35 Miles from Shore (28 page)

“Emerson, we got an emergency here,” the Governor said as he hurried by, as if Emerson was getting in the way of the rescue operation.

“I can see that,” Emerson replied. His back had stiffened to the point where he could hardly walk. He couldn't chase after the governor to explain that he had been on the plane. He spotted an airport worker and asked him if he would get him a cab. Emerson rode to the hospital in a taxicab. When he got to the hospital, he ran into the same problem again.

“Emerson, you're going to have to come back tomorrow,” one of the nurses said as he limped into the hospital. “We got an emergency going on.”

Emerson tried to explain that he had been on the plane but the nurse cut him off.

“Emerson, go home. We're too busy right now.”

Emerson waited for the nurse to leave before walking down the hall to search for an empty bed. He took the first open bed he saw. Minutes later, a doctor entered the room. “Emerson, go home, god-damnit!”

Emerson was known as a practical joker. He tried to explain that he had been on the plane, but the doctor only looked exasperated and left. So Emerson got up again and searched for another room. This time he spotted a passenger whom he had helped in the water. Emerson took the open bed next to her. This time when the doctor and nurse came in to toss him out the woman spoke up on his behalf.

“He was on that plane,” she said. “He helped me. You leave him alone.”

Only then did Emerson get the medical attention he had been seeking.

Rick Arnold was determined to get Loretta out of the water first. She was obviously in pain. She had told Rick that she thought her back was broken. When the first Coast Guard helicopter arrived,
Rick told those around him that Loretta needed medical attention, and several people helped him load Loretta into the rescue basket.

Rick's only injury was to his hand, although he was feeling some discomfort in his back. After the injured passengers were taken out of the water, the sequence of those being rescued was random. Rick felt confident that he would be rescued and didn't feel a sense of urgency to be next into the helicopter. He was, however, growing concerned about the dwindling daylight. At one point, Rick and two others were the only people left at the slide. They didn't see any other survivors. Thinking that it might be too dark for the helicopters to return, Rick suggested that he and the other survivor in the water join the first officer on the slide. Harry agreed and helped Rick and the other passenger, a young man in his mid- to late twenties, onto the slide. The three of them sat atop the slide, pondering the possibility of having to spend the night in the rough seas. It was a frightening thought. The only positive sign was the two aircraft still circling overhead, which was a good indication that they hadn't been completely abandoned. Their moods improved when they heard a low-flying helicopter approaching from the west.

Rick was first in the sling. He used the opportunity to take one last glance at the accident scene, this time from the perspective of looking down from above. He still found it hard to believe what had happened and wanted to have a visual image to take with him. The first thing he noticed was the debris floating around: pieces of luggage, toilet paper, and other objects he couldn't identify. There was a discoloration of the water, a different shade of blue in and around the area where the plane had gone down. Other than the two people on the slide, he didn't see anyone else in the water.

Rick thanked the crewman who had helped him into the helicopter. He was cold and feeling waterlogged. He had been in the water nearly three hours. The crewman wrapped a blanket around
him. Rick took a seat on the floor as the crewman turned his attention to rescuing the two remaining people on the slide.

Nothing was said during the brief ride to St. Croix. Like those rescued before him, his thoughts were filled with the events that had just taken place and the knowledge that he was safe.

When they landed at St. Croix, Rick saw a large crowd of people but no ambulances. He and the second passenger in the helicopter were taken to the hospital in a private car. Harry Evans stayed behind to join up with the rest of the flight crew.

Once at the hospital, Rick was ushered into a small examining room and given a hospital gown to wear. A doctor came by minutes later to check on him. The doctor was a large man with poor bedside manner. He performed a perfunctory examination and found the gash in Rick's hand. Rick looked on in horror as the doctor pulled out a large needle and thread and proceeded to stitch the wound without any preparation. Rick made a comment about wanting something for the pain. “You don't need anything,” the doctor said in accented English. Rick let out a scream as the needle was thrust into his finger.
*

After the doctor was finished stitching Rick's wound, Rick set out to find Loretta. He had already concluded that Gene hadn't survived. When he found Loretta, she was having an argument with one of the doctors over how best to treat her broken back. The doctor was suggesting a procedure that could have left her permanently paralyzed. Loretta was adamantly against it. Fortunately for her, she won the argument and was put in a brace instead.

