Carrier (2008) s01e06 Episode Script
Hour 6. Groundhod Day
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Uh-huh it's a long road to paradise and, oh, I feel the pain oh oh oh they tell me things are different now but I still hurt the same Haze gray and underway a world away from you and miles and miles of blue Subs rip, edit, and resnyc by © VJ Me 2010 The hardest part about being in the Gulf is keeping the troops motivated and keeping everybody going despite the horrible atmospheric conditions.
Too many moments continually out here same old relationship oh, no.
No? No.
After the first few weeks, the Gulf starts to become monotonous, where every day looks like the day before.
The same stuff over and over again.
It's like groundhog day.
It's the same day every single day.
Seven days a week.
Every day, it's the same thing.
Work, sleep, work, sleep.
I don't even know what day it is.
I think today is Monday.
At least that's what they tell me.
I'm not sure.
An action replay identical twins photocopy, once again ancient history yes, yes, USA repeated like grains of desert sand, monotony Our mission out here? I don't even know.
When it comes to the mission, I think everybody has the same idea, that we're here for a reason and it's for a very, very good reason.
It's my job.
I just be here and follow orders.
And fly across the boundaries of your heart monotony can't you see it's killing you it's killing me? I wouldn't mind dropping some bombs.
I know that sounds kind of sick and demonic, but I've trained for five years to do it.
It's kind of what I want to do.
It is like the big game, and you're on the sideline.
Monotony monotony, yeah monotony monotony monotony oh, yeah it's like a merry-go-round monotony On the deployment, you go from seconds of pure adrenaline to sheer boredom.
You don't know what to do with yourself, and I think a lot of people on the boat on the deployment Start to feel that.
Slippin', slip away in space My name is lieutenant Booher.
I'm a pilot in the Black Aces.
Drifting a smile upon his face I was 24 when I started flying.
There's no turning back what's done is done he's heading for the bright and shining sun My brother was a race car driver, and he was Florida state champion, and he was really great at what he did.
And I saw that he got a lot of attention, especially girls, so I decided that the only way I could go faster than him was to become a pilot.
And so I run I run to the bright and shining sun It looked like a lot of fun.
What couldn't be fun about raging around? There's a lot of incredible adrenaline, flying down low at 500 knots, constantly pushing your self every day, putting yourself in a new challenge every day.
Everybody leaves the squadron after 3 years, and I found out today that I'm leaving in 6 days.
I'm heading home.
After a long, long journey, it's time to go home.
And so I run I run to the bright and shining sun When I got married and especially when my wife gave birth to our child, it changed me.
It certainly did.
I think it allowed my opinions to be much more flexible I think I learned how to think more than I ever had in my life.
I may have found something in me that made me question what we're doing here.
Are we doing the right thing or are we doing the wrong thing? So that's a personal struggle that I think anybody that does this, anybody that's over here and pulling the trigger, has to ask themselves that question at some point.
And I think, sure, there are other ways to go about fighting this war.
I think we are fighting a war that may be more futile than we recognize.
It was my natural, you know, paternal, you know, protection of my family that made me start thinking about these things.
So, yeah, my wife did change me quite a bit.
And so I run I run to the bright and shining sun Hello.
Hey, kiddo.
Hey, hey, hey.
So, uh, first thing We were just talking about you.
Oh, really? Well, first thing, I've got a piece of news I think you'd like.
1:00 at Meridian airport on the 21st.
I think I'm gonna try and stay up, like, the entire day and night before so I can just sleep through that entire flight.
I'm sure I'll be tired when I get back to the States anyway.
Well, don't, don't get home too exhausted.
I'm aware of that.
I'll save a little strength.
Ha ha! Hopefully they'll edit that.
Can you believe we're doing this? I'm in a surreal state.
It's funny.
As badly as I want to get home, you don't realize how much you're going to miss this.
Well, I was wondering, you know, if that had sunk in yet.
You know, it won't sink in until, you know, I get home because right now, I mean, it's not my concern.
My concern is getting home.
And you know what? In 2 weeks, I may miss it, but I got you and Ciera to remind me of what's important, and that's it.
I've got a little poem here from E.
E.
Cummings.
You ready? Sure.
We are so both and oneful night cannot be so sky sky cannot be so sunful I am through you so I get home.
Ha ha! Well-said, well-said I'm airman Christopher Altice.
I'm from Manassas, Virginia.
I'm 21 years old.
I'm almost 3 years into the Navy.
Not married, but I got a baby on the way.
What's going on one? Huh? He's doing to launch.
Just prepping it? Yeah.
Just taking all theOff.
All right.
Then we'll be done.
I don't have the slightest idea how things are even gonna work when I get back.
It's definitely gonna be a big change.
My girlfriend, her name's Tanya.
She's really sweet, and she's very cute.
I had a great time being with her.
She always did things for me.
And we're fine, but since I've been gone, there are some big problems.
I was bummed earlier, dude.
I don't know if you saw.
I wasn't talking to no one, dude.
I was so frustrated this morning.
She hadn't e-mailed me again in, like, 6 days.
It's crazy.
I've gotten 2 e-mails from her this month, man.
Look what we're doing.
I've got time to e-mail.
She got a computer at home? Yeah.
She's got, like, 3 of them.
Wireless Internet.
Matter of fact, she can pick up her laptop and go up to the couch, sit down, being pregnant and all.
And You should get at least one e-mail a day.
That's the minimum.
Her best friend even e-mailed me a baby name they thought was cute, not Tanya.
Her friend.
And then her friend also sent me pictures of Tanya, not Tanya.
So I'm sitting up here on deck this morning.
She hasn't wrote me.
I'm pissed off, and then it's just all that worry running through my head, you know, every possible scenario.
The bad thing is, dude, I'm sick of asking her.
It seems like I'm begging, begging for her to e-mail me.
We had to make a line-up change.
We just ran into probably about a 4-day stint where everything was just bad, everything was going wrong.
I think having the marines on the ship, it's good.
They're cool.
But their jets are old and busted.
They go down all the time.
This jet goes down, this jet goes down.
Time's up on those jets.
Those things are old.
Hey, Gerber, try to get a hold of base.
I got a barger up here on 310 and a high leak on 53 left, says it's leaking out of every weephole that he has on the damn door.
So, when it drops down to the hangar bay, he needs to find out where that leak is.
My name is Randy Brock.
I'm a staff sergeant in the Marine Corps.
I joined this squadron in 2000.
I've been here for five years.
This is my third deployment with this squadron.
I don't know if 4 is going to make it out.
So we're probably going to have to start up 307 and have it launch out before we came out on this deployment, we had no clue.
I think there was eight people when we started off with that had any type of boat experience.
The Navy guys, they think we suck.
How come we can't fix your jets? How come your stuff is always broken? Ok, guess what.
We're still the new guys.
We are still learning.
This is still our first cruise.
Every squadron goes through a hard time.
Every shop goes through a difficult time.
Ridiculous.
Yeah.
The CAG is very upset because this thing's been leaking for the last 2 or 3 weeks.
Ok, give me a damn clean fuel control, and a strut, and then I can work on the damn thing.
You know as well as I do You know, everybody has their problems.
Yeah, we're new.
And the last thing I want is to freaking lose a pilot.
But there are some pilots who think that they know my job better than I know my job.
I've got some pretty big questions for corporal Molinado, so Those questions you can pose to me, sir.
Well, my question is, why did he sign off the math? Because if I get Where's my water bottle at? Tell me what's wrong with my water bottle sir.
The cap leaks.
Cap leaks? Can you tell that by physically looking at it right here? No, you can't.
It's the same thing that would happen with the ATS duct.
All the fingers were on the ATS duct.
The only reason why they fell off is because freakin' Willows went up there to look at it, and he noticed something was loose.
