THE MARINES HAVE LANDED

Nags Head Surf
Photo by Tom Rose

Nags Head can have reasonably clear water even when an offshore storm has just sent a message in of its presence in the form of big breakers. Under these conditions it is more like surf entries on the west coast. Once you get past the breakers, the water is great. It was one of those days.

It was the summer of ‘60 and a great day for underwater movies. Visibility on the wreck was over 25 feet in spite of the waves I had my newly made camera housing for a 16 mm gun camera. Gun cameras were used to confirm "kills" in air combat. It was my first "homemade housing". It would shoot about a minute of film in the 50 foot cartridge and then we would swim back in and change film. In and out through the surf all day long. Stan Waterman look out, Rose is on your tail..

Over the sand dune came the Marines. There must have been 20 of them. They did not travel lightly. Boxes and bags of gear were deposited on the sand mere yards away from our positions on the beach. It looked like a beachhead with all that gear. We sat silently and watched in amazement as we had never seen so much shiny new equipment. They even had wetsuits. By God, this was an operation. They did not say hello. They ignored us as if we were dead fish washed up on the beach. One grunted. Later I was to find out that was why they were called grunts. I guess if they gave us any information they would have to kill us. They were on a mission.

The military structure was clear from the get go. I had just graduated from a military high school and knew discipline when I saw it. Carl Johnson looked at his shabby double 38s and I looked at my converted CO2 tanks with shame. The big boys had arrived. They noted our gear and there was some quiet laughter. At least they had the decency not to laugh out loud at our well worn stuff. In our hearts of hearts we knew we were totally and completely outclassed. It hurt.

They suited up and grouped themselves into buddy units of two lined up along the beach as the leader checked out each of them, as if for a combat jump. They looked like a skirmish line from the revolutionary war. He checked every snap,every tank for pressure, position of regulators, and weight belts. Everything was AOK.. He gave the signal and they pulled out the buddy lines.

"Holy shit" Carl said as we watched them tie off to each other in pairs with a 5 foot line. We perked up. This was going to be reallllly interesting. The leader blew a whistle. Masks on their faces, flippers on their feet, regulators in their mouths the Marines marched into their battle with King Neptune. The skirmish line moved unfaultingly toward the waiting waves as the doomed but proud Black Watch marched on the cotton bales in New Orleans, the cream of French knighthood at Agincourt, and the Union Army cannon fodder at Cold Harbor. They were a brave lot, but no one has ever doubted the bravery of the USMC.

Everything went fine until the advancing army hit the surf line. Neptune sent a wave against the invaders with the effect of grape shot against Picket at Gettysburg. They went down to a man. They crashed onto their backs tangled in the buddy lines and gear went everywhere. There were wetsuited bodies splashing and writhing in the surf as wave after wave crashed unmercilessly over their prone bodies. As each wave receded they became more tangled as they tried to rise, the carnage was horrible. We could not believe our eyes. Normandy Beach looked more organized. We laughed til we choked, caught our breath and then we laughed some more. We rolled on the beach laughing. I cursed myself. Why or why did I fail to film that scene?

They slowly made a strategic withdrawal crawling up the beach in defeat. The troops walked up and down the beach retrieving gear, burying their dead, and regrouped dejectedly at their original position on higher ground. Their attack had failed. Their leader obviously upset by the events, tried to make sense of the disaster.

Carl and I quietly put on our rag tag dive gear and headed into the surf, slipped through the surf, swam out to the wreck and shot another minute of movies. After a couple of filming and entry cycles, one of the Marines came over and asked if he could go out with us. Their fearless leader had decided that it was to dangerous to dive that day...somehow failing to notice that we were going in and out of the surf every five minutes like a couple of seals.

Our visitor had the haunted eye look of a deserter. He was going over the hill, AWOL, abandoning his unit under fire. He really wanted to go out, and obviously we had a pact with Neptune so he wanted to go with us. It is good to enlist the natives when you are in enemy territory as Lieutenant Presely N. O'Bannon and his small force of Marines did at Tripoli.

"Glad to have you." We instructed him to put his regulator in his mouth, carry his mask and flippers in his hands and to back into the waves. When the wave is about to hit, you fall backwards into it and punch through the wall of water. After the wave breaks against the tank and flows past, turn over and suck bottom you get out of the surf zone. Then put on the mask and flippers. He followed us with nary a single problem and had a great dive. He had a series of great dives with us and had no more problems with the surf.

Afterwards, he became a liaison with the others except for the leader who still pretended that we were not there. As is often true when barriers go down they turned out to be nice guys and shared their beer. Sharing beer is always is a bonding experience, almost as good as sharing a great dive. Sharing beer and a good dive is always an exceptional bonding experience.

To this day as I remember those guys marching to their doom in the surf, it cracks me up.

No Marines were hurt in the making of this "I shit you not " true story.
Semper Fi Bob

Approved by Dr Bob ex Marine Rebreather Diver Extraordinaire
His Response was that Marines are trained to go from the ocean to the beach, not the other way and that they have never been pushed off the beach.