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Tuesday, July 27, 1999

Midnight on Inchon finds some hard at work

Also: Sailors get lesson in international relations while working with foreign counterparts

By Stephanie L. Jordan
Caller-Times

Petty Officer 3rd Class Alyssa Terry

Petty Officer 3rd Class Ed Johnson marks the status board during the night watch on the bridge aboard the USS Inchon.

   ABOARD THE USS INCHON - Engines humming below the surface of the dark water occasionally cause this ship to shudder as it moves at 10 mph through the Gulf of Mexico.
   Rap and Tejano music compete on the hangar deck during rousing basketball games and evening visits held in spaces that house sleds used for mine sweeping.
   Some sailors sit quietly, swaying easily to the beat of music playing on headphones, their steel-toed boots tapping on the non-skid surface.
   It's midnight on the USS Inchon, and 1,000 sailors are homesick.
   Red lights cast eerie shadows throughout the hallways lined with living quarters. Occasional footsteps are heard stepping over raised doorways.
   At the upper-most point of the ship, above the helicopters at rest with their rotors drooping, Seaman Apprentice Armando Rodriguez lifts large binoculars toward the moon.
   "I like to look at it," he said, having just begun his midnight watch on the signal bridge. "I like full moons the best. Then I like the sunrise sometimes, too."
   One deck below him on the bridge, a group of seven 20-something sailors steer this 600-foot mine countermeasures command and control ship toward Naval Station Ingleside.
   Ensign Andrew Lowery, 26, knows that the ship's captain is close by, sleeping in a single bed in a small room off the hallway leading to the bridge.
   "He can sleep wherever he wants," Lowery said, in a whisper that is as quiet as the occasional beep from the radar. "But this is the central point of the ship where everything goes through so he probably wants to be close by."
   It's normal to be up this time of night for Petty Officer 3rd Class David Gorbet.
   "I'm not working hard now, so this is OK," he said. "Besides, if there's a problem I can call maintenance control. I sleep at about 9 (a.m.) and come back up here at 6 at night after eating."
   One deck below Gorbet, on the hangar deck, is an airman who is usually at bed during this hour. But tonight Jocelyn Joseph stares straight at the moon. He's talking to himself in English.
   "I don't talk much because then people will know that English is my disability," the Haitian said. "I've applied for my citizenship. But I would like to be home, in Haiti, where the waves come toward me on the beach instead of away from me like here."
   No one will greet him when he gets back to the pier. His family is still in Haiti. And although he smiles his way through his discomfort when speaking English, his language skills served a valuable purpose to his shipmates. When dealing with the Spanish and the French, they turned to Joseph for translation. English is his fourth language.
   At the other end of the ship, past an area that still bears the stench from when the garbage was there, a door closes sharply on the smoking area. Close to midnight a few sailors stand alone. Earlier this space was filled with guitar music and sudden bursts of laughter, but now it's almost deserted.
   Petty Officer 3rd Class William Frazier is waiting to bake his goods down on the second deck.
   "I work from 6 p.m. through the night," he said, the breeze catching his chef's hat and lifting it. "I love it. There's not as many people up so I don't have to deal with the pressures. I haven't rotated (off this shift) because I'm good at what I do and I work best alone."
   Across from him sits 19-year-old Christina Smith, who watches the waters flowing back in a wide V.
   "I don't like the smell of the smoke much," she said. "But I sit back here and I'm pretty aware. I sometimes think about what would happen if we were attacked. That keeps me awake."
   And far off in the distance are the twinkling lights of four others: The USS Scout, Devastator, Champion and Avenger. All four are being escorted home by the Inchon.
   "I know we won't get lost," said Dwight Hampton, the bridge's quartermaster for the evening. "You can use the stars and planets and sun to tell where you are. But right now isn't a good time. At night the stars and constellations are good to look at, but there's too many of them to find our way."
   Multi-national exercises
   More than 300 sailors got unofficial lessons in foreign relations while practicing hunting for sea mines in the Mediterranean Sea.
   While the USS Inchon went to the Adriatic Sea to participate in Operation Shining Hope, four mine countermeasure ships, the USS Devastator, Scout, Avenger and Champion worked with Belgium, France, England, Spain and Italy. Before the U.S. began bombing Yugoslavia, it had been scheduled to exercise in the Persian Gulf.
   The four ships arrived in the Mediterranean Sea about a month after their departure from Naval Station Ingleside in late February.