He pulled it The squadron is a symbol of who I am.
Molinado! And when people bad mouth my squadron, I get pissed.
How come you put something on there that now, once we shut everything off and you see all the stuff that's wrong with it? I'm not saying that you don't know your job.
But the fact of the matter is, is now we have eyes pointed on you and eyes pointed on me and eyes pointed on the division, which I know you don't like and I sure as hell don't like The guys that I work with, the guys who work for me, this is my family and I'm the dad.
I'm the daddy.
Take your medicine.
Take it like a man.
Let's move on.
If this ever happens again, it's not going to be pleasant.
It's not going to be pleasant for me, and if it's not going to be pleasant for me, I'm gonna make it terrible for you or for whoever else who does it.
And since I joined the Marine Corps, me and my family back at home have been sort of distant.
Just certain things come up.
I was left at a carnival.
I know that sounds pretty funny, but I was left at a carnival when I was three.
It's called the Pride of Texas shows Just a carnival that traveled from Texas to Oklahoma.
That's all they did.
My biological parents were carnies that worked on the show and they took off and took my sister with them and left me there with a guy that I call Uncle Ed Ed Burlingame.
You know how last time you went up, and it sort of See how it pokes out? See how it sort of goes out, like that? Round it up next time.
When you ask about my biological parents and if I knew them or remembered them, Anna and Larry.
That's pretty much all I remember.
I know my mom was short and my dad was 6'2", 6'3".
But other than that, I sort of want to forget everything else.
We have our small boat here off the stern of the ship that's going to take on some of our personnel to go over to a ship that's in distress that's taking on water.
So we have a pump, and we also have the personnel to go over there and provide that assistance in order to keep that ship afloat.
It looks to me like it's getting lower.
Might be underneath towards the keel.
Rising what is the status of the water level right now? Is it rising, holding, or falling? The water is steadily rising.
Freeboard on the starboard side.
My obvious concern is getting our people off there before it sinks like a stone and getting them off there, too.
You know, we can put them up overnight, which is probably preferable than trying to fly them off up north in the dark.
6-1-4 is inbound with two pumps.
Once he lands, we're going to run them to the fantail.
Roger.
Once they arrive on station, I'll call the rib in.
Copy.
Please make sure they understand the most important thing they're doing is getting the pumps off the helo and to expedite.
The dhow is about to sink, and we need to get the pumps off the helicopter and over to the elevator in motion.
Yes, sir.
We're getting everything out as quickly as we can, sir.
Expedite.
Expedite.
If you have anyone involved in this rescue and assistance operation, please get them moving and get them moving quickly.
Mini, you're just absolutely killing me with this elevator.
I tell you what, his rail, his starboard side rail is under the water on the rolls.
He's low.
Yeah, we might have both pumps pumping, but I'm not convinced they're making progress.
Let's call the dhow and get the Iraqis to abandon their boat.
Aye.
Let first know that we are abandoning and we are going to be bringing them back.
He's saying he wants money for his sunk ship.
I don't know anything about that.
I am just trying to take care of you while you are on-board here.
Sorry.
Arms up.
Are we allowing lighters chief? He's got a lighter.
Am I allowed to let him have it or A lighter? Yeah.
Yeah.
Stand by for words from your training officer.
Good evening, "Nimitz" and airwing 11.
I'm sure you heard the commotion this morning with the Iraqi boat.
He was just having all kinds of trouble.
We sent a rescue and assistance team over there, and they worked at it all afternoon, but unfortunately the leaks were too bad for the pumps to overcome, and the damn thing just sunk.
But it wasn't because of the lack of effort.
All our guys did just a heck of a job.
I guess the good news part of the story is we went over there and we rescued 7 Iraqi nationals that were on-board the boat, and we have them on-board now.
And we will host them in fine hotel "Nimitz" fashion, and probably tomorrow we will fly them back off and take them home to Iraq.
Well, it's been, how many days, 36? 36 days out to sea.
36 days.
Now I'm in Bahrain In the pool.
Yeah, soaking up the wonderful Bahrain sun.
Well, Bahrain's not the happening spot, but it's nice, I guess.
It's changed a lot in the last 10 years.
It's become a lot more conservative than it used to be, Muslim conservative.
You can really only go out during the daytime.
There are some curfews, when we have to be back in our hotels and places that we can and cannot go, things that are easy targets for, you know, you could set off an explosive.
It's like, before you pull into port, they try to scare your pants off so you don't want to go anywhere.
They told us, "you guys are not allowed to go off base probably unless you go to the mall.
Everything else is restricted.
Hotels, restaurants, cafes," this and that.
"But you can go if you go on a tour, and if you already have a hotel room, but everything else is restricted.
When I go on liberty, I love to experience the different people and the culture and the history.
I love it.
I mean, I think it's the greatest thing to join the Navy and see the world.
I honestly do.
Prince Ali, fabulous he, Ali Ababwa But Bahrain is kind of like, there's not a lot here.
Finally, I can find one thing in Bahrain that likes Americans.
Bahrain is a small island.
280 square miles and made of 33 islands.
Today we're gonna drive through a few islands.
The population, 720,000.
The king is the head of the nation, king Hamad.
Today we gonna see his palace Smallest kingdom in the world.
London bigger than here, New York bigger than here.
Bahrain a little bigger than Singapore.
I'm thirsty.
How many waters have we got left, 4? Uh, three.
No, in my bag.
Three.
We got You slugged 2 of them down? Yeah.
I was dehydrated.
We see the view of the tree of life all the way there.
Archeologists have discovered evidence of life around here.
So they believe this is maybe what is left from Garden of Eden.
The middle of Garden of Eden, the tree of life.
Anybody find any evidence of life yet? Look, there are some plastic bottles over here.
Oh, wow! Another sign of Somebody's underwear.
Adam or Eve's? Well, whoever used to live here was smart and got the hell out of here, that's why they're not here anymore.
You know what that phrase means? Prayer is better than sleep, prayer is better than sleep.
It will get the lazy bones out of bed, you know? It's very early, and it's very challenging, so we have to get an extra push.
We are all children of Adam.
That's what Islam teaches, that all mankind is one family, one brotherhood.
We are all descended from Adam and Eve.
They are our parents.
So if you have the same parents, what is our relationship? We are brothers and sisters.
So as far as God is concerned, it doesn't matter what's your color or nationality or whatever differences that you may have here in this world.
Everybody is equal, so we don't distinguish people because of their color or race or status in society.
Look out at the Two rocket ships.
You know what I haven't heard The call to prayer go out No, I haven't either.
That's the Indian call.
Oh, sorry.
I got my languages mixed up.
Well, we'd like to get a few good meals.
We could catch up on some sleep, lots of sleep.
We go down by the pool.
Just kind of hang out, I guess you'd say.
Being very low profile is what we really want to be.
We haven't left the hotel since we got here.
This is my family.
And, you know, I have a family and I'm extremely eager to live that side of my life.
I've got a wife and a kid, and that's really all I want to do.
What? Yeah, I'm gonna miss It's gonna be probably a very difficult time getting used to not having 40 of your best friends living with you at all times.
I'm gonna miss every single one of these guys.
It seems like it would be fun to be an officer.
I've seen you guys party like in Guam and stuff.
Like, I know this really like older officer girl.
She was like freak dancing! I was like, she had to be at least like 40, you know.
Like, how can you do that at your age, you know? So you feel, like, the same way as us? You do your job, you go to sleep, do your job again? We're flying 5-1/2-, 6-hour flights.
We're sitting in a hard chair.
You know, imagine sitting in that chair for six hours and you can't move.
It's only a little bit more comfortable than that because there's a little padding.
That's about the only reason.
