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I was stationed at Special Boat Unit (SBU) 24
at NAB Little Creek from 1983 till 1985. Our command was a
Naval Reserve Facility (NRF). We had about 60 active duty
personnel but we swelled to about 240 one weekend a month
with Reservists. I was there as an active duty sailor. My
first CO was LCDR(SEAL) Tom Truxell. I was trained as a
9533 NEC Electronics Technician on both Seafox and MK III
Patrol Boats (PB).
During the fall of 1983, we sent a DET of
Seafox and MK III PBs out on the USS Fort Snelling
(LSD-30). Our CO then was LCDR Ross Brooks. SBU-20 (our
sister boat unit) also sent a DET. The ship picked up US
Marines in Morehead City and not long afterwards, they were
diverted to Grenada for a short vacation (ha ha), and then
onto Beirut. My DET was the replacement crews for those
first guys, and we were prepped and ready to go.
Here’s my recollection of our deployment to
Beirut in January 1984. We flew out of NAS Norfolk in an
old C-118 USN Reserve prop plane. The crew chief wouldn’t
let the pilots take off until he saw a small stream of oil
blowing out of the engines. He said it showed that we had
oil pressure. Next stop was Bermuda. After we left there,
we flew at 10,000 feet (non-pressurized) all the way to the
Azores. We could see the faces of the crewmembers when we
would fly over a commercial ship. We landed late in the
Azores and they opened the chow hall to feed us. When we
took off later that night, we flew into the tail end of a
water spout that threw sailors all around the plane, and up
into the overhead. We thought it was cool, like riding a
roller coaster. That is until we landed later and the crew
chief told us how close we were to ditching the plane. He
said the pilot was a Vietnam Vet, and plenty smart. He kept
the plane from stalling and saved us from going down in the
ocean that night.
Our next stop was Sicily. As I recall, we
spent the night outside Palermo, and the Italians were the
craziest drivers I’d ever seen. This is where I first
tasted espresso and I still have the receipt from the
hotel. We spent most of that night, drinking and playing
with the bidet in our hotel room (dumb sailors). The next
day, we flew in a C-130 (jump seats) all the way to Cyprus.
I believe the city was Larnaca. After we de-planed, the
Cyprus Police kept us in one corner of the runway, under a
machine gun guard. The US Navy sailors stationed at that
runway had long hair and wore civilian clothes. They even
had civilian passports.
From Cyprus, we caught a CH-53 helo that flew
us out to a big amphib (don’t recall the ship). The CH-53
helo pilot was a full-blooded Cherokee Indian and wore a red
headband under his helmet. From the big amphib we loaded
onto a CH-46 that took us to the Fort Snelling. Once on
that ship, we stowed most of our gear in the CONEX box and
then it was over the side and down a Jacob’s ladder into the
waiting MK III PBs (I don’t remember the PB hull numbers,
but they may’ve been 775 and 777).
We headed into Juniyah, a little city just
north of Beirut, which was our home port in Lebanon. In
Juniyah, we were only allowed “Wall Liberty” which meant we
were able to peer over the wall (between the barbed wire) at
the locals. The women all had olive complexions and seemed
prettier than I would’ve thought. There was a beautiful
statute high on the mountain overlooking the city, but the
only thing I thought of was, it would’ve been a good place
for someone to shoot a mortar from. We had two options for
taking a bath. One was a spigot on the perimeter wall – all
cold water. The second was a bucket in the engine room of
the PB. At least that gave us hot water.
I remember the beer at that base as being
very strong, and there seemed to always be stuff floating
around in it. The other thing that stood out was the
delicious chocolate candy bars. Both items were locally
made and seemed to taste much better than I would’ve
thought.
We had one memorable patrol where we escorted
a US Marine landing craft from the beach, out to one of the
waiting LSTs. We heard there was an ambassador or someone
important on the landing craft, but we never heard who it
was. One of the crewmembers on my PB said they saw bullets
zipping over the water by our boat, but I didn’t see them.
I was too busy manning the 20MM on the port side sponson. I
don’t think we were scared, but we were aware of the gravity
of the situation. We were very well trained before we left
the US.
We didn’t patrol too many days before the big
brass determined we were to either head home, or head to the
Gulf. So we followed the Fort Snelling down the coast into
Haifa, Israel to on-load the PBs and await their decision.
The only thing wrong with that plan was the Israeli patrol
boats patrolling the Haifa harbor. They let the ship into
port, but wouldn’t let our PBs in. Even though we were
flying the US flag and clearly were Americans, they held us
at gunpoint for a few hours until someone at a higher level
cleared up the misunderstanding, and they let us in.
We spent a day or so in Haifa before the PBs
were loaded onto the ship, and then it was decided we would
head to Spain, and then home. Along our way across the MED,
we had to clean the PBs and the ship from top to bottom so
we could pass “de-snailing” in Rota (that may be an outdated
term nowadays). The morning after we cleaned the ship, we
awoke to find an inch of sand on the whole ship from a sand
storm off the North African coast. The QMs said we were
about 200 miles off the coast, so that sand had to blow a
long way. Anyway, we had to clean everything all over
again.
We spent a few days in Rota and then headed
home. Half way across the Atlantic, the ship lost steering
twice. Each time we ended up steaming in circles, waiting
for the crew to repair the problem. So all in all, that
entire deployment was fairly short. The guys we were
supposed to replace came back home with us, but they were
over there when the Marine Barracks was bombed, and when the
Fort Snelling ran into and sank a commercial ship that
refused to yield the right-of-way.The rumor was that the
commercial ship was on a suicide mission, but I don’t think
that was ever proven.
Some of the guys from the original crews that
I remember were: ET2 David Kotvis, EN2 Bob Davis, and ET1
James Rosekelly. Some of the guys in my DET were: QM2 Mike
Tuepker, BM1 John Dudzic, EN3 Paul Ewing, BM2 Scott Mercer,
and EN3 Mike Uyeda (killed later in Honduras along with a
Navy SEAL, while clearing waterways for the locals). There
were others (see the attached SBU-24 DET group photo) but I
can’t remember their names. I was on watch the morning that
photo was taken. Our OIC was a tough old SEAL Warrant
Officer named “Bos’n” Holland. My memory is not what it
once was so I hope others from that time will write in and
add to this. Thanks for letting me ramble.
v/r, ETC(CC) Bill Adkins, USNR-Ret |
