If they got the captain, this could be really bad, Keel thought. We may be in some real serious trouble here.
KEEL AND HIS white buddies were doing the same as men all over the ship: barricading themselves in small compartments and wondering what was going on. Were they on their own?
Boatswain’s Mate Second Class James W. Brown, a white sailor from Carlsbad, New Mexico, was responsible for supervising thirty eight men in his division, and he was with most of them in their berthing area when the violence broke out. One man had been going to take a shower when a crowd of black sailors knocked him back down the ladder he had just climbed, where he fell against the hatch to their berthing area. Like the rest of the crew, Brown and his men didn’t know exactly what was going on, but it wasn’t hard to figure out that some of the black sailors were causing disturbances. Brown had his men stay there with him, not wanting them to go out and get involved in the violence. One of the three black sailors who lived in the berthing area was there with Brown, and he didn’t know where the other two were. He only hoped they weren’t involved in any of the fighting.
Like Keel and his buddies, the men holed up and hoped the trouble didn’t find them. But then one of Brown’s men came running into the compartment, sweat pouring off his face and frantic with fear.
“They’ve got one of our guys up there! They’re beating the hell out of him! We’ve got to save him!”
Then he turned around and ran back toward the other compartment where the man was being assaulted. Brown didn’t want his men to follow, so he yelled at them to stay put and said he’d go after the other two men. Brown stepped out of the compartment but soon lost track of the other sailor and was in the passageway alone. He stopped running, not sure where the trapped man was, then turned to go back to his berthing area. Just then seven black sailors stepped out of a compartment and blocked his way. They were all armed with pipes, chains, broom handles, and other improvised weapons.
“Hey, here comes another honky,” one of the men said. “Let’s beat his ass.”
Brown was terrified. He’d seen the brutal way these men, or their cohorts, had thrown his sailor down the ladder, and he understood that worse things were happening to other men on the ship. Now he was separated from friendly faces and surrounded by angry men with weapons.
“Look, I don’t want any trouble with you guys. I just want to go back to my compartment.”
One of the men was ready to pummel Brown. He raised a pipe up high and shouted, “Come on, let’s do it!” But another of the black sailors put up his hand to stop him and said, “Wait. Wait, man, just wait.” That sailor started arguing with the others, saying they didn’t have to do it this way, that they could just let Brown go.
“Let’s try it the way the XO told us,” he told the rest of the group.
The other men weren’t taking the suggestion well, yelling that the black sailor was a sellout, that he needed to get with the program and go on with what they needed to do. “Are you going to be with us or against us?” they shouted at him. Eventually the more levelheaded sailor gave up, assured the other black sailors that he was with them, and stopped arguing for Brown’s release.
Brown knew he wouldn’t stand a chance against these men, so he tried to talk his way out of a bad situation. In a quavering voice, he tried to assure the men that he was no threat to them, that he didn’t know their names, didn’t care anything about reporting them, and just wanted to get back to his compartment. He also urged them to save themselves.
“Guys, if you keep this up, you know this can’t turn out well for you. They’re going to catch you eventually,” he said. “I mean, for god’s sake, what are you trying to do? What are you trying to accomplish?”
One of the men stepped closer to Brown and shouted in his face.
“We are going to do what you white honkies can’t do! We’re going to get the ship home!”
Brown was aghast. They really were trying to mutiny?
“You’re going to take the ship? How are you going to do that, man? How?” he yelled back, looking around at the men. “Do you have any idea how you are going to get the ship to go back?”
The men didn’t have any reply. They looked at each other, tense and ready to spring, waiting for someone to respond or throw the first blow. After a moment, they started to turn away from Brown.
“Well, let’s forget this guy,” one said. “We don’t need to fool around with him.”
“Yeah, he’s too fat to do anything with,” said another. “Let’s let him go.”
With that, the black sailors moved on and left Brown standing there, shocked that he had talked his way out of a certain beating.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“THIS IS MUTINY!”
At 11:15 P.M., Cloud was racing to the sick bay, the compartment that served as the carrier’s emergency room and clinic, where there were reports of more violence. As he made his way there, a white corpsman named G. Kirk Allen was doing his best to treat the wounded while fending off fellow sailors intent on beating him, the other medics, and the wounded patients.
A native of Fort Wayne, Indiana, Allen had graduated high school in 1969 and left for boot camp with a couple of friends the next day, all three of them trying to avoid the draft into the jungles of Vietnam and earn eligibility for college funds under the GI bill. After training at Great Lakes Naval Training Center, Allen emerged as a corpsman and physical therapy technician, soon assigned to the Kitty Hawk. He wasn’t so crazy about the idea of going to sea, but once he got to the ship, he settled in well and for the past six months he had become a valued part of the crew. Allen had noticed, however, that there was a definite tension among the races on the Kitty Hawk. Blacks and whites didn’t mingle for the most part, and he sensed that there was trouble brewing. Like so many whites on board, Allen responded by keeping his head down and doing his job. On a carrier, especially one operating at high tempo in a combat zone, there was always plenty of work for corpsmen and the doctors on board. The sick bay, measuring about fifteen feet by thirty feet with a central supply room and a closet on opposite ends, regularly saw men who had suffered every type of injury, from a cut thumb to limbs caught in machinery and severe burns, not to mention the standard illnesses that crop up in any large group of people over a period of months. In addition to the sick bay, the Kitty Hawk had an operating suite and two nearby berthing areas that were used as hospital wards.
