Rescue Warriors

by David Helvarg

  Another tragic loss during the war was that of Lt. Jack Rittichier, a Coast Guard pilot shot down and killed in 1968 attempting a rescue behind enemy lines. He’d already carried out several rescues under fire earlier that year. His crash site was located and his remains and those of his three crewmates recovered in Laos in 2003, twenty-five years after their deaths. Lieutenant Rittichier was buried with full military honors on Coast Guard Hill in Arlington National Cemetery on October 6, 2003. He was the recipient of the Air Medal (four times, the first for a 1967 rescue on Lake Huron), three Distinguished Flying Crosses, a Silver Star, a Purple Heart, and a Presidential Unit Citation.

  Three future commandants of the Coast Guard would also serve in Southeast Asia during the war. Paul Yost won a Silver Star for leading his men through an ambush during a nine-vessel Swift Boat operation on the Bo De River on April 12, 1969. One of his captains and a number of Vietnamese marines were killed. Yost took two boats back to the ambush site to rescue the crew of a third boat that had run aground on a mud bank and was under fire from enemies ashore.

  Jim Loy would spend fifteen months in country doing combat patrols on an 82-footer. He would win a Bronze Star and later train Vietnamese to take over Coast Guard vessels the United States left behind.

  Thad Allen took command of a loran station in Thailand toward the end of the war, working to keep it up and functioning as Communist troops took control of South Vietnam in the spring of 1975. Because President Richard M. Nixon had declared the U.S. role in Vietnam over in 1972, he didn’t get a service ribbon for his Southeast Asia tour—but I figure if not getting a uniform ribbon to wear is one of your life’s regrets, you’ve led a pretty good life.

  Still, many who joined the Coast Guard during the 1960s did so to stay out of this divisive and unpopular war. When I mention that many service members I’ve interviewed speak of joining the Coast Guard because it’s a service that saves lives rather than takes them, an admiral’s wife expresses sympathy, pointing out that her husband joined during Vietnam to get out of the draft.

  The Coast Guard has gone on to play an active role in various post-Vietnam conflicts, including Grenada, Panama, Haiti, Kosovo, and the Persian Gulf wars.

  In 1994, the 378-foot High Endurance Cutter Chase, which had seen duty in Vietnam and the invasion of Grenada, led U.S. forces into Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in an intervention that restored the democratically elected president Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power during the Clinton administration. Ten years later, the United States provided tacit support to the rebels who overthrew Aristide during George W. Bush’s administration. The Coast Guard then surged into local waters, creating a blocking force to prevent a new wave of Haitian refugees.

  More Coast Guard reservists were mobilized at the start of 2003’s Operation Iraqi Freedom than had been mobilized after 9/11, mostly to guard military ports and cargo. In addition, over sixteen hundred Coast Guard members, several large cutters, six patrol boats, Port Security Units, Law Enforcement Detachments, and other assets have been deployed and redeployed to the Persian Gulf.

  Even though the Coast Guard was forced to mothball eight 123-foot cutters in Florida in 2007 as a result of a botched “Deepwater” contract and deploy some buoy tenders in their place, its six best-maintained 110-foot cutters remain in the Gulf, along with about three hundred service members. This inspired one sector commander I interviewed to wonder, “Did we win homeland security so that we can now send our best resources over there?”

  The NAG

  Two more red flares go arching over the water. “Motor vessel, this is the coalition warship. Turn immediately or you may be subject to defensive action including warning shots. Come starboard thirty degrees immediately,” warns the CO of the Coast Guard cutter Monomoy to the freighter now crossing our T two hundred yards out. This is the second time today the 400-foot North Korean–built O Un Chong Nyon Ho has headed toward the two-mile security zone around one of Iraq’s two big offshore oil terminals, and tolerance is growing short.

  Gunnery Mate “Thunder” Dann Merrick exposes the 25 mm Bushmaster chain gun on the bow loaded with high-explosive incendiary rounds. The double .50s off the bridge are uncowled and cocked. The freighter begins to turn to starboard.