You know, it's things like that actually, they wear on you.
That's when you're not dropping bombs? We haven't been, actually.
We haven't dropped a single one.
Not since you left Not at all.
I heard they were dropping lots of bombs.
6? Uh, decimal what? Ok, I'm gonna read them back 2-8-4-6 decimal 5-5-0-0-2-2-9-4-9 decimal 5-5-0-1-1-5-0-0-6 decimal 5-5.
All right, Rog.
Thanks.
And you want me to stay out of the box, I assume? Ok.
Come right to 2.
Go to 3-0-0.
Continue right.
Stay on course 3-0-0 degrees.
Continue right.
Stay on course 3-0-0 degrees.
Aye, sir.
This morning on the "Princeton," they found out that somebody was missing, so they looked around the ship, tried to see if they could find him.
They asked a lot of questions, when was the last time somebody saw him? The last time somebody saw him was about 1900 yesterday.
So what they're doing now is they're kind of backtracking, where were we the last, since 1900 last night? 6-3.
Got it.
Cooper, 6-3.
Start coordinator.
Request you search southwest corner of your search area 2-8-1-5 north, 0-5-0-0-0 East.
Request search road to the East, over.
603.
What we'll be doing now, one more north-south pass, and we'll RTB for a hot pump.
And then we'll be back.
Well, let's concentrate the next couple of hours on this area right here.
Then we're gonna take the box, we're gonna split it up, and we're gonna start an expanding square here, and we'll just have the p3 just go over the top.
Because I think he's in this southern half somewhere.
I think he's in the Southern half, too.
We've taken the box It's a 16-by-21 mile area that we figured out that this guy's in, broken it down into sections, and so we give an aircraft a section.
We use latitude and longitude.
So we have one helicopter moving north to South in the Southern half of the box.
We have another helicopter in the northern half of the box by itself.
And over the top of them, we have a p-3 going back and fourth East to West.
So when that all changes, we are gonna turn everybody around and they're gonna search the same box, but they're gonna be searching from a different angle.
You always want to go over that same thing at least 2 to 3 times, because it's amazing how things look differently in the water when you're looking which way the waves are coming and the wind and the white caps and everything.
You look at it from a different angle and you actually see things in the water.
I can't really describe it.
It's just a terrible feeling for me as a Captain to know that one of my sailors is missing.
The first I knew was, I got woken up by a phone call from the xo at about 5:15, and he said that the sailor was missing and had been missing, actually, hadn't shown up for watch at about 2:00.
We called about him with the commander and started our search and rescue both on the ship and the rest of the strike group.
Seaman Macrum is a boatswain's mate.
He's one of the guys who used the announcing system.
He's, like, one of the voices of the ship.
We've had sailors looking for him all day, 12 hours.
Never left, didn't make a head call, didn't get a drink of water.
I mean, they just wanted to find their shipmate.
And we all feel like that.
I've been on-board for a while, and we never had a man overboard, so I never really had to think about it.
But I always thought, wow, if somebody falls over, yeah, they'll find us, you know? A helo will come pick us up in like an hour, you know? They'll see us go over or something like that.
I never thought I would just disappear.
It's kind of shocking, but I wish I could figure out what happened, because knowing Bobby, it's like, he's a very careful person, not somebody that I would imagine would have had an accident like this.
It's our culture that when something goes wrong, we want to work at it to fix it.
And we will look as long as we have to find our shipmate.
The last friend that I lost in the Marine Corps was my buddy, John Maloney, in Ramadi.
But 4 or 5 personal friends of mine have been killed over here in the last year.
He was the closest.
When you know guys are dying on the ground, you don't even need to know them.
It just still hurts the same, especially when you are up there and you've got all of this firepower at your disposal and a random, you know, improvised explosive goes off, kills somebody with you overhead.
You're like, "what could I have done to prevent that?" And there's nothing you can do.
There's nothing you can do to stop that if it's already gone off.
I don't know.
That part's pretty frustrating.
Everybody know what happened to 301 last night? Ok, the fact is, they said that there was no safety wire on the cannon plug whatsoever.
Do I believe that? No.
Can it fall off? Yes.
We all know it does, and it happens.
It happened once on the 38th day, and it happened again last night.
If you've got to double safety wire the damn thing, I don't care how we do it.
We're gonna find a way to fix that damn part.
You understand? I will not have something happen to my guys on the ship.
I can't live with myself if something happens to someone.
They're a part of me.
Turn it up.
Uh-oh! Here we go, here we go.
The guys that work for me, we go through a lot of stuff together.
A lot of crap, but a lot of going out, having some good times.
I mean, we're close.
He's break dancing now.
He's break dancing now.
I would hate to see where I would be if I didn't join the Marine Corps.
Don't know where I would be, don't know what I would be doing.
Get a drink of water, take off your boots and get on the mat.
I joined the Marine Corps for a reason Because I had no place to go.
So what you're gonna do is you're gonna be in your basic warrior stance just like this.
My biological parents were drug addicts, alcoholics.
The things that my sister and I have gone through the abuse, the things said, the things done I wouldn't wish upon anybody.
Then like this.
Now what? Now what? I've never, ever let my temper go all out.
I fight hard not to let it happen.
In High School and junior high, I got into fights all the time.
I lost my temper.
I'm not an angry person, but there is so much anger at the stuff that my parents pulled.
If I ever see those guys again, I will kick the Out of them and kill them.
It's really not that big of a deal.
He would still be out there to find him.
If this guy's kicking and swimming, you know, his drift and the distance that he could move based on your computations means that if he's still floating, we should be flying over him.
I don't know if this guy can tread water for 12 hours or not.
I mean, this water's that' out there is pretty salty, it's dense, and it's easier for you to tread water.
Plus it's over 66 degrees, so there are sharks out there and Yeah Jellyfish.
Essentially, this is the worst-case scenario to have to swim in the water.
It's a guy without flotation, without any kind of a signal device.
Can this guy survive 20 jellyfish stings and still be able to tread water? Or is some shark nibbling at his toes? We're hoping for the best, that this guy wants to live, that he's gonna fight for his life, and we're gonna do our best to make sure we're covering this area so that if he's in it, if he's in the box that we've established, then we're gonna find him.
It's hard to believe after a long, long journey, it's time to go home.
I was actually on my way out the door.
I was supposed to leave on March 1st.
My three years were done, and I had my orders.
Andy, I'm gonna leave you my stash of cereal.
Yeah, buddy.
Take care of it.
My wife and kid have moved to Mississippi.
On February 27th, we kind of had a party, and everybody said good-bye, and the skipper that night asked me to stick around.
So here I am six months later.
Getting ready to go home, so I'm still, I'm once again one day away from leaving.
Hopefully, this time there's no extension involved.
One thing I've learned on this job is, you have very little control at any time.
So we'll see what happens.
I had the silver ones.
You remember this one.
Oh, this is the wedding.
Yeah, that's the wedding.
I met my wife salsa dancing.
She was dating somebody at the time.
I was just a friend.
Really didn't go out at all.
We just danced.
This one here No, here's this one.
They broke up.
I stepped in there.
I'm like, hey, you want to go out? This is a fold-out.
And to tell you the truth, I think she's probably I think it's this one.
The four years from meeting my wife until now, I mean, it's been great.
And I got my sonogram.
My wife and I are expecting our first kid A little boy.
Well, he don't look like daddy yet because he ain't had his nose busted open to the side.
For me, I'm a little scared.
Am I gonna be a good dad? Am I gonna hold him right? Is he gonna love me? Am I gonna love him? You know, I mean, given the stuff that I've been through, my biggest fear is turning into the person that I came from.
6-1-3.
Ok, we're Admiral's at desron.
