Steve Alemar has his own harrowing Vietnam War story to share.
On October 1, 1972, he was an 18-year-old sailor aboard the USS Newport News off the coast of Vietnam. About 1 a.m., the 21,000-ton heavy cruiser was firing at enemy targets when an eight-inch shell in the center gun of Turret 2 prematurely exploded, killing 20 and injuring 36 aboard the ship.
The cruiser became a horror show of fire, thick, green smoke, and burning flesh. "I don't remember how long I was in there," a sailor recalled decades later about the scene at Turret 2, "but I'm guessing 15-20 minutes and then I was relieved." I [spent] 34 years in the fire department and I don't recall ever being as scared."
"We were young that night," another remembered years later, "but we aged fast."
Alemar, who was above Turret 2 when the disaster occurred, suffered a crushed ankle and from smoke inhalation. The battered Newport News -- "The Gray Ghost of the East Coast" -- finally made it back to its Norfolk, Virginia, base on Christmas Eve.
The memory of that awful day still cuts deeply into Alemar. "Those things never go away," he says.
--Cooter
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