Life in Small Bites

A huge shadow swam under my tiny life-raft. For the next three hours I never looked back in the water. If the Shadow was going to eat me at least it wasn’t going to catch me looking.

Two weeks before my encounter with the shadow I was standing in front of a wall of fishing lures in the Carswell AFB Exchange.  I just received orders to proceed to Homestead AFB in Florida to attend Air Crew Water Survival Training.

An attachment to the orders suggested creating a small personal survival kit that could be placed in the leg pocket of one’s flight suit. Recommended articles to include were:

1. Waterproof matches
2. Small pocket knife
3. Small magnifying glass
4.  Asshole compass*
5. Water purification tablets
6.  Band-Aids
7. Fishing line and hooks
8. Fishing lure
9. Condoms (to be used as water container)
10. $40 (bills-10X$1, 2X$5, & 2X$10)

* So called because it was small enough to be quickly swallowed prior to capture by an enemy and could be subsequently recovered when it passed out the other end.

Carswell AFB is in Fort Worth Texas – plenty of lake fishing in the area. The wall of lures was all for freshwater fishing – nothing for ocean fishing. I settled on an innocuous looking purple plastic worm with an embedded hook. I scrunched all the assembled items into a small plastic travel soap container and bound it tightly with a thick rubber band.

A week later I was sitting in a classroom with 30 other pilots listening to lectures on ocean survival techniques. This information would be crucial if the pilot had to eject and ended up in the open sea–usually alone. Appropriate cautions, preventions, and remedies were discussed about sun protection, hypothermia, and managing food and water requirements.

The instructors also talked about barracudas and sharks. The instructors advised that the fear of sharks was overblown and that we needn’t focus on them. Why oh why did they follow-up this advise with actual photos of sharks cut open revealing rings, watches, sunglasses, dog-tags, and shoes – I’ll never know?

After three days of classroom instruction and testing all of us were put aboard a landing craft (LCM) and then taken out to sea – until no land was in sight. All of the pilots had previous parachute training. For this training exercise each pilot was wearing flight helmet, flight suit, and G-pants.  Attached to a parachute I was launched off the LCM by speedboat, parasail-mode, to an altitude of 2,000 feet.

Airborne, with full aircraft survival kit, including an inflatable one-man rubber raft, dangling from my parachute pack, commanded by the signal from the speed-boat I released the tow-line connecting me. Once released the speedboat continued and was quickly out of sight as I descended toward the sea.

By design, for training exercises, intentional hardships are built-in. For example, normally the small life-raft would be automatically inflated when the parachute was deployed after ejection – but not in this training.

Just prior to hitting the water, with visions of the rings, watches, and other swallowed paraphernalia, I pulled the releases to detach from my parachute while simultaneously pulling the auto inflate cord on my small underarm water-wings. While the water-wings kept my head above water the next moments were long in passing as I manually inflated my raft with explosive breaths trying not to hyperventilate while working to blow-up the raft as quickly as possible.

Soaked, but safely in my raft, I thought of how I would pass the next several hours until I would be winched up by a rescue helicopter. After singing every song and hymn I could think of, and even making up a few, I remembered my personal survival kit in my leg-pocket. Upon reviewing the items, the only ones that had immediate utility was the fishing gear.

I took the purple plastic worm, attached it to the line, dropped it into the sea, and tethered the free end to the side of my raft. Passing time by thinking of ‘not thinking’ about sharks I resumed my singing.

20 minutes later I felt a firm tug on the line. Then another – and finally a tug that nearly overturned the raft and me. The line went slack. The Shadow swam by. I started counting clouds.

An eternity later I heard and saw an approaching rescue helicopter. Hovering above me the helicopter lowered a cable to which I hooked onto and was winched up – raft dangling under me.

After initial expressions of sincere appreciation to the air crew I was too mentally exhausted for much conversation. Silently I journeyed back to base accompanied by my roaring inner voices of thankfulness and wondered about the “What if’s?” and “What nexts?”.

Learnings:

1. Purple plastic worms can attract sea monsters.
2.  Learn more songs, especially hymns.
3. Prayer works!
4. Select appropriate resources in advance to cope with current environment.
5. Check all gear for proper functioning before departure.
6. Willful transformation of Fear into Focus releases possible solutions.