War & Other Fun Stories
by Kevin Chapman

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I think that there is one gripe or peeve, if you will, that all active-duty military and veterans alike can agree on at some level. It’s that many of the first (and recurring) questions we get asked are based around combat. Did you see it, did you piss yourself when it happened, did you kill somebody?  

Further on down the list, maybe, just maybe, they’ll ask you about the people you met or the places you went, how hot was it, did you get laid, did you get fucked up?  Rarer still, “Are there any places you want to go back to?”  

Not once have I been asked about the charity or reconstruction work I did or the  people I helped. That’s not the sexy stuff that they can say their combat vet friend told  them about. I forgive them for that though. No one goes to the movies to see an action star shine his boots, mop the deck, or clean the shitter. Movies and TV make military service out to be excitement all day, interrupted only with scenes of brooding reflection or sex. 

To that, I present my two best war stories. I do this so that the next time I’m asked, I can tell them to go check this book out at their local library and read for themselves what happened.  

Now, we’ll set the scene…  

It’s January 1991; the Persian Gulf war is in full swing. I’d been on the USS LaSalle for three months. The LaSalle had been permanently stationed in the Persian Gulf before the war and was one of the main flagships of the US Navy’s presence in the region. It was my first and only overseas posting.  

Iraqi president Saddam Hussein had recently blown up the offshore oil wells  and opened the oil valves of the Sea Island pipeline. A desperate move to try and stop US troops from attempting any beach landings.  

The spilling of two hundred and forty million gallons of crude oil into the Gulf is the first-time mass pollution is used as a war tactic. The problem is that it worked. It worked because as the worst oil spill in human history, it complicated everything. The smoke from the fires blacked out the sun for hundreds of miles for days. Ships make drinking water from seawater when underway. We on the LaSalle found out the hard way that the results of trying to make water out of an oil slick tastes exactly like what WD-40 smells like and contaminates the entire ecosystem inside the ship.  It was an effective laxative though. Talk about being whistle clean. 

Okay, now it’s time for what everyone’s here for.  

War Story #

‍Here we move forward to February 18, 1991. The USS Tripoli hit a moored contact sea mine while patrolling inside that same oil slick. No shipmates lost their lives, but four were injured.  

A few days later, the Lasalle took over as flagship of the minesweeping operations. Sweeping for these mines meant searching through and under the oil slick for where they were moored to the ocean floor, in the dark, mind you. 

Challenge accepted. This is what the Navy does: keep the seas safe.  

I’d been shuffled to aft steering for my general quarters station shortly before this.  Aft steering being at the bottom of the ship directly above the rudder. The outer  hull, the only thing between us and all that nice clean gulf water. The Tripoli was hit in the bow. However, the news reported that the Tripoli was hit in the stern, where I was in aft steering.  

In an effort to ease tensions, my Chief told me, “If we hit a mine, you’ll just be dead. You won’t even know it.”  

“Great. I feel so much better.” 

He was serious about this being soothing advice.  

There were six of us down there. With tools to fix whatever may go wrong but no replacement parts to do it with. Huddled in the cold and damp, next to that sealed door with the stupid hope that if something happened, we could outrace the explosion, open the hatch, fight our way through it, and climb up four more decks and their sealed hatches.  

During cases of long-term fear, it will often simmer into a stressful boredom. The lack of a head or toilet turned the terror into fear of another type of explosion. It’s interesting how the mind works to prioritize our dangers. After a week or so of actively seeking out things to blow us to kingdom come, our group settled into a routine.  Go down there, secure the door, one guy stays awake with the headset  monitoring the 1JV circuit. Everyone else, naptime. Your tool bag is now a pillow.  “What?” Like anyone was going to climb their happy ass down there to that tiny, dimly lit crawlspace to check on us in a room that might go boom at any moment.  

It’s hard to be afraid when you’re not awake to know what’s going on, and we got a lot of sleep down there.  That cramped little place will forever own a corner of my mind.  It was almost a relief when four months later I was assigned to another battle station. As the electrician for a repair locker’s firefighting team.  

War Story #2 (Same ship – mid-May of the same year)

‍At this point of my time in the Navy, the ships I had been stationed on were involved in exercises meant to push the vision of American naval sea power. Crossing Gaddafi’s “Line of Death” on the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt, for example. Nothing happened. Just like Minesweeping a few months ago.  Yet, mid-May 1991 is when I’d find out that irony is one of the spices of life.  

I was in the lounge of the E-2 division berthing, where the usual sailor shit-talking was taking place. That night, I had center stage. We were young men talking about the war we were in, the things that had happened, what might happen, should happen, random crap that was still broken and needed to be replaced. This was discussed with all the knowledge of 20-something Pit Snipes who spent all their time in 130+ degree engine rooms instead of air-conditioned war rooms.  

