Chapter 5: Protecteur

After I had completed paternity leave, I came back to work on the day Protecteur sailed on what would be her last deployment. As part of our agreements with NATO and the United States the RCN regularly sends its supply ships to work with Allied Navies. In this case we would escort HMCS Regina across the Pacific to Hawaii and help them prepare for their deployment to the Arabian Sea. We would then join the US Third Fleet in Hawaii for a series of exercises in the immediate area to work up their crews. The deployment was called Operation Midpac Oiler and it was my first sail on a big ship, and I was so excited to finally go somewhere incredible: Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

We finished our transit over the first week out and got beaten by some hefty winter storms over the ocean, but the ship was big so she could handle it. On that sail I saw my first underway replenishments (RAS) and flight operations. It was amazing to feel like a real member of a ship’s company and I was so happy and excited to do it all that I invested myself totally into it. As a trainee one of my primary jobs was to train, constantly. I was committed to advancing my training on both my Officer of the Day and my NOPQ packages and was eager to prove myself ready to my Captain to have charge of his ship but had a long way to go since when I first came back I was faceless Subbie number 16. It would take time for me to really fit in.

I slugged away on that while we went in and out of Pearl Harbor and conducted operations with the United States Navy (USN). It was an amazing time. We hosted delegations and guests and toured around the island of Oahu in our off duty. I got my first naval tattoo in Aiea at a small shop about an hour and a half walking north from Pearl. It was a compass rose with one of my favourite naval film quotes from The Hunt for Red October: “…And the sea shall grant each man new hope as sleep brings dreams of home.” I had always loved that quote and had come to understand its significance over the course of that first real sail. I flew in my first helicopter, saw my first gun-shoot, and loved the pace of everything as I experienced my first tastes of the naval life that I had fought so hard for through basic and my initial phase training at Venture. On that sail I saw the green flashes of sunrise and sunset, tropical islands, the monument where James Cook was buried, submarines and dozens of warships. It felt great to advance my training but over the course of the sail I came feel the familiar sting of loneliness and yearning for a reunion with my family and thought of them constantly. By the time we had completed all the exercises and had departed for our final return transit most of the crew was tired. The pace had been a bit much, but I relished the esteem I had gained in the eyes of my supervisors and my peers and had started to be accepted by the crew as well which to me was one of the most important steps in my journey.

Prior to heading home, we were tasked with heading south of the island of Kauai to meet up with some destroyers and conduct a final replenishment before heading back to our home port in Victoria. I was thrilled because the last RAS of the trip was with the USS Michael Murphy, an Arleigh Burke class destroyer named after a slain Navy SEAL who gave his life in Afghanistan trying to save the men under his command. For as long as I had been in the military I carried a deep love for the book Lone Survivor by Marcus Luttrell, where the story of Michael Murphy is told. The book describes the efforts made by a team of four Navy SEALs on a mission in which Marcus was the sole survivor and his struggles to find life again through the agony of survivor’s guilt and PTSD. I was always touched by his deepness and his honesty and I considered Marcus to be a personal hero, though he knew nothing of me. The RAS went well save for some high winds and the occasional pump failure, but she was so gorgeous to see, and I liked to feel deep down the personal connection I had with the story of Lt Murphy. As we wrapped up, they broke away from the group and continued with their training as we turned North East and started the slow plod home. As it turned out this was the last RAS of HMCS Protecteur.

The next evening on February 27th, 2014 I prepared for my watch in the evening as per usual and after the usual sets of rounds I went up with my friend and fellow Sub-Lieutenant, Aaron, who was a newly ticketed OOW. We took over on the bridge and started to set ourselves up and maintain the key administration of the watch. I plotted the ship’s position, did all the administration with the required stamps and signatures, briefed the watch and carried on with the ship’s program.

That day we were conducting engineering drills. It was the last dog watch (1800-2000) and we knew that we would be blacked out because they were working to certify engineers on our return transit from Hawaii. I remember at the time that something felt off. I am a very perceptive and keenly aware person when it comes to things like that. There was an ineffable feeling of foreboding that is hard to describe or pin down. Everyone was bagged. We’d had a pretty busy program over the two months we were gone, and we just wanted to get home, but we were still about six days out and being chased by one hell of a storm. On the bridge we were even talking with the watch on deck about our imminent plans when we got home. I remember talking about how excited I was to play with my kids and to take Seth to see a movie because he’d had such a hard go with me being gone for so long. I also wanted to see my little girl who had learned to crawl while I was away, and I wanted to get home before she started to talk too much. I was going over my roles and responsibilities for power failures in my head and was desperate to do well since I had been really doing a good job through the sail and was desperate to earn my ticket and take charge of the ship as the Officer of the Watch proper.

At 1830 we lost power and began to cycle through the bridge equipment verifying it and maintaining our safe-at-sea requirements. The MARS Sub-Lieutenants were on the pilotage bridge doing a celestial navigation lesson with our navigator, Eric. We came to the point in the drills where the power started to be restored and we commenced normalizing the plant while our bridge equipment was preparing to be re-flashed. The engineering officer (EO) was in the process of wrapping up drills when we heard six bells ring out over our Henschel propulsion repeat, indicating that there was an imminent failure of the propulsion plant and telling the bridge to stop the ship immediately. We ordered the engines stopped as the EO come over the net shouting “bring the ship to Emergency Stations, the Port TA is on fire!” The Captain, who had been on the bridge at the completion of drills taking care of routine work immediately took charge of the situation while Aaron and I went through our list of close up requirements. The CO went out with an informative pipe calling a “no duff” fire in the engine room as the rest of the bridge team donned their action dress and did as they were trained.

My mind raced, and I didn’t know how to process the information because it was so ludicrously unexpected and so profound that I resorted to my training and focused on writing out the timeline of events. The EO came back over the net only seconds after the pipe went out and declared that there were “multiple casualties en route to sick bay.” The ship continued with its response, closing-up in minutes and bringing to bear the full force of 300 souls desperate to save their ship from a massive fire burning next to 7 million litres of fuel. I can remember thinking of HMCS Kootenay, a destroyer that suffered a gearbox explosion in 1969 with a loss of nine sailors. It was the worse peacetime tragedy in the history of the RCN, and I asked myself if we were going to join them as I started to smell the acrid, toxic smoke beginning to work its way forward out of the funnels. I moved forward to the engineering communications net and put my head right near the speaker so I could hear what the EO was saying. The bridge was dark and blood red with the nightlights we carry to preserve night vision. The EO’s calls were hard to make out because she was muffled by her breathing apparatus, but it was clear that the fire was growing.

When it had failed the Port Turbo Alternator caught fire and resulted I the failure of a lube oil hose which shot a jet of aerosolized lubricant through it at 150 PSI. The guys down there said it was like a giant flamethrower that shot up the port side across the deckhead to the starboard causing the entire, massive compartment, roughly the size of an elementary school gymnasium, to burn. The situation was worsening. We had no power, so the ship was trapped in the darkest, blackest night I had ever seen and was filled with thick black smoke that surrounded us and hovered over us in the light tropical breeze that preceded the large storm that was moving up to overtake us.

The attack teams tried to fight it back, but the entire engine room was engulfed, the temperature was rising, and they had to back off and remain defensive. I remember becoming very worried as the Captain was calling down to ask if there was any way to cool the space enough to allow the attack teams to re-enter it and the EO’s answer was “there’s nothing we can do.” The fire was out of control. Boundaries were sent out to establish a means of preventing the spread of the fire as much as possible by moving flammable items away from the source of the oppressive heat and shooting and washing down the deck with a fire hose to cool it down like squirting water on a frying pan. The fire itself was unstoppable unless something could change. The Machinery Control Room (MCR) was evacuated because the heat was unbearable, and they sounded like they were on the verge of passing out.