What's the latest? Ok, we have, initially we went through, we had an initial search pattern for our helos.
Worked it up, yeah, like I briefed this morning.
Currently, at this time, have an Australian p-3.
We have a US p-3.
We have a battle cat from Princeton, and we also have our 613.
What are the pilots telling you about the ability to pick out things on the surface with these water conditions? Yes, sir, the winds have come down slightly, which has been favorable.
They are definitely able to see in through the white caps and pick things up.
So we've had a pretty good chance to see things this morning.
Well, my intention is just You know, I've talked to the Captain about it Is to stay with this tonight while we have the illumination and just stay with it again tomorrow.
And maybe the next day, you know? I'm hoping 10 minutes from now, this will be o-b-e, and we won't have to do this anymore, because we will have found our guy and found him alive.
Yes, sir.
But in the meantime, I just want you to know, I feel like we're in this for the long haul.
So thanks for the work of your guys Yes, sir.
This is important.
Hello.
Hey.
Hello? Hello? Hi.
What are you doing? Hello? Can you hear me? I think I can hear you.
Are you sure? Yes.
Uh-oh.
What? Nothing.
Have you checked your e-mail lately? No.
You haven't? Why? I don't know.
I was just wondering.
Well, notNot I was just wondering.
Not since the last time I checked it.
When was that, like a week ago? No.
I got that one.
Did you write me back? No.
Well I don't know.
Maybe I did.
I don't remember.
You don't remember if you wrote me back? Well I got to know something.
Do you plan on moving in with me when I get back, honestly? Yes.
You want to? Yeah.
You don't seem Why? You don't want me to anymore? No, I want you to.
That's what I want to know.
But I have trouble believing you sometimes because you never write.
Even if you sent me an e-mail that just said, "I miss you," or "I miss the hell out of you," or whatever it is, and that's it.
Nothing else.
I'd be happy, I guess.
I think that's boring.
Well, not writing me at all is really boring for me.
It's boring? You know I worry enough already.
All right, baby.
I'm gonna go.
'Cause like I said, it's hotter than hell, and I'm sweating my ass off standing here.
Besides it's probably Ok.
It's going on 2 A.
M.
here.
I got to go take a shower and get into bed.
I got another great day tomorrow aboard USS "Nimitz.
" Bye.
Bye.
Good-bye.
Almost 3 years I've been in the Navy.
I've seen a lot of relationships go down.
I just don't want it to be the case this time because I have a little girl on the way.
It must feel like, it's just like, all right, I'm gone and she's there doing all this on her own and she just I don't know just doesn't include me if anything's going on.
Oh, man.
I just turned 21.
Hey, guys.
How you doing? I heard a nasty rumor there is no cods tomorrow.
That may or may not be.
I can find out for you right now if you want me to.
I know we're putting in an ato request to get me off the ship tomorrow.
And I just found out kind of through some roundabout circles that it's not happening.
And if it's not, then I have to kind of Hold on one second.
.
Figure it out.
Let me find out.
Yes, sir, I've got a lieutenant inside the office.
He wants to find out, we got cods running tomorrow, sir? Negative.
There's none.
If you get your paperwork signed, and go see your ops, the ops-o Yeah.
And he approves it, you can get out today.
I got to go.
I'll keep working on it.
What's your last name, sir? Booher.
I can't tell my wife one thing and then let her down again.
I just feel like I'm not keeping my word.
So every time I tell her that I'm gonna be home, and then, you know, every hour that I'm not there from the day that, or, you know, the minute that I tell her I'm gonna be there is just brutal at this point.
She's been doing this on her own for 12 months.
Hey, Bung, there's no flight on the 17th.
There is no cods.
The cods are on no fly day.
And I had them double check, all right.
I'll check.
If it is, then it's either 2 hours from now is my last shot, or I don't leave until next Tuesday.
Yeah, all right, let me find out.
According to, if you call the How about chief Jensen or senior chief Yeah, everybody wants to go home.
It's not that I hate this.
It's just that I'm ready to go.
That's what I've been prepaired to do, is go home.
I've been counting down the days.
That's where I'm at right now.
This may be my last flight ever in this aircraft.
And that's a big deal to anybody.
I think if you ask anybody, whether they're 40 or whether they're 25, it's never easy to say good-bye to something fantastic.
I think everybody's last flight, especially in the best jet that the Navy has, is tough.
On the link? Affirmative.
That was the approximate position of where we saw the object float.
The ops guy.
One of the helicopters has found a small khaki-colored object in the water.
We know that that's what the guy was wearing.
So they've come back around to try and relocate this.
It's a small object.
You know, may or may not be him.
So we're hoping for the best.
Sir, coordinator, rudders, 6-2, it's just a piece of orange plastic, man-size, but no Joey.
I got on and checked my e-mail, right? Tanya finally writes me for the first time in a week, OK? So I'm all happy about that.
I call her again on the phone the other night to ask her why she hadn't been writing me.
And I said, you know, "what's the deal when I get back? Are you gonna move in with me?" You know? And she said, yeah.
So, yeah, it's pretty much a go, then.
Yeah.
They still haven't found the Princeton guy.
Oh, 72 hours.
Yeah.
That's crazy, man.
I mean, you don't expect for that you know, you always know in the back of your mind that Could happen, but it's unfortunate, dude.
When I got back, the skipper told me that I was good to go home.
Despite the ride that it's been and as desperately as I want to get home right now, I know I'm gonna miss this.
It's never easy to say good-bye.
I know for me, I set my sights as high as I could go and I was lucky and fortunate enough to end up here, so saying good-bye to it is tough.
Am I gonna miss the guys? Yeah.
Unfortunately, I'm not gonna be able to call them, you know, every night and say, "hey, let's have dinner.
" I just can't do that anymore.
Yeah, I'm gonna miss it.
But I think one look at my wife and kid, I'll be all right.
Almost home.
I don't think I'll take a deep breath until I get off this thing, though.
It's gonna be a while.
They're unloading.
The reason why it's taking so long is they're loading 4 Jacks right now.
You'll see when you get in that bird.
They loading this bird down right now.
They're loading 4 aircraft Jacks on the cod with us and the bags.
There's room for that? Plus all your boxes, plus all their luggage.
Ha ha! The only time I've ever taken off or landed on an aircraft carrier, I was the guy flying.
So I'm sure these guys.
Good buddies and all.
I'm sure they're great.
It's just one of these pilot control things where you just like, if you're gonna do something like that, you want to be doing it.
The admiral suspended the search today, and that's been the big deal.
We went easily a hundred hours, heavily searching.
I think, I'm just adding up the figures here.
I'm well over 4,000 square miles of search.
You know, it's a lot of water, and, you know, we tried, we tried our absolute best.
Princeton is still continuing to look for their sailor, but she's headed back up north, 'cause she has to rejoin the carrier here tonight to continue to be our escort.
At least they got to spend some time looking for their guy.
You know, best cruise in the world is when you bring every single person home.
But the reality is that people do die.
Oh, my God.
She wrote me.
Oh.
Did you get anything? Yeah, she's pissed.
Basically, I wrote her, really pissed off the other day, that it had been like 51/2, 6 days since she wrote me again.
Yeah, I should probably at least write her back.
She probably won't check it for a week but Can't say how I'll feel tomorrow 'cause I've been known to fall apart and I'll look for words that I could borrow but that don't seem to change the way we are all I got is time time for livin' all I got is time time with you everything I know is in my heart I'm just kind of worried, you know.
I don't know if you I don't know what you're thinking.
I don't know what's going on.
It makes me crazy when you do this it burns like fire in my veins now, how could someone be so careless? It reminds me of myself once again all I got is time time for Vin' and all I got is time time to give you everything I know is in my heart Subs rip, edit, and resnyc by © VJ Me 2010
Thank you.