  “He’s gonna get boarded,” someone behind me predicts. Not an untypical day in the North Arabian Gulf, or NAG, as Coalition forces call it. The Iranians, just a few miles away, call it the Persian Gulf.

  I arrived on scene a couple of hours ago, but it took some doing. After twenty-five hours traveling from California to Washington to Qatar and on to Bahrain, I’d caught a few hours’ sleep at a Coast Guard villa in the capitol of Manama before heading to the “Mil-Air” base adjacent to the airport at 2:30 A.M. From there I caught a Desert Hawk (UH-60A) flight two and a half hours north, landing on the helicopter deck of the missile cruiser USS Vicksburg. After a short break in the hangar bay, Coast Guard photographer Nate Henise and I climbed down an orange rope ladder off the fantail and joined seven others on a Navy rigid-hull inflatable under the command of Ensign Nate Mitica. Seemed like a lot of Nates following in Bruckenthal’s path, I thought.

  Before heading over to the Monomoy, we make a fast bumpy run toward a fishing dhow that’s gotten too near the Vicksburg. “I want to manage this but not get too close,” Nate Mitica explains, reflecting lessons learned in blood. The dhow prudently changes course.

  Climbing aboard the Monomoy, I’m greeted by its XO, Lt. JG Meghan Hague. At twenty-four, the blond, ocean-blue-eyed 2005 academy grad is lit up with enthusiasm, offering me a firm handshake and quick tour of her boat. It’s like many stateside 110s except for three extra-heavy machine guns, an automatic grenade launcher, and ten thousand extra rounds of ammo. This is the only one of six Coast Guard cutters out here at present with a mixed crew (of men and women), though in a few months there will be three out of six, luck of the draw. As executive officer, Meghan has her own stateroom. The other six women (out of the Monomoy’s crew of twenty-two) share the forward berthing by the bow, the infamous antigravity chamber famed for its bronco-like bucking in rough seas. They’ve posted a cartoon by their head of a rockin’ granny with a caption reading “Life’s too short to dance with ugly men.”

  Of the six cutters in the theater, there are usually two in the NAG, each covering a slice of the no-go sectors around the al-Basrah (ABOT) and Khawr al-Amaya (KAAOT) terminals that pump over $100,000 of oil a minute, over 1.5 million barrels a day, accounting for 80 percent of Iraq’s gross domestic product. The security sector around KAAOT overlaps with waters claimed by Iran, and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy (IRGCN) has been active in the area. In March 2007, they seized fifteen British sailors and marines who were inspecting a ship without their normal helicopter backup. Three months later, the Monomoy had its weapons loaded and aimed at Iranian speedboats headed toward them in the dark. “I thought we were really gonna shoot somebody,” Gunny Dann Merrick admits. The Iranians turned away at the last moment.

  A month after my visit, three IRGCN speedboats get into another near-fatal confrontation with U.S. Navy warships farther south in the Gulf. That confrontation, it turns out, may have been the result of a hoax radio transmission from a third party.

  While I’ll see one poorly maintained Iraqi patrol boat during my visit, it quickly becomes apparent that long after the last ground troops have left Iraq, U.S. forces will still be guarding these oil terminals.

  W

  hen I return to Bahrain I’ll talk to Commodore Glenn Grahl, who runs the Coast Guard expeditionary force in the Gulf, and the DOG’s Adm. Tom Atkin, who’s touring the area with an acquisitive eye on these “deployed” forces. I’ll also visit with law enforcement training teams, including LEDET 408 from Miami, aboard the British Royal Fleet Auxiliary ship Sir Bedivere, which has Iraqi navy patrol boats secured to its deck.

  One of the team suggests the Iraqis might be ready to take over oil terminal security in five or six years. “Ten years,” another jumps in quick
ly. They tell me how a week earlier an Iraqi broke one of the ship’s washing machines when he tried to use it to clean his helmet and machine gun.

