1956, in the Harbor of Yokosuka, Japan, on board my Navy home the USS Bryce Canyon (AD-36). I had just turned 20 years old and had two years of Navy Service behind me.
That morning as we fell-in for our Morning Muster on the Main Deck, the weather was already hot, sticky and even more Tropical muggy than usual. The Chief Bo’sun Mate was telling us that we had to get the ship ready for a storm that was fixing to hit that afternoon. Then he said a new word for my Midwestern ears…”Typhoon”. I had probably heard of them storms, but I had no idea what one was. After all, I was from the Midwest….Tornadoes…Tornadoes…Tornadoes. Shoot, no Typhoon could be as bad as what I had grown up with.
Later that day, I had my storm education broadened considerably.
It’s one thing to be hiding down in the basement of the farm house where I grew up, as a bad storm battered the countryside around us…it’s quite another to be sitting in a ship, in the middle of the harbor when a Typhoon comes….and stays….and blows like a tornado on steroids…and keeps staying…
I was a boat coxswain on board ship. I operated the big landing craft, where the front end comes down, and the soldiers run into the water next to the beach in a real War…but, in 1957…we used the boats for carrying my shipmates from ship to shore for liberty and to haul supplies back to the ship.
The Bo’sun called all boat crews on deck…report immediately! I had been hunkered down out of the rain and wind in our living quarters…but, I threw on my foul weather gear and rushed to the Main Deck to see what was wrong now.
“All right men, there is a barge that has broke loose from the loading dock at the Naval Base and it is a danger to all the ships in the Harbor with this storm. I need a crew to volunteer to go get it tied up and secured back at the dock. I looked out at the waves, that looked like the ones you have seen in the movie, “The Perfect Storm”, and nervously cleared my throat…”All right, Hitchcock, get your crew and go get it!”….teach me to not clear my throat at the wrong time, I reckon.
Our boats were tied up on booms that stuck out from the ship, which you had to walk out on and them climb down on rope ladders to get to. It was some kind of acrobat trick in 100+ MPH winds and waves that looked like mountains, but we made in into our trusty boat and got ready to head out. Fortunately, this was early on in the Typhoon, or we would have been unable to even try to do what we had to do. At the peak of a Typhoon the wind can exceed 200 miles an hour, and all you can do is hold on to your rear end and pray.
We headed out in the torrential rain and waves that were tossing us around like a tin can and searched for the loose barge. We finally found the thing in the middle of the Harbor and I got the landing craft up as close as I could to try to get lines on it and tow it back to the Base.
My bow hook (the sailor at the front of the boat handling the front line), was able to get one line on the stanchion of the barge, and it was up to me to step out of the coxswain compartment to try to tie up a back line. I stepped out on the wet deck and bent down to try to get a line around the back of the barge. My foot slipped on the wet deck and I went head first into the churning water between the boat and the barge. Somehow, I had held on to the rope….when my head came above the water the barge and the boat was about to make a sandwich and I was gonna be the meat between them. Just before that happened, I pulled myself straight up the rope and threw my legs up on the deck of the boat, as the two vessels crashed together. I lay there for a moment, getting my breath back, and then proceeded to tie the rope to the back stanchion of the barge. We got the barge back to the dock and tied up properly and headed back to the ship.
It took mail quite awhile to reach us from back in the Ozarks, but about a month later I got a letter from Mama. She said, “Stanley Edward, the Lord wakened me in the middle of the night and I knew you were in dire danger. I fell down by my bed and prayed that the Lord would spare my son from whatever was about to take you. I received a great peace, that God had answered my prayer. I love you son. Mom.”
The date of the letter matched the exact time that I was out in the storm. Yes, I believe in prayer, and particularly prayers from a Godly Mother. When you have been on the receiving end of such prayers, you have no trouble believing.
Thank God for Storms that pass over, Mother’s that pray through, and sons that learn to trust in Faith.
stan
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