   When they got there to participate in exercises with NATO nations, they paired off to work in different foreign waters, said Lt. Cmdr. Barry Coceano, chief staff officer for Mine Countermeasures Squadron 2.
   Avenger and Champion headed to Olive Vertes, France, to work with Spain, Italy, England and France for about 10 days. In the meantime, Devastator and Scout worked with Isreal's explosive ordnance dive teams for seven days.
   Later in the tour, Avenger worked with the Italians and the Champion headed to Monaco.
   "At first you think that working with other nations will be different than working with your own," Coceano said. "But they all speak English and you get used to the accents quickly."
   With the Inchon gone, the four smaller ships were lacking a mine countermeasure command and control ship. At 600 feet, the Inchon is a much larger presence in the water compared to the others which stand at 224-feet long.
   "When we went to the Mediterranean for exercises, other nations were looking for leadership in us," said Cmdr. Bill McQuilkin, commanding officer of the USS Scout. "They found it in our little MCMs."
   Some of the sailors toured other ships, while some of the U.S. ships received guests during the exercises.
   Lt. Adan Nieto remembers working with a Spanish junior officer.
   "They pretty much do things the same way we do," Nieto said. "He stood a couple of watches with us to see the way we do things."
   And it's important that the nations work together on such exercises so they are familiar with each country's way of doing business.
   "When you go out and work with a multi-national exercise it gives everyone a new perspective," Coceano said. "It's not about how we perform as a single nation, it's how you perform as a group."
   Life as a corpsman
   Just as Petty Officer 1st Class James Van Cleave sits down for chow on the USS Devastator, one of his shipmates will drop to one knee, lean his head back and open wide.
   "I am the sounding board for all bizarre medical questions," Van Cleave said. " 'Is my fingernail supposed to look this way?' one will ask me, holding his hand up to show me it's falling off. 'Do you think this rash is bad?' And it's all over him. And usually it's just when I'm about to eat."
   Ships' doctors, known as independent duty corpsmen, call it passageway medicine. And at any given moment, they are a dentist, psychologist or diagnostician.
   Some of the corpsmen who deployed from Naval Station Ingleside in late February and early March said that this past five months to the Mediterranean Sea and back have been a challenge. Each of the mine countermeasures ships have one corpsman. On this deployment, the USS Inchon carried a light surgeon, a dentist, doctor and several corpsmen.
   On the USS Inchon, which deployed to the Adriatic Sea, there were injuries, such as one sailor getting hit by a car while on liberty and a couple of sailors who were sent home because they were psychologically unfit to remain on board.
   "But it was pretty quiet," said Lt. Shawna Gugel, the flight surgeon for Helicopter Mine Countermeasures Squadron 15. "We're lucky. (On an aircraft carrier) they expect at least one person to die or commit suicide each deployment."
   Although the Inchon may have been medically calm, some of the mine countermeasure ships had unusual medical experiences. The corpsmen have dealt with the usual seasicknesses and colds, but some of the more serious occurrences include appendicitis attacks and brain hemorrhaging. One corpsman successfully diagnosed a thyroid disease that was confirmed by test taken at a European hospital.
   "Anything that's very serious makes me nervous," said Petty Officer 1st Class John Hokenson, the USS Champion's corpsman. "We're so limited in what we can do."
   There are advantages to being a corpsman. They are one of three on the mine countermeasure ships who get their own offices. Some don't stand watch, and they get to come into contact with all of the sailors.
   Sometimes a common cold can get serious, Gugel said.
   "If one of my pilots or air crewmen have a cold, I have to make sure they can clear their ears so they don't have ruptures," Gugel said. "You have to take care of colds right away because with the recycled air on this ship, they can spread quickly."
   Gugel is the one of a choice few who can tell a pilot he's not fit to fly.
   "It's important that we know what's going on in their lives and about their stresses," Gugel said. "That's what probably sets me apart from this ship's doctor is that I know what all of my guys are thinking."
   And although she has the power to ground a pilot, the commander of the squadron can override her. Some commanders say they listen carefully to what the doctors tell them,
   "They have an incredible span of accountability and we rely on them," said Cmdr. Johnny Walker, commanding officer of the USS Champion. "We have to because we just don't know anything about all that stuff."


While heading home on the Inchon, staff writer Stephanie L. Jordan can be reached at sjordan@inchon.navy.mil

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