Act of War

by Jack Cheevers

  Suddenly, all four PT boats veered away.

  Bucher realized that if he kept turning right, he’d soon be heading back toward North Korea. As he contemplated what to do next, a blood-chilling sound rolled across the water:

  Ba—ROOOM! Ba—ROOOM! Ba—ROOOM!

  Cannon shells whistled over the Pueblo and cut harmlessly into the sea. But one round cracked into a radar mast, spraying Bucher and two sailors on the open flying bridge with shrapnel.

  The skipper fell to the deck. A metal splinter had drilled into his rectum; white-hot pain stabbed his bowels. He almost fainted, but a surge of adrenaline mixed with rage revived him. Moments later, he heard the angry hammering of machine-gun bullets on the superstructure as the torpedo boats opened up.

  “Commence emergency destruction!” Bucher shouted. Shrapnel had hit his signalman and his phone talker, too, but neither was seriously hurt. Law popped up on the bridge, checking for injuries. Assured that everyone was okay, he turned and unleashed a furious barrage of profanities at the communist boats.

  Bucher resisted a powerful urge to shoot back. He figured that would be futile: The Pueblo’s paltry armaments were no match for six combat ships and two jets. Even one sub chaser, sitting beyond the range of the Pueblo’s weapons, could chop the spy boat into scrap metal with its deck cannon. In a firefight at closer quarters, American gunners would have to run across exposed decks, pry off frozen tarpaulins, and wrench open ammo boxes before they could bring the two .50-calibers into action. With no protective shields, the gun mounts were vulnerable to enemy fire from several directions. Ordering men to the machine guns in such circumstances, the captain believed, was tantamount to ordering them to their deaths.

  “Set a modified general quarters!” Bucher yelled into the voice tube. “Nobody to expose themselves topside!” With any luck, his men would stay off the outside decks and no one would get killed needlessly.

  In the crypto room, Steve Harris and CT Bailey searched frantically for the precut CRITIC tape. Another CT, Jim Layton, shoved Bailey out of his chair and banged out a message by hand:

  SOS. SOS. SOS. SOS. SOS. SOS. SOS. SOS. SOS. SOS. SOS. SOS. SOS. SHIP POSITION 39-34N, 127-54E. SOS. SOS. SOS. SOS. SOS. SOS. SOS. SOS. SOS. SOS. SOS. SOS. SOS. SOS. SOS. SOS. SOS. OUR POSITION 39-34N, 127-54E. WE ARE HOLDING EMERGENCY DESTRUCTION. WE NEED HELP. WE ARE HOLDING EMERGENCY DESTRUCTION. WE NEED SUPPORT. SOS. SOS. SOS. PLEASE SEND ASSISTANCE PLEASE SEND ASSISTANCE PLEASE SEND ASSISTANCE PLEASE SEND ASSISTANCE SOS SOS SOS WE ARE BEING BOARDED.

  In his haste Layton had gotten ahead of events; no one had boarded, at least not yet. The MiGs made another screaming pass. Whether as a warning or by accident, the lead pilot fired a missile that zipped into the sea several miles away. But it was clear the fighters were armed and ready to back up their comrades on the water.

  No. 35 fired a second, more accurate cannon salvo. Shells ripped into the Pueblo’s masts and rigging, making peculiar popping sounds and producing another dangerous shower of shrapnel. Other projectiles slammed into the smokestack and superstructure. At the same time, the PT boats blasted away with machine guns, stitching the pilothouse and flying bridge from both sides.

  “Clear the bridge!” Bucher shouted. Law, the signalman, and the phone talker jumped off the deck, landing in a heap outside the pilothouse. The captain attempted a more dignified descent on the ladder, but dropped down quickly when bullets spattered the steel walls just inches away. He noticed that the PT boat firing at him had uncovered one of its torpedo tubes and trained it out for a close-in shot.

  The pilothouse was a shambles. Its portside windows were blown out; glass shards littered the floor. With the exception of Lacy, who was still standing, Bucher found the entire watch hugging the deck for protection against the deadly hail of shells and bullets. When the communist machine guns paused, the captain yelled, “Everybody on your feet!”

