the corpsman, told him of my misfortune, and asked if he had anything to deliver me from my miserable condition.