Shortly after that I remember listening to the Captain out on the bridge wing with a satellite phone. He was briefing someone ashore. I listened to him giving the update, and was struck by how grim it was, and have never forgotten the sensation of seeing him calling for help. This was not something that ever happens in our training scenarios, we always win, and the CO is leading the charge. Especially at that point in my training, the Captain was always the one with the answers. Seeing him at such a loss for words and at such a lack of options, that all that was left was to ask for help was jarring and fundamentally changed the way that I perceived Captains in general, but Julian Elbourne in particular. He was a folksy, ball-busting kind of man who was quick with a joke and with a demeanor like Tom Hanks. He cared deeply for his crew and was well liked by them for it. He very much saw himself as the father of the family under his command and he said often that he had a very similar level of concern for the men and women who served under him as he would for his own sons. I had come to respect him a great deal in the short time since I had met him, and it was frightening in that moment to see someone so human and to be faced with the distinct possibility that maybe he did not have all the answers which also meant that maybe we wouldn’t win. It was the oddest creeping sensation to know that the fire was raging, and my Captain could only call for help. It was then that I truly knew, if not before, that the situation was very, very serious.

In the heat of that moment was when I felt it for the first time. A rising fear that came up from deep within me in bursts of almost overwhelming panic. I didn’t know what to do so I tried to silence it with deep breaths over and over and just focused on trying to maintain the best possible record of the events. Nicky, the information warfare officer, came over and sat next to me trying to piece together a timeline of events used later in the event’s reconstruction. I was the only one that had the times for certain events in the notebook that we maintained on the bridge which I clutched tightly to try to calm the shaking of my hands. I read back the key points to her and I remember being stricken with disbelief reading the notes like they had been pulled from some work of fiction. None of it seemed real except the visceral and terrifying uncertainty that came with us trying to find missing people and wondering if we were going to be able to pull this one out.

The complete loss of power was the nail in our coffin if we couldn’t get our emergency gas turbine to fire up. We had nothing. There was no real way to fight back but we did still have our diesel driven fire pumps up so there was pressure to the fire main. The emphasis from Command became boundaries and doing everything possible to box in the inferno so it wouldn’t spread forward to the fuel tanks. There were so many reports coming in, but everything was black with only a few glow sticks and flashlights to allow us to see. I kept noting what I could as best I could since I knew that the notebook would be a key document for the board if inquiry if we were able to pull through. There were portable generators being moved to the bridge wings and to the fo’c’stle, so they could run the portable Draeger bottle re-fillers, but weren’t fast enough.

The boundaries that were sent out could only spend minutes in position because of the oppressive heat in the secondary zones being fuelled by an engine room so hot that the decks were starting to buckle in some spots. It was a good thing the MCR was evacuated because the heat there was so intense that the sight glasses on the control panels melted and huge pieces of machinery were reduced to grey ash. Through it all we were fighting relentlessly as teams were dispatched one after another to maintain the boundaries and to help move equipment and casualties. They were helping people dress for the fire, swapping and charging air bottles as fast as they were being drained. The stewards and cooks tried to hydrate people so medical could assess those in need of medical help and teams were dispatched to get emergency supplies from our cargo holds.

The alarms were deafening but on independent power and could not be shut off and were so loud that everyone had to shout, which only increased the stress. The ship’s after house was lost to smoke with the lower decks cloaked in an almost inky blackness of toxic fumes and soot as the fire raged on with no way to stop it. The only hope was to box it in and hope that it would burn itself down enough for us to re-enter the space and knock it down as fast as we could.

As the fight continued, we were given word that the USS Michael Murphy was en route at best speed, burning through all the gas that we had earlier RASed to them. It was comforting to know someone was coming to us as the scene became bleaker. The emergency generator had re-flashed briefly but died again and taking with it any chance of rigging casualty power and drastically reducing our ability to replenish the air in the bottles. I can vividly remember thinking of my wife Stephanie finding out about the situation and I was nearly overcome by a surge of emotion and empathy. I wanted nothing more than to tell her that I was OK, and I worried about my little guy who was at home counting how many more school days he had before Daddy came home. I had to physically shake my head to force myself to focus on what was coming in over the speaker and try to stop myself from wondering whether we would be able to fight back hard enough to save our ship or if we were going to end up in life rafts. More so than all that I thought of all the fuel. I honestly, for a while, sat in imminent anticipation that the ship would explode. For the first time I experienced what could only be called mortal terror from the realization that the seriousness of the situation was so far and above anything I ever actually expected to have to deal with. The power continued to fade on the batteries for our radios. I had to move because the MCR nets died, not that it mattered since the MCR was completely lost.

Eventually it worked. The boundaries and the defensive posture of the teams allowed a window for attack teams to enter the space and cool the hot gasses enough to raise the oppressive thermal layer and fight back. They cycled team after team and boundary after boundary beating the fire back each time and returning so spent that they would fall to their knees in the dispersal area. I was relieved on the bridge by another Sub-Lieutenant, Adrian, who had smoke inhalation and was useless to the DC effort, but he could maintain the notebook. I was sent to the dispersal area and I moved quickly to join my shipmates. Deep down I was terrified. I remember thinking, once I was through the Operations Room, that I was mad at myself for being so scared and that I felt like a coward. I was deeply ashamed of the terror that I was feeling. I wanted so badly to feel brave like all the people that were around me. Like Eric, Jeff (our Executive Officer or XO), and of course Julian, who seemed fearless in his resolve.

As I moved my way down to the dispersal area, I realized that I may have to lead an attack team and I panicked. My mind raced: “WHAT WERE THE FUCKING COMMANDS AGAIN?!” I had done the attack team leader course some time earlier and was trying to make sure I didn’t forget something because it could cost lives. I went over the orders and considered the layouts and tried to prepare mentally for the emergency. In training I was always in the manning pool. There were always lots of teams but now it may come down to me and I was afraid because I had only been in the engine room about six times. I continued down the stairs and was afraid too of what was going to be down there. “They said casualties. How many? Are there burnt people down there screaming out in pain? Have people been killed?” I felt so helpless and so afraid that I questioned whether I was worthy of even being in the Navy. I thought I was brave. I was wrong. But I couldn’t wallow in my own fears and anxiety, the situation would not be helped by me freaking out, so I figured I would just fake it. Maybe if I just put on brave face and tried to keep my terror buried I could convince people that I wasn’t a total coward. It would be my little secret that I wouldn’t ever speak about aloud and that I never even wrote about in my journals.

As I approached the door to the dispersal area, I expected to see utter chaos, so I took a deep breath and prepared for the worst. When I walked through there were probably around 20 people on cots that had been set up for people to sit at and a few were being fed oxygen. For the most part though I saw nothing because it was so deeply dark that you could only see with flashlights. I presented myself to the on-scene command and I asked where they needed me, and I was tasked with assisting the teams and boundaries with dressing and swapping the air tanks on the SCBAs. There were people everywhere as the whole ship was mobilized to save our only home on the Ocean. The attack teams, as I said, were literally collapsing as they approached the dispersal area. I helped them stand and stripped off their gear which was so hot that I could feel it through my flash gloves, and it steamed from the sweat that soaked it. Everything was covered in soot and soon I was as well. I helped a few of them to medical and could feel their hearts beating against me as I tried to support their weight. They were so incredible and so brave that I didn’t know what to say. So, I told them they did a good job and helped them to hydrate until the medical staff took over. I was just grateful to them for their courage. Mike, our padre, was with the people awaiting treatment trying to give words of encouragement to the beaten and exhausted sailors who were too spent to even sit upright. I just focused on the job they gave me and hoped they didn’t call my name because I was so unsure of myself. I hated the feeling, like a helplessness that I could have cured with more effort and drive when I was training.

