Lesson 1 writing assignment

Pirates
It’s two-thirty in the morning. The metallic buzz of the bulkhead phone above the bunk cuts my dreams short. What a pity. I had been skydiving with friends. Eight of us were freefalling through the clean, crisp air at ten thousand feet over the Paris California drop zone. Now I find myself spread eagle, face down in my bunk, no longer falling at terminal velocity. I reach my right hand up, pull the phone's handset from its clip-mount. Still face down I croak “Yes?” into the mouth-piece.

A worried broken english I know belongs to a young Philipino third officer comes down the wire. “Captain have situation. Need you on bridge sir.”

I picked up this job in Singapore when a cargo broker talked me into doing a client a favor. The three-month contract expired a month and a half ago. I stayed around because I had no place important to be. Besides, it was better than hanging out in bars. Or so I told myself.

Mostly awake, I swinging my feet to the cool linoleum covered deck. “What kind of situation mate?” I leave the lights off so my eyes will need less time adjusting to the darkness on the bridge.

“Not sure, maybe is pirates captain,” comes the anxious reply.

Damn I think. Just what I need. Pirates. “Be right there,” I respond in a level tone and snap the handset into its bracket. Now I’m fully awake, thoughts of freefall long gone.

I pull on shorts, t-shirt and worn sneakers not bothering with socks. Slapping a beat-up officer’s cap on my head I’m out the door.

Ten seconds later I enter the wheelhouse. We are running the Malacca Straits in flat calm seas bound for Kuala Selangor with a mixed load of cargo. With the Malay coast less two miles to the north, the smells of vegetation and salt sea hang heavy in the humid night air.

The darkened bridge is almost pitch-black. Unless you know your way around you bump into people and equipment. I pause for a second then move over to the radar console. The third mate announces “captain on bridge” and joins me.

The Oruki Marie is a three hundred foot four hold rust bucket registered in the Philipines. Her nineteen man crew is a mixed bag. Malayan, Philippino and Indonesian sailors make up the deck gang. Most are ok. A few are very good. Some signed on one-step ahead of certain jail time. My black gang; an old Frenchman, a Fat Finnlander and an Irishman who is drunk most of the time, handle mechanical issues. Their step-and-fetch-it guy is a young Chineese kid we picked up, a few weeks back, in Pontianak, Borneo. Together the four generally manage to keep things running.

“Ok mate, what have we got?” I keep a low steady voice and study the wax target plots of four radar contacts. They are small and appear to be running close together half a mile astern. They are matching our speed perfectly.

Pirates are a problem in these waters but don’t usually bother old trampers, preferring larger ships and potentially bigger paydays.

“See them ten minutes ago. Come out mango swamp to south captain. No show lights. No answer radio captain.”

“Ok mate, plot a new fix. Then put her on auto pilot and get the helmsman to make fresh coffee.” I knew exactly where we were. I just wanted to give the young officer something to occupy his mind. I head for the small bridge wing picking up binoculars as I go.


War
It’s early spring 1968. Our unit is assigned to the Third Marine Amphibious Force (III MAF). Detached to a little place called Khe Sanh, Viet Nam, we are under the command of Colonel Lounds and his 26th Marines. For the last month and a half we have been under siege. We are surrounded by enemy forces and all supplies must come in by air.

A dense fog blankets the base most mornings preventing aircraft from landing. Until it lifts around ten o-clock things are fairly quiet., With sunshine the days festivities begin. The little base, perhaps a mile long and half that in width becomes the focus of air dropped supplies, as well as enemy rocket and artillery fire. Rockets have a distinctive scream that I can still recall clearly more than forty years later. An incoming artillery round sounds like a freight train, explodes with a karump and sends hot razor sharp shrapnel zinging through the air. On a busy day we can receive as many as one thousand rounds of incoming. We live underground and go nowhere without flack jackets and steel helmets.

Part of our platoon’s area of responsibility is six bunkers and some one hundred yards of perimeter defense. Part of my job is checking these bunkers on a regular basis.

Sporting a three day growth of beard I crouch in one of these bunkers eating cold beans and weenies from a green painted c-ration can. There are four other men with me. A fine, red clay dust covers everything and everyone. We sometimes shave using water heated in a helmet but haven’t actually bathed in more than a month. We must smell ripe. No one seems to notice. Dirty as everything else is our equipment is spotless and well oiled. We use it frequently. It needs to work every time.

I am almost done eating when a sound powered phone at the other end of the bunker jungles in its green canvas case. The closest man answers it and looks at me. “Sarge, they want you in the command bunker.”

“OK. Thanks.” I flip the empty can into a deep trash pit dug into one corner of the bunker and grab my helmet.

As I get ready to sprint the ninety odd yards to command I notice the sunshine. Then I’m out the bunker door and off. I cover some ten yards when there is a powerful karump behind me. A heavy hand slams me to the ground. The world disappears in a cloud of dust.

There is an eerie silence as I check myself for damage. Finding nothing terribly wrong I look around me. The bunker I just left looks somehow different. Stumbling to my feet I am just about at its entrance before understanding begins to dawn. A crawl inside verifies my worst fears. An artillery shell has penetrated the six layers of sandbags on the bunkers roof and detonated in the confined space of the bunker itself. The coppery odor of blood, stench of feces and smell of detonated explosives are thick in the air. I check; all are dead. A deep sadness nearly overwhelms me.

I leave the bunker and jog to command to tell them what has happened and call graves registration.

The day is hectic. Not until much later does the closeness of my brush with death begin to sink in.


Chicken Anyone?
It is almost ten pm and street noise is starting to die down. Waiting for my wife I sit alone with a nearly empty porcelain coffee mug at a rear table in my daughter-in-laws restaurant. It is a variation on the “Rotisserie Chicken” theme and in Latin America, or our part of it anyway, this style of restaurant is open fronted. The odors of wood smoke, roasted chicken and exhaust fumes from the street permeate the place. A six-foot wide brick fireplace faces the street displaying to passers by the chickens as they roast rotating over a wood fire. The restaurants interior and stainless steel steam tables are also visible from the street, as are the dozen square wooden tables. Seating four people each, save for myself, they are empty at this late hour. I have been re-reading the day’s newspapers trying to ignore the nasty taste and smell of coffee brewed five hours earlier then left to slow cook over the heating plate.

Glancing up I notice four men across the street. They are in conversation and from time to time look in my direction. An internal alarm bell sounds softly. Since it opened five years ago the restaurant has been robbed seven times. Left unmolested for the last year I figure it is just a question of time. It is the same feeling you get living on a very active fault line that has been quiet for a few years.

I pretend to go back to my newspapers. Shortly a car rolls to a stop in front of the four men. The car, painted flat black, is low-slung and sports heavily tinted windows. My internal alarm kicks up a notch or two. Three of the four are now bent over and in conversation with the car’s occupants. One man, taller than the others, continues to examine the restaurant.

Casually I push back from the table, stand up, and slowly walk toward the front of the restaurant. I make my way onto the street glancing left and right pulling a cell phone from my shirt pocket as I go. I put the phone to my ear and pretend to make conversation as I study the car. Moving slightly I intentionally stare at the cars front license plate and continue my mock conversation. Two of the four men on the street get into the rear of the car and it shoots away tires protesting. The two remaining individuals give me a last look before they too depart moving downhill into the heart of the barrio.