Month: March 2019

Lee was seeing stars floating in his dimming vision. He heard nothing but an eerie monotone hum that seemed to come from between his ears. He fought to orient himself and catch his breath. He was laying in an awkward heap on the Signal Bridge deck. The concussion that rocked his ship moments before had knocked the breath out of him. It threw him over a waist-high panel of monitors and instrumentation and into a wall of lit indicators and switches . He felt like he had been impaled with a 4×4 fence post. His lungs finally took in just enough of the salty humid air for him to let out a barely audible groan. Experience, Navy training and muscle memory guided his movements. He assessed his injuries and composed himself, determined to get into the fight. “Maybe another Japanese torpedo had just found the Alhena”, he thought. A few agonizing moments later, after he had regained his ability to breathe, Lee got to his feet and made his way toward the Alhena’s deck. He, and the other Radio Men he served with staggered toward the exit. Now able to hear somewhat, he thought it sounded like they were taking fire from a Zero but he couldn’t hear a plane. Out of nowhere, it seemed, a 5 inch artillery shell smashed through the ceiling of the Signal Bridge at a 45 degree angle and bounced off the floor and into the far corner of the room where it came to a rest. Everyone had hit the deck as a reflex and held their breath for a few seconds, expecting it to explode. It didnt. It missed everyone in there, too. But it sounded like an entire squadron of Zeros were coming down on their ship….in pieces! Then the mayhem seemed to die down. Lee got up and looked out the door. It seemed that everything on deck was damaged and covered in a viscous dark red sludge. The occasional nugget or pebble still bounced off of the deck or splashed in the water.

There were men, dead and injured, littered about the deck. Someone yelled, “the Hood” and everyone’s eyes turned to where the USS Mt. Hood had been anchored in the bay about 1500 feet off the Alhena’s starboard bow. It was gone! The 3733 ton ammunition ship and crew of 375 had been vaporized. A column of thick black smoke, with a flaming mushroom at its top, was climbing hundreds of feet up into the thin humid marine-layer over the bay where she had been anchored. Smaller gray smoke trails went arcing away from it hundreds or thousands of feet in all directions. Some of the trails had gone particularly high. As Lee craned his neck to inspect the radar dishes and antennae that handle the signals it was his job to analyze, he realized some of those smoke trails were incomplete…..and growing….and one was coming right down out of the sky at him. “INCOMING!” He yelled as loud as humanly possible as he dove back into the Signal Bridge for cover. On his knees on the Signal Bridge floor he transmitted what he thought might the last signal he ever sent. He Prayed, “God! This is Delzell RDM3. Get me through this hell alive and I’ll go into the ministry!”

To be continued.

In the following days Ill be finishing up this short story, which is true BTW, and relating how it came about that I am going to Kenya. Once I get to Kenya I’ll post pics and share the experience as best I can. If you can and would like to contribute, please click on the DONATE button on this site to do that. Thank You

Curtis Delzell