  Ten or 12 men stood up. Helmsman Ron Berens, who’d been steering the ship from a crouch, was the first to his feet, muttering angrily. Tim Harris, who’d thrown himself out of the captain’s chair, got up and resumed writing his narrative. Bucher noticed that the only one who didn’t rise was Murphy. The executive officer stayed on his hands and knees, glasses askew. It looked like he’d been trying to stick his head under a radiator.

  “But, sir, they’re still shooting at us!” he pleaded.

  “No kidding, Ed!” Bucher rejoined angrily. “So get off your ass and start acting like my XO!”

  When Murphy failed to move fast enough, the captain gave him a sharp kick in the rear end. (The executive officer later denied getting booted, saying that while he and others were crouched or prone for protection, they kept doing their jobs.)

  With a ragged semblance of order restored in the pilothouse, Bucher decided to call Steve Harris to make sure emergency destruction was under way. The captain grabbed the secure phone to the SOD hut and vigorously cranked the growler. No one answered. Bucher cranked again—no response. “Goddamn it, answer the fucking phones!” he spat. Then he realized he’d picked up the wrong handset. The mistake rattled him. Was he cracking under pressure? He switched phones and Harris’s voice came on.

  “Emergency destruct is in progress, Captain, and our communications are open with Kamiseya,” the lieutenant said. Despite his confident report, Harris sounded shaken.

  That wasn’t surprising in view of the situation in the hut. Eight to ten CTs were desperately trying to annihilate classified electronics with sledgehammers and fire axes; the cramped compartment rang with the clang and crunch of metal striking metal. Just outside the security door, other sailors were hurriedly trying to burn secret papers in wastebaskets. But with the ship’s portholes dogged shut and its ventilation system turned off, smoke from the fires swirled into the hut. CTs coughed and gagged and dropped to the deck, gasping for air.

  The electronic instruments were sensitive but solidly built; sledgehammers bounced off their steel cases. A sledge handle broke in one CT’s hands; another man nearly brained himself when his hammer ricocheted back from an unyielding metal box.

  In the crypto room, Don Bailey asked another CT to relieve him so he could burn his code lists. Turning around, he found Lieutenant Harris on his knees, praying.

  “I’m going to have to get busy and destroy this gear, sir,” Bailey said as evenly as he could. “You’re going to have to get out of the way.” Harris got to his feet and departed.

  In the pilothouse, Bucher peered through blown-out windows. The Pueblo was still lumbering toward the open sea at top speed. But the gunboats matched its 13 knots effortlessly, almost mockingly. Schumacher and others were doing their best to torch classified documents in the small, pitifully inadequate incinerator behind the smokestack. Bucher told them to take cover under the nearby whaleboat if enemy gunners got too close. “But,” he added urgently, “keep that stuff burning, burning, burning!”

  Lacy reappeared after conferring with damage-control parties below. His face was ashen, but he reported the ship intact except for some minor hits to the hull above the waterline.

  “Okay, Gene,” Bucher said. “We’re still afloat and under way. We’ll keep trying to bull our way through.”

  The sub chaser’s cannon boomed again. A shell flew through one empty window frame and out another, missing Lacy and Tim Harris by inches. Bucher and the others hit the deck. More shells burst around them. What happened next was to become the subject of bitter dispute between the captain and Lacy.

  In Bucher’s telling, he struggled to his feet after the barrage ended and was met with “a wild-eyed look” from Lacy.

  “Are you going to stop this son of a bitch or not?” the chief engineer yelled, according to Bucher.

  The captain claimed that with no specific command from him, Lacy then racked the annunciator to all-stop. Lacy would later insist Bucher told him to do so.

  In any event, enginemen below im
mediately rang answering bells. The diesel engines abruptly halted; the ship decelerated rapidly.

  Bucher turned his back on Lacy and walked to the starboard wing of the pilothouse. What the hell was he supposed to do now? If he kept running, the North Koreans could blast the Pueblo to splinters and kill any number of good men. Then, despite the bloody sacrifice, the communists would commandeer his ship and its classified treasures anyway.

  The firing ceased as the ferret coasted to a stop. Bucher stood on the wing, temporarily paralyzed. A PT boat bobbed 40 yards off his starboard quarter, its gunners staring impassively at him through their sights.