Uh-huh it's a long road to paradise and, oh, I feel the pain oh oh oh they tell me things are different now but I still hurt the same Haze gray and underway a world away from you and miles and miles of blue Subs rip, edit, and resnyc by © VJ Me 2010 The hardest part about being in the Gulf is keeping the troops motivated and keeping everybody going despite the horrible atmospheric conditions.
Too many moments continually out here same old relationship oh, no.
No? No.
After the first few weeks, the Gulf starts to become monotonous, where every day looks like the day before.
The same stuff over and over again.
It's like groundhog day.
It's the same day every single day.
Seven days a week.
Every day, it's the same thing.
Work, sleep, work, sleep.
I don't even know what day it is.
I think today is Monday.
At least that's what they tell me.
I'm not sure.
An action replay identical twins photocopy, once again ancient history yes, yes, USA repeated like grains of desert sand, monotony Our mission out here? I don't even know.
When it comes to the mission, I think everybody has the same idea, that we're here for a reason and it's for a very, very good reason.
It's my job.
I just be here and follow orders.
And fly across the boundaries of your heart monotony can't you see it's killing you it's killing me? I wouldn't mind dropping some bombs.
I know that sounds kind of sick and demonic, but I've trained for five years to do it.
It's kind of what I want to do.
It is like the big game, and you're on the sideline.
Monotony monotony, yeah monotony monotony monotony oh, yeah it's like a merry-go-round monotony On the deployment, you go from seconds of pure adrenaline to sheer boredom.
You don't know what to do with yourself, and I think a lot of people on the boat on the deployment Start to feel that.
Slippin', slip away in space My name is lieutenant Booher.
I'm a pilot in the Black Aces.
Drifting a smile upon his face I was 24 when I started flying.
There's no turning back what's done is done he's heading for the bright and shining sun My brother was a race car driver, and he was Florida state champion, and he was really great at what he did.
And I saw that he got a lot of attention, especially girls, so I decided that the only way I could go faster than him was to become a pilot.
And so I run I run to the bright and shining sun It looked like a lot of fun.
What couldn't be fun about raging around? There's a lot of incredible adrenaline, flying down low at 500 knots, constantly pushing your self every day, putting yourself in a new challenge every day.
Everybody leaves the squadron after 3 years, and I found out today that I'm leaving in 6 days.
I'm heading home.
After a long, long journey, it's time to go home.
And so I run I run to the bright and shining sun When I got married and especially when my wife gave birth to our child, it changed me.
It certainly did.
I think it allowed my opinions to be much more flexible I think I learned how to think more than I ever had in my life.
I may have found something in me that made me question what we're doing here.
Are we doing the right thing or are we doing the wrong thing? So that's a personal struggle that I think anybody that does this, anybody that's over here and pulling the trigger, has to ask themselves that question at some point.
And I think, sure, there are other ways to go about fighting this war.
I think we are fighting a war that may be more futile than we recognize.
It was my natural, you know, paternal, you know, protection of my family that made me start thinking about these things.
So, yeah, my wife did change me quite a bit.
And so I run I run to the bright and shining sun Hello.
Hey, kiddo.
Hey, hey, hey.
So, uh, first thing We were just talking about you.
Oh, really? Well, first thing, I've got a piece of news I think you'd like.
1:00 at Meridian airport on the 21st.
I think I'm gonna try and stay up, like, the entire day and night before so I can just sleep through that entire flight.
I'm sure I'll be tired when I get back to the States anyway.
Well, don't, don't get home too exhausted.
I'm aware of that.
I'll save a little strength.
Ha ha! Hopefully they'll edit that.
Can you believe we're doing this? I'm in a surreal state.
It's funny.
As badly as I want to get home, you don't realize how much you're going to miss this.
Well, I was wondering, you know, if that had sunk in yet.
You know, it won't sink in until, you know, I get home because right now, I mean, it's not my concern.
My concern is getting home.
And you know what? In 2 weeks, I may miss it, but I got you and Ciera to remind me of what's important, and that's it.
I've got a little poem here from E.
E.
Cummings.
You ready? Sure.
We are so both and oneful night cannot be so sky sky cannot be so sunful I am through you so I get home.
Ha ha! Well-said, well-said I'm airman Christopher Altice.
I'm from Manassas, Virginia.
I'm 21 years old.
I'm almost 3 years into the Navy.
Not married, but I got a baby on the way.
What's going on one? Huh? He's doing to launch.
Just prepping it? Yeah.
Just taking all theOff.
All right.
Then we'll be done.
I don't have the slightest idea how things are even gonna work when I get back.
It's definitely gonna be a big change.
My girlfriend, her name's Tanya.
She's really sweet, and she's very cute.
I had a great time being with her.
She always did things for me.
And we're fine, but since I've been gone, there are some big problems.
I was bummed earlier, dude.
I don't know if you saw.
I wasn't talking to no one, dude.
I was so frustrated this morning.
She hadn't e-mailed me again in, like, 6 days.
It's crazy.
I've gotten 2 e-mails from her this month, man.
Look what we're doing.
I've got time to e-mail.
She got a computer at home? Yeah.
She's got, like, 3 of them.
Wireless Internet.
Matter of fact, she can pick up her laptop and go up to the couch, sit down, being pregnant and all.
And You should get at least one e-mail a day.
That's the minimum.
Her best friend even e-mailed me a baby name they thought was cute, not Tanya.
Her friend.
And then her friend also sent me pictures of Tanya, not Tanya.
So I'm sitting up here on deck this morning.
She hasn't wrote me.
I'm pissed off, and then it's just all that worry running through my head, you know, every possible scenario.
The bad thing is, dude, I'm sick of asking her.
It seems like I'm begging, begging for her to e-mail me.
We had to make a line-up change.
We just ran into probably about a 4-day stint where everything was just bad, everything was going wrong.
I think having the marines on the ship, it's good.
They're cool.
But their jets are old and busted.
They go down all the time.
This jet goes down, this jet goes down.
Time's up on those jets.
Those things are old.
Hey, Gerber, try to get a hold of base.
I got a barger up here on 310 and a high leak on 53 left, says it's leaking out of every weephole that he has on the damn door.
So, when it drops down to the hangar bay, he needs to find out where that leak is.
My name is Randy Brock.
I'm a staff sergeant in the Marine Corps.
I joined this squadron in 2000.
I've been here for five years.
This is my third deployment with this squadron.
I don't know if 4 is going to make it out.
So we're probably going to have to start up 307 and have it launch out before we came out on this deployment, we had no clue.
I think there was eight people when we started off with that had any type of boat experience.
The Navy guys, they think we suck.
How come we can't fix your jets? How come your stuff is always broken? Ok, guess what.
We're still the new guys.
We are still learning.
This is still our first cruise.
Every squadron goes through a hard time.
Every shop goes through a difficult time.
Ridiculous.
Yeah.
The CAG is very upset because this thing's been leaking for the last 2 or 3 weeks.
Ok, give me a damn clean fuel control, and a strut, and then I can work on the damn thing.
You know as well as I do You know, everybody has their problems.
Yeah, we're new.
And the last thing I want is to freaking lose a pilot.
But there are some pilots who think that they know my job better than I know my job.
I've got some pretty big questions for corporal Molinado, so Those questions you can pose to me, sir.
Well, my question is, why did he sign off the math? Because if I get Where's my water bottle at? Tell me what's wrong with my water bottle sir.
The cap leaks.
Cap leaks? Can you tell that by physically looking at it right here? No, you can't.
It's the same thing that would happen with the ATS duct.
All the fingers were on the ATS duct.
The only reason why they fell off is because freakin' Willows went up there to look at it, and he noticed something was loose.