That night in the hospital Rick was asked if he could take a phone call from a reporter. Rick answered the questions as best he could. By
this time news of the accident had reached the states. Rick's parents were in the city to see a play. Somehow his parents got word of the accident and were able to hear the entire interview with Rick as it was broadcast.

L
INDLEY AND
B
RAZZELL HAD BEEN FORCED TO STAND
after picking up their twenty-six survivors. The helicopter was so full there wasn't even room to crouch down. Lindley scanned the traumatized faces of the passengers as they sat huddled together inside the helicopter. Their wounds ranged from simple cuts and facial lacerations to broken bones. He noticed one man whose collarbone was protruding through his skin. The men in their business suits and the women in their dresses looked oddly out of place. Most of them had removed their shoes. Every now and then Lindley would take a peek outside to see how high they were. He tried to not show his concern. He could tell by the strained sound of the engines and the unsteady way the helicopter moved through the air that they were overweight.

A few of the women asked for blankets, but there were none to hand out. “They're getting mighty cold back here,” Lindley announced over the ICS.

“Close the hole,” Rylee told him. There was a large two-foot hole in the bottom of the floor where the sonar had been removed. The
empty hole was now used for ventilation. Lindley closed the hole and the cold draft subsided.

At one point on the way back to St. Croix the quiet inside the helicopter was interrupted by laughter. Bill Brazzell turned to see a woman holding a roll of money wrapped with a rubber band. “I lost everything else but I managed to keep this,” she said, shaking her head as if to indicate that she couldn't believe that the money had survived the ordeal. Neither Bill nor Lindley had seen the money on the woman as she was being hoisted into the helicopter. She was dressed in a brightly colored tropical print dress with spaghetti straps. There could have been only one place where she could have stashed the money. There was no way to tell how much she had managed to save, but judging from the size of the roll, it was a sizeable amount.

The light was fading fast as Rylee entered the traffic pattern at St. Croix. He landed on a taxiway and taxied to the main terminal building where he saw waiting ambulances and a large group of people milling about. As they were taxiing in, one of the survivors caught a glimpse of the large crowd and asked for a comb, not wanting to get caught unexpectedly by a photographer or television camera.

As soon as the helicopter came to a stop, Lindley opened the door and the passengers streamed out. One woman turned to Brazzell as she was leaving and offered an invitation to him and the rest of the crew to join her and her friends for a drink. Brazzell nodded his head toward the cockpit as if to indicate that they were still on duty.

By the time Jim Rylee unbuckled his shoulder harness and turned around all but one passenger had exited the helicopter. Balsey had stayed behind to personally thank the two helicopter pilots. Jim shook Balsey's hand then jumped out and tried to assist an elderly man to an ambulance. As he grabbed hold of the man, he realized
that he was completely drained of energy. He signaled for Lindley who then assisted the passenger to the waiting ambulance. At one point, Jim was approached by a reporter. He brushed him aside after catching a whiff of the man's breath, which smelled of alcohol.

As the crowd of people subsided, Lindley and Brazzell noticed a large pile of life preservers lying on the floor inside the helicopter. They also spotted several life preservers lying on the ramp, the owners having waited until they were safely on terra firma before ridding themselves of the uncomfortable vests. Lindley and Brazzell scooped up the life vests and tossed them into the back of the helicopter. Jim Rylee had also removed a life vest from a female passenger as she lay on a stretcher. She obviously didn't need it anymore. Jim tossed the vest into the back of the helicopter along with the others. Each crewman would later take a few of the life vests home as souvenirs.
*

With the survivors safely on their way to the hospital, Lindley secured the aft section of the helicopter and hooked up to the ICS. “Let's go home,” he told Jim. Lindley and Brazzell sat in their crew seats. They were hooked up to the ICS, but no one said anything. They flew back to Roosy Roads with not a word being spoken.