  Bucher felt utterly alone. His first mission as a commander had turned into a disaster. The comforting mantra that international law would shield him on the high seas, so often repeated by Navy brass, had been exposed as a foolish illusion. The Pueblo’s inability to defend itself, its lack of a rapid destruction system, the absence of air or sea forces to protect it—all the faulty assumptions and half measures and corner-cutting had caught up with the captain and his men with a vengeance.

  Smoke from burning secrets billowed from the Pueblo’s flanks and topside incinerator. Bucher wondered whether the North Koreans had quit shooting because they thought they’d disabled his ship. Four of his five officers were with him in the pilothouse, but no one offered any advice about what to do.

  The skipper looked at each man in turn. Lacy stood by the annunciator, staring out a window and rubbing his hands as if they’d been burned when he rang all-stop. Schumacher and Tim Harris seemed to be pleading silently for something more important to do than burn paper or write log entries. Murphy swayed unsteadily next to a dead radiotelephone.

  Bucher was trapped. The communists were in a position to board the Pueblo at any moment. The only thing that mattered now was keeping classified documents and equipment out of their hands. The captain decided to play for time.

  “Everybody not needed to work the ship will bear a hand at burning—everybody!” he told his officers. “What can’t be burned goes over the side. Never mind the shallow water. Now move!”

  More signal flags rose on the lead sub chaser: FOLLOW ME—I HAVE A PILOT ABOARD. Bucher ignored the demand. He headed for the SOD hut to inspect the destruction efforts.

  The scene there appalled him. Smoke filled the passageway outside the hut. Men coughed, cursed, and stumbled around in the choking gloom. The deck just inside the security door was covered with publications and files that had been dumped there to be fed into the wastebasket fires. Steve Harris and his CTs had flattened themselves on the floor during the last salvo and hadn’t budged even though the shelling was over. Bucher spotted the lieutenant wedged behind a rack of radio receivers.

  The skipper yelled at Harris and his CTs to stand up. “The shooting has stopped, so get off your asses and get on with the destruction down here!”

  Harris pulled himself out from the radio rack. His face was gray, and he coughed and wheezed as he spoke.

  “Yes, sir, Captain—we’re getting it done!” he exclaimed. He started yanking open file drawers and dumping their contents on the deck. To Bucher he seemed dazed, on the brink of panic.

  The CTs scrambled to their feet and resumed the frenzied destruction. One of them delivered a staggering blow to an electronic instrument with a sledgehammer, but couldn’t stave it in. Other men tore apart heavy bindings and stuffed chunks of paper into ditch bags to be heaved over the side.

  Bucher hurried over to the two Marine translators, who were listening in on radio transmissions from the North Korean boats.

  “Well, what about it?” he demanded. “Haven’t you guys been able to make out anything they’re saying out there?”

  The Marines shook their heads in dismay.

  Bucher shouldered his way into the crypto room. He was about to dictate another communiqué to Japan when Lacy called. The North Koreans were insisting that the Pueblo follow them, the engineer reported. The captain lurched out of the hut, trusting Harris to finish wrecking everything in it.

  Back in the pilothouse, Bucher saw North Korean sailors angrily pointing at No. 35’s FOLLOW ME flags. He wanted to keep stalling without getting hit with a prodding barrage of cannon shells, so he rang up all ahead one-third. Inching along at four knots might give his men enough time to polish off the classified material before they entered communist waters. Also, there still was a chance that the cavalry—Navy destroyers or Air Force fighters—would show up. But if anyone was coming, they’d better get there soon. The North Koreans clearly meant to capture Bucher’s ship, not merely board it, and force it into Wonsan.

  The Pueblo swung around in a wide arc and fell in behind the sub chaser.

  Bucher told Murphy to get rid of all navigation records: charts, logs, loran fixes. The bridge was a blur of activity as sailors unearthed an astounding amount of paper that had to be done away with. The skipper joined in, shuttling publications to the incinerator outside. Smoke poured from the little furnace, but it could handle only three pounds of paper at a time, and only loose sheets at that. Thick manuals had to be torn into separate pages, one by one. Paper piled up far faster than it could be consumed. The ship had two shredders, but they were capable of chewing up only an eight-inch stack of documents every 15 minutes. And if the men in the pilothouse were having this much trouble, what was happening in the SOD hut, which held 50 times as much of this stuff? Bucher decided to stop the ship if necessary to buy more time—even if it meant getting shot up again.

  “Captain, they are signaling us to put on more speed,” Lacy called out.