He pulled it The squadron is a symbol of who I am.
Molinado! And when people bad mouth my squadron, I get pissed.
How come you put something on there that now, once we shut everything off and you see all the stuff that's wrong with it? I'm not saying that you don't know your job.
But the fact of the matter is, is now we have eyes pointed on you and eyes pointed on me and eyes pointed on the division, which I know you don't like and I sure as hell don't like The guys that I work with, the guys who work for me, this is my family and I'm the dad.
I'm the daddy.
Take your medicine.
Take it like a man.
Let's move on.
If this ever happens again, it's not going to be pleasant.
It's not going to be pleasant for me, and if it's not going to be pleasant for me, I'm gonna make it terrible for you or for whoever else who does it.
And since I joined the Marine Corps, me and my family back at home have been sort of distant.
Just certain things come up.
I was left at a carnival.
I know that sounds pretty funny, but I was left at a carnival when I was three.
It's called the Pride of Texas shows Just a carnival that traveled from Texas to Oklahoma.
That's all they did.
My biological parents were carnies that worked on the show and they took off and took my sister with them and left me there with a guy that I call Uncle Ed Ed Burlingame.
You know how last time you went up, and it sort of See how it pokes out? See how it sort of goes out, like that? Round it up next time.
When you ask about my biological parents and if I knew them or remembered them, Anna and Larry.
That's pretty much all I remember.
I know my mom was short and my dad was 6'2", 6'3".
But other than that, I sort of want to forget everything else.
We have our small boat here off the stern of the ship that's going to take on some of our personnel to go over to a ship that's in distress that's taking on water.
So we have a pump, and we also have the personnel to go over there and provide that assistance in order to keep that ship afloat.
It looks to me like it's getting lower.
Might be underneath towards the keel.
Rising what is the status of the water level right now? Is it rising, holding, or falling? The water is steadily rising.
Freeboard on the starboard side.
My obvious concern is getting our people off there before it sinks like a stone and getting them off there, too.
You know, we can put them up overnight, which is probably preferable than trying to fly them off up north in the dark.
6-1-4 is inbound with two pumps.
Once he lands, we're going to run them to the fantail.
Roger.
Once they arrive on station, I'll call the rib in.
Copy.
Please make sure they understand the most important thing they're doing is getting the pumps off the helo and to expedite.
The dhow is about to sink, and we need to get the pumps off the helicopter and over to the elevator in motion.
Yes, sir.
We're getting everything out as quickly as we can, sir.
Expedite.
Expedite.
If you have anyone involved in this rescue and assistance operation, please get them moving and get them moving quickly.
Mini, you're just absolutely killing me with this elevator.
I tell you what, his rail, his starboard side rail is under the water on the rolls.
He's low.
Yeah, we might have both pumps pumping, but I'm not convinced they're making progress.
Let's call the dhow and get the Iraqis to abandon their boat.
Aye.
Let first know that we are abandoning and we are going to be bringing them back.
He's saying he wants money for his sunk ship.
I don't know anything about that.
I am just trying to take care of you while you are on-board here.
Sorry.
Arms up.
Are we allowing lighters chief? He's got a lighter.
Am I allowed to let him have it or A lighter? Yeah.
Yeah.
Stand by for words from your training officer.
Good evening, "Nimitz" and airwing 11.
I'm sure you heard the commotion this morning with the Iraqi boat.
He was just having all kinds of trouble.
We sent a rescue and assistance team over there, and they worked at it all afternoon, but unfortunately the leaks were too bad for the pumps to overcome, and the damn thing just sunk.
But it wasn't because of the lack of effort.
All our guys did just a heck of a job.
I guess the good news part of the story is we went over there and we rescued 7 Iraqi nationals that were on-board the boat, and we have them on-board now.
And we will host them in fine hotel "Nimitz" fashion, and probably tomorrow we will fly them back off and take them home to Iraq.
Well, it's been, how many days, 36? 36 days out to sea.
36 days.
Now I'm in Bahrain In the pool.
Yeah, soaking up the wonderful Bahrain sun.
Well, Bahrain's not the happening spot, but it's nice, I guess.
It's changed a lot in the last 10 years.
It's become a lot more conservative than it used to be, Muslim conservative.
You can really only go out during the daytime.
There are some curfews, when we have to be back in our hotels and places that we can and cannot go, things that are easy targets for, you know, you could set off an explosive.
It's like, before you pull into port, they try to scare your pants off so you don't want to go anywhere.
They told us, "you guys are not allowed to go off base probably unless you go to the mall.
Everything else is restricted.
Hotels, restaurants, cafes," this and that.
"But you can go if you go on a tour, and if you already have a hotel room, but everything else is restricted.
When I go on liberty, I love to experience the different people and the culture and the history.
I love it.
I mean, I think it's the greatest thing to join the Navy and see the world.
I honestly do.
Prince Ali, fabulous he, Ali Ababwa But Bahrain is kind of like, there's not a lot here.
Finally, I can find one thing in Bahrain that likes Americans.
Bahrain is a small island.
280 square miles and made of 33 islands.
Today we're gonna drive through a few islands.
The population, 720,000.
The king is the head of the nation, king Hamad.
Today we gonna see his palace Smallest kingdom in the world.
London bigger than here, New York bigger than here.
Bahrain a little bigger than Singapore.
I'm thirsty.
How many waters have we got left, 4? Uh, three.
No, in my bag.
Three.
We got You slugged 2 of them down? Yeah.
I was dehydrated.
We see the view of the tree of life all the way there.
Archeologists have discovered evidence of life around here.
So they believe this is maybe what is left from Garden of Eden.
The middle of Garden of Eden, the tree of life.
Anybody find any evidence of life yet? Look, there are some plastic bottles over here.
Oh, wow! Another sign of Somebody's underwear.
Adam or Eve's? Well, whoever used to live here was smart and got the hell out of here, that's why they're not here anymore.
You know what that phrase means? Prayer is better than sleep, prayer is better than sleep.
It will get the lazy bones out of bed, you know? It's very early, and it's very challenging, so we have to get an extra push.
We are all children of Adam.
That's what Islam teaches, that all mankind is one family, one brotherhood.
We are all descended from Adam and Eve.
They are our parents.
So if you have the same parents, what is our relationship? We are brothers and sisters.
So as far as God is concerned, it doesn't matter what's your color or nationality or whatever differences that you may have here in this world.
Everybody is equal, so we don't distinguish people because of their color or race or status in society.
Look out at the Two rocket ships.
You know what I haven't heard The call to prayer go out No, I haven't either.
That's the Indian call.
Oh, sorry.
I got my languages mixed up.
Well, we'd like to get a few good meals.
We could catch up on some sleep, lots of sleep.
We go down by the pool.
Just kind of hang out, I guess you'd say.
Being very low profile is what we really want to be.
We haven't left the hotel since we got here.
This is my family.
And, you know, I have a family and I'm extremely eager to live that side of my life.
I've got a wife and a kid, and that's really all I want to do.
What? Yeah, I'm gonna miss It's gonna be probably a very difficult time getting used to not having 40 of your best friends living with you at all times.
I'm gonna miss every single one of these guys.
It seems like it would be fun to be an officer.
I've seen you guys party like in Guam and stuff.
Like, I know this really like older officer girl.
She was like freak dancing! I was like, she had to be at least like 40, you know.
Like, how can you do that at your age, you know? So you feel, like, the same way as us? You do your job, you go to sleep, do your job again? We're flying 5-1/2-, 6-hour flights.
We're sitting in a hard chair.
You know, imagine sitting in that chair for six hours and you can't move.
It's only a little bit more comfortable than that because there's a little padding.
That's about the only reason.
You know, it's things like that actually, they wear on you.