“Man, I’m not scared of dying,” I had said to someone.  

A Chief Petty Officer from another division, who for some odd reason was passing through our berthing area, heard us, specifically me, and decided he had to join in.  

“What the hell do you mean you’re not scared?” the Chief demanded.  

I shrugged out my honest answer, “I’m not”, and I wasn’t for a lot of reasons. 

“Well, stay the fuck away from me then,” he yelled as he took a swipe at the air in front of him to make his point.  

“I’m fucking terrified.” 

The pitch of his voice rose high before he took off in a huff. 

I didn’t get a chance to respond. Although given my mouth at the time, I can tell you that’s probably for the best.  

We collectively shrugged. Not even two minutes later, we were back to the trash talk and forgetting all about it. The memory of nothing happening to the Roosevelt mixing with the recent events of the Tripoli and aft steering. I was on a US Navy warship, bitch. If it hadn’t happened yet, nothing was gonna happen now.  

It was with that same attitude a few days later, May 22nd to be exact, about the same time at night, somewhere past ten o’clock, I got out of the shower after hitting the gym. Working out to relieve the daily basic boredom. Shower shoes on and a towel wrapped about my waist, I was headed through the lounge, back to my bunk, when I passed the TV. A rerun of “Married with Children” was on the ship’s system. I remember it with crystal clarity. Ingrained into my mind, never to be forgotten.  One of the show’s stars, Christina Applegate as Kelly Bundy, was wearing something red, skintight, and way too small for her. Bless her heart. It captured my attention immediately, purely for the plot mind you. Pulling my towel tighter, I sat down to watch. Not that it mattered what I was wearing. Everyone was either getting ready to  hit the shower or the rack themselves or getting ready for mid-watch. I was laser focused, staring holes into the screen when it happened. Even right now, I can put myself in that room.  

“Bong, Bong, Bong! General Quarters, General Quarters. All hands, man your battle stations!”  

Our training kicked in. I did the same thing as everyone else.  

“Fuck!” we screamed in unison.  

Scrambling to run to my rack, grab my clothes, and get to my repair locker, I was the picture of comedic dressing.  Screw socks, screw underwear, or a t-shirt.  I ran half-naked down the starboard passageway, trying to put on my pants and boots. No idea when or where I managed to get a shirt on and buttoned. The shit was here, and it was real.  

I reached my station in record time and without killing my shins on the kneeknockers. Condition X-ray was set. All doors and hatches were closed and secure.  With hard, panicked breaths, our hearts pounding, eyes wide, that’s where we sat.  Everyone had their firefighting gear on, OBA’s prepped and ready to go.  My electrician’s tool bag was in one hand, fuse pullers squeezed tightly in my other.  

And . . . nothing.  

Not one word from the bridge for the next three damn hours. Dead silence except for the every-so-often routine check-ins over the sound-powered phones damage control circuit. 

Panic turned to that familiar boredom, which turned back to fear, and that finally turned into “Oh, come on now. This crap is ridiculous.” That came from the Lieutenant.  

Sometime before one in the morning, there was a whistle over the 1MC speaker.  “All hands. Stand down,” or some shit like that. I don’t totally remember. 

I may have been in the best shape of my life, but adrenaline exhaustion had set in, and I wasn’t beating that. A buddy of mine who worked in the CIC (Combat Information Center) would later tell me that the whole thing was over before the alarm was even sounded.  Iranian pirates had mistaken the all-white painted USS LaSalle AGF-3 for a merchant vessel. How they missed the five-inch gun mounts sticking out the front of the ship no one knows.  

Nevertheless, they raced down our port side strafing with small arms fire in an effort to startle and overwhelm any crew so they could board and commandeer us.  Big mistake.  

The aft watch responded with their fifty caliber deck guns. Not even asking for permission to return fire, they just did.  

The pirates never stood a chance. The official account detailed that the boats were last seen fleeing back to somewhere off the coast of Iran. However, given the rate of fire that was returned to them, I think it is safe to assume that some of their bullet riddled remains may still lay at the bottom of the Gulf, polluting the water.  

Is it so wrong that I wish I could have seen their faces when the enormity of their mistake literally hit them back? 

While I never spoke to that Chief again, after that excitement, if I had, I would have told him that I still wasn’t “afraid,” invincibility being the main delusion of the young and dumb crowd. 

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Kevin Chapman is US Navy Persian Gulf combat vet, Acoustic Neuroma survivor, and writer. He has run the Cleveland Eastside Writer’s Group for over 15 years. He lives in Mentor, Ohio with his wife of 32 years, Teresa. Rounding that out are his two sons, Jacob and Nicholas, who are sick of his Dad jokes.