  “To hell with ’em!” Bucher shouted back. He went to the starboard wing, where he saw North Koreans on the nearest PT boat gesturing at him to hurry up. The commander shrugged his shoulders, feigning incomprehension. The communists held their fire.

  Bucher suddenly remembered he had classified materials in his stateroom and went below to destroy them.

  Through the eye-stinging haze he saw dark figures setting fire to stacks of paper that kept arriving from the seemingly inexhaustible supply in the SOD hut. More than half of the crew seemed to be crammed into the mess deck and adjoining passageways. Some men were actively getting rid of classified materials, but others stood around, unsure what to do.

  The captain buttonholed a sailor to come with him to his quarters. He threw open the door and his small cabin immediately filled with smoke. He groped for some confidential publications, his Navy records, and letters and photographs from his wife. He ripped up everything and passed out the pieces to be burned. Then he told the crewman to toss his personal sidearms, a Ruger .22-caliber pistol and a .38-caliber pistol, into the sea. He’d be damned if he’d let the commies get their hands on his cherished guns.

  Bucher made his way back toward the pilothouse. He noted with grim satisfaction that two safes near his stateroom that had contained codes were open and empty. Secret papers still were being thrown into fires or packed into ditch bags; the sound of sledgehammers bashing electronics was audible throughout the Pueblo. With more time, the captain thought with faint optimism, maybe, just maybe they could get rid of everything. He rang up all-stop.

  No. 35 reacted swiftly, sending a long salvo of shells crashing into the American vessel. At the same time, the torpedo boats opened up again with machine guns. Chunks of metal ricocheted all over the spy ship. The sub chaser’s gunners rammed in another clip and five more shells thudded into the Pueblo’s thin steel walls.

  “All ahead one-third!” Bucher yelled. It was senseless to sit dead in the water while the North Koreans cut him to pieces. The shooting stopped as soon as the ship started moving again. Muffled shouts rose from below. A sailor with a headset turned to the captain: “Sir, there are casualties reported from Damage Control Two! One . . . two men hit!”

  Bucher descended once again into the smoke-shrouded interior. Exploding shells had badly damaged the mess deck
and stateroom areas. The captain headed for a passageway leading to the SOD hut. As he opened a hatch, something with the heft and moistness of a small steak plopped onto his shoulder: a slab of human flesh.

  A shell had sliced through the steel outer wall into a corridor where several men were burning papers. The result was carnage. Blood and pieces of flesh were splattered on the walls and deck; crumpled, half-burned papers were everywhere. Amid the mess lay a 20-year-old fireman, Duane Hodges, his eyes glazed and his head lolling. The projectile had struck him in the groin, all but shearing off his right leg. Intestines oozed from his blown-apart abdomen; his penis and testicles were gone. Doc Baldridge was trying unsuccessfully to stanch the gush of blood.

  The sight of the dying sailor shocked Bucher. “You’d better amputate that leg!” he urged Baldridge.

  “Then he’ll only bleed to death faster, sir,” the corpsman answered.

  Other men had been hit, too. Another fireman, 19-year-old Steve Woelk, leaned against a wall, a dazed look on his face as bloodstains spread across the front of his pants. Sergeant Chicca was bleeding copiously from a thigh wound.

  The captain picked his way to the SOD hut. CTs were still bashing and burning at a frenetic pace, but a large amount of paper remained. Two mattress covers stuffed with documents that Bucher had seen earlier had never been jettisoned. Steve Harris was ripping apart publications with spasmodic bursts of energy, his face flushed and grim. The skipper again ordered everything dumped overboard. Then he hurried into the crypto room, where he found CT Bailey bent anxiously over the Teletype as it spit out a message from Kamiseya:

  LAST WE GOT FROM YOU WAS “ARE YOU SENDING ASSIT.” PLEASE ADVISE WHAT KEY LISTS YOU HAVE LEFT AND IF IT APPEARS THAT YOUR COMM SPACES WILL BE ENTERED.

  “Key lists” was Navy jargon for monthly lists of codes; Kamiseya wanted to know whether the North Koreans were likely to get hold of the Pueblo’s. The captain told Bailey to be ready to send a reply. But Bailey was too nervous and another CT, Don McClarren, had to sit in for him. McClarren typed furiously as Bucher dictated: