Some Heroes Are Only Known By Their Stories

Sixteen years ago the world nearly ended, but a single man stopped it all from happening.

No, I’m not exaggerating, this really did happen.

Nobody will know about it. Nobody but a handful of select people stationed there that day. They watched everything unfurl, helpless. Lost but for the hope of salvation from one person who stepped up and beat the odds. Unimaginable stuff that would shatter your own conceptions of what is real.

I can’t tell you much more than that, because it is classified. I daresay it always will remain so.

What I can tell you is that were it not for this person, the world itself wouldn’t exist as it does today. Life as we know it would have been irrevocably changed, if it even survived at all.

Trust me when I say this, six billion people and counting owe this man everything, and nobody will ever even know his name.

The truly crazy part, besides the fact that he stopped literal Armageddon, is that he very nearly wasn’t even there to save the day at all.

There was a moment in this man’s life that defined him, clarified his future as a member of the armed forces. His life was to that point, defiantly antagonistic towards authority, was one of unwillingness to change, a reluctance to grow up.

His ultimate fear in life? The deep.

The waters of the vast oceans that cover this world, even the relatively shallow waters of a public pool struck at his heart and filled him with terror.

Ironic, that.

A fear of water and yet it was water he chose to face down. For it was the Navy he joined.

Were it not for boot camp being but a week shorter than the Army, he would have joined them instead. And then all would’ve been lost.

To think that is how close we came to catastrophe. The sheer happenstance of life itself.

A few sentimental considerations was the difference between life ending and persevering, weighing the new found fear of boot camp against the lifetime of fear of water.

In the end it was water that he overcame. And boy did he.

You see, Naval boot camp involves a major event. One that tests the mettle of every would-be sailor that joins. Its called Battlestations. An event that includes a series of tests, physically demanding, mentally taxing. They work you to bone, for an entire day and night. Over twenty-four hours of no sleep. Test after test after test. And when its done, you don a cap that signifies you’ve finished boot camp. A hat that says “Sailor” on it. For that is what you’ve become. A sailor of the United States Navy.

Most of us cry like little babies at that point, as they play some patriotic music in the background and hand out each cap ceremoniously. The culmination of many weeks of hard work, knowing its all over and you can finally relax. A little bit anyways. we knew nothing then. Nothing but what boot camp had drilled in us.

Anyhow, one such Battlestations test required you to dive into an Olympic size pool, wearing lead-tipped boots and dungarees. You jump in, doff the boots and then swim to a life raft some twenty or thirty feet away.

But weeks before that even happens, you have to jump in this same pool and swim clear across it!

An Olympic sized pool mind you, not your average public pool that people easily swim laps in.

The depth is well beyond anything he’d previously had to jump into.

His entire life he’d never dared jump into anything deeper than several feet. He was terrified that doing so would result in him never coming back up.

This man was so afraid of the deep water that he told his drill leader that he would probably need to be pushed in. I was there with him that day. We were brothers in arms, serving in the same division in boot camp. It was some six years before the events that led up to the near apocalypse you will never hear of.

He approached me, and others. Asking what it felt like to jump in water that deep, water that you didn’t immediately feel your feet touching the bottom. We tried to assure him it was as quick as blinking, that he had nothing to worry about. But his wide stare was all we needed to see to know he wasn’t assured in the slightest.

I could see him visibly shaking as he climbed the ladder up and up and up, all the way to the top of the high rise set overlooking one end of that massive pool. He walked straight to the drill leader and told him as I said before, that he was scared he might freeze up, and not actually take the plunge.

I was in the set of recruits that waited behind him, so I saw when the time came. He made the jump on his own. I saw the drill leader reaching out to push him but only finding air.

He did it! He jumped in of his own accord!

He told me later that he kept telling himself “fast as blinking, fast as blinking!”

He said as a child he’d nearly drowned and that that was his primary source of fear of the deep. But just as he was ordered to jump into the waters below, his heart racing, he thought of the millions upon millions of people who preceded him, diving and swimming. Whether for recreation or otherwise, how not a single one of them died simply by virtue of the water being deeper than a man was tall. That momentary realization compelled him, and he stepped forward.

I followed suit. Unfortunately, I soon saw that he had given up midway across the pool, he’d have to climb out and do it all over again!

It became clear that I was likely to do the same. That pool was so damn long! And people were swimming around and over each other, a few of us were experienced enough to make it across on that first attempt, but many of us did not. Merely touching the side of the pool meant you had to get out and go back and try again.

Those who failed a second time were sent to a smaller pool area where they taught doggy paddling and how to swim/float on your back, they were told that this was the easiest way to swim the long distance across. A couple people never were able to do it. The man in question however, he did successfully make it across on that second attempt.

Those that failed to do so washed out. That was it, they were gone within days. Back home. Sent packing. Bye-bye, thanks for playing.

Had he been unable to jump, he’d have been pushed, had that happened I can’t say with certainty how he’d have fared in the swim across. Nor could he, but he did say to me and the others that he was glad that in the end, he was able to jump without needing that push.

The circumstances that followed, those which lead to his being there with us all that day, saving everyone, they didn’t stop there. The obstacles didn’t either.