We continued to load up team after team into the soaking wet gear, helping with their jackets, packs and equipment, making sure their air was on, and making sure they had everything. I was desperate to do well so they wouldn’t see the fear in my eyes; I checked everything over, so they could go in. I will never forget one sailor, an Ordinary Seaman, who was so young and so scared. I helped him into his gear, put on his air pack and switched on the tank. As I moved around to check his pressure gauge I could see in his eyes, in the glint of the flashlight beams that cut across the inky darkness, that he was terrified, and that his hands were shaking. I saw in him the same fears that I had but I was so afraid of him seeing how weak I felt that I mustered what I had and grabbed his hand between both of mine and shouted over the alarms and the radios and the bedlam of directions to the damage control parties and said “look at me!” He did. I continued: “you are going to be fine, just focus on your job and listen to the attack team leader! You will be back in 15 minutes, just stay with your team!” I watched him sort of shake himself and take a deep breath and he calmed a bit as I handed him his helmet and gloves and he joined his team. I then got moved over to the air bottles and was told to keep switching the tanks and keep the good tanks and the spent tanks separate.

The emergency generator kept re-starting and dying again, which nullified our ability to refill the bottles. All we had were two portable refilling stations that couldn’t keep up and without air bottles there would be no boundaries, no attack teams, and no fight. During a brief break in the tank switches I informed the Logistics Officer that we only had five more bottles left to say nothing of the fact that personnel were dropping off, some having gone as many as three or four times and who couldn’t even stand much less fight a fire. It was at this point that I heard over the radio that the fitted AFFF system had been engaged and the fire was knocked down. It was out, finally. But the night was young. The space itself was still over 600 degrees, starved of oxygen and filled with steam and dense toxic smoke. The boundaries were still cycling as teams were prepped to overhaul the fire. It was then that the emergency GT started, and we were able to get it on load. We now had limited power. We flashed up the system for charging the bottles and started to gain some ground on the distressingly large stack of empty bottles that we had accumulated over the dizzying four hours that had passed since the ship was first brought to Emergency Stations.

The boundaries were still being exhausted too quickly since it was nearly 70 degrees C in the spaces around the engine room, but they maintained the barriers against the fire re-flashing and spreading. Throughout the overhaul the fire re-flashed but the attack teams were able to knock them down and we gradually were able to reclaim the space. By 0600 I could barely stand. My hands were raw and seizing up from screwing the tanks on and off and my chest ached from breathing so much soot through the flash hood that I was wearing. Since the pace had died down people were told to rest when they could. We were relieved for a bit, so I went back up to the wardroom passing through dozens of cots and makeshift beds people had made for themselves. I was struck and shocked to see the sheer number of them and manoeuvred past the civilians we had embarked and who were kept there for their safety. It looked like a flophouse. There were people everywhere but there were other officers there too, so I found a small couch and laid on it.

I thought of Stephanie and the kids as I laid there in the room that had once been so full of life and now used as a refuge. I thought back to several months earlier when Sophia was baptized on board. It was full of children and families and was a celebration of service, faith and family but tied to all of that was this ship, this ship into which I had hung all my hopes for my career and accepted into my heart. It was gone. I imagined that Stephanie had gotten the news by then and I let a few tears fall in the quiet darkness where no one could see and fell asleep dreaming of holding my children again.

I woke up an hour and a half later and moved down to the dispersal area for some breakfast and to rejoin the effort. The stewards and cooks had been middling their duties between casualty clearing and preparing hundreds of peanut butter and jam sandwiches. I grabbed a quick bite and dove right back into the bottles and helping with the dressing and undressing of the returning boundaries and attack teams that overhauled the fire and put out two further re-flashes over the next six hours. I was sore and exhausted but refused to slow down because the harder I worked the less I had to think about Stephanie whom I wanted nothing more than to call and to tell that I was ok. It also helped to stay busy to avoid thinking of how much worse it could have been. I kept pushing myself and tried to be kind and reassuring to returning people since it was one of the ways I felt morale could be maintained to keep the effort up and sustain the fight. Eventually the persistence paid off and the overhaul was completed. Shortly thereafter we were overflown by a US Coast Guard C130 that circled overhead and relayed position updates to the Michael Murphy and to USS Chosin, which had sailed with emergency supplies from Pearl Harbor.

We were still cycling boundaries but there was a break in the commotion, and I went out to the port side to grab a sandwich. I stood and looked out at the sea. I thought about the last 24 hours and could feel my anxiety building again. I was too tired though, so I just consigned myself to it and let it wash over me. A few of the other Subbies come over and we spoke for a second. I sort of shook my head and laughed a bit when I realized that it was the 28th of February. I had turned 30 over the course of the fire. Aaron asked me what was so funny, so I told him that it was my birthday. He got excited and smacked my shoulder and wished me a happy birthday before laughing to himself and saying: “sure is one for books eh?” My friend Nic came over too and said pretty much the same thing. Soon a few of the people around heard and they all wished me a happy birthday while we shared peanut butter sandwiches and a bit of water.

Around 13 or 1400 we were finally able to stand down the boundaries and start the long and arduous process of sustainment and reclaiming some of the ship because we were alone in the middle of an unforgiving Ocean. It was at this point that I was finally able to get back to my mess to see the status of my personal effects and to see the extent of the damage in the after house. There were hoses running all over and a blanket of soot on almost every surface. The corridor was filled with boot prints left behind in the charred powder which left a patternless sea of sludge up the centre of the corridor. It was dark and there were sunbeams cutting through from the open doors down the length of the passageway.

When I got to our mess, I was surprised that besides the acrid stench of burnt plastic and soot the room looked mostly not so bad. My clothes would need some serious cleaning to get them to a useable scent but otherwise things were OK. I counted my blessings and went back out to the dispersal area where I settled into the role of managing the Draegers with Aaron. There was a watch rotation generated among the Sub-Lieutenants with some remaining in the bridge watches and the rest filling the teams for the bottles. We decided since we had three teams, we would do eight-hour shifts to give time to assist elsewhere and to de-compress. For those on the bottle detail we were in charge of swapping the bottles for all the units, organizing them, cleaning the masks and dressing people heading down as sentries.

After a short time, USS Michael Murphy came over the horizon. I was giddy to see them and ran to the side to see them approach. I could feel myself well up a bit. Help was here, we no longer had to go it alone. As they arrived it was announced that we needed to transfer our towing hawser forward and rig for a tow supplied forward from the fo’c’stle. This was an amazing moment and one of several to come over the next several days as the entire ship’s company formed a massive chain to carry the towing hawser forward. We rigged shooters on both ships and Michael Murphy made several passes with the crack of the gunlines firing trying to pass the first in a series of lines to pass the full six-inch thick hawser to them so they could pull us. They handled their ship well and made tight, professional approaches but the winds were simply too high to transfer the lines. On the final pass we had three shooters per ship and when the time came to fire it was a crack of exchanges and a mess of red gunlines. We attempted to pass the first line, but the seas were building and it broke. That was the last attempt because it was unnecessarily dangerous to attempt at night. They stayed in the area to allow the USS Chosin to arrive to take over, but we transferred the civilians over to them because they didn’t deserve the abject conditions that we were soon to find ourselves in.

Before he departed, the XOs father Vice Admiral Murray (Ret’d) made an inspiring pipe to the ship’s company about how proud he was of us and how proud he and the other Tigers (the codeword for embarked civilians) were to be Canadian and bear witness to the heroic way that we fought for the ship and saved each other and how we had refused to give up. He offered his personal Bravo Zulu and departed for the Michael Murphy which sailed for Pearl Harbor once USS Chosin arrived on station. I remember looking around at the crew as he spoke, and I could feel the pride that his words stirred and could even see it in their eyes. People raved about that speech, it really rallied them, and I was struck by how much the right words at the right time really could turn the tide and set fire to the hearts of people who craved a spark of inspiration. The moment of that realization was a key moment in my junior officer development and resonates with me deeply when I think about it. I will never forget how in that moment, after he was done speaking and we watched their helicopter head to the Michael Murphy, the crews’ hearts glowed.

