Train Like You Fight… Fight Like You Train

Train like you fight
Fight like you train
Pray you never need to put that training to use

2016 04 06 Thursday

Every 18 months, major Coast Guard cutters undergo a three-week series of tests, drills, and evaluations. This work is done to recertify their ability to carry out their missions and respond to shipboard emergencies. It is called Tailored Ships Training Availability (TSTA), pronounced: “tis-tah.” For Cutter Active, the first week is usually done dockside in the home port. It consists of ten-man duty section drills; one drill in the morning, and one, maybe two in the afternoon, covering scenarios on fires, flooding, intruders, etc.

We were in the second week of TSTA, and it was more of the same; only this time, we were underway in the Straight of Juan De Fuca. It was the second damage control drill of the day. I’d lost count of the actual number of drills run since we woke that morning, much less since the previous Monday. The cutter was “dead ship” for that scenario. That means battle lanterns (emergency lighting) and the e-gen (emergency generator) were the only systems up and running, and the lanterns were fading quickly. The main fire pumps were disabled, and an out-of-control bravo fire (combustible liquid fire) raged in the engine room.

Fire Team One was positioned at the door to the engine room, awaiting permission to enter the space and engage the fire. I was the nozzle man for Fire Team Two and we were standing on the port side main deck just aft of the engineering vestibule. To my left was my attack team leader. Behind me was my hose man, behind him was the on-scene leader, and back at the fireplug (valve) controlling our firefighting water was the plug man – five men to a fire team, two teams to a fire. One is on standby while the other fights. When Team Two relieved Team One, Damage Control Central would cobble together a third one from whoever was standing around to back up Team Two. Ideally, Team One will have recovered enough to go back in if Team Three needs relief.

In truth, if Fire Team One has to go back into the main space to keep fighting an uncontrolled bravo, the cutter is lost. Steel that’s been holding back the ocean for 50-plus years can only take so much stress before it gives. With that sobering thought, I recall the first line of the damage control handbook. “Believe in the integrity of your cutter; never give up the ship.” I idly pick at a flake of rust on the bulkhead I’m leaning against. One side has a hard bright coat of metallic white paint, and the other is the color of sun-dried blood.

The universe is an ironic place.

The extra weight of the air pack was biting into my shoulders through the heavy triple-layered firefighting suit, which per military tradition was too small for my 6’ 2” frame. One size fits everyone but you. We use the coverall version instead of the bunker pants and overcoats like shoreside firefighters. The weight of the suit adds to that of the pack to make our shoulders droop in the body heat the coveralls kept trapped against our skin.

The 10-pound boots and thick pants made each step an over-exaggerated effort. The Nomex hoods were damp with our sweat and clung to the skin. The helmets and face masks were relatively lightweight, but even a few pounds add up over several hours. Every roll of the neck or twist of the head only adds another knot to the spine and shoulders. The air reeked from the mask’s high-grade silicone rubber and the diesel exhaust of the two P-100 portable fire pumps.

The pumps were rigged to the fire main system positioned on the port side of the main deck up forward of us. Their rattling drone requires double hearing protection if you’re within 20 feet and even then it’s deafening. As the cutter drifted in the slow current of the straight, her bow turned to the north to present her port side to the west. The relatively cool April sun glared down on us. It got noticeably hotter inside the suits. As we sweated, the mask’s rubber trapped it against our faces which quickly turned from a mild itch to a burn to a cutting pain. We are not allowed to relax our gear in case we need to respond rapidly.

Seconds are an eternity in a fire.

Finally, we heard that Team One had extinguished the fire. The trainer/evaluator gave my attack team leader the go-ahead. We snapped in our regulators and started the timer. We had about 4,000 pounds of air pressure each in our air packs. That translates to about 10 minutes of breathable air under heavy exertion. We fumbled our way, one at a time, down the ladderwell in the engineering vestibule. It was a tight fit with the bulky coveralls and air pack and a clumsy affair with 10 people squeezing past one another in full fire gear in the tight confines of the ship’s interior. The dark of emergency lighting only added to the claustrophobia. I followed the hose to Fire Team One’s nozzle man and assumed control of the hose.

“OS3 AUD HAS THE REFLASH WATCH!” I shouted through my mask. The voice amplification box mounted on the side of my mask broadcasted my words to the rest of the room.