On October 12, Allen was among the legions of sailors on the Kitty Hawk who didn’t know much of what was happening on the ship because they hadn’t walked into any dangerous areas and there had been no ship-wide announcements about the trouble. He reported for duty at about 8:30 P.M., ready to work his scheduled shift and face whatever injuries and illnesses the night might bring. He had no idea what was coming.
As soon as he walked in, he could see fellow corpsman Mitch Philpott, who was white, busily checking a supply cabinet. He also noticed more people than usual in the sick bay, plus a couple department heads running around looking concerned. Philpott looked up when Allen walked in and said, “Hey, don’t go anywhere. Get ready! All hell’s breaking loose!”
“What? What’s going on?” Allen asked. But his friend had already turned to do something else and didn’t reply. The corpsman was left to wonder what was going on, and the usual aircraft carrier nightmares started flashing through his mind. Has there been a crash on the flight deck? No, we’re not doing night ops tonight. A fire? Probably not. I never heard a fire call. What does that leave? Are we under attack? Oh my god, did the enemy’s MiGs get out to us?
Allen was about to ask one of the department heads what was going on when the first casualties started arriving. Sailors began carrying in their wounded friends, two unconscious from blows to the head, another conscious but bloodied and bruised. The men delivering the patients looked like they had taken some blows themselves, but for the moment Allen and the five other corpsmen had three patients who looked like they could have serious injuries.
The first priorities were to stop the bleeding, then to assess breathing and look for possible head injuries. He didn’t have the time to ask what had happened. As Allen was bent over one patient, he heard a noise in the passageway outside, the sound of stomping feet, voices shouting in anger, metal banging on metal. He had his back to the door, so he looked up from his patient and turned just as a group of black sailors barged into the sick bay, shouting obscenities and waving tie-down chains, wrenches, pipes, and other weapons. The hatred and rage in their eyes shocked Allen.
These are our guys. What the hell are they doing?
One corpsman jumped in the supply closet and locked the door. Another jumped in the closet at the opposite end and hid there, holding the door closed from the inside, leaving Allen and three others there with the patients and about twenty very angry black sailors. The sick bay was practically shoulder to shoulder with sailors as the last of the group pushed their way in. For the first few moments, no blows were thrown; the black sailors just shouted and cursed, pushing the corpsmen around.
Sensing that the intruders were ramping up for an attack, Philpott shouted to the other corpsmen. “Get ready, boys! Here it comes!”
Just as the beating began, Allen saw a Marine run past the first hatch that led into the sick bay. He was a tall, lanky redhead from Idaho, clearly responding to a call for help. But as he passed the first sick bay hatch, he saw what was happening. When he got to the second hatch farther down the passageway, he stepped inside. The Marine’s red hair stood out in the crowd. Allen, trying to defend his patient from the men who wanted to beat him again, could see the Marine release a two-and-a-half-foot green oxygen bottle from its restraints and grab it like a bat. Then he went after some black sailors who had a corpsman pinned. The Marine swung the oxygen bottle hard, the dull thump of contact sounding through the room even as men continued shouting and screaming obscenities. A couple of the attackers fell back, reeling from the blows, and then others realized what the Marine was doing and scrambled to get out of the way. That sight rallied the white corpsmen, who continued fighting back against overwhelming numbers.
“Come on, boys!” Philpott cried out. “We got ’em on the run!”
As the black sailors moved to get away from the oxygen bottle, which the Marine was still swinging back and forth in a wide arc, the corpsmen used the opportunity to push the men toward the hatches. They shoved and punched until they got many of the rioters out; the rest, who didn’t want to be left behind, spilled into the passageway after them. The Marine followed, still carrying his oxygen bottle, and chased the crowd down the passageway and away from the sick bay.
The corpsmen were left panting, dazed and confused, with bloody lips and noses. None of them had suffered serious injuries, but their patients were worse off than when they arrived. The two men who had hid in the closet and supply room came out of hiding as the others were standing around wondering what the hell had just happened.
The violence reminded Allen of another race riot he had found himself in years earlier. During his senior year in high school, Allen and his friends had been at a popular hangout for the white kids called the Hullabaloo, when a group of black teenagers showed up. They refused to pay the cover price, made derogatory comments about just wanting to take the white girls, and then fists started flying. The white kids pushed the black kids back out into the parking lot and a free-for-all ensued, drawing the local police and the media. Allen had been surprised to see that the racial disturbances happening all over the country could make it to his neighborhood, but that was nothing compared to what was happening now on the Kitty Hawk. Halfway around the world, America’s racial tension was getting Allen’s ass kicked in the sick bay of an aircraft carrier, of all places.