The next day we were taken under tow by Chosin who began the slow plodding journey back to Pearl Harbor while they conducted transfers of food, water, rations, Gatorade and other essential supplies. The emergency GT hummed away, giving us lights. The messes started bringing TVs and gaming tables to the dispersal area so that they could unwind with a movie on between the work of reclaiming parts of the ship from the smoke damage. That night as we slowly plodded our way back to harbour, we were hit by the 6-metre waves that were rolling through as the storm we were avoiding overtook us finally. I sat up in Ops with a few other officers and we chatted. Sometimes about nothing, other times it felt like a scene from The Breakfast Club. With the generator back up they could charge the satellite phone, so people were finally able to make the calls home that we all desperately wanted to. I had a slot the next day and was chomping at the bit to get a call off to Stephanie and just tell her that I was ok and so I could hear the sound of her voice and had even talked in Ops about how anxious I was to make a call. Then almost like an answered prayer the senior naval communicator came in with the phone and said that it was available if anyone wanted to use it for a quick five-minute call. I conceded to the group not wanting to betray how badly I wanted to lunge at him and grab it, but they insisted that I go first. I can remember shaking with anticipation as I headed out to the pilotage deck to give the best chance of having a signal go out. I knew that it was late in Victoria, but I also knew that Stephanie probably hadn’t slept since she had heard the news.

My hands shook as I tried to punch in the number and go through the dialing procedure to hear the sound of her voice. My heart was beating so fast with anticipation I felt like a dog must when it goes for a car ride. In retrospect it is a touching image to me to think back on. I was so nervous trying to work myself up to call a girl like a nervous 13-year old. I was right about her being awake because she answered within half a ring. The desperation in her “hello” was telling and the delay in the satellite phone made the conversation stilted but I managed to get out a broken “hi honey” before I started to cry. The relief that I heard was cathartic, she had clearly just wanted to hear my voice. I told her that I only had minutes to talk and needed to be quick and she understood.

I told her I was OK; I wasn’t hurt, and that help was here. I looked up at USS Chosin steaming away, lurching in the seas that had built. Her steaming lights were the only break in the blackness of the night sky that was becoming gradually obscured by the clouds of the coming rain. That image stays with me when I look back on that moment as a defining moment in my life, a snapshot in my internal highlight reel as I stood alone on the pilotage deck of my ship, stricken from fire, being helped to safety by an allied cruiser under the brilliant, fading stars of the Hawaiian night sky. Tears streaking down my smiling face, and I was beaming with relief just to share a quiet moment with my wife. I told her I needed to go but that I would call again as soon as I could, I told her not to worry and that we were doing fine for now and I asked her to hug Seth and Sophia extra tight for me, I said bye, hung up, composed myself and headed back down. That night as I slept, and the heaving deck rolled and tossed me around I felt at peace for the first time in days.

When I woke up there was music playing. They had decided to boost morale by playing music at 0700 for wakey wakey and the selections over the next several days usually had fire as their theme. Sailors are funny that way. Over the course of the night the tow line had snapped so we were adrift again. The stress among the crew was palpable, you could feel it in the dispersal area as we wondered how long it would be before we would get back to Pearl Harbor. The USN dispatched one of its deep-sea tugs, USNS Sioux to bring us in, which slowly made its way out to us. Shortly after the start of the morning the emergency GT went down hard again. Apparently, it had burnt some key parts and there was no ability to get more.

Thankfully Chosin had sailed with extra diesel generators and they were choppered over to us. The ones that we had been using were from our stockpile of humanitarian aid supplies that the ship carried with it and were effectively useless because they took gasoline and we didn’t have very much on board. We even had to destroy our $70 000 target boats just to get the 30 dollars of gasoline that they contained. We did however have the 7 million litres of diesel that had no other use, so these new generators were a huge shot in the arm. Sioux stood off the whole day after arriving on station. Conditions were still not safe to take us under tow. The drop in Protecteur’s morale was palpable as we watched her, and we continued to drift. I suppose palpable is the wrong word, but it was there, hidden under the laughter and inappropriate humour, the quiet guitar strums, and the silent stares.

The mutual support was inspiring to see as the crew moved to set up the generators and rig lighting to stay busy. We still had no fresh water or toilets though with only one working saltwater toilet for the remaining 280 people. Things were degrading, people were still in decent spirits but only insofar as they had no alternatives and were still riding high because in our minds, we had saved our ship. After my bottle watch I found myself struggling with the events of the days previous. I was unsettled and preoccupied. I couldn’t shake the overpowering emotions that I was feeling constantly build and come breaking over me in bursts. They would sometimes see me shed a few tears because I couldn’t keep it in. The intensity of the emotions that I was feeling was unreal and throughout I could almost hear the alarms again and smell the smoke. I was jittery. The adrenaline was wearing off and the lack of sleep was starting to catch up with me.

I met the other officers in the operations room that evening. It was kind of hilarious that we even had to man it since it only consisted of a single press on light taped to the deckhead and a laptop next to a stack of batteries that had been collected from all the computers over the ship. We talked for the first time about the night of the fire and what our own experiences had been. It wasn’t really an unburdening of feelings, more a sewing circle of dit-spinning as our cluster of peers from all over the ship shared our own perspective of the events. This was interesting because no two of us had even a similar experience since we were in different areas and most were not even aware of what others were doing because they were so focused on our own tasks at hand. This was where I started to realize that my perspective was unique because I had chronicled the start from the command perspective and moved down below, so my experience was one of the most varied. I still felt jaded and isolated because I was being dogged by the fear that had accompanied me to the dispersal area from the bridge on the night of the fire. I still felt deep shame for the cowardice that I perceived in myself for feeling that way and it would come to be something that would dog me for years and would drive me in my later training.

As the days continued, we saw extraordinary innovation come from the crew to improve our living conditions. The hull techs built toilets down on the ‘Jungle Deck’ (the RAS service deck that resembled an oil rig) by cutting away a section of deck to expose an overboard discharge and then constructing a seat, complete with an actual toilet seat and stall walls. They rigged a saltwater hose at the inboard end of the discharge, and it acted as a constant flushing mechanism. They were quite remarkable and saved us from having to do bucket shits off the stern.

When the Sioux was satisfied that things was safe enough they started the process of bringing us back under tow. Again, we needed the entire crew to bring in the line. It wasn’t hard to get people there because we were all VERY motivated to get back underway and most of us were interested in seeing the fourteen-inch thick Kevlar towing hawser they brought with them. We all felt compelled to get eyes on it as the crew rotated through and heaved in the line.

Later in the evening as we were back under tow, I headed up to the pilotage deck and spoke with Dan, one of the senior BWKs and one of the people I trusted enough to open up to. The conversation helped a lot because Dan was such a caring and genuine person, who listened to what I had to say while I reciprocated. It was one of the most important heart to hearts of my life. For the first time I told someone that I was afraid and that I felt I was no good to the Navy and wouldn’t be able to do my job anymore. He was tremendously reassuring but ultimately was interrupted when the emergency GT, newly restarted, caused a power surge in the destroyed lines that reignited the fire. The timing was uncanny.

The ship launched full on back into Emergency Stations. We were so much faster with everything after all the practise we’d had. I felt completely different than I had thought. An eerie calm washed over me because I felt so much more prepared. The crew was super fast too and the re-flash was boxed in and out within minutes, but we stayed closed up for nearly an hour to properly overhaul everything. The mood was tense, but everyone was silent. In the end we reverted back to the extended DC organization and carried on as we had but I was changed. The re-flash had shown me that I could still do the job when I needed to. I didn’t feel as afraid and so for the first time I stopped worrying that the experience would leave me unable to handle the stress of my job again. The crew was pretty anxious though, as we moved into the next day they started to become more agitated and the mood was more serious. We ate rations sent over by the Chosin for lunch and that allowed for some re-bonding over the bags of food that were similar but with very different menu options than Canadian rations. One of the Chiefs that I had worked with and who was notoriously hard on people even saved me one of the packs that he most enjoyed because he had been watching me encourage the men and he was very happy with me.