However, between my voice overloading the microphone and the low-fidelity speaker my words were barely intelligible. Attack Team Leader Two shouts it back to On Scene Leader Two, who barks it into a radio.

A moment later, the 1MC intercom barked out, “Fire Team Two has relieved Fire Team One. OS3 Aud has the reflash watch. Fire Team One has moved to a fresh air environment…”

The announcement continued as the LTJG (lieutenant junior grade) who held the DCA (damage control assistant) position rattled off the status of the fire and commands to the various damage control teams scattered around the cutter, all of which were working feverishly to rig de-watering and de-smoking equipment. Some were setting up a peri-jet eductor to pump out the firefighting water used to put out the engines while others were hauling hundreds of feet of fire hose up and down the decks to bypass ruptures in the fire main.

The Electrician’s Mates were rigging thumb-thick jumper cables to work around breaks in the power system. People were shouting, running back and forth, and being as polite as possible while shoving officers and chiefs out of the way to get the job done. For their part, the officers and chiefs were doing the same thing to us, focused on their tasks. They all silently hope that the instructor/evaluators don’t decide to throw a hull breach into the mix; heat compromises steel. It might still happen.

All of us were sweating and in a hurry, frustrated that we even had to put up with the charade of drills, mock disasters, and having to move with a sense of unnecessary urgency. It was all pretend, and we knew it, which made us twice as tired.

All that said –

In the event of an actual shipboard fire, all of that discomfort, frustration, and annoyance wouldn’t even register. Were one of the main engines to suffer a crankcase explosion and fling a con-rod through the hull of the main space, we would have done everything, and then some, to keep her afloat. And if it happened at 0300, we’d do it in our underwear.

Soon the XO came over to the 1MC to announce, “Secure from drill, stow all gear, and conduct on-station debriefs.”

I shouted down to the two men working on the lower level of the main space to double-time it out of there. The engineers wanted to restart the main generators. None of us were wearing hearing protection, and the gennies were loud, and the main engines were worse. I drug the fire hose out by its nozzle to meet with Fire Team Two in the A-Gang space (auxiliary engineer’s room/machine shop).

We started shutting off each other’s air packs, peeling out of helmets, and discussing the exercise. The next hour would be spent refilling air bottles, cleaning face masks, putting away damage control equipment, and otherwise getting everything back online and in normal operating conditions.

I could feel a burning line where the mask stuck to my head traced its way around my face as I clambered back up topside to shed some heat in the April air. The sun was lower on the horizon than at the start of all the shenanigans and was too bright after being down in the ship’s dark. Hot air forced out of the collar of my fire suit with each step, almost like the coveralls were panting from the heat.

Shouldering my replenished air pack, I heaved a second one onto the opposite side. Helmet wobbling loose on my sweat-plastered hair, I trudged forward on the main deck up to Repair Locker Two where my gear was normally kept. I have gear to check and stow for the next drill.

It’s days like these that I wish we still served rum aboard ships. I could use one right about now. 

________________________

K.C. Aud has made a career of being lucky and has managed to find something positive in nearly every poor decision he’s ever made, even if it was only a new perspective on how not to do something.

Enlisting in the U.S. Coast Guard in 2010 he became an Operations Specialist (radio and navigation) and did his first tour in Georgia guarding submarines from drunk fishermen. In 2014, tired of the heat and the bugs he transferred to a 210-foot medium endurance cutter in Washington state. The cutter then regularly deployed to the hot and buggy west coast of Central America to hunt down drug runners. Aboard USCGC Active he traveled 94,194 miles and personally handled enough cocaine to keep a small country high for a decade. Somewhere in there, he learned to write, if not spell.  

Three years later, daunted by the prospect of spending the rest of his career in a windowless command center, he separated from active duty. After 13 different jobs ranging from beer brewer to dairy farmhand, to machinist, to Navy civilian contractor, he reenlisted in 2020 as a Coast Guard reservist, changing rates to Maritime Law Enforcement Specialist. When not helping the Navy assets in the Puget Sound troubleshoot radios, he’s on drill in Seattle doing water cop stuff and or flailing away at his keyboard. Though married and now a father, he misses the mission. 

As the Voice of the Veteran Community, The Havok Journal seeks to publish a variety of perspectives on a number of sensitive subjects. Unless specifically noted otherwise, nothing we publish is an official point of view of The Havok Journal or any part of the U.S. government.