Having grown up in Southeast Florida, the city of Fort Lauderdale to be more specific, I have always been around boats.
My dad served in the Pacific during World War II. During a voyage from Norfolk, Virginia through the Panama Canal and onward to San Diego in 1942 his ship put in to Port Everglades to re-fuel. During a brief liberty he visited Fort Lauderdale.
The town made an impression on him so much that when the war was over he and my mother moved there in 1948 with me and my younger sister, Barbara. My name is Eric Mueller.
Dad got a job at Broward Marine, a ship building facility on the New River, which had a contract to build mine sweepers for the Dutch Navy. Pop was a motor machinist in the Navy during the war and had an extensive knowledge of diesel engines.
When the last of the ships was completed in 1952, he remained with the company that had by now shifted to building yachts; some as large as sixty-five and seventy feet.
In 1957 dad and two of his friends decided to open their own boat yard. They saw the boating boom that was beginning in South Florida and thought they could fill a niche not being met by the larger boatyards. They started out building smaller, less expensive boats, in the sixteen to twenty-five foot range. Over the years dad bought out his two partners and became the sole owner of the boatyard.
By the time I was entering high school the business had expanded to such an extent that he now employed over thirty craftsmen.
When I was in my mid-teens dad gave me a job at his boatyard working during the summers and during breaks from school. The first summer I worked there I was one of the go-for guys you know . . . . 'Eric go for a box of stainless steel screws for me . . . Eric go for a three-eights inch drill and please bring me a fifty foot extension cord . . . Eric bring me another gallon of fiberglas resin. You get the [picture.
I learned a lot just by watching these skilled craftsmen that first summer. I continued working there every summer and afternoons at the end of the school day all through high school and during breaks from school when I was away at college.
When I graduated from high school I applied to the University of Florida and was accepted. Four years later, in 1968, I graduated with a Bachelor's Degree in Mechanical Engineering and a minor in Marine Engineering.
My social life in both high school and college was great. I had no trouble finding girl friends. My only problem was finding a girl with which I would want to spend the rest of my life.
There was one girl that I met during my Freshman year at Florida. Her name was Elizabeth Becker and I really, really cared for her and I wanted to get to know her a whole lot better. I knew she felt the same way toward me.
At the end of the school year I went home to South Florida and she went home to North Carolina. We did keep in touch over the summer by letter and the occasional long distance phone call.
In early August she wrote, that because if a family problem, she wouldn't be returning to school for the Fall Semester.
I wrote back asking what had happened. The letter came back stamped 'Moved/Left No Forwarding Address'. When I tried calling I received the following message. The number you have dialed 555-555-5555 is no longer in service.
After several other failed attempts to contact her we lost touch with one another.
In June of 1968, after graduation, I wanted to continue on for a Masters Degree but my Draft Board said 'No'. I had run out of student deferments when I received my Bachelor's Degree. Even though I had a fairly high draft number I decided to visit the Navy Recruitment Office.
The recruiter took one look at my qualifications and offered me the opportunity to attend Officer Candidate School (OCS). I signed on the dotted line and committed myself for at least the next five years of my life.
Six months later I was a newly commissioned Ensign in the United States Navy. Somewhere along the line the Navy had discovered my experience working in my dad's boatyard and I received an assignment to PCFs (Patrol Craft, Fast) otherwise known as Swift Boats and was sent to Coronado, California for training.
These boats were all-aluminum, fifty foot long, shallow-draft vessels operated by the Navy. They were used to patrol coastal areas and later for work on interior waterways as part of what was known as the 'brown-water navy'. During the Viet Nam War they were used to halt the Vietcong movement of arms and munitions, insert SEAL teams for counter-insurgency operations or to transport Vietnamese forces.
After completing my training I was sent to South Vietnam to join up with a detachment already in place at a base in the Mekong Delta region.
I was placed in command of PCF-35 with a crew of five, a Bosun's Mate, a radarman, an engineer, along with a Quartermaster and Gunner's Mate. The latter two operated the twin .50 caliber M2 Browning machine guns in a turret above the pilot house, an over-and-under .50-caliber machine gun as well as an 81mm mortar combination mounted on the rear deck. In late 1969 my crew was supplemented with the addition of a Vietnamese trainee.
PCF-35, a Mark III boat, was powered by a pair of General Motors Detroit marine diesel engines rated at 480 horsepower each, with a design range of 320 nautical miles at twenty-one knots (25 mph) with a top speed of twenty-five knots (30 mph).
Our primary mission was to patrol the Mekong Delta area which was composed of over ten thousand square miles of marshland, swamps and forested areas all interlaced by rivers and canals controlled by the Vietcong with some support from North Vietnamese regulars. We also would be performing special operations which included gunfire support, troop insertion and evacuation, and raids into enemy territory.
It soon became very clear to me that control of the waterways was being hotly contested by the Vietcong. They had developed a number of tactics to challenge us. They set up ambushes, built obstructions in the canals to create choke points, and began to place mines in the waterways.
Coming back down river was always more dangerous then going up river. The passage of our patrol assured the Vietcong we would be returning at some point and provided them the opportunity to ambush us. It was on one of these occasions, about six months after my arrival that, as we were returning from a mission, we were attacked.
I was hit by a stray round from an AK-47 in my upper left shoulder. Fortunately, it was a through and through and caused no significant damage.
Unfortunately, it was not severe enough to earn me a ticket home. It did earn me a Purple Heart and thirty days recuperating in a naval hospital in Yokohama, Japan.
Upon my return to the unit I met Ensign James Kerr for the first time. He was a real piece of work. He came from a family of considerable wealth and influence which he all too often pointed out to us.
I don't think he liked me. I was senior to him by about ninety days, had combat experience and was well-liked by my crew. My philosophy was my men depended on me to get them home alive and I depended on them for the same thing. I know I had their respect. I had earned it
Kerr on the other hand treated his crew with disdain and considered them below his station in life. On more than one occasion he opined that he could hardly wait until his father could pull some strings and get him the hell out of there.
After several missions I began hearing some disturbing scuttlebutt concerning Ensign Kerr. Seems like every time his boat came under enemy fire he disappeared below deck and didn't re-emerge until the shooting had stopped. He soon became known as 'Chicken-Shit Kerr' amongst the enlisted personnel.
Sure enough a little more than six weeks after his arrival he was gone. Transferred back to the states for some obscure reason. Good riddance. Officers like him were sure to get someone killed.