  I also tour a “ship in a box,” a training site in the port (there’s a second in Umm Qasr, Iraq) made of stacked shipping containers laid out like a commercial vessel (latched doors, an engine room, ladders, radio room, ladders, bridge) where the trainers just finished working with a team from the Royal Saudi Naval Force on how to take control of a hostile ship.

  They tell me that after years of rotating in and out of the Persian Gulf they much prefer doing drug busts in the eastern Pacific.

  So why can’t the U.S. Navy do the job the Coasties are over here doing? I’m told the Coast Guard represents a less threatening profile, that they have more ship boarding experience, that they’re better small boat handlers, that the 110s are perfect vessels for fast, responsive picket duty, that most of the world’s navies are the size of the Coast Guard and so they make better trainers and ambassadors (one of the 110s just visited Oman for the sultan’s birthday). I know Commandant Thad Allen believes the Coast Guard should be the sole provider of patrol boats for all the military sea services, and while I’m certain the Navy will never let that happen, the Coast Guard presence here at least works as a proof of concept.

  O

  il platform or, “opat,” sector defense usually involves one “big deck” (a U.S., British, Australian, or other warship with its own helicopters) and two smaller, more maneuverable platforms, usually a 110-foot Coast Guard cutter and 179-foot Navy patrol craft.

  The larger ships carry more punch but are slower and potentially vulnerable to small boat attacks like the 2000 attack on the USS Cole in Yemen that killed seventeen sailors.

  Bosun’s Mate 2 Emily Ernst, decked out in a black snowboarding helmet, tactical body armor, and a drop-down holster, backs the Monomoy’s 17-foot small boat away from the cutter, makes a tight turn, and leaves a roostertail of spray as she and her crew bounce off across open water to pick up some radar graphic software from the Wrangell, the other 110 guarding KAAOT, six miles away. Before lowering the boat, they do the usual risk-assessment briefing on the bridge, where they’re told two cowboys have been seen hanging out by Maple Tree. “Cowboys” are Iranian Revolutionary Guard boats, and Maple Tree is a sunken crane that marks the disputed line between Iraqi and Iranian waters. Along with speedboats armed with small missiles and machine guns, the IRGCN has a couple of oversized armored dhows whose extended prows make them look like Viking ships. The Coasties used to call them “super-dhows” until psy-ops officers in Bahrain decided that made the Iranians sound too powerful and ordered they be called “red dhows.”

  I join Machinery Technician Second Class Chris Dias, a big, shaven-headed engineer who’s grilling steaks on the Monomoy’s fantail. Meghan joins us and explains the protocol for dealing with security zone intruders. First they use the L-RAD, the long-range audio device (loud-hailer) that looks like a big black drum bolted onto the bridge deck. The L-RAD blasts taped warnings in Arabic and Farsi. On the Wrangell they also use it to blast music by AC/DC, the Hives, and Audioslave so their small boat crews can hear their tunes while practicing on the water. At night a cutter might spotlight an intruder. If that doesn’t work, they fire off their red pencil flares like they just did at the Korean freighter. After that they use shell-cracker (flash/bang) shotgun rounds before resorting to warning shots and disabling fire.

  That evening there’s a birthday party in the galley for Electronics Technician Second Class Beth Keough on her twenty-sixth. Care packages of candy, nuts, and movie DVDs get passed around. Half the crew camps out on the padded benches to watch the movie Anchorman and episodes of Rescue Me.

  I’m in my rack at 8:30 when a nervous voice announces, “Man overboard,” on the pipes (PA system), followed by a delayed alarm. This break from protocol convinces several crewmembers that it’s for real. I undog (unlatch) a couple of watertight doors and climb two sets of ladders to where I can watch from the open bridge as the crew scrambles topside, tossing three life rings with blinking strobe lights over the side that drift in the cutter’s wake. Others are manning the small boat crane. A spotlight plays over the dark waters, and two crewmen with long poles work the port side until they hook and recover Oscar, a dummy made up of stuffed pants and a shirt in a life vest. It’s their fastest recovery to date, just over five and a half minutes on a moonless night.