It was after the lunch that I was given an opportunity to see the engine room first- hand. It had been decided by Command that the engineering roundsmen would need an escort since they were trying to preserve the scene for the investigation. I happened to be standing with one of the Master Seaman engineers just as word was passed about the new directive, so he asked me if I wanted to be his escort. For the first time I got suited up in a HAZMAT coverall set and donned an SCBA. I remember thinking that it was going to be weird because I had never actually needed one before. We used them in training, but this was the first time I would not be ok without it. We headed down to the jungle deck to be logged and cleared and then we stepped through with our air on into the secondary zone.

The after flats were dark and empty. The kenopsia of the moment was oppressive to me. It was an area of the ship that normally had dozens of people at all hours of the day because it was where the majority of the crew slept. There was a thin layer of water, filthy from the black soot which covered everything in a powdery black residue. It was on the walls, caked on every horizontal surface and coating one of the firehoses that laid on the deck being sloshed around from the moving water and snaking down into the darkness of the passageway. The beams from our flashlights were solid from all the particles in the air. He brought me into one of the ‘stoker’ messes to see the degree of destruction to their personal effects. I had heard how bad it was down there, but I was unprepared to see just how bad it was in person. It was dark. The carpet was black and wet, the entire mess was charred with the thick, black soot which had destroyed everything that was left out or hung on the outside of the lockers. It sat on every surface and left the room with an almost haunted feel. I was dumbfounded by the devastation and the lack of life and sound from an area usually crammed full of sailors. I felt terrible for even feeling bad about my mess. I had gotten off so easy and I felt for all the sailors who had only escaped with the literal shirts on their backs.

We continued on to the starboard boiler uptake and started to move down into the black abyss at the bottom of the winding staircase the led to the boiler room. The soot wasn’t just a dust, it was burnt into the paint and the metal like a powder coat that got denser as we moved down. When we had reached the bottom the Master Seaman started to do his rounds. I looked around and found my bearings. The boiler room looked so different. There was soot everywhere and the whole space was so dark and creepy, it was like a level from Doom or Deadspace. Outside the beams there was nothing, but inky blackness and soot covered machinery. After he was finished his rounds in the boiler room, we moved through the main fire door into the engine room.

It was so incredibly eerie. The engine room was always loud. Even when we are alongside there was always something running but as we walked through the only sounds were the artificial hissing of our SCBAs and the slow and gradual sloshing of the bilge water as the ship rolled. The Master Seaman told me about the events from his perspective and the perspective of the engineers. He told me about the heat and the smoke so thick he couldn’t see his hand right against his mask.

We worked our way up to the area of the port turbo alternator, where the seat of the fire was located. It was charred various colours of black, grey, and white and covered in ash and chunks of debris and had sections that were melted away. I looked up with the light at the deckhead and could see the damage there was catastrophic. Beams were warped, and blistered paint was everywhere and fell away in sections. We kept pressing through to the port side. The freshwater tank that they had painted to look like a giant Kokanee can during the First Gulf War was there but destroyed on the upper half from the charring. We continued surveying the area where the evaporators were. They were gone. There was only a pile of ash and some brass dials and other fittings where they had been. The deck in general looked like the bottom of a fireplace. Incredibly, the couch that sat between the evaporators, where the inside roundsmen would sit between rounds was completely intact albeit covered in soot and debris.

We moved our way up the catwalk that overlooked the engine room toward the door to the Machinery Control Room. This is clearly where the majority of the heat was because the damage was catastrophic. The deck head was even more clearly warped from up there and had a rusty sheen from the saltwater that had been used to beat back the blaze. We moved toward the door where the MCR was and I marveled at the breaker boxes that fed into the main MCR console. Everything was destroyed. The wiring was gone and there was a cake of soot and ash over everything. All the plastic parts were vaporized leaving gaps and holes in the boxes that were all burnt a solid shade of dark grey like every other thing there including the bulkheads, deck, deckheads, and equipment.

We moved into the MCR. In my head it was almost like I could hear the reports coming in. This was where they were, I considered that as I surveyed the devastation. The last time I had been there was on rounds prior to taking the watch that the fire had started on…the last set of MCR rounds as it turned out. Just like all the other areas that felt weird because with no one was there the MCR felt almost haunted. It had been manned every day of its service for 45 years, so it was surreal to see it stand empty. Everything was blackened and covered in soot. The sight glasses were melted, parts of the main console were melted. The MCR was dead. The fountain that had been there drooped and looked like something from a Dali painting.

We continued to HQ1, where the deck was bubbled and burnt like a blowtorch had been taken to it. We kept on through the flats and I saw down into the freshwater treatment room which had about a foot deep of dark water, speckled with chunks of paint and soot sloshing around on the deck with the same characteristic sound that I had heard in the engine room. To an extent that is the sound I think of when I consider the moment where I truly knew that my ship was dead. With that we were done rounds and headed back to be logged in. I thought about what I had seen, I was glad I had gone but part of me regretted it because it did nothing to ease my thoughts. “At least now I know why the guys keep calling it ‘Chernobyl’.” I thought, as I made my way back up to the dispersal area to have my pack swapped.

I handed my Draeger to Aaron when I got back, it was odd to be on the other side of it all. I was very pensive and took a moment to look out to the horizon in the direction of home. I thought of Stephanie and my children and enjoyed a quiet moment to myself. Soon I decided to walk around and see what people were up to and to take the pulse of the crew. I noticed there was a group of combat systems engineers on a tarp working on what looked like a toaster. Intrigued I headed over and asked what they were up to. Apparently, one of the guys was thinking outside the box and concluded that he could make a resistor out of parts from the toaster and some solder. They also had a heating coil that they had pulled out of one of the dryers from back aft. It was a major morale booster just to hear about it and it was something that everyone was so proud to say that this guy had thought of, it was so Canadian to us to fix a jet engine with pieces of a toaster and a drier.

They slugged away for a while and rigged a part to connect it to the generator. In the end it worked. We couldn’t believe it, but as they brought it on load, we had power for the rest of our time under tow. They used the newfound power to improve our quality of life dramatically. We had flushing toilets again, water in the sinks and lots of light. We were jubilant, and the mood was matched by the food which turned into the most elaborate and delicious barbecue we had ever had. The meat was going to turn over the period without power and was still ok to eat but was going to be tossed once we were ashore. So, we used the ship’s charcoal grills and had brisket, steak, ribs, roasts, and chops. The dairy was going to spoil too so all the fancy cheeses reserved for receptions and dinners were available in huge quantities. That helped fill our spirits and the rest of our time adrift the crew bonded over the idea of getting ashore soon.

Hawaii was in sight after a few more days and the crew felt even better as our phones started to get a signal allowing calls to be made that were longer than a few minutes. It was incredibly reassuring to even see land again. The Ocean is very humbling and frightening when you have no way of moving and are at its mercy with no land in sight. We were anticipating a gong show when we got in since the reactivation plans churned out from ashore were totally ludicrous. It was clear that the reality of the damage was going to be very shocking to them. By this point the dispersal area had come to be known as ‘Little Calcutta’ because it was the default hangout for the entire crew. As we were putting it back together to prepare for the entrance the next day people started to talk about some of the lasts that we bore witness to. We had watched the last Sea King fly off her deck that afternoon before an Ash Wednesday service that we held with our padre, Mike. I started to think too about my role in the ship’s history. Whatever else I would do in my career I could say that I was part of the final crew of HMCS Protecteur and that I had borne witness to incredible acts of bravery and ingenuity.

