I received a call Wednesday from a colleague who shared some not unexpected, but still very sad, news. Carl Bryson, the last surviving sailor of USS SQUALUS died. Calling hours are today from 4 to 7 PM at the Byles Memorial Home in New London. I'm not advocating a mad rush to get there, so much as suggesting, perhaps, spending a moment to reflect on his life and times.
I am not, nor ever was, a sailor--submarine or otherwise but I appreciate those who are and the service they render on behalf of the rest of us. I've toured Historic Ship Nautilus in Groton, Connecticut, and have read enough history to appreciate the leap forward nuclear power was for submarines. But I am still uneasy at just walking through the cramped space, fifty years on still cramped, that's work and home for extended periods of time. And did I mention underwater? I've listened as sub sailors explain the importance of maintaining an exact one-to-one correlation of submergences to surfacings--their way of making light of the very real danger of what lies beneath.
Back in the day--actually, nearly seventy years ago, the USS SQUALUS failed to accomplish the ratio properly. She partially flooded and sank, coming to rest two hundred and forty feet deep. Carl Bryson was a member of that crew-and, as I understood the stories, was in the last group of crewmen to be rescued. I asked him, when, through pure luck, I met him (still spry in his Eighties), what he'd said to the rescue party as they prepared to evacuate the last of the crew BEFORE his group. He softly smiled, "I said, 'take your time and good luck-I'm not going anywhere.'"
We all remember, or should, the tragedy of KURSK but, in looking back at the evolution of all aspects of every submarine navy, and scrolling through some of the on-line materials on SQUALUS, it's impossible to not be impressed with the courage it took just to report aboard a submarine (actually, that's as true now as it was then). Ordinary men doing extraordinary things on a daily and routine basis.
Thirty-three sailors survived the sinking of SQUALUS. Herculean, heroic actions in the most trying of circumstances with no more than rudimentary (and in some instances, untried) rescue devices, were taken to rescue them by many who spent decades strenuously denying any and all assertions that they had been heroes at all. They were just doing their jobs and helping their shipmates.
It takes all kinds to make a world. I believe we are, each in our own way, the sum of everyone we've ever met. I consider myself very lucky to have shared the planet with Carl Bryson. I was impressed beyond words (rarely happens with me as we both know) by his humility and humanity. To have seen what he saw, done what he did and survived in the face of some very long odds brought home how fortunate I have always been and how blessed we are as a nation to have had the quiet heroes we have always had.
"There is a port of no return, where ships/
May ride at anchor for a little space.
And then, some starless night, the cable slips,
Leaving an eddy at the mooring place . . .
Gulls, veer no longer. Sailor, rest your oar.
No tangled wreckage will be washed ashore."
-bill kenny
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