Larry Bond - Dangerous Ground

“Dr Pepper, right? You’ll have it as soon as we get back, sir.”

“Very good. Oh. and Jerry, when it’s appropriate, you can call me Al.” With that, Millunzi went back to the business of settling Memphis into her natural element.

“All right, green one, come with me,” nagged Berg. “You’ve had a rough day and the doctor’s orders must be obeyed. It’s off to your rack for a few hours of blissful slumber so that you’ll be well-rested and ready to face that vile creature, the drill monitor.”

Jerry didn’t remember even making it to his stateroom before he fell asleep.

April 20, 2005

Atlantic Ocean

“FIRE IN THE GALLEY! CASUALTY ASSISTANCE TEAM LAY TO THE GALLEY! ALL HANDS DON EABS!” screeched the IMC. Immediately after the announcement shattered the evening’s silence, the ship’s general alarm sounded. BONG, BONG, BONG, followed again by “FIRE IN THE GALLEY! CASUALTY ASSISTANCE TEAM LAY TO THE GALLEY! ALL HANDS DON EABS!”

“The man is a sadist!” whined Berg loudly as he tumbled out of his rack. As Jerry, Berg, and Washburn struggled into their poopy suits, Berg continued his lament with: “I might as well not even take the damn thing off at the rate we’re going.”

Reaching into one of the lockers, Jerry pulled out three bags with the Emergency Air Breathing system masks and handed Washburn and Berg one each.

“Come on, Lenny, get a move on. You’re the CAT phone talker. The XO’s going to be pissed as hell if you don’t get to the galley pronto,” warned Washburn.

“I know, I know. I’m going as fast as I can,” replied Berg as he pulled the EAB mask over his face and tightened the straps. Plugging the hose connection into the one hundred pound air manifold, he took a couple of deep breaths, disconnected the hose and quickly moved out of the stateroom. Washburn followed Berg out as they both headed for the scene of the casualty. For the first time in the last two days, Jerry didn’t have to go rushing off immediately, so he had a little more time to get ready before making his way to the wardroom. Normally, he would go to the torpedo room or the crew’s mess during a casualty. But since the “fire” was in the galley across from the crew’s mess, he would only be getting in the way of the casualty assistance team if he tried to go to either location. As the offgoing OOD, Berg was, by procedure, the designated sound-powered phone talker, so he had a reason to be at the scene. So too did Washburn who, as the Supply Officer, was responsible for the galley. Jerry’s job was to stay out of the way and muster in the wardroom, where he would sit quietly breathing dry, metallic-tasting air. How exciting, he thought. Grabbing his qual notes, Jerry took a deep breath, unplugged his EAB, and walked quickly to the wardroom.

In the wardroom, Jerry found Tom Holtzmann already on the sound-powered phones passing reports to and from control. The Navigator was sitting next to him, listening to what was going on. Maneuvering over to the couch, Jerry plugged himself back into the air system and started breathing again. Sitting down, he began going over his notes on casualty procedures and tried to follow the drill through its stages.

“THE CAUSE OF THE FIRE IN THE GALLEY IS A FIRE IN THE DEEP-FAT FRYER,” shouted Holtzmann loudly and slowly through his mask. Even so, he was barely understandable. Talking through an EAB mask is like trying to talk with your hand over your mouth. With every word muffled, any extraneous noise made verbal communication difficult at best. And with six guys breathing like Darth Vader, it was hard to hear what was going on.

“THE FIRE IS OUT,” reported Holtzmann. “PREPARING TO EMERGENCY VENTILATE THE FORWARD COMPARTMENT WITH THE DIESEL.”

Jerry sat back, closed his eyes, and tried to visualize what was going on in control. The small up angle indicated that the boat was already coming up to periscope depth. From the compass repeater on the bulkhead, Jerry saw that Memphis was turning slowly to the left. This would be the baffle-clearing maneuver, checking the area immediately behind the submarine where the hull arrays couldn’t hear, to make sure there were no contacts behind them as they came shallow. After verifying the baffles were clear, the OOD would raise the periscope to visually check that the area was free of any close contacts. Sometimes it was difficult to hear even a large merchant ship on sonar if its bow was pointed right at the sub. The worst were Very Large Crude Carriers, or supertankers. They were amazingly quiet bow-on and had fully-loaded drafts of up to seventy-five feet. Memphis would be nothing more than a speed bump to one of those behemoths if she came up in front of one.

Once the OOD announced, “No close contacts,” the Chief of the Watch would be ordered to raise the snorkel mast and test the head valve at the top of the mast. This verified that the head valve would close automatically when it got wet and would prevent seawater from rushing down into the boat and make things much worse. After opening the induction and diesel exhaust valves and clearing the lines of seawater, the emergency diesel could be started.

While the OOD and the rest of the ship’s control party got Memphis positioned to snorkel, watchstanders in the various spaces would be placing dampers and vent valves in the correct position for the diesel to suck the air and smoke from the affected compartment and discharge it overboard. Fresh air would then be sucked down through the induction valves and replace the toxic atmosphere. After about thirty minutes, the air in the forward compartment would be breathable again. No sooner had Jerry finished his mental walk-through of the procedure when he heard “COMMENCE SNORKELING” over the IMC. About a minute later, he could feel the vibration of the diesel running. The slight rolling of the boat told him that the sea state was pretty mild. Jerry allowed himself a small smile of satisfaction as he realized that he was becoming more confident of his ability to read the feel of the boat and his knowledge of emergency procedures.

“Secure snorkeling. Recirculate,” spoke a clear voice over the IMC a few minutes later. “Secure from drill. Drill monitors muster in the wardroom for the critique.”

Jerry removed his EAB, unplugged it, gathered his notes, and headed back to his stateroom. He’d seen a number of these drill critiques and none were pretty. The Captain never seemed to be satisfied with the crew’s performance and he would use these critique sessions to berate the officers and senior enlisted involved. Nobody left one of these meetings happy, so Jerry decided to clear datum before the Commodore and the Captain arrived.

Twenty minutes later, Berg and Washburn stumbled backed into the stateroom. Both were chortling and having a hard time restraining their glee. This was a very unusual outcome from a Memphis drill critique. The perplexed look on Jerry’s face only made the two laugh some more.

“Oh man, Jerry, you missed a good one,” said Berg with his usual pixielike grin. “The Captain didn’t even wait for the critique before he started chewing out the Chop here for having incompetent people in the galley. He was sooooo pissed off, I thought that he was going to lift a relief right then and there.”

“Forgive my ignorance, Lenny, but why would this be funny?” replied a very confused Jerry. “It sounds like Bill here got his butt reamed in a major league way.”

Berg was about to respond, when he stopped, waved flamboyantly at Washburn, and said, “Bill, this is your coup. Please enlighten Mr. Jerry here on the outcome of said ass-chewing.”

“Thank you, Your Officerness,” replied Washburn with an equally exaggerated hand gesture. “You see, while the Captain was busy winding himself into the overhead and yelling at me about how poorly trained my people were, the Commodore stepped out of galley behind him and just stood there listening. When the Captain demanded an explanation for the abysmal performance of my people, what pitiful excuse did I have for my MS2 not activating the fire-suppression system installed in the deep-fat fryer’s exhaust hood, the Commodore butted in and said, ‘Because I told him he was dead.’ Oh Lord!” sputtered Washburn as both he and Berg struggled valiantly not to break out in loud laughter. “The look on CO’s face was absolutely priceless!”