The next morning after waking the crew to the Billie Joel song, We Didn’t Start the Fire, the ship made its three-hour entrance into Pearl Harbor. A lot of the crew was agitated because they knew that there were going to be challenges ahead as it started to be discussed that we may not go home for several more months. It was amazing again to see how much harm the wrong words at the wrong time could do. None of it mattered in the short term so we continued alongside to the maintenance piers at the end of ‘Destroyer Row.’ We had been told that we would stay on a barge that the USN had been kind enough to rush to us out of its scheduled maintenance period. It was clear as we came around in the turning basin which berth we were headed to since we could see that it was peppered by news personnel and teams in USN and a mix of Canadian Forces uniforms. This was also when we got our first look at the accommodation barge where we would be staying. It was a large white box on a flat platform sitting in the camber. Next to us were two USN cruisers that we had sailed with in the months prior. The barge looked odd, but they told us it had hot showers and air conditioning which is all we needed to hear. As the brow went across people started to pour out onto the Jetty and outsiders started showing up on the ship.

The first duty watch went to shower and take a minute for themselves while the rest of the crew gloved up and formed a line to bring all our garbage ashore. Some people gave interviews to the reporters while Julian was ambushed by a horde of senior officers who welcomed him back. I was excited as we were being settled alongside to see that Jeannine had come out to meet the ship. She had flown out to assist Mike because they knew there would be some problems; she smiled and gave me a hug when I saw her and told me that Stephanie had asked her to. Jeannine had, after all, baptized Sophia, so it was nice to see a friendly face. She joined the line and helped the crew while the rest of the shore parties started to work away, and groups of damage assessment and public affairs personnel flooded the dispersal area. When it was done, we worked away on the ship until the time came to go and see the barge.

While we were waiting for our turns to head ashore some pizza arrived that had been ordered. We had told them what our needs were but apparently somewhere down the line the order had been deemed too large and was halved, so there wasn’t enough pizza for everyone. It didn’t help that as we came into the dispersal area, after hauling putrid garbage for an hour and half in the hot noon sun, after not really showering for seven days and wearing clothes that were stiff enough to stand up on their own, to see members of the so called ‘Forward Det.’ eating the pizza and even drinking all the coffee that we had been looking forward to. It may not seem like that big a deal but the entire time at sea we were so desperate for coffee. On one of the days on bottle detail the deck officer, Jackie, had come up with a cup that she had managed to get from a Keurig they had plugged directly into one of the generators. She offered me some and poured half of it into a cup for me. I took a glorious sip and it remains the best coffee I have ever tasted. I held it in my hand and just smelt it for a second before I gave the rest to one of the guys who had come out of the engine room because I felt I couldn’t enjoy it with the crew sitting there waiting for their turn to go in. We all wanted coffee. I had a headache the entire time adrift except for an hour or so after that one sip and it was truly infuriating whenever selfishness results in getting old or cold or no coffee when things are busy. Having no Cup-of-Joe was a big deal in the Navy.

So why mention pizza and coffee? This set the pace for the entire rest of the time that the crew was in Hawaii. If you ask most of the crew that spent any time there they would say that the hard part of the whole experience wasn’t the fire, it was the time alongside in Pearl Harbor aboard the barge which came to be known as ‘The Boatel’. That was one of the hardest things about trying to make people understand why the Navy lost half the crew from the ordeal. I didn’t even end up staying long compared to some but what I saw in the next several weeks fundamentally changed who I was.

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As I said the barge was a large white box on a floating platform. As we got closer, we saw that there was a staircase up the one side the led to the ‘brow’ area that had a CCTV monitor and a small desk. Inside it looked very much like a ship. It had doors and hatches and was very similar to what we were accustomed to seeing. I found out that the Sub-Lieutenants were going to be berthed in the junior ranks cafeteria and that we had cots and sleeping bags courtesy of the USN. I went in and looked around briefly before dropping off my stuff to claim a bed. There was air conditioning which was amazing to feel since I pretty much hadn’t stopped sweating since we had lost power. After we dropped our stuff off, we headed up to the assembly area to get issued some of the stuff that had been sent out to meet us. I was issued a set of the grey coveralls that they make people wear in military prison, soap, a toothbrush, toothpaste, clean underwear, socks, and a towel, and I headed down to get what I needed to bring down to the laundry area before I headed up to the showers.

I revelled in that hot shower despite how gross it was to stand ankle deep in the grey water that had pooled there from all the people that had gone before. There was obviously a clog somewhere down the line. I felt like how a snake must when it sheds its skin. The layers of soot and sweat and filth that had caked on and clogged my pores was gone and it felt like my skin took a deep breath for the first time in days. A nice shave and the clean pair of underwear and I almost felt human again. I ended up back in our little Subbie den where some of the other guys were getting tables set up across the entryway to give us some level of privacy. In the end we had a pretty decent set-up before we headed out on phase II of the mission: the beer run.

There was an exodus of sailors walking down the street next to Destroyer Row in a mixture of naval combat uniforms and grey coveralls. No one had hats on, which in and of itself was weird. People had lost them and there weren’t enough for everyone. What this meant is that we were out of uniform and unable to properly render or return compliments (saluting), so we were only allowed to move between the barge, food, and the Naval Exchange (NEX), where we could buy essentials like clothing, snacks, and beer. We were not allowed to leave the base. I remember walking into the NEX and heading back to the beer fridge which was a walk-in. There were a few other guys there too. It was so wonderfully, angelically cold, as we took our sweet time to pick which beer we would enjoy. Really it was about so much more than beer; we stood there in that fridge for about five minutes and in some small way, healed together. I grabbed a pack of Hawaiian beers and some snacks and headed back to the barge. Thankfully the cafeteria we were sleeping in had drink dispensers and other small refrigerated spots that were promptly bursting with cooling drinks as we prepped ourselves mentally to get properly drunk that night.

Before we were allowed to dive right in though we had to go to a meeting. They had ordered enough pizza finally and were giving out a couple of beers to people. Most of us just wanted some time to think and to have a cold, quiet drink. A forced fun event was not uncommon in the Navy and usually they will end up being a good time, but this time it was different. I spoke with some people but generally ended up off by myself for the first part of it and as I looked around I saw something that stayed with me and that I thought about a lot later as I was in my fight against Cancer. The event was being held in a small park area near where the barge and Protecteur were. There was a long stretch and a picnic table area under a red gazebo and a field next to it with trees in the centre and a board to board wood fence around it. The area was filled with small groups, generally split by rank and trade but not entirely. As I watched them, I saw the full spectrum of people coping with trauma and to me this is what I remember most from the experience of coming back alongside.

I was first aware that something was off when I witnessed one of the Petty Officers from the engineering department in the corner of the area, sitting on a stone retaining wall do something unusual. He was a gruff, tobacco chewing guy who I had sat with for 4 hours a few weeks earlier to earn one of my NOPQ signatures. He had friends around but was kind of off to the side and wiping away a few tears and shaking his head occasionally. He looked just like how I had felt on the tanker. In short order though he started to get loud and rowdy with the group that was nearby that seemed very proud of themselves. He chugged his beer down and then bit a chunk out of the side of the can, spitting it out and laughing to the cheers of his friends while a small trickle of blood ran down his chin.

I looked around and saw some of the Bosuns shot-gunning their beers as a group, but it wasn’t like when I had seen it done at parties in university; no one was smiling. It was like they were going through the motions, but it was clear that they were hurting. Right next to me I watched another Petty Officer take a 12 oz. bottle of vodka out and he pounded the whole thing down by himself off to the side where I assume he thought no one could see. Looking back on that event it felt like the older guys were having a harder go of it because their default coping mechanism for decades was alcohol and doing dumb shit. Other people left early to go running or to sit off alone. Others were totally normal and coping just fine. I was considering leaving because I didn’t want to be there. It was the day that we were supposed to be home and there was no word on whether we would be leaving in days weeks or months. My friend Nic came over and put his arm around me “Tommy buddy! What are you doing over here all off on your own man, come over here!” he said gesturing to a group of the Subbies that were standing under the gazebo.