You see, I initially told you there was the Battlestations Event to contend with.

As a division, we began that long day and night together, and together we thrived! All the way til the end. Almost to the end.

The pool dive and swim portion of the night was about midway through the series of tests. It was a success! He dove once again and made it to the raft. We all cheered one another on, we were brothers by that time. We’d spent weeks together, toiling through the long hours of each day, getting stronger. Unifying in pursuit of success.

Then just before it was to end, at the penultimate event, an obstacle course began.

We were told to don gas masks and carry a 100 pound mannequin across the course, anyone seen touching their mask was immediately disqualified and would not graduate with the rest of the class.

And wouldn’t you know it? That man, that poor man, was royally screwed over.

Clear as day to me and everyone else present at the time, almost as if it were merely yesterday and not some twenty years ago, we watched the man as he flipped over a bar and landed neatly on his feet. He never once touched his mask.

But a drill leader accused him of it, and after a series of protests by the man and by us nearby, he was sent off to the side. They failed him. The only one in our entire division. His hat would remain a recruit’s hat for awhile longer. The sailor cap would have to wait.

Worst of all, despite having jumped into that pool multiple times already, he’d have to do it all again. The pool, the dive, the swim. The other events too. All of it. They told him it’d be in a week or two, they’d send him to try again with another division. With strangers he’d never met.

Worst of all, our graduation ceremony came before he could make that second attempt. He never touched his mask, but they said he did. And as a result he had to sit out the graduation.

Everyone’s family came to attend the ceremony.

We all dressed up in our finest uniforms, and under that hot summer sun, we walked. Well, mostly we stood at attention. Some of us even passed out because it was so damn hot out. I imagine that man, despite the heartache he must have been feeling, likely felt some relief at not having to be out under the immense sunlight. He was there, a ways away behind us. Watching a sailor here and a sailor there fall unconscious, as the captain of the base droned on and on about honor, courage and commitment. Then it finally ended. We were allowed to leave.

We met with our families and were given permission to leave the base and spend time with them. He wasn’t. He had to stay. Only graduates were allowed to go.

That was the policy. Barbaric isn’t it? Spending weeks and weeks grinding away through boot camp only to be lied to about a failure that never happened. We all agreed it never happened. He didn’t touch his god damn mask!

But they said he did, so he failed. So he was stuck on base. His family flew here for nothing. I can’t even begin to imagine the despair and embarrassment he must have felt.

So imagine my surprise when I ran into him outside the base, he was all smiles. He said our chief let him go. I couldn’t believe my ears, Chief said he could leave?

Apparently our chief had asked him what the problem was when he found him standing there alone, his family walking away towards the main gates. When he told our chief that he had to stay, our chief simply asked him “what are you still doing here?”

It took a few repeated times of being asked that, “what are you still doing here?” before the implications meant by it set in, Chief was telling him to go. He was able to leave! He was able to spend time with his family after all.

So in the end, there was that at least.

But that second test loomed large over him. He spoke of it often throughout the days that followed, and it was not until mere days before we were to fly to our respective new duty assignments, that he went through Battlestations once more.

And as if to say no freaking duh, he made it through that one flawlessly. Just as he’d done previously if were being real here, but this time he did so without being accused of touching his mask. He told me that he even looked directly at the same drill leader, at the same point as before, spreading his arms out defiantly as if to say “See? No mask!”

In the end he made it.

It could have gone totally wrong, it wasn’t uncommon for people to give up and request discharge after failing Battlestations. In fact, some recruits simply snuck away, going AWOL rather than face the humiliation of processing out.

Now that I think on it, I cannot be certain those who requested discharge were even granted it, they very well may have simply been sent back to do boot camp all over again!

Yes, even that was a thing.

A punishment for recruits that acted out. It was rare, but it did happen. And for most of us, that sounded like the stuff of nightmares.

Regardless, he made it. Had he not, none of us would likely be here. I certainly wouldn’t.

I never saw him again until the days leading up to the event, when circumstance led to us to being stationed together once again, during those final months in service.

I’d developed a severe case of asthma that treatments weren’t adequate to treat and was being processed out. The person who saved us also developed a handful of disabilities, owing to his time spent on a ship.

We were both being processed out, and it’s a slow process.

We waited and served in a limited duty capacity. In an office that oversaw all regional operations and affairs. Our boss was no longer the captain of a ship, no. Now we served the captain of the naval base itself. We reported to the command master chief. We broke bread with people that spoke to the senators and the governors and quite possibly the president himself!

In that capacity we were privy to a whole slew of things we’d otherwise never even deal with, and as a result, we were there to see him stop disaster in its tracks. It was incredible. I’d tell you more, but its classified.

Suffice to say he was in the right place at the right time.

A man who bucked authority and was terrified of water, joined the Navy. A man who suffered numerous setbacks throughout his career, achieved greatness in his field and became the go-to in his respective division aboard his ship. A man who became disabled to the point of barely being able to work a full day’s work, somehow saved everyone.

And I cannot even tell you who he is, or what he did.

But he’s a hero in my eyes. And I celebrate him every year and will do so for the rest of my life.