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By
GEORGE F. WILL
George F. Will
is a nationally syndicated columnist for The Washington Post.
When Daniel
Johnson, who is now 23, was transferring from Wake Forest University to
the University of North Carolina, he went to Chapel Hill to find an
apartment. When he called his parents in Hickory, N.C.--his father,
Wallace, is the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church; his mother,
Sallie, teaches history at Hickory High School--they asked him if he had
found one. He said yes, and oh, by the way, I've joined the Navy. From
his hospital bed in Walter Reed Army Medical Center he says he has no
regrets about that decision.
After
graduation, the commitment he made when he joined the Navy ROTC at UNC
took him to Newport, R.I., for six months at the Surface Warfare
Officers' School. On New Year's Eve, 1998, he reported to his ship, the
USS Blue Ridge, the flagship of the admiral commanding the 7th Fleet.
It was a good
assignment for a young man attracted to the Navy by a desire for travel:
The 7th Fleet operates from the international dateline to the east coast
of Africa.
In his eighth
month on board, on August 23, he was the safety observer at the aft
mooring station as Korean tugs pulled the Blue Ridge into position to
leave the harbor at Pusan. A tug was reeling in the messenger line, a
rope about an inch and a half in diameter that is attached to the
hawser, the big rope--about eight inches in diameter--that bears the
weight in tugging and mooring. The tug was moving away and reeling
unusually fast. Too fast.
What happened
next happened very fast. The leg of Seaman Steven Wright, 21, from Pine
Bluff, Ark., became tangled in a loop of the messenger line which, under
extreme tension from the tug, dragged Wright across the deck and pulled
his leg into a "chock," an oval opening about a foot long and
eight inches wide through which ropes pass. The tremendous torque from
the tug could have pulled Wright through the chock, ripping him apart.
"This part
is a little bit fuzzy to me," says Johnson about what he did.
"I tried to free him up." The official "summary of
action" recommending the Navy and Marine Corps Medal says:
"Immediately, without hesitation, and in the face of known risk to
his own life, Ensign Johnson ran to the assistance of the entrapped line
handler who was in imminent peril of losing the lower part of his leg.
... None of the other seven personnel on scene attempted any similar act
or endangered themselves to such a degree to come to the entangled
Sailor's aid."
Wright's life
was saved because his leg was not. He was freed when the rope severed
his leg (and four fingers above the knuckles). But before that happened,
as Johnson struggled to help Wright, the violently jerking line
entangled both of Johnson's legs, dragged him to the chock, and severed
both limbs below the knee. He also lost a finger.
Why did he act
as he did? He says, matter-of-factly, that officers are trained to be
responsible for the well-being of their men, and besides, that's the way
his parents--they are at his bedside this day, having made the
seven-hour drive from Hickory for another stay with their son--raised
him. He would rather talk about the prostheses that will soon be fitted
to the stumps of his legs.
"They say
that if I want to I can run a marathon. The only thing that will limit
me is myself." He is thinking of going to medical school. There is
no recondite lesson to be learned from this episode. A good young man
from a good family and a good community did something admirable. But in
an age that thinks the phrase "good news" is an oxymoron, it
is well to be re-minded that the American population is leavened by a
lot of people like the slender, unprepossessing young man propped up in
bed on his elbows, unself-conscious about the neatly bandaged stumps of
his legs.
And it is well
to be reminded that in routine training and routine operations the men
and women of the armed services are at risk, and they have chosen to be.
And that the armed forces know a thing or two about teaching honor and
responsibility.
Johnson thinks
there is more of him leaving the Navy than entered it. "I developed
a lot of self-confidence when I was doing my job. It's been a great
experience. No regrets."
© 1999, The
Washington Post Writers Group. Reprinted with permission.
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