So I get a call from the Vets Center counselor. 

I need you to come in and go over the paperwork we have been asked to share with the VA. We want to make sure you are good with what we're sharing. 

So I get up early the next day drive the 60-miles and sit down to read over my history with Vets Center Counseling. Every note, every Q&A session, and it was a lot. 

Seeing what caught the counselor's ear... in writing... began to become disturbing after a few paragraphs. Key words flashing by as I scanned the pages of text.  Survivor's guilt, abuse, darkness, depression, insomnia... it kept on and on.  

Things I've talked about only a couple times in my life, are now text in a VA computer system. My innermost thoughts, memories, fears and more - all there for the next person to read, and decide... does this veteran have a right to benefits because of what happened to him? 

We shall see.  

As the Vets Center counselor said, "someone who makes a lot more money than I do will read it and decide." 

How can they judge? What's their experience? Who gets to decide? 

All questions without answers... for now. 

 

A Cold Walk in the Water

I did it.

38 years after it happened, I sat down and hand-wrote a letter to both Kevin and Chris, the U.S. Navy Aviators we couldn’t rescue that night in August 1985 in the North Arabian Sea.  

It was not an easy letter to write. But telling them how I felt, and asking their forgiveness instantly made things happen. The moment I wrote “Please forgive me and all of us there for not …”  I knew, I heard it in my head, as if from their voice; “there’s nothing to forgive.”  

As if they were beside me watching the tears stream down my cheeks as I wrote at my desk at work, I heard what I needed to hear… their perspective. Something that I guess I never really gave much thought to. I mean I did, we didn't pull them out that night. The guilt of that has been heavy for decades.  Were they dead? Alive? I thought about them, unconscious in the plane, waiting. But their perspective today, that thought had never crossed my mind until now. 

What would they have said about that entire operation? They said it to me as I wrote, and it lifted the weight I'd been carrying for nearly four decades. 

It wasn’t our fault. It wasn’t my fault. It was no one’s fault. It’s simply something that happened. 

All of us there that night were changed by it, some lived to tell the story; two did not. 

Getting it out, with a pen in my hand - not typing, was cathartic, and putting it all up in flames - and sending it off to the waves… was freeing.  

That night, at sunset, on the 38th anniversary (17 August) on the beach in Jacksonport, Wisconsin, It did not go quite as planned. But as my wife pointed out, neither did their mission.  

Appropriate I think to send it off on an inland sea, close to my home, my deepest most painful memories, on fire. 

Lake Michigan was having none of it and a wave washed over the float extinguishing the flames. 

But the wave made the envelope clear, and I could see writing and a photo of the plane. 

I tried to chase it down, to set it on fire again, and they would not have it.  The wind picked up and the waves carried it away quicker than I could catch up and before I knew it the 58-degree water was too deep to chase them in. 

Not only was too deep, they were on their way too fast for me to hold on to. 

Read that again.  They were on their way too fast for me to hold on to. 

I had hoped and prayed to do this would lift my spirit, but I had no idea the direct messages it would send. Very direct. 

The events of that night helped shape who I am and from time to time the sadness of losing them is overwhelming. But I also know now that they are in a good place. They knew the risks when they put on that uniform and they knew we were there.  They also know it's not mine, or anyone else aboard Towers fault. It wasn't the fault of the crew on the rescue chopper, or other ships there that night... it's not on us. 

It just happened. 

I will never forget that night, and now I will never forget how they ran from me when I tried to catch them... how it seemed they tried to take the guilt away quickly. 

Thank you, Chris and Kevin.  Thank you Liberty 603. 

I remain beyond sad that we could not get you to safety that night - but I also know we're good. 

I felt you there at the beach in Jacksonport Wisconsin.  

Every year on New Year we will come back with hundreds of others and take a swim in freezing water and we will remember your service, your sacrifice, and our eternal brotherhood.  It's an honor for me (and my wife) to do that. 

Fair Winds and Following Seas Shipmates. 

We will #NeverForget.