Not so long ago, but what seems like only yesterday, I was steaming on the Gulf of Siam. Now technically the Vietnam war was almost over, but we were heading to Thailand which is next to Cambodia and so it goes...on and on and on.

Now on this particular day we were beatin' feet so to speak- that is our carrier group was haulin' tail at 30+ knots to get nearer to Thai airbases. The purpose of our mission was to off load the Midway's entire air group and take on a bunch of Jolly Green Giant helicopters for the evacuation of Saigon. Mind you this was 3 months before the actual evacuation which began on tax day in 1975, but these things take lots of planning.

Our skipper was a mustanger (promoted from enlisted ranks) and the senior guy in the destroyer squadron protecting the carrier, so when we got to our destination and completed our escort mission, the USS Richard B Anderson, DD786, was released for five, repeat five days of R&R in Bangkok. They were five of the most glorious days of my life... but thats another sea story for another time.

Now the Dicky B, which is what we called our beloved destroyer ( a WWII gearing class destroyer named after Pfc. Richard B Anderson who posthumously won the medal of honor on Kawajelien  in 1944 ), was just toolin' along. We were just mindin' our own business when the aft lookout announces a contact off the starboard beam. The lookout was a guy with real good eyes and he says it looks like this US riverboat coming alongside at several miles out. So we're cruizin', but this guy is really cruzin' to intercept us. Signal bridge guys put the big eyes (super binoculars) on the target and it is a US riverboat, flying a white flag and hailing us. I was a twidget (Electronics tech) and I worked in plot (Radar control room- nerve center of the ship) so I knew what was going on. But this was too good to be true. The skipper was gonna slow down and give assistance to this little boat in distress. Everyone disappeared from their work and tore off to get their cameras and smokes and made their way starboard.

Sure enough, this heavily laden river craft pulls alongside and I am up on the flight deck when I took a few pictures. The boat turns out to be  South Vietnamese refugees (probably deserted defense workers fleeing the communists) in need of food and other items which we gladly collected and transported. All the time this is going on our crew is all along side to check out the action. On the riverboat some 8-10 men assist with the supplies while this military looking guy sits near a gun turret which is armed with 50mm ammunition.

 Well it looks like our good deed is done when all of a sudden, all hell breaks loose.

One of the guys on the riverboat jumps onto our ship; a tremendous feat of unbelievable courage. He is the man in the tan shirt and ball cap. I can't believe he made it and even more shocked he didn't fall off and get sucked into the ships screws.

Everyone was stunned for an instant.

The skipper starts screaming, "Get this (expletive)civilian off my ship!" The people on the little boat start cursing and yelling back. This poor bastard is hanging on for dear life, the chief mate is stomping the guys fingers, we're still doing  10 knots on the deep seas and all the crew's the Pentax, Nikon and Ricohs are blazing away along with their cigs..

The captain orders up to the bridge wing, "General quarters, repel boarders!" The claxon starts pounding and the alarms are all going off. The skipper takes off for the bridge yelling, " Full left rudder all ahead flank." The entire crew scrambles to their predetermined GQ stations. The engines kick in and we start makin' lots of smoke. At the same time the military guy on the riverboat jumps into the turret and trains his twin mount on us. About the same time, the jumper falls into a huge swell (I think he got picked up.)

Now the Dickey B is pouring cubic tons of  acrid black smoke from her two funnels and the ship heaves heavy to starboard. I don't hesitate and take off for my repel boarders station which is me and another guy going to the armory and getting a 20mm BAR. We quickly set up the weapon on the after look-out and I do a sound check on the sound powered phones. Seconds later we are in position with me feeding the ammo belt into the Browning. My buddy clicks off the safety. I took a deep breath because I know  that if we are ordered to shoot those civilians we will. I look up from what we are doing as the thick smoke screen clears and all I see is this little riverboat just gettin' rocked by our wake but disappearing fast on the horizon.

Well, I can tell you that the days incident was the topic of conversation at chow that night as we sat down to our cheese burgers and bug juice(a kind of Navy Koolaid). There was ice cream for dessert and we all watched Chinatown that night.

As I lay in my rack that night, with my ear along the skin of the ship, trying my damnedest to get to sleep, I thought  about those people. My brain was flashing like the shutters of all those cameras and I could see each picture. The strife on all those womens faces. The stress on the faces of all those young men on the little boat. I could see all my shipmates joking and laughing and trading smokes.

I was sure the boat people didn't have cheese burgers that night. I was pretty sure they didn't have a movie. I was pretty sure we would have killed those people if we were ordered to. It was bloody hot and I doubt that they had much medicine. And for those 8-10 men on the deck, there were 20+ women and children and old people cowering below just trying to survive. I had to put them out of my mind cause I needed my sleep for the mid-watch.

The only way I could go to sleep that night was to think that the skipper had it way worse. He must have been sweatin' bullets that night. Can you imagine having 20 or 30 of your crew killed taking pictures on a high seas mercy stop? whew.