The interruption jarred me out of my introspection, and it felt good to stand with them and talk with some of them since we had been on opposite watches while we were adrift and hadn’t really had much of a chance. We ended up heading back to the barge to our living area behind the tables and got completely drunk. It was weird though. I kept having more and more alcohol, but it wouldn’t take the pain away, it just made me feel more and more exhausted as my body finally accepted that I was off the ship. As the night carried on the party turned into what could only be described as a rave. The phrase “blow off some steam” doesn’t really capture it. I headed up to the top of the barge to see what was happening up there and was unprepared for how hard people were going. Someone had gone back to the tanker and grabbed a case of glow sticks and the speakers that we used to play music during Replenishments. The music was loud, there were glowsticks and empties EVERYWHERE and people still angrily drinking and almost pretending to party. It was too much, and I was sure that someone was going overboard or that a fight was going to happen and knew it was best to stay clear, so I headed back down to continue partying with the other officers.

As I made my way down the rest of the barge looked like something from Animal House. There were people passed out in the halls, rooms with vomit and spilled drinks, and red solo cups littering the halls. There were snacks strewn on the decks and music playing from the different areas as the different groups all coped the same way. I saw people crying, huddled in corners with beer bottles clutched tightly to their chest. I should have helped them, but I was so drunk I was numb and just couldn’t take anymore so I stumbled to the officer area to keep drinking instead of being a leader. This was another part of the journey that I hated myself for. For allowing myself to be so broken and so weakened that I thought only of myself and that selfishness carried a great deal of guilt with it. That night as I went to sleep, I could hear someone crying out in the flats, I think they had fallen or something. They were in pain and moaning but I was so drunk I could barely stand. I passed out that night tortured by guilt because I wanted to help them but couldn’t.

The next day I woke up at around 7 am and was still incredibly drunk and felt sick. I was so sore and unfulfilled from the sleep because of the cot I was on. The sleeping bag was a mummy bag that was useless in this circumstance because it didn’t cover me entirely since I didn’t want to seal it because I would have been incredibly hot; not that it mattered anyway given that I had no real desire to have it against my skin. It was old and musty, smelled like urine and mildew, and was literally stamped for disposal by the US Marine Corp. As it turned out the only mattresses and sleeping bags that they could muster were old ones that were slated for disposal. The mattresses were off the USS Missouri, the battleship museum that I had toured about a month prior to that.

I swung my feet over the side of the bed and the deck was soaking wet. The plumbing had backed up and the grey water from the showers was pooled all over the deck and gotten on all the stuff that I had put under the cot to keep out of the way. It was disgusting, and I was so nauseated between that and the fact that I was still so drunk that the room was spinning. I ended up waded through the shower water that had noticeable soap, mucus and spit floating in it and banged loudly through the door that was on that side. I stuck my head through the guardrails and there, in my underwear, I threw up into the harbour and tried to steady myself. Way up on the jetty was a US sailor who saw me and laughed. He called down “hey buddy, fucking wild night eh?” I looked up through my puffy eyes and tried to focus on him. It was so humid that it took effort to breathe but I soon came back to reality. As the American sailor walked off I looked down at my stomach contents pooling on the surface of the water next to the empty cans and 40 oz. bottles that floated in the harbour next to wrappers from glowsticks and other vomit which had collected that surrounded the barge like a marsh. The tide was coming in, so it was impossible to pretend that it was from something else.

I headed down below to the laundry just to see if maybe it was done so I could finally get out of the grey coveralls that pinched and were incredibly demoralizing. People had even started to write prison numbers on the them to be funny, but it ended up really dragging down morale. It was a joke we all got and appreciated but that no one found to be particularly funny. I found my laundry still not done, they had teams working down there but they didn’t get to it the day before. It was fine. I preferred to do my own because I despised being waited on. With some clean laundry at last, we all headed up to the top of the barge at 1000 so we could receive word from Command concerning our way ahead.

The patio area was cleaned a lot from the party the night before, but it was still pretty trashed. It was loud because of the large air conditioners up there chugging away. Protecteur was in the background as an ominous reminder that we were still not out of the woods. She looked so sad and dead, like seeing a body at a wake or a funeral. She was a bit worse for wear, the GT had been running without cowling on the exhaust manifold so there was a large black patch on the starboard side. The tow line had been connected to the bow with a steel cable that had rubbed along the hull and stripped away the paint. All that, coupled with my knowledge of the interior damage, meant that my once proud ship was gone and only a cold, dead pile of steel remained in her place.

Command went over their main points to ensure that people had some semblance of news on the way ahead. They clarified that the free-for-all frat house style of partying was done and not allowed to happen again but that they knew that people were blowing off steam so there would be no charges from the night before. They still refused to dry out the barge which would have made sense but would have been devastating to the crew to hear so I am glad they didn’t. They outlined how alcohol would be consumed in proper designated messes from then on, identified where they were and said that the normal rules for mixed messing etc. applied. They then moved on to administrative points. They talked about how to settle claims against the Crown for all the stuff that was lost in the course of the fire and talked about the proper assignment of papers to document that we were all there. One indicated that we were on board for the fire, very generic but proof positive in case something like ‘Protecteur Syndrome’ ever came up, the other dealt with specific personal injury for each person. The crowd was suddenly stunned though as one of the Master Seaman engineers interrupted the XO. He was very drunk still and slurring his words, upset and incoherent. They asked him to wait until the end to address his concerns and when they wrapped up and opened the floor and he just lost it. We stood there, now about 250 strong and watched as a man completely broke and imploded in front of us. He was ranting incoherently about how we all needed a form because “from 61 mess all the way up to the Captain’s cabin, everyone was there.”

He was trying to say that everyone deserved to be covered because we had all been there together. It was sort of ridiculous because it was almost literally what they had just said. He moved through the group blankly staring while he ranted before he attempted to initiate a group cheer of “61 to 1, 61 to 1!” The thing was that most of us were still trying to figure out what he was even getting at and it wasn’t until much later that we came to realize that the essence of what he was getting at was that we were all in it together. Later as we were stuck there longer, and the weeks dragged on his dream was sort of realized because 61 to 1 became the rallying cry of the crew as a way of acknowledging how shitty the experience was but also how it had unified us. ‘61 to 1,’ our battle cry of solidarity.

As the days progressed, they began to blend together. Myself and most of the other Sub-Lieutenants joined the working parties to prepare the ship to make its way back to Victoria. We had been sat down by the Command Team and briefed on the rough plan and were told that we should start to arrange to be there until May. I remember Jules saying something to the effect of “I know this not ideal, but we wanted to talk because a shitty plan people can accept no matter how terrible it is, but having no plan will destroy people.” I thought of those words a lot later when I was fighting Cancer too because it was so true. Having no plan leads to chaos and helplessness, a shitty plan, no matter how shitty can be accepted over time.

The day-to-day grind was not too bad in principle but working in the source of the trauma we were trying to process didn’t help and was made worse from the oppressive heat and from the alcohol that I was consuming. Looking back, I probably consumed almost 20 oz. of hard alcohol every night I was there. Sometimes with people, sometimes alone, it didn’t matter. I know that it was a terrible way to cope but the fog of the booze was just enough to obscure the pain that I felt inside and from the stress of the whole situation.

Things at home were not going well. Stephanie had volunteered to be the ship’s representative with the Military Family Resource Centre (MFRC) to arrange coffee nights to know and hang out with other wives from the ship. She had been left as the only contact point that people had though because her bosses were both away on vacation at the same time. The people treated her like garbage and had clearly forgotten that her husband was on the ship too. She started to crack from the pressure and was raising hell because she was hearing about the conditions that we were living in. The barge had bugs in it and the mattresses were covered in blood and urine stains and torn open. Some even had mold in them. The grey water backing up was a persistent problem and the sounds of the compressors kicking on from all the equipment in the cafeteria we stayed in were driving some of the guys crazy.

