Front Burner (14 page)

Someone hollered down at Parlier that there were more wounded in the starboard passageway near the back of the ship. He dashed up the stairs to the engineering office, where the most seriously injured were temporarily staged, and found lying on the deck in front of him the most seriously wounded sailor he had yet seen—Seaman Craig Wibberley. Wibberley had been standing in the mess line at the time of the explosion. In its aftermath he had severe injuries on his right side, and what Parlier judged to be life-threatening head trauma. His breathing was labored. Master Chief immediately ordered several other sailors nearby to help get Wibberley loaded into a litter for evacuation out to the flight deck. By this time, the
urgency of getting the wounded attended to had overridden my initial concerns about topside security, and by the time they got Wibberley's litter out into the heat of the day, Master Chief was taken aback to see at least a dozen wounded crew members lying on the flight deck, being worked on by other crew members. “Airway, breathing, circulation!” he hollered out to them. “That's the most important. Monitor them, and if you need me to look at them, let me know.” Master Chief began trying to treat Wibberley, assisted by Fire Controlman Chief Jonathan Walker. Parlier put his ear on Wibberley's chest and could hear that both lungs were rapidly filling with fluid. As the pulse began to weaken, Master Chief started cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), but Wibberley's life signs were fading away. In the background, there were screams and moans, and other crew members crying out, “Corpsman!”

In Parlier's mind's eye, a memory flashed by as he recalled Wibberley only recently standing before the ship's Professional Development Board. While assigned to Deck Division, he had taken his time in deciding what career path he wanted to take in the Navy. After months of thinking about it, Wibberley submitted a request chit to start training to become an information technology specialist. As he stood before the board, he knew he faced an uphill battle to leave Deck Division. Billets for undesignated deck seamen like him had been undermanned by almost 30 percent since the beginning of our deployment, because of Navy-wide manpower shortages. At the end of the board's deliberations, however, he was unexpectedly rewarded with a compromise: as long as he could keep up on his work and watch assignments in Deck Department, he could start training with the information technology (IT) personnel in preparation for attending an advanced training school. In a flash, Master Chief Parlier remembered his smile and unending gratitude to the board members as he left the chiefs' mess that day. Now, all those hopes and ambitions were fading away as Wibberley struggled to breathe his last.

Finally, Chief Walker quietly spoke up. “James, you need to stop,” he told the Master Chief. “You've got to look around.”

Almost two dozen wounded needed his lifesaving skills. Now, for the first time in his life, Master Chief found himself before the most difficult
of all decisions. By this point Wibberley had stopped breathing. Master Chief lifted his hands, sighed, said a short prayer over Craig Wibberley's body, and the decision was made.

Steeling himself to deal with the rest of the wounded, he turned to attend to the next most seriously wounded sailor, Electronic Warfare Technician Third Class Johann Gokool, who was screaming with excruciating pain. Gokool had been standing in the mess line near the point where the deck was violently ripped apart and was blown back along the passageway toward the starboard side of the ship. The force of the impact had had a brutal effect on his lower legs and feet. His boots were literally blown open and both feet were visible through gaps in the shredded seams. They appeared to be mangled beyond recovery and blood seeped out onto the deck between them. The sailors attending to him were preparing to cut off his boot, but Master Chief told them to stop and wrap bandages around the entire extremity. It was better to keep the injury contained than try to deal with it on the ship. Within minutes, Gokool's feet were wrapped and he was gently taken up the ladder to be staged in the amidships area for evacuation.

Master Chief then spotted a sailor leaning up against the bulkhead in a forward corner of the flight deck. Working over Operations Specialist Second Class Timothy Saunders was Seaman Sanchez-Zuniga, the corpsman trainee who had been with Campbell when the explosion hit. Saunders had a severe cut or gouge in the back of his left upper leg. Sanchez-Zuniga had already inspected the wound and wrapped it tightly to stem the bleeding. But even before Master Chief bent down to give Saunders a more thorough examination, he could tell that despite the apparently superficial wounds, his condition was grave. He was likely suffering internal injuries that they simply could not treat amidst this pandemonium. Saunders murmured, “Man, I don't feel good, Master Chief. I don't feel good.” Master Chief just looked directly at him, “We're going to take care of you. Sanchez has done a great job. He's going to reinforce that dressing, we're not going to take it off, and we're going to get you out of here.”