For the next hour, the corpsmen and doctors cared for a steady stream of injured men, black and white, some brought on stretchers, some helped in by a friend, some just stumbling in on their own. The injuries ran the gamut from the superficial to the serious, from cut lips to crushed skulls.
About an hour after the first attack on the sick bay, another patient came in, and this time, all the corpsmen took notice. It was hard to miss that close-cropped red hair on the Marine with his feet hanging off the end of the exam table. It was the same man who had saved them by wielding the oxygen bottle so ferociously. Now he looked like the rioters had finally gotten the better of him. He was bloodied and badly bruised, his face beginning to swell. Concerned that he might have a skull fracture, the corpsmen took him to the nearby X-ray department. They placed him on a table to wait his turn while the technician tried to keep up with the number of men who needed to be checked. A black sailor waiting to be X-rayed noticed the Marine’s arrival.
“You’re the guy who hit me!” he shouted, pulling himself up on his elbows.
The Marine was groggy, but he turned his swollen, bloody face to look at the other man. Then he pulled himself up to a sitting position and stared at the man as intently as he could with just one eye still open.
“I thought I killed you,” the Marine growled, clearly regretful that he hadn’t.
For a moment the two men looked like they might go after each other again, but neither one was up to it. They both slumped back down and waited for their X rays.
MORE CORPSMEN AND PHYSICIANS had shown up soon after the first attack on the sick bay, so there were now a couple dozen working in the sick bay and the nearby hospital wards. Allen and the other medics couldn’t believe what they were seeing. There had been no official announcement on the 1MC, no message from the bridge to explain, but they could tell from the injuries that men were beating the hell out of each other. The white men coming to the sick bay told them that it was a black-on-white riot, while the injured black sailors said the Marines had attacked them. When they got a chance to breathe between patients, Allen and the other corpsmen tried to figure it all out.
“How long is this thing going to last?” Allen asked, his white shirt stained with blood and wet with sweat. “How long can we keep up this pace? I mean, good god, how many people are involved in this?”
The others wondered the same thing, and they tried to piece together what they knew about the world outside their hatch, based on what they had seen and heard. They talked about where their patients had been attacked, which berthing areas and how so many injuries were coming out of the mess decks, where the least experienced, youngest crew members could be found. The night’s violence didn’t seem entirely random, not just a blowup here and there. The medics saw a method behind the madness.
“They knew what they were doing,” Allen said to another corpsman. “This was organized. They had a plan in mind and executed it.”
One of the corpsmen finally said what Allen and the others had been thinking.
“This is mutiny, boys!” he said. “This is mutiny! This is just absolute mutiny!”
They had all been thinking the same thing, but it was hard to believe. Sailors on the Kitty Hawk actually were mutinying. It’s true. That’s what this is. A mutiny, Allen thought. Men get hanged for that.
“My god, are they going to take over the ship?” Allen asked of no one in particular. “Why isn’t someone stopping them?” No one had an answer.
The medics were tired but buzzing on adrenaline, every sense heightened as they cared for patients, moved them on to other treatment areas, and always, always, kept an eye on the hatches and waited for the next attack. At least they’ll have more of a fight on their hands next time, Allen thought. It’s not just a few corpsmen here now.
Word came that there was a man down in the nearby mess deck, and the corpsmen decided that someone should go get him. Allen volunteered, though he wasn’t crazy about facing god-knows-what was going on out there, and headed down the passageway by himself. He was about thirty yards from the sick bay when he turned around a bend and suddenly, whack! he took three or four punches to the face. Allen went down on one knee, stunned, and looked up at his attackers. He was surprised and disappointed to
see that one of the faces was a black sailor he knew, a corpsman “striker,” meaning he wanted to become a medic one day and had spent a lot of time hanging out in the sick bay, getting to know the corpsmen and learning about their work. Now he was among the black sailors assaulting Allen in the passageway. The striker didn’t actually hit Allen, but at one point they looked right at each other and Allen knew the other man recognized him. But he did nothing to help Allen.
Before any more punches were thrown, a black chief petty officer who worked in the sick bay happened on the scene and intervened. He had been on the way to sick bay to help and immediately sized up what was going on.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he shouted at the black sailors. “Can’t you see that red cross on his arm? This is a corpsman! If you get beat up, who the hell do you think is going to take care of you?”
The men gave the chief some lip, calling him an Uncle Tom, a lackey for the white man, but they soon moved on. The chief helped Allen up and the two of them went back to the sick bay. Allen needed medical attention now, so two more corpsmen headed out to retrieve the man from the mess deck.
THE WOUNDED KEPT COMING. At one point a white sailor came in with multiple stab wounds, all of them small and not too deep, but enough to cause a lot of pain and bleeding. The man had been stabbed all over his arms and torso, little evenly spaced puncture wounds that Allen had never seen before. When Allen asked what had happened, the sailor said, “Forks. They’re stabbing us with forks. Can you believe that shit?” Other men told of being slammed in lockers, having heavy hatches thrown on their heads and hands.
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