“… We’re going in … all ahead flank, 23 knots … I am now crouched behind the vents … we’re 13 miles out … we are now in range of the coastal batteries …”
Twenty-year-old Noel Lane III scribbled these words in a 10-page handwritten letter during a confrontation off the North Vietnamese coast on Jan. 10, 1973. Lane, a Conifer resident, recently came across the letter, which chronicles both the mundane aspects of life aboard ship and the numbness from spent adrenaline.
“It’s a letter to friends of mine, and in the middle of the letter, I would write down what was happening,” Lane said. “We were getting hit with 200 rounds. … They shot the hell out of us.”
Lane was a torpedoman’s mate second class on the USS Turner Joy, a ship that was involved in the first confrontations of the Vietnam War and also fired the last shot before the cease-fire was declared on Jan. 27, 1973. On that day, the ship’s schedule read as follows: “0800: Commence Cease Fire, Commence Holiday Routine.”
Most of Lane’s January 1973 letter covers a mission near North Vietnam’s main port, Hai Phong, just a few days before the cease-fire.
“… 25,000 yards and closing … speed still 23 knots … they have us on radar now …”
Lane’s job was to foil the enemy radar by launching “stack chaff” that created false targets away from the ship. Lane’s most memorable flirtation with the chaff was when it misfired and landed on his own ship, covering him with the aluminum-laced debris.
“Now I was the target,” he said, laughing now at what scared him to death then.
Lane said he was often frightened but did his job. Still, he and his buddies made plans for escape should the ship be sunk — most kept a ditty bag ready to go in case they had only moments to abandon ship.
According to Lane, the mission outlined in his letter was called Linebacker II and was designed to pound the North Vietnamese into agreeing to a peace accord, which was signed a few days later.
But before peace, there was still war.
“… Changed course to 280 degrees true … still going in at about 30 degree angle to the beach … slowed to all ahead full …”
Lane said the North Vietnamese were firing 8-inch projectiles at the Turner Joy, and he was stationed on the top deck.
“If they hit the ship, there would have been big damage,” Lane said.
The ship had a crew of 250, and Lane has “yearbooks” from his stints in the Navy, one from boot camp and a couple from other tours. Fresh-faced kids smile out from the faded black-and-white pages, and though the books don’t document actual battles, they show the daily routine, the fun and the laughter, when war was far away.
“… 6 miles, 14 knots … were the first time we came under fire … we’re firing now … all 3 guns … what a noise …
… Boy, are we putting out a lot of rounds …”
During that encounter, the ship fired 193 rounds, and in the letter Lane keeps score like a baseball game, complete with innings and hits. A short time later, Lane rambles on in precise handwriting about his mind-set during his 19th hour on duty. He wrote about going 15 days without a cigarette but finding other means to get through the endless shifts.
In a non-combat moment, Lane reflects on the experience of fighting in a war:
“I’ve really become introspective in trying to understand more fully my own self. I’ve been having a lot of feelings inside me that I really don’t understand. This is really a strange experience and it is giving me such a fantastic insight into myself.”
“… 290 degrees true, 16 knots, all ahead …”
Being on deck and under fire required Lane to wear a 20-pound flak jacket, and at times the ship would take fire from starboard and port. Though it kept him safe, the jacket was heavy and cumbersome.
“I have nowhere to go, and I’m outside while all this stuff is blowing up around me,” Lane said.
“… This damn flak jacket is putting my arm to sleep …”
“They (the crew) could feel the rounds as their shock waves bounced off the hull in sonar, and I could feel the shimmy or vibration or whatever. I’m sitting here again on the floor behind the vents.”
“… Real close round shook ship … they have a better average this round …”
Lane said one round hit the vent behind him, just 2 inches from his head.
“Hey you guys, save this letter for me, I’d like to read it again at a later date to see if I can understand or re-capture the feeling of these moments.”
Today’s thoughts on yesterday
Lane, who today owns Lane III Group, Inc., a development and business/management consultation company, said that, for him, whether Vietnam was a just war was not the question when he joined the Navy in the middle of his senior year of high school in 1969.
There were bad times he wishes he could forget, but he still remembers them vividly. Lane said that as he gets older, he tends to remember “only the adventure and the excitement of being a young man on a tremendous adventure.”
He said the only significant part of remembering is when he shares his experiences with a fellow veteran. No one else can truly understand what it was like.
The Turner Joy was commissioned on Aug. 3, 1959, and named in honor of Adm. S. Turner Joy. The ship was decommissioned on Nov. 22, 1982, and is now a floating museum anchored in Bremerton, Wash.
“I was proud to be in the Navy and proud to serve my country,” Lane said.
This story ran in the October 13, 2010 edition of the High Timber Times, Canyon Courier and was part of a special section to commemorate Veteran's Day, 2010.
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