On Thursday, October 7, 1993, the U.S.S. Peleliu, a U.S. Navy Tarawa-class amphibious assault ship, was halfway through a week of training maneuvers some 50 miles out in the Pacific when a UH-1N Huey helicopter crashed around midnight, killing one passenger. The pilots and four other survivors were all rescued.

At about midnight, a Marine helicopter left the ship to carry a crew member to the Navy hospital on the mainland for emergency surgery. The patient was accompanied by a medical officer, and the chopper’s four man crew: Two Marine soldiers and two Marine pilots. Less than 100 yards out from the ship, the Huey’s engine failed, and the chopper nose-dived into the Pacific. One person was killed.

Earlier that evening, a U.S. Navy corpsman, a quartermaster in training, had been diagnosed aboard ship as having appendicitis. All six ship’s doctors agreed that he should have surgery right away. One doctor, a young lieutenant, chose to fly with the young quartermaster to the hospital at Camp Pendleton for the procedure.

Medical personnel prepared the corpsman with an IV and placed him on a gurney. They strapped his legs, chest and arms securely to the stretcher for the trip. Two Marine crewmen then placed him aboard one of the Hueys on deck. They secured the gurney to the floor with two large straps, then positioned themselves on either side. The military doctor sat at the patient’s head to hold the IV steady. The pilots received a go-ahead and took the chopper into the air.

No one knows why the helicopter’s engine failed. Witnesses agree that the pilots were giving the chopper full throttle, but while still visible against the pitch black darkness, the craft’s nose dropped suddenly. One of the Marine crewmen braced himself inside one of the large side doors and forced it completely open. In that same instant, they crashed into the black waters of the Pacific.

On impact, the windshield exploded inward on the pilots, and the chopper flipped forward, end over end. Passengers in back were slammed forward, except the patient, whose gurney remained secured to the floor of the chopper. The tail section ripped free, landing on top of the rotor blades, sending shrapnel flying everywhere.

The military doctor was thrown headfirst into the grid work behind the cockpit, as seawater gushed in, driving glass from the broken windshield into the pilots’ faces. The two Marine soldiers were dashed against the metal insides of the craft. Amid of the chaos of those few seconds, the same Marine who had thrown open the door managed to grab one of the straps that secured the stretcher to the floor, releasing it.

In the midnight darkness, the wrecked helicopter rolled sideways in the waters of the open Pacific and sank like a rock. The gurney and patient, still secured by four straps, were pitched free of the aircraft into the cold, black water.

“I couldn’t see anything in the total darkness,” quartermaster says, “When we crashed, salt water hit me in the face, filling my nose and mouth. I shot down through the water like a bullet, being pulled deeper and deeper by the stretcher that held me securely. My ears popped, sending a horrible pain right through my skull. I just kept sinking.

“I struggled but couldn’t move my arms or legs, and I knew I was going to drown. I started to panic but I realized that to panic now would only guarantee my death. So I fought for my life, twisting, yanking, and turning, determined to get out from under the straps. Somehow I managed to get my legs free.

“I must have swallowed gallons of sea water. All the time, I kept sinking deeper and deeper. I really believed I was going to die. As I squirmed and thrashed in the cold blackness, the last strap, the one that had been on my chest, slid up until it was around my neck. I chocked, struggling to hold my breath, and finally got free of the strap.

“I don’t know how far down I was when I finally got free. All around and above and below me was black darkness. I started pushing up with everything I had in me. I just wanted to live. My whole body agonized for air. I just kept pushing upward. It seemed like an awful long climb back to the surface. Maybe I was going the wrong way. I couldn’t hold my breath anymore.

“Just then I hit the air! I gasped and choked and worked to keep my face out of the water so I could breath. I could see the lights of the ship as it kept moving through the water. Everyone on the chopper had been wearing life jackets but me. I had to swim to stay afloat.

“Not far away, another head soon bobbed up out of the water. He turned and saw me. It was one of the Marines, ‘Are you the doctor?’ he asked. ‘No, I’m the patient.’ I could tell by his reaction that he was surprised that I was alive.”

Men on deck aboard the ship had witnessed the crash and sounded the alarm for a downed aircraft. Survivors in the water saw search lights come on almost immediately as the entire ship responded to the emergency. All the survivors were bleeding from the crash. The Navy corpsman who had escaped the death grip of the gurney now began to worry about sharks.

“I kept thanking God, over and over, that I was alive,” he says. “It felt so great to be alive. And, at the same time, I prayed that sharks wouldn’t get us before the ship boat did!.”

Inside half an hour (the official report says 9.5 minutes), all survivors were out of the water and on the ship. Another Huey was readied while the rescued survivors were being patched up. In a matter of minutes they were placed aboard the aircraft and heading for the coast.

In the hospital at Camp Pendleton, the young quartermaster was told that he didn’t have appendicitis, after all. The cramping had been caused by an intestinal virus. He didn’t even have water in his lungs. The doctors asked him how he had managed to free himself from the gurney before he drowned.

“I guess I have a strong will to live,” he told them, “And I know that God was with me, protecting me or I’d be dead. All the odds were against me. I’m really happy to be alive.”

The pilots had been sliced up quite a bit, but they pulled through. The two Marines were beat up some, one with fractures, but otherwise OK. The medical officer had fractured his skull and suffered heart failure. He died in the ship’s sick bay.

The young quartermaster who had nearly drowned that night is my son. He completed his term in the Navy, taking his share of deployments around the world, and was later given an honorable discharge. He then served in the Marines for 6 years, where he excelled, being promoted to Gunnery Sergeant while working with electronics — working to keep Navy and Marine helicopters flying. Today, he is back in the Navy, still working in electronics to repair and maintain military choppers.

Interestingly, when he went back, a few years later, to get information on the crash and survivors, there was no official record of the event at all. It doesn’t even show on his own military record. Such things are not all that unusual, really. Some things are considered best forgotten.

But my son vividly remembers the crash, the cold grip of death, the men who were with him, the young military doctor who died, and the men and women aboard the U.S.S. Peleliu who worked double time to fish him out of the waters. And he still knows that it took the hand of God to keep him alive that night, rescuing him from certain death.