It was harder than the Master Chief had ever imagined it would be. But with every step he took, he was saving lives.

Standing in the mess line at the moment of the blast, Signalman Second Class Hector Figueroa had just placed his right hand on the Plexiglas menu board just outside Master Chief Parlier's office when he was stunned by the loudest noise he had ever heard in his life and felt a tremendous force pressing his eyeglasses into his face, and searing heat. He and the people around him were thrown through the air and slammed hard into the starboard passageway wall. “The kitchen must have blown up,” Figueroa thought.

Staggering back upright, Figueroa ran toward the galley. He could see a body lying on the deck, staring lifelessly back at him. Behind the debris was another sailor, pinned under what looked like the remnants of the ship's oven, her left leg bent out at an impossible angle. “I can't do this by myself,” Figueroa thought, and yelled out, “Wounded in the galley!” to get others to help. He heard a cry from somewhere lower down and, peering through the scuttle opening of the hatch that led to the ladder and the refrigerators one deck below, saw Mess Specialist Third Class Joseph Davis, standing unsteadily near the entrance. “My leg is broken,” Davis said, and Figueroa saw that water was slowly flooding the space where he was. He slid through the scuttle hole, went down the stairway, and leaned over to wrap his arm around Davis's shoulders and try to pull him up toward safety.

Another sailor came up to Figueroa and told him Storekeeper Second Class Sean Taitt was trapped down in the supply office, a deck lower than the already flooding refrigeration deck. “Got him,” Figueroa answered, and wriggled through the scuttle hole again and went down until he saw Taitt, a solid, muscular man who was one of the best weightlifters and workout hounds on the ship, standing unsteadily near the door to the supply office. “Shock, he must be in shock,” Figueroa thought to himself. Water, now thigh deep, churned around their legs. He grabbed Taitt and then began lifting, dragging, and pushing him up two sets of stairs to the scuttle hole, where Figueroa was relieved to see Personnelman Third Class Nicole “Nikki” Lozano's face looking down. She offered to help, and together they worked Taitt up through the hole and out onto the mess decks to be treated for his injuries.

Fire Controlman Third Class Dyon Foster, who had rushed toward the source of the explosion to get to his emergency station, heard the cries for help and came to the galley. He looked at the mass of tangled equipment and saw two or three bodies in the wreckage, but there was no way to get to them from where he stood. He and another sailor, Gunner's Mate Third Class Kenya McCarter, saw that Hull Technician Fireman Jeremy Stewart, who had been working in the galley as a food service attendant, was alive but trapped in the wreckage of the steam tables. Stewart's right forearm was bent at a ninety-degree angle and he was in severe pain. With his left arm, he could reach down to his lower leg and feel metal pinning him to the deck. Stewart sensed movement next to his head and saw that Mess Specialist Seaman Elizabeth Lafontaine, who had been working in the galley with him, was regaining consciousness, but was in great pain. He tried to lift the metal off his legs but found it would not budge, and then felt his legs and realized they were both broken at mid-shin. Bones were sticking out from his lower left leg and his right leg felt like mush.

Foster and McCarter, joined now by Operations Specialist Second Class Jaja O'Neil, climbed over the metal and saw that they would need to get Stewart out first before they could extricate Lafontaine. Grabbing him by the upper arms and the belt loops on his pants, O'Neil got ready to pull. “This is going to hurt,” Stewart heard, and answered, “I don't care, just get me out of this galley.” Straining to lift the twisted metal off Stewart's legs, they succeeded in pulling him out and got him to a triage station, where Hull Technician Second Class Christopher Regal saw him. “Chris, you've got to save the ship,” Stewart told him. Staring down at him in disbelief, all Regal could whisper in response was “Jesus Christ,” when he saw how badly injured Stewart was.

