RONGERIK

Part 3.

The Captain hollered to me, "Steady as she goes, SGT." and when we started getting pushed around a bit by the waves and the wind, he hollered Turn the helm to starboard." I couldn't believe this guy. I had used up the sum total of my Navy jargon with tore and aft" when we originally cast oft. I didn't know what the helm was nor where the hell the starboard was, so I just hollered "AYE AYE SIR" and kept on coming. Did we ever hit it lucky! We nestled that sucker right up to the ship. After tying up alongside, I turned to the bridge, popped a crisp salute, and hollered, Thanks for the help, SIR!" When the Captain returned the salute I whispered out of the side of my mouth "You 90 day asshole." The sailors kept a respectable distance from us normally because of the conditions we worked in, but increasinly they were talking to us about the instruments we were sending up and how 'hot" did we think the island was, and where was our home states. It seemed we had become part of the crew! Plus they liked the 90 day comment!

I knew it had to happen sooner or later since we were almost dead east of the tests. We were just getting ready to shut down when the ship's Klaxon sounded once, paused, and sounded twice more. Talk about panic! We jumped up, shut everything down and ran out to the duck and headed for the PSP. We were all glancing skyward and holding out a hand as it to catch a "black snow flake." We started down the incline to the beach and I noticed the anchor chain was still in the water and no diesel smoke was coming out of the stack. One of the guy' s said, "They're signaling us in code." Cox deciphered. "DO YOU GUYS WANT SUPPER?" We had missed chow a few times and had to settle for baloney or peanut butter sandwiches. The cook had cooked up a good meal and wanted us to get a warm meal for a change. We were certainly thankful there was no fallout. How could you get mad at a guy who wanted to see us get some good chow? You know what, we went to the ship, washed our hands and our faces, the crew brought the chow topside and we ate on deck. Then we went back ashore, coded our data, sent it on the teletype. and then came back to the ship.

I figured the good weather wasn' t going to last and I was right. One day there was a lot of wind and there were white caps in the lagoon. When we pulled away from the ship and on our way to the shore we were getting soaked from the ocean spray before we hit the beach. I didn't even consider what it was going to be like coming back. We had some trouble launching the balloon but everything else went OK, that is, until we started back. We had dried off ashore but trying to ease the duck into the water without getting wet was a total failure. When we got near the ship, the sailors were up on deck, some with prods, hoping to help us get in OK. The two-bar idiot was hollering instructions that I didn't pay any attention to, just a bunch of Navy jargon I didn't understand anyway. So I just pointed that duck at the side of the ship and kept on coming in, hoping that at the last minute I could get it sideways and let the elements bring me alongside. Forget it!

We got turned around and our ass end plowed into the ship knocking us all ass over teakettle in the bottom ot the duck. Along with this bang there was an awful screeching noise as the duck scraped the side of the ship. The Navy guys were really concerned, because they jumped onto the duck and helped us up and on board the ship. I marveled at that, since they never got too close to us guys until we had finished scrub down. They were all laughing and patting us on the back and nearly went into hysterics when the call came over the speakers, "NOW HEAR THIS! NOW HEAR THIS! AFTER SCRUB DOWN, SGT. SAPP LAY UP TO THE BRIDGE!"

After the usual griping about my lack of seamarlsllip. the Captain informed me that the sailor who had the previous duty of ferrying us ashore and back, would be handling that task from now on. I had enough sense not to laugh in his face. What a relief! I looked up the Chief and told him I had been relieved of my command of the U.S.S. DUCK! That made the rounds of the crew and there were a lot of jokes about that. The crew had started getting worried about us and were on a daily basis asking us how we felt.

I don't know how many days we spent on the island, or to this day how much radiation we were actually exposed to, nor how much we absorbed. We didn't talk about it much. We just hoped we would be pulled from this mission before our exposure proved deadly Being in my early twenties I never paid much attention to my health prior to this assignment, but I'll say this, as the hours accumulated that we worked on the island, every indication that all was not well with our bodies received a lot of attention, right down to a runny nose. There were spots on the island where it appeared the sand was mixed with some black substance and we carefully avoided these places. The road was pretty clear so we never strayed from it. Eash and every single day we passed those barracks we were hit by the somber thought. "There, but for the grace of God, I could've been." Sometimes when the wind was just so, the reefer smell came over us and we were lucky to finish the run without upchucking our last meal.

There was a typhoon starting to kick up its heels in the Pacific and its projected path would bring it close to Rongelap Atoll (Rongerik was a small part of Rongelap), so the ship had to pull anchor and move out. I think that night I slept like a lamb, possibly because of the tension that kept building in us as we daily worked on Rongerik we all felt we had paid our dues" to Joint Task group 7-4. Our ship met up with the Destroyer Phillips and we were transferred aboard, staying in a quarantined area until we reached Kwajalein. When we reached Kwajalien, we were ferried to a dock area where we were met by some people in lab coats, without any military insignia of any kind on their clothing. We had to scrub down, lather with shaving cream, get rid of all our body hair, rinse off put on hospital gowns and get into one of those olive drab weapons carrier ambulances.

Chapters
|| The Assignment || Eniwetok || The B-29 Drone Modification ||
|| The Hydrogen Bomb Test] ||
|| Rongerik part 1 || Rongerik part 2 || Rongerik part 3 ||
|| Mystery and Reflections ||

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