That's when you're not dropping bombs? We haven't been, actually.
We haven't dropped a single one.
Not since you left Not at all.
I heard they were dropping lots of bombs.
6? Uh, decimal what? Ok, I'm gonna read them back 2-8-4-6 decimal 5-5-0-0-2-2-9-4-9 decimal 5-5-0-1-1-5-0-0-6 decimal 5-5.
All right, Rog.
Thanks.
And you want me to stay out of the box, I assume? Ok.
Come right to 2.
Go to 3-0-0.
Continue right.
Stay on course 3-0-0 degrees.
Continue right.
Stay on course 3-0-0 degrees.
Aye, sir.
This morning on the "Princeton," they found out that somebody was missing, so they looked around the ship, tried to see if they could find him.
They asked a lot of questions, when was the last time somebody saw him? The last time somebody saw him was about 1900 yesterday.
So what they're doing now is they're kind of backtracking, where were we the last, since 1900 last night? 6-3.
Got it.
Cooper, 6-3.
Start coordinator.
Request you search southwest corner of your search area 2-8-1-5 north, 0-5-0-0-0 East.
Request search road to the East, over.
603.
What we'll be doing now, one more north-south pass, and we'll RTB for a hot pump.
And then we'll be back.
Well, let's concentrate the next couple of hours on this area right here.
Then we're gonna take the box, we're gonna split it up, and we're gonna start an expanding square here, and we'll just have the p3 just go over the top.
Because I think he's in this southern half somewhere.
I think he's in the Southern half, too.
We've taken the box It's a 16-by-21 mile area that we figured out that this guy's in, broken it down into sections, and so we give an aircraft a section.
We use latitude and longitude.
So we have one helicopter moving north to South in the Southern half of the box.
We have another helicopter in the northern half of the box by itself.
And over the top of them, we have a p-3 going back and fourth East to West.
So when that all changes, we are gonna turn everybody around and they're gonna search the same box, but they're gonna be searching from a different angle.
You always want to go over that same thing at least 2 to 3 times, because it's amazing how things look differently in the water when you're looking which way the waves are coming and the wind and the white caps and everything.
You look at it from a different angle and you actually see things in the water.
I can't really describe it.
It's just a terrible feeling for me as a Captain to know that one of my sailors is missing.
The first I knew was, I got woken up by a phone call from the xo at about 5:15, and he said that the sailor was missing and had been missing, actually, hadn't shown up for watch at about 2:00.
We called about him with the commander and started our search and rescue both on the ship and the rest of the strike group.
Seaman Macrum is a boatswain's mate.
He's one of the guys who used the announcing system.
He's, like, one of the voices of the ship.
We've had sailors looking for him all day, 12 hours.
Never left, didn't make a head call, didn't get a drink of water.
I mean, they just wanted to find their shipmate.
And we all feel like that.
I've been on-board for a while, and we never had a man overboard, so I never really had to think about it.
But I always thought, wow, if somebody falls over, yeah, they'll find us, you know? A helo will come pick us up in like an hour, you know? They'll see us go over or something like that.
I never thought I would just disappear.
It's kind of shocking, but I wish I could figure out what happened, because knowing Bobby, it's like, he's a very careful person, not somebody that I would imagine would have had an accident like this.
It's our culture that when something goes wrong, we want to work at it to fix it.
And we will look as long as we have to find our shipmate.
The last friend that I lost in the Marine Corps was my buddy, John Maloney, in Ramadi.
But 4 or 5 personal friends of mine have been killed over here in the last year.
He was the closest.
When you know guys are dying on the ground, you don't even need to know them.
It just still hurts the same, especially when you are up there and you've got all of this firepower at your disposal and a random, you know, improvised explosive goes off, kills somebody with you overhead.
You're like, "what could I have done to prevent that?" And there's nothing you can do.
There's nothing you can do to stop that if it's already gone off.
I don't know.
That part's pretty frustrating.
Everybody know what happened to 301 last night? Ok, the fact is, they said that there was no safety wire on the cannon plug whatsoever.
Do I believe that? No.
Can it fall off? Yes.
We all know it does, and it happens.
It happened once on the 38th day, and it happened again last night.
If you've got to double safety wire the damn thing, I don't care how we do it.
We're gonna find a way to fix that damn part.
You understand? I will not have something happen to my guys on the ship.
I can't live with myself if something happens to someone.
They're a part of me.
Turn it up.
Uh-oh! Here we go, here we go.
The guys that work for me, we go through a lot of stuff together.
A lot of crap, but a lot of going out, having some good times.
I mean, we're close.
He's break dancing now.
He's break dancing now.
I would hate to see where I would be if I didn't join the Marine Corps.
Don't know where I would be, don't know what I would be doing.
Get a drink of water, take off your boots and get on the mat.
I joined the Marine Corps for a reason Because I had no place to go.
So what you're gonna do is you're gonna be in your basic warrior stance just like this.
My biological parents were drug addicts, alcoholics.
The things that my sister and I have gone through the abuse, the things said, the things done I wouldn't wish upon anybody.
Then like this.
Now what? Now what? I've never, ever let my temper go all out.
I fight hard not to let it happen.
In High School and junior high, I got into fights all the time.
I lost my temper.
I'm not an angry person, but there is so much anger at the stuff that my parents pulled.
If I ever see those guys again, I will kick the Out of them and kill them.
It's really not that big of a deal.
He would still be out there to find him.
If this guy's kicking and swimming, you know, his drift and the distance that he could move based on your computations means that if he's still floating, we should be flying over him.
I don't know if this guy can tread water for 12 hours or not.
I mean, this water's that' out there is pretty salty, it's dense, and it's easier for you to tread water.
Plus it's over 66 degrees, so there are sharks out there and Yeah Jellyfish.
Essentially, this is the worst-case scenario to have to swim in the water.
It's a guy without flotation, without any kind of a signal device.
Can this guy survive 20 jellyfish stings and still be able to tread water? Or is some shark nibbling at his toes? We're hoping for the best, that this guy wants to live, that he's gonna fight for his life, and we're gonna do our best to make sure we're covering this area so that if he's in it, if he's in the box that we've established, then we're gonna find him.
It's hard to believe after a long, long journey, it's time to go home.
I was actually on my way out the door.
I was supposed to leave on March 1st.
My three years were done, and I had my orders.
Andy, I'm gonna leave you my stash of cereal.
Yeah, buddy.
Take care of it.
My wife and kid have moved to Mississippi.
On February 27th, we kind of had a party, and everybody said good-bye, and the skipper that night asked me to stick around.
So here I am six months later.
Getting ready to go home, so I'm still, I'm once again one day away from leaving.
Hopefully, this time there's no extension involved.
One thing I've learned on this job is, you have very little control at any time.
So we'll see what happens.
I had the silver ones.
You remember this one.
Oh, this is the wedding.
Yeah, that's the wedding.
I met my wife salsa dancing.
She was dating somebody at the time.
I was just a friend.
Really didn't go out at all.
We just danced.
This one here No, here's this one.
They broke up.
I stepped in there.
I'm like, hey, you want to go out? This is a fold-out.
And to tell you the truth, I think she's probably I think it's this one.
The four years from meeting my wife until now, I mean, it's been great.
And I got my sonogram.
My wife and I are expecting our first kid A little boy.
Well, he don't look like daddy yet because he ain't had his nose busted open to the side.
For me, I'm a little scared.
Am I gonna be a good dad? Am I gonna hold him right? Is he gonna love me? Am I gonna love him? You know, I mean, given the stuff that I've been through, my biggest fear is turning into the person that I came from.
6-1-3.
Ok, we're Admiral's at desron.
What's the latest? Ok, we have, initially we went through, we had an initial search pattern for our helos.