John Barber and Vince Perron had kept up the CPR on their lone survivor all the way to St. Croix. At no time did they detect a heartbeat or a pulse. Upon arriving at St. Croix, Art Nash lowered the loading ramp and several paramedics rushed inside carrying a stretcher. By now the two men were totally exhausted. They sat back against the fuselage and let the paramedics take over. A doctor came aboard and placed a stethoscope against the man's chest. He listened
for a few seconds then gave a thumbs up sign, indicating that he had detected a heart beat.

The other five helicopters landed minutes later. Only EM-07, piloted by Glen Warren and Ned Lemoine, had survivors aboard. It was dark now and the crews were not looking forward to having to fly back to the ship, where they would have to make a night landing on a rolling deck in bad weather. Fortunately, their concerns were alleviated when a man approached and said that he was working on finding rooms for the crewmembers. They would be spending the night on St. Croix.

While those details were being worked out, a number of marines headed inside to the airport bar. John Barber stayed behind. He still had to secure the helicopter. He tied down the blades and put on the protective covers. The adrenaline was still pumping, but his arms were so weak from doing the CPR he could hardly lift them above his head. His first thought after securing the helicopter was to call his fiancée to tell her about the rescue. He went inside and located one of the special phone booths used for calling the States. The call was taken by his fiancée's mother. John gave her a brief rundown on what had happened and said that he would call again later. He hung up and headed for the bar to hook up with Vince Perron and the rest of his crew.

John found Vince and Randy Logan sitting at the bar surrounded by other crews wanting to hear the details of their rescue. When Vince saw John, he cleared a spot for him at the bar and ordered him a rum and Coke. John learned a few drinks later, after his head began throbbing and the room began spinning, that the rum he was drinking was 151 proof. When a woman entered the bar later that evening looking for volunteers to donate blood, John and the others were politely turned down.

At one point, Vince was telling the others about his efforts to revive the man they had rescued. He casually mentioned that the man had eaten bean sprouts for dinner. “How do you know that?” someone asked. “Because he threw up while I was doing CPR,” Vince replied.

There was a sense of celebration in knowing that they had possibly saved a man's life. They all saw the doctor give the thumbs-up sign. But each of them had their doubts. For one, the man never once responded to the CPR. Secondly, the section of the helicopter where the doctor had listened for the man's heartbeat was located directly beneath two turbine-powered engines that were still running. You couldn't hear yourself talk, let alone hear a heartbeat.
*

After the unofficial “debrief” at the bar, the thirty-six men were taken to the same condominium complex where the ONA crewmembers were staying. The crews shared new three-bedroom luxury condominiums.
¹

Bill Bohlke flew in a loose formation behind the HU-16 for nearly two hours, relaying messages to and from San Juan Center. George Johnson, who was sitting in the co-pilot's seat, flew whenever Bill needed a break.

When they landed in St. Croix, it was dark enough that Bill needed his landing lights. As he taxied past the crowd in front of the terminal building, he spotted fifteen or twenty Army surplus stretchers laid out on the ramp waiting to be put to use. Sadly, Bill knew that the stretchers would go unused. He parked the Skyvan and thanked
Paul Wikander, George Johnson, Andy Titus, and Gorge Stoute for their help. While the rest of the men were in a celebratory mood, George Stoute was tense and uneasy. He expressed concern over the fact that he was going to be late returning to the prison. The work release program had been a blessing for him; he didn't want to jeopardize losing the privilege. George was assured that he had no reason to be concerned. Once the prison officials learned the reason for his late return, they would surely understand. One of the men commented that George might even be entitled to a reduction in his sentence for his participation in the rescue. After all, he had risked his life to help drop life rafts to the survivors. They all agreed that if anyone should ask about the rescue they would make sure that George received recognition for his efforts. With that, they shook hands and went their separate ways. Paul Wikander agreed to take George back to the prison.