The pressure there and the fact that I didn’t have answers for when I would come home was breaking her and after about a week, she screamed at me on the phone because she was mad that I hadn’t called her all day. I was furious because I had worked all day hauling putrid meat, dairy and fresh food out of the ship’s fridges and storerooms and still felt disgusted and dirty even though I had managed to get a shower in. She was just at her wits end, but I couldn’t take what she was saying. So there, on the barge, while I was stared at by members of the crew and passing members of the USN for pretty much the first time since we had been together, I screamed at her. “Stephanie do you have any fucking clue what kind of pressure I am under here?!” I shouted without restraint as I broke down crying. Through the tears I told her about the conditions and the uncertainty, the crew falling apart, the alcohol, everything. I told her I felt betrayed by the senior leadership because we were coming apart at the seams and they appeared totally oblivious to it. She calmed, and I calmed, we had blown off the pressure and we both cried because we were so far apart and there was no way to be with each other. My heart was in pieces because I just wanted to go home to her and the kids and to hold them and let them see that I was ok.

After that Stephanie doubled her efforts to try to raise awareness about the conditions we were facing and appealing to people to send the crew home and send out the hundreds of volunteers who stepped forward to clean up the mess. She ended up being called into an office and told that she would be sued if she continued to push the matter because she had volunteered as the ship’s representative and they wanted her to stop making things hard for them. She felt so helpless because her husband was so far away and needed her help and she couldn’t do anything. I knew that she had been vocal about it because I was even pulled aside by a superior and asked to muzzle it because it wasn’t helping. I told them I would talk to her, but I never did because as far as I was concerned, I may have to deal with it because it was my duty, but it was her right to say whatever she wants. I didn’t want her to stop because I wanted us all to go home and I wanted people to know what was happening.

We gradually lost people as the days ticked by. Some were sent home because it was cheaper than paying out vacations they had booked and were supposed to have been home for. Some had their wives concoct stories to get them sent home urgently. Others had coursing and others were moved to get help because they were imploding. I didn’t want to go home like that, but I didn’t want to stay the whole time either. I just kept at it with the work parties and tried my best to stay social and avoid turning too far inward. On several of the nights nearly the whole wardroom showed up and mingled. One of the nights just Eric and I got completely shittered together and were up at 2 o’clock in the morning, arms around each other headbanging to Panama by Van Halen. I was becoming very close to a lot of the people there, and that connection remains to this day even after years of not seeing each other. The shared experience of the fire had brought us together as a family, but it was starting to become clear that it was the shared experience of the barge that truly unified us.

After much discussion about arranging it on one of the weekends I went for a walk with Jeannine. As I said she had baptised Sophia and had even seen Stephanie right before she had come down. We talked about the events of the fire and about some of the feelings that I had. How much I was being affected by the crew’s grief and how much I missed my family. I still, even then while talking to my padre, was not able to say how guilty I felt for being a coward. I talked about Stephanie and my worries about the strain the whole thing had put on her. I tried to explain that I just wanted to go home but that I didn’t want to be emergency re-patted. I was confused and conflicted because I felt torn between my needs as a husband and a father and the requirements of my duty to the ship. After we had walked for about an hour or so she gave me a hug and told me that she would see what she could do about making sure I was on the first plane of normal re-patriations and reminded me to come see her or the other padre, Mike, if I feel overwhelmed or upset like that again. That made me feel a lot better and it eased the stress from home because Stephanie trusted her too.

A few days later I was on the barge and coming off duty. Jules was on his way out to go surfing with the Commodore, but he stopped and told me that he wanted to talk to me about something later in the afternoon. I was scared to death. I had barely seen him since the fire and was still in awe of him. I was embarrassed and afraid he was going to dress me down because I hadn’t stopped Steph from venting her frustrations. I waited on the barge all day and eventually found myself in the hall outside his cabin there. As I waited there patiently, I remember thinking back just a few years to basic training. It was unreal to think that I was having a one on one meeting with the Captain of the ship. He had spoken to me briefly in little bits on the bridge through the sail and on one of the nights in Ops after the fire, but we still didn’t know each other all that well.

I waited there properly next to the door and readied myself to have a strip torn off me. I’d been chewed out before, so I wasn’t worried per say, more readying myself. After about 20 minutes he arrived out of breath, he was clearly rushing to get to me. He saw me standing rigidly and immediately allayed my fears: “Tomlinson, easy there, buddy, come on in and grab a seat. You want some coffee?” He was a very easy-going kind of guy, but I had been expecting to get a blast of shit. I walked in and sat down and didn’t know what to make of it, but I would love to share a coffee with my Captain, so I accepted. He struggled with his coffee machine and got a pair of black mugs with the Protecteur crest on them and made small talk about the day-to-day. He sat down at his desk and we talked. I eased up when I came to realize that he was just a man talking to another man.

He asked after Stephanie and I told him what I had told Jeannine and tried to emphasize that I do not want to have special treatment but that I wanted to go home. He listened and understood, and he told me something that I have remembered ever since: “Tommy listen man, the way that I see it we are all just walking around with buckets and we have people and events and all kind of stuff just dumping water into them. Some have larger buckets, some are smaller, and some are better at managing the flow, so they don’t get overwhelmed as quickly. When you get to a certain point though you just can’t empty it out and when it gets that full it starts to spill, and it gets so heavy that its hard to carry. Your bucket is just full man, you don’t need to apologize, I understand why you want to get back and that you don’t want to just cut out, but your bucket is full, and it sounds like Stephanie’s is too. You need to look after your family. Family is the most important thing. I have always prioritized my family except for one time and it nearly cost me everything and if I could go back, I would make a different choice even if it meant that I never had command.” I was speechless. I was touched by his candor and happy that I was going to go home with the first group of re-pats so I could have it my way. I left his cabin and headed up to the upper deck. I stopped for a second and looked out over Pearl Harbor. I looked at the tanker, now covered in ventilation machines and work crews prepping her for her tow. I called Stephanie and told her about what he had said. She was happy and we both felt the stress of the situation fall away.

In the end I was in Pearl Harbor for about a month. Eventually it was time to get the ship’s helicopter, air crew, weapons and essential equipment home. This was when I would get to go. I woke up early and walked around the barge. I left a note in the wardroom to my fellow officers thanking them for staying and letting me get home. I was so grateful to the entire group for pulling together and making it happen, there were a few of them coming too so I wasn’t alone, but it was touching that they were happy for me.

I loaded up my luggage and headed outside where I met the other 30 or so people and loaded the bags into a van. The command team came out to greet us and told us that it was nice to finally see some people heading home for normal stuff and not just the emergencies and the short notice movements. The entire group shook our hands one after another and Jules looked at me as he shook my hand and said “go look after your family, Tommy” as he headed back. We got in the van and within a few hours boarded a Canadian C117 Globemaster at Hickam Air Base and I finally went home to Stephanie and the kids.

I was giddy with anticipation and looked earnestly after we walked off the plane and made our way to the gate. My heart was in my throat, one of my favourite parts of the job is the reunion with my family. It gives you butterflies for your wife even after years together and sort of reminds me of the excitement before a first kiss as a teenager. As I walked up to the building we were greeted by several senior officers and our families were waiting inside. I remember seeing them as I rounded the corner, my heart almost hurt I was so overjoyed and I walked up, dropped my stuff and went right up to Seth dropped down on my knees and I held him and felt all the anxiety and the fears, and the uncertainties fall away. I went up to Sophia and held her in front of me and looked deeply into her confused little eyes. She had been looking at pictures of me and didn’t know how to process me being there right in front of her. As I looked at her it filled my heart and I kissed Stephanie before crouching down with Sophia in hand and held them both tight and fought to keep in the tears back as I remembered the moments on the bridge wondering if I would ever hold them again and I felt all that stress evaporate in their arms. I hugged and greeted Stephanie again and grabbed my bags and we headed out to the car and drove home, finally reunited and a family again.

Next Chapter: Aground