A Dangerous Game of Chicken

In my sat­is­fac­tion with hav­ing found a few like-​​minded com­pan­ions, I stepped back from the edge of the abyss, to seek out the one who could show me the way to safely reach the bot­tom with­out act­ing like an ani­mal or going insane. Thus did my search for She Who Must Be Obeyed begin as our flotilla steamed out of Pearl Har­bor on the 18^th of April, 1967, to ren­dezvous with the Japan­ese and South Korean Navies for joint maneu­vers or war games, as they were more com­monly called.

Hav­ing arrived at our des­ti­na­tion, some­where off the coast of South Korea, about a week or so later, we encoun­tered more than just our allies, as we almost lit­er­ally ran into a Russ­ian Naval ves­sel. For with the com­ing about of our ship to avoid a col­li­sion with the Russ­ian ves­sel, was I slammed up against the bulk­head in the pas­sage­way where I had been assigned to work. Out of the sud­den flurry of crew­men that descended upon the pas­sage­way from both direc­tions, did I hear some­one ask, “What the hell’s goin’ on?“

“We damn near hit a Russ­ian ship,“ came the reply.

In a panic, I dropped what I was doing and raced up top­side to see what was going on. Off the stern of the ship, I saw two Russ­ian Naval ves­sels com­ing about to head us off. And sure enough, within moments, it seemed as if we were going to col­lide into one of them again. Only this time we reached the crash point first, forc­ing the Russ­ian ves­sel to come about to avoid hit­ting us.

At one point, I went down below to retrieve my cam­era, to get some pic­tures of the Russ­ian ships when­ever we maneu­vered close enough to get a good shot. As I con­tin­ued to watch the game, the two of us were play­ing, I saw the Rus­sians as the kid on the block who had not been invited over to play. Miffed at hav­ing been excluded from our games, he then goaded us into play­ing a dan­ger­ous game of chicken. Intim­i­dated at first by his actions, we quickly decided that what this turkey needed was a dose of its own med­i­cine. After get­ting in a few good licks, we finally drove the Russ­ian kid back to the hori­zon, where he hung around for awhile to watch us play our pre­cious lit­tle war games.