  At 5:00 A.M., unable to sleep, I go up on the bridge with its softly glowing radar display where Lt. JG Mike Maas has the watch. Mike spent four years in the Army, then quit the first week of September 2001, thinking America would never go to war again. He entered the California Maritime Academy and later enlisted in the Coast Guard.

  “Why didn’t you go back into the Army after 9/11?” I wonder.

  “I’m from a diving family, and my brother was killed in a diving accident in 2001. After that I lost my desire to kill people. I still wanted to be part of a military service, but this is one with an ethos of lifesaving. Funny thing is I’ve seen more real gunfire in the eastern Pacific [aboard the High Endurance Cutter Boutwell] than in four years in the Army.”

  “Doing drug operations?”

  “It’s like being pirates. You run up with guns, take them prisoner, and burn their boats down, but all within the law.” He grins. He then tells me how on one patrol they and the Costa Rican Coast Guard rescued 160 Peruvian and Chinese migrants whose “snakehead” smugglers had deserted them and set them adrift to die on an 83-foot fishing boat. Being the majority, the Chinese had begun preying on the Peruvians. To avoid further ethnic conflict, they’d had to remove the half-starved survivors one Chinese and one Peruvian at a time.

  T

  he next morning, Nate and I pack our gear and catch a ride on the 17-footer to the cutter Wrangell, which is getting set to do a couple of operations. Four massive oil tankers now occupy the berthings at ABOT. I can smell crude oil wafting through the air from the petroleum terminal like roofing tar on a hot day. To date I’ve seen almost no sea life, only a handful of gulls.

  “You see tons of sea snakes out here in the spring, also jellyfish,” our driver, Bosun’s Mate Third Class Dusty Banazzilo, offers brightly.

  After a twenty-minute ride we approach the KAAOT terminal, where we’ll be picking up a Bahraini interpreter. This badly damaged petro-island reminds me of the movie Waterworld with a little Mad Max thrown in. It’s a mile of concrete pilings, catwalks, military antennas, stacked shipping container/barracks with air conditioners (average summer temperature 120 degrees), and an Indian supertanker named Ankleshwar tied up at its only working berth. Heavily bombed and shelled during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, it was seized by Navy SEALs and Polish Special Forces at the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom, then had an accidental explosion and oil spill in 2006.

  As we approach, we pass an Iraqi army post and machine-gun nest made up of two containers covered in tan camouflage netting. We pull up by a three-story barge next to a seagoing tug where an Aussie officer in desert camo is waiting with our interpreter. KAAOT is the Australians’ command and control center for the platforms and has its own missile battery and unmanned spy plane. Rami, the hefty Bahraini interpreter, climbs aboard, and we head on to the cutter Wrangell.

  C

  limbing aboard, we’re greeted by its CO, Lt. Matt Moyers, a buff, intense, dimple-jawed weight lifter and ’02 academy grad with a slight stiffness to his gait since he broke his leg fast-roping out of a helicopter. His XO is Lt. JG Gordon Hood, twenty-four, five-nine and stocky with a fuzz of light hair cut close to the scalp. His last assignment was on a buoy tender out of Kodiak, Alaska. Their lanky, more laid-back ops chief, Bosun’s Mate First Class John “Harpoon” Harker, sounds and even looks a bit like the actor Ray Romano, though he’s actually a born and bred New England sailor from Maine.

  It doesn’t take long to figure out that this is a gung-ho operations-oriented boat. After a quick briefing in the galley, Matt
takes me up on the flying bridge and lets me drive. The 110 has the clunky throttle and quick pickup of a 47-foot surfboat. Leaning it over in a fast turn, I can understand why the designers of this narrow-beamed greyhound traded comfort for speed. Straight ahead we spot the Chinook, a 179-foot Navy patrol craft with two Coasties from TACLET South riding on board to help train and assist its crew.

  “They probably wonder what we’re doing,” Matt says as I move his cutter around in random patterns. I decide I’ve had enough VIP treatment and give the controls back to the bridge.