Lafontaine, who had only recently reported to
Cole
, had just walked by the huge convection ovens near the middle of the galley when the blast went off. The deck beneath her feet buckled and tore to pieces, smacking her into the air and brutally tossing her sideways, almost horizontally. The oven sheared off at the base from its mountings, and pinned her beneath a mass of other debris. Lieutenant (junior grade) Jim Salter, who had made
his way to the galley a few minutes after leaving me just after the blast, saw Storekeeper Senior Chief Joseph Pelly and Petty Officer Dyon Foster trying to free her and bent down to see what he could do to help. He could not immediately make sense of what he could see of her legs.

Lafontaine was on the deck with her back to the wall but pushed down by the debris on top of her and all around her. She faced the hole in the side of the ship, but her torso had been twisted slightly to the left by the displaced oven and other debris, near the smashed and buckled galley door. Her left leg was bent backwards and behind her at the femur, and the lower part of her leg was snapped and bent upward, with the bottom of her foot facing towards the ceiling. Her right leg, visible beneath the oven, was clearly broken in more than one place, and the lower part was crushed and bent at an odd angle.

As Salter peered into the darkened recesses of the galley, he saw the lifeless body of another sailor, Seaman Lakiba Palmer, folded over and leaning up against the far wall and covered by debris. Salter knew that time was not on the side of the rescuers.

Pelly and Foster, working feverishly to try to free Lafontaine, could not pry the metal off her legs. Foster was holding an oxygen mask a few inches from Lafontaine's face to keep her breathing. Jim Salter jumped into the middle of the effort. Each of the three grabbed pieces of metal to try to shove, bend, and pry them back. Lafontaine was in tremendous pain. Even the slightest movement caused her to cry out or scream every time the metal debris around her body moved even slightly. Jim, kneeling in front of her, kept calmly telling her to just hang on, they would get her out in only a few more minutes. When it looked to the three as if they had freed her enough to pull her out, Jim leaned in over her body, putting his chest in front of hers and told her, “Honey, I know this is going to hurt like hell, but grab onto my neck and hold tight when I lift you.” The three rescuers looked at each other, and Foster and Pelly lifted and pushed upward on the debris. Lifting the debris just enough, in one smooth motion, Jim slid her sideways and upward. As her left leg straightened out, hit the deck, and slid grotesquely underneath him; she let out a series of blood-curdling screams. He reached beneath her shattered legs and cradled them as he
walked through the vestibule into the mess decks to lay her gently down on a clear table near the rear entrance.

How Jim Salter came to be part of the rescue effort in the wreckage of the galley speaks volumes. After blurting out to me his blunt reaction that fuel had caused the explosion, he had hurried down the passageway and then smelled the acrid stench of something like cordite, like the smoke after artillery shells have been fired. His instincts and his training then kicked in, and led him to help shipmates, too. Salter's mind absorbed but did not understand why no alarms were going off on the ship to send the crew to their general quarters stations. He also had an odd sensation that no 1MC announcements had been made to tell the crew what had happened or what to do next. While he knew getting to the fuel lab might be important, he also knew he had a more critical obligation to get to his general quarters station.

Turning toward the forward part of the ship and proceeding that way, up a port side passageway, Salter had passed the ship's administrative office, rounded the corner, and entered combat system maintenance central (CSMC). Light from the one or two battle lanterns cast hazy beams that stared down at the deck to illuminate an otherwise dark space. There was no power and only a couple of technicians had shown up, responding like him to their battle stations.

Salter's primary technical expert on
Cole
's combat system and fellow general quarters responder, Fire Controlman Master Chief John Henderson, still had not arrived on station. The internal phone system for the ship did not work and no one was communicating on any of the sound powered phone circuits. After waiting just a few minutes, Salter announced that he was going to go out into the ship and see what he could do to help. He also told the other sailors who had arrived in the space that there was nothing they could do there. He ordered them to leave and go see if anyone needed their help at any of the repair lockers. Clearly, there was nothing more they could do up there in the dark.