Worked it up, yeah, like I briefed this morning.
Currently, at this time, have an Australian p-3.
We have a US p-3.
We have a battle cat from Princeton, and we also have our 613.
What are the pilots telling you about the ability to pick out things on the surface with these water conditions? Yes, sir, the winds have come down slightly, which has been favorable.
They are definitely able to see in through the white caps and pick things up.
So we've had a pretty good chance to see things this morning.
Well, my intention is just You know, I've talked to the Captain about it Is to stay with this tonight while we have the illumination and just stay with it again tomorrow.
And maybe the next day, you know? I'm hoping 10 minutes from now, this will be o-b-e, and we won't have to do this anymore, because we will have found our guy and found him alive.
Yes, sir.
But in the meantime, I just want you to know, I feel like we're in this for the long haul.
So thanks for the work of your guys Yes, sir.
This is important.
Hello.
Hey.
Hello? Hello? Hi.
What are you doing? Hello? Can you hear me? I think I can hear you.
Are you sure? Yes.
Uh-oh.
What? Nothing.
Have you checked your e-mail lately? No.
You haven't? Why? I don't know.
I was just wondering.
Well, notNot I was just wondering.
Not since the last time I checked it.
When was that, like a week ago? No.
I got that one.
Did you write me back? No.
Well I don't know.
Maybe I did.
I don't remember.
You don't remember if you wrote me back? Well I got to know something.
Do you plan on moving in with me when I get back, honestly? Yes.
You want to? Yeah.
You don't seem Why? You don't want me to anymore? No, I want you to.
That's what I want to know.
But I have trouble believing you sometimes because you never write.
Even if you sent me an e-mail that just said, "I miss you," or "I miss the hell out of you," or whatever it is, and that's it.
Nothing else.
I'd be happy, I guess.
I think that's boring.
Well, not writing me at all is really boring for me.
It's boring? You know I worry enough already.
All right, baby.
I'm gonna go.
'Cause like I said, it's hotter than hell, and I'm sweating my ass off standing here.
Besides it's probably Ok.
It's going on 2 A.
M.
here.
I got to go take a shower and get into bed.
I got another great day tomorrow aboard USS "Nimitz.
" Bye.
Bye.
Good-bye.
Almost 3 years I've been in the Navy.
I've seen a lot of relationships go down.
I just don't want it to be the case this time because I have a little girl on the way.
It must feel like, it's just like, all right, I'm gone and she's there doing all this on her own and she just I don't know just doesn't include me if anything's going on.
Oh, man.
I just turned 21.
Hey, guys.
How you doing? I heard a nasty rumor there is no cods tomorrow.
That may or may not be.
I can find out for you right now if you want me to.
I know we're putting in an ato request to get me off the ship tomorrow.
And I just found out kind of through some roundabout circles that it's not happening.
And if it's not, then I have to kind of Hold on one second.
.
Figure it out.
Let me find out.
Yes, sir, I've got a lieutenant inside the office.
He wants to find out, we got cods running tomorrow, sir? Negative.
There's none.
If you get your paperwork signed, and go see your ops, the ops-o Yeah.
And he approves it, you can get out today.
I got to go.
I'll keep working on it.
What's your last name, sir? Booher.
I can't tell my wife one thing and then let her down again.
I just feel like I'm not keeping my word.
So every time I tell her that I'm gonna be home, and then, you know, every hour that I'm not there from the day that, or, you know, the minute that I tell her I'm gonna be there is just brutal at this point.
She's been doing this on her own for 12 months.
Hey, Bung, there's no flight on the 17th.
There is no cods.
The cods are on no fly day.
And I had them double check, all right.
I'll check.
If it is, then it's either 2 hours from now is my last shot, or I don't leave until next Tuesday.
Yeah, all right, let me find out.
According to, if you call the How about chief Jensen or senior chief Yeah, everybody wants to go home.
It's not that I hate this.
It's just that I'm ready to go.
That's what I've been prepaired to do, is go home.
I've been counting down the days.
That's where I'm at right now.
This may be my last flight ever in this aircraft.
And that's a big deal to anybody.
I think if you ask anybody, whether they're 40 or whether they're 25, it's never easy to say good-bye to something fantastic.
I think everybody's last flight, especially in the best jet that the Navy has, is tough.
On the link? Affirmative.
That was the approximate position of where we saw the object float.
The ops guy.
One of the helicopters has found a small khaki-colored object in the water.
We know that that's what the guy was wearing.
So they've come back around to try and relocate this.
It's a small object.
You know, may or may not be him.
So we're hoping for the best.
Sir, coordinator, rudders, 6-2, it's just a piece of orange plastic, man-size, but no Joey.
I got on and checked my e-mail, right? Tanya finally writes me for the first time in a week, OK? So I'm all happy about that.
I call her again on the phone the other night to ask her why she hadn't been writing me.
And I said, you know, "what's the deal when I get back? Are you gonna move in with me?" You know? And she said, yeah.
So, yeah, it's pretty much a go, then.
Yeah.
They still haven't found the Princeton guy.
Oh, 72 hours.
Yeah.
That's crazy, man.
I mean, you don't expect for that you know, you always know in the back of your mind that Could happen, but it's unfortunate, dude.
When I got back, the skipper told me that I was good to go home.
Despite the ride that it's been and as desperately as I want to get home right now, I know I'm gonna miss this.
It's never easy to say good-bye.
I know for me, I set my sights as high as I could go and I was lucky and fortunate enough to end up here, so saying good-bye to it is tough.
Am I gonna miss the guys? Yeah.
Unfortunately, I'm not gonna be able to call them, you know, every night and say, "hey, let's have dinner.
" I just can't do that anymore.
Yeah, I'm gonna miss it.
But I think one look at my wife and kid, I'll be all right.
Almost home.
I don't think I'll take a deep breath until I get off this thing, though.
It's gonna be a while.
They're unloading.
The reason why it's taking so long is they're loading 4 Jacks right now.
You'll see when you get in that bird.
They loading this bird down right now.
They're loading 4 aircraft Jacks on the cod with us and the bags.
There's room for that? Plus all your boxes, plus all their luggage.
Ha ha! The only time I've ever taken off or landed on an aircraft carrier, I was the guy flying.
So I'm sure these guys.
Good buddies and all.
I'm sure they're great.
It's just one of these pilot control things where you just like, if you're gonna do something like that, you want to be doing it.
The admiral suspended the search today, and that's been the big deal.
We went easily a hundred hours, heavily searching.
I think, I'm just adding up the figures here.
I'm well over 4,000 square miles of search.
You know, it's a lot of water, and, you know, we tried, we tried our absolute best.
Princeton is still continuing to look for their sailor, but she's headed back up north, 'cause she has to rejoin the carrier here tonight to continue to be our escort.
At least they got to spend some time looking for their guy.
You know, best cruise in the world is when you bring every single person home.
But the reality is that people do die.
Oh, my God.
She wrote me.
Oh.
Did you get anything? Yeah, she's pissed.
Basically, I wrote her, really pissed off the other day, that it had been like 51/2, 6 days since she wrote me again.
Yeah, I should probably at least write her back.
She probably won't check it for a week but Can't say how I'll feel tomorrow 'cause I've been known to fall apart and I'll look for words that I could borrow but that don't seem to change the way we are all I got is time time for livin' all I got is time time with you everything I know is in my heart I'm just kind of worried, you know.
I don't know if you I don't know what you're thinking.
I don't know what's going on.
It makes me crazy when you do this it burns like fire in my veins now, how could someone be so careless? It reminds me of myself once again all I got is time time for Vin' and all I got is time time to give you everything I know is in my heart Subs rip, edit, and resnyc by © VJ Me 2010