Screams Overboard

By Thomas Valentine

The night of the ferry boat accident, I heard screams in the dark and rough sea. Sailors were screaming for their lives, and I was the first medical responder on the aft platform that night. I witnessed the deaths of my friends and my shipmates. I had just talked to these guys earlier in the day only to perform CPR on them later that night. I continue to have nightmares about my friends, and I still see them in my dreams. I have what they call PTSD, and I have suffered with this over twenty years now. I didn't realize, but I was screaming mentally for help for years, and I didn't realize it. Screams Overboard is not just about a book of what I heard that night but also about my silent screams for help with PTSD that I didn't realize I had till later in life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: May 30, 2018
• ISBN: 9781642148053

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Screams Overboard

Thomas Valentine

Copyright © 2018 Thomas Valentine

All rights reserved

First Edition

Page Publishing, Inc

New York, NY

First originally published by Page Publishing, Inc 2018

ISBN 978-1-64214-804-6 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64214-805-3 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Thank You

I want to thank God, my family, extended family and friends for all their support. I want to thank all of my facebook family, my church family, my Osborn Knight’s family, my Fort Valley State family, my Shield’s and Starz’s families, and my neighbors. I want to especially thank the all the Veterans who signed their names on those dotted lines and put their right hands over their hearts willing to sacrifice their live’s for the country that they love. Thank you to all the sailors and Marines who I worked with side by side onboard the USS Saratoga and to all the crew members who assisted in the ferry boat accident rescue attempts of our fallen shipmates. Thank you to the USS Saratoga Medical department and in particular AL, Ray, O’Brian, Nathaniel, Anthony, John, Roger, Paul, Douglas. You guys were my closest friends and we had each other’s back to the end. Thank you cousin Charles for what you did for me in Jacksonville. Thank you to Douglas Marble for your guidance. Thank you to Dr. Julie for your help. Thank you to Trevor and the staff of Page publishing. I miss you lil Pee Wee.

Each one of us as humans has a story to tell. No matter where you go or what you do in life there is always room for you to inspire and strengthen that next person. This is my story and I’m telling it the only way I know how. I hope that somehow I have inspired that next person to deal with issues that may be buried deep inside their soul that need to be brought out, addressed and dealt with. I’m still dealing with my issues and I’m winning my personal battles. It’s all because I was inspired by a story from another and I found the strength to seek help.

To all the Hospital Corpsmen past and present, I want to say thank you for your services and I wish you Godspeed. From experience I know that our jobs can be very dangerous and we play or played a special role in the defense of our country. Again, I say thank you and I’m with you in spirit.

To everyone, shake a Veterans’s hand when you can because that simple gesture could mean the world to them. They may not have anyone or anything else in their lives to make them smile and/or to feel appreciated. Thank you everybody . . . .

In December of 1990, during the Desert Shield, Desert Storm War, a deadly accident occurred off the port of Haifa, Israel. Several Navy sailors stationed aboard the USS Saratoga lost their lives. I was the first corpsman on the scene. This is my story.

Introduction

Man down! Man down! We have mass casualties at the aft end of the hangar bay. Again, that’s mass casualties at the aft hangar bay. This is not a drill. This announcement was called in panic over the ship’s PA system, also known as the 1MC. I was a hospital corpsman stationed on an aircraft carrier the USS Saratoga out of Mayport, Florida. I was on the emergency medical rescue team the night of the deadly ferry boat accident in the port of Haifa, Israel on December 21 and 22 of 1990. Those screams I heard that night still haunt my dreams today. This is my story of how I met several sailors who became good friends and suddenly by a twist of fate how I watched them die within a matter of minutes.

I was a very vibrant and outgoing sailor who had a very promising career as a hospital corpsman. I was moving up in rank rather quickly, but because of one stormy and deadly December night, all that changed.

This is my story of how my PTSD started and how I’ve suffered with it for nearly twenty years. I’ve changed the names of the sailors to protect their legacies and privacies.

Chapter 1

After a very long and depressing day at the plant, I walked up to the time clock and put my code in to punch out then walked out of the building. I jumped in my car, put in a CD, and headed home.

I’d been having problems on my job with my boss for a while now, and today he made me really upset. I was at a point where punching him in the face would’ve made my day worth going to work. I knew a write-up lingered in my near future for yelling back at him during one of our daily morning meetings. I didn’t care because I was ready to quit anyway. The high stress was starting to become overwhelming.

I got home, and my wife and I ended up preparing dinner together. This is something that we did whenever the opportunity was available. Although still very upset with my boss, my anger was growing at him and starting to sit on my mind. It was becoming very difficult to hide that anger from my wife.

We sat down in the den, and while eating dinner, we watched a very lengthy but good movie. It was a war movie that involved many killings. I knew that I wasn’t supposed to be watching war movies because those types of movies caused me to revert to thoughts from the Desert Storm War I served in, and it would result in me having nightmares. We ended up watching it anyway.

As it got later in the evening, I started getting very sleepy. My eyes started getting heavy, and I felt myself starting to rub them, but I caught myself and stopped. I had a bad habit of rubbing them. Dinner was good, and I was able to make it to the end of the movie without falling asleep.

We got up from the couch and went into the kitchen to clean up and put the food away. Afterward, I went to shower then back into the den to kiss my wife good night. It was time for me to hit the sack. She stayed up a little longer to watch television.

The clock showed 11:15 PM as I lay down and got under the cover. I prayed that I wouldn’t have another nightmare, and I asked God for forgiveness of my thoughts about wishing bad things on my boss. I lay there a few minutes with that war movie on my mind and drifted off to sleep. I started dreaming again, and it turned out to be one of my many nightmares that I’d been having for years. Here’s my dream:

I screamed, Oh no, oh no, help, help me, somebody. Please help me, as I slipped and fell backward off that aft platform at the back of the ship. I was falling into that rough and dark sea. I’m dead, I’m dead, help me, please. Somebody, help me. I can’t see. I fought the water to stay afloat, but there was no bottom to feel, and I began to sink and I started drifting under the water and under the aft platform. I tried pulling myself up above the water, but I was unsuccessful. I even tried screaming under the water, Help, help! Please, Lord, help me. I began to take water into my mouth and nose, and I realized that I was going to die. I continued sinking deeper, but two sailors who perished in a previous accident grabbed my arms and abruptly pulled me up out of the water at the brink of my death.

Suddenly, I woke up from this nightmare, quickly sat up and leaped out of the bed with tears running out of the corners of my eyes. After a few seconds, I realized that it was just another nightmare. My body was soaking wet from sweating. My hands, my T-shirt, and pillow case were stained with blood from a heavy nosebleed I had sometime during the nightmare.

I’d been having nightmares like this for years, and they were just getting worse. With all my twitching and movements, my wife was abruptly awakened and startled. She told me later that she watched me grabbing my wrists and stretching my hands in the air as if I were pulling something.

She got up from her side of the bed and walked around to my side of the bed. She held on to me and sat me back down. She asked me if I was okay as she rubbed my forehead. I was still trembling, but I told her I was okay. After I calmed down, she went into the kitchen to get me a glass of water and my medicine.

Those few minutes while she was gone, I lay back down next to my bloodstained pillow, and I fixed my eyes on the ceiling. It was still dark in the bedroom, and only the illumination from the clock appeared on the ceiling. The clock showed 4:15 AM. The faces of my deceased friends whom I had tried to rescue in a ferry boat accident during Desert Storm started