I saw our signalman was giving the ‘avast’ heaving signal, for it to stay in place and to keep slack in the Highline Lead. Since The Hook was swinging around, I did something I had done literally hundreds of times. I ran my line though one of its handles, back though the bulkhead eyelet, held the twisted the doubled line in one hand. That stopped it from swinging around dangerously. No more then two or three seconds later the winch operator on the supply ship completely ignored our ‘avast’ heaving signal and began a fast return…without the nets. As the Highline Lead suddenly went taut, my arm was jerked straight up and I instantly let loose of the line. At the same time I glanced up, only to see my line immediately throw a half hitch around itself. As the doubled up nylon line started to stretch, I tried to duck away as fast as I could, when BAM! The line yanked the welded metal rod handle from The Hook and it came back to whack me really hard in my lower jaw (think of it in the terms of someone having a extremely powerful rubber band, a huge paper clip, my jaw as a moving target and they scored a bulls eye from 10 feet away). I staggered away from my station (didn’t want to fall overboard), dropped to my knees and rested my helmeted head on the deck. Hmmmm funny, inside my mouth I could feel two of my molars were sticking sideways over my tongue and my chin and jaw were becoming very wet…I wondered why? I could hear someone yelling there was a “Casualty on Station”. I thought I should go help whoever was hurt, but then maybe it would be OK if I just rested there for a couple seconds before trying to stand. Next thing I knew, people crowded around me and wouldn’t let me move. Only then did I realize…I was the casualty people were yelling about.

A few minutes later Trammel PC3 helped me down to Sickbay where our Doc (whom I recall was Murray HM1) examined my injuries. The Doc had no experience in re-aliening someone’s teeth, but knew something should be done quickly about situation. He put some bandages over my cheek and inside my mouth (to cover up the new hole in my face) plus another one over a long rip across the tip of my chin. I was then taken to the fantail where I was given instructions on how to get into a sling that was to be lowered at the end of a cable from a circling helicopter. I still recall some of those instructions; ‘For God’s sake, once you are in the sling don’t lift up your arms or you’ll fall out of it into the ocean’, ‘You won’t be wearing a life jacket as it won’t do you any good and it’ll just get in the way’ and ‘When you are lifted off the deck watch out for our radio antenna’s, so you don’t swing into one and damage something important’…those wise words gave me great encouragement for my first ride in a helicopter!

The stormy seas were making our fantail bounces around so bad it was like trying to stand erect on a bucking horse. There I stood (with some assistance from a couple crewmen) in a rather small open space tucked between our large VDS (Variable Depth Sonar) unit mounted on our stern, the Fanfare equipment on our starboard side, the BT (Bathythermograph) winch on the port and big old 5” gun Mount 53 just forward. Our ship then turned to bring the wind over her forward port quarter. As I watched the helicopter battle the gusting winds to come closer, the erratic motion of our fantail worsened. Then the sling was lowered. As it blew over our heads, someone caught it and…GULP…I raised my arms. The sling was fitted on me and up I went…slowly. I swung away from the deck over the ocean and swiftly came back again…aimed directly at the upper portion of Mount 53. Don’t ask me how, but somehow I managed to slew myself around in mid-air and kicked off the gun mount with both feet. At that point the helicopter made a fast left turn, picked up speed and began to climb. I suddenly discovered what the end on a tail of a kite, dancing in a stiff breeze, must feel like!