Free I Pledge Allegiance by Chris Lynch

and rub my shin, all at the same time. It would be a good time to be an octopus.
    “Vera, man. Rivera. He froze. Wouldn’t answer the bell. Stayed in his rack. Nobody could move him. He’s gonna get some serious grief coming his way when this is over.”
    One of the early lessons you learn in this operation is, you have to answer the bell. You have to, have to, have to answer the bell. Unless you’re already dead. Then you’re allowed to be a little bit late, but then, still, dead, answer the bell. You do not let your mates down, no matter what. Vera’s main job is just domestic stuff, kitchen and laundry and such. But like everybody, he has duties in battle as well. He’s a sailor, a soldier, a warrior. No excuses.
    We are just to the top deck, nearing the control room, when it all changes again. For the first time, I feel bullets.
    You feel them. Whether they hit you or not, you feel them. Like evil, large, lethal mosquitoes, you feel them buzzing all over, and it doesn’t matter how hard the surface is, you
hit
the deck.
    “Holy smokes,” Rascal says as he launches himself at the deck.
    I throw myself down with all the force of one of the rockets. I smash both elbows, and they feel the same metallic zing as my shin.
    There are more aircraft now, and it is
us
under attack. There are small explosions, and I cannot believe I now think of these as small.
    But I do. Because off in the distance I hear a mother of an explosion.
    Smoke, big smoke, is puffing up off the
Hobart.
    Rascal and I scramble our way into the control room. The Officer of the Deck is hollering into the radio, and his assistant is relaying orders to all the different battle stations. The big guns continue to pummel the land targets, but the furious action has turned to the antiaircraft guns.
    “American!” the OOD shouts.
    “Negative!” I hear the response come back. “There is no American aircraft activity in the area. Deploy antiaircraft fire. Fire!”
    “Fire!” the OOD shouts.
    “Fire!” his man shouts into his microphone.
    And they fire. It is now official and total mayhem. There is firefighting of all manner, in all directions. The antiaircraft guns are blasting away at several times the rate of the cannons, following the aircraft across the sky.
    The OOD continues with headquarters. “Have we got confirmation?”
    “Negative. There is no American activity within that sector. All activity has been suspended in order to isolate the problem. There is no, repeat,
no
friendly activity in the area.”
    I almost laugh. This is the truest thing I’ve heard anyone say since I joined the Navy.
    There is no friendly activity in the area.
    As those words come out, there are two almighty explosions. The first is off in the distance, but there’s no doubt something severe has happened.
    The second is closer to home.
    The entire ship shudders, then tilts, and everyone is thrown to the deck. I can see smoke rolling up over the glass where the OOD had been surveying the action. He scrambles back to his feet, shouting into the phone, “Sir, we have been hit. We have identified, in the darkness, one hovering aircraft, rotating blade, gunship. And two jets, possibly F-104, F-2. We’ve been struck by rocket fire.”
    We hear the distinctive sound of jet engines shrinking into the distance. Our guns continue firing for a while, while smoke and fire lap up from a section at the front of the ship. I get up to the window in time to see a shocking sight. PCF-19 goes down so quickly, there’sa splash, a plume of water at the end of it like off the tail of a diving whale. Whoever it was, they just sent one of our swift boats swiftly to the bottom of the South China Sea.
    The
Hobart
has taken a hit like ours. The sun is coming up now over a scene of carnage. All guns cease, and it’s as if we are all punch-drunk, standing, uncomprehending.
    We’ve taken a beating.
    I thought the American military never, ever lost. That’s what I was taught my whole