On the night of November 22 1975 as I was getting into my rack for the evening and there was an announcement over the intercom that the U.S.S Belknap and The John F Kennedy had collided.  I jumped out of my rack as many of the others did. I helped man the hoses on the port side of the Hart as the Belknaps boilers exploded and our ship shook from the vibrations.
 
All that night I helped as we pulled fellow sailors from the sea.  One vision stays with me to this day; as I was helping to pull a guy up on to the deck, skin from his burned arm peeled off as we reached to pull him on board.  When I saw the pictures of what remained of the Belknap it looked like a big steel canoe.

The next day we pulled a dead body from the water. I don't recall if he was a fellow sailor or not, but I will never forget the smell of the body.  That night I put to use everything that I was taught in boot camp.  Without the training that I learned in Great lakes Boot, I would have been useless to anyone.  I was 18 at the time, soon to turn 19 on December 17th. This was not my first experience dealing whith death.  When I was 14, I saw a man decapitated in a car accident, but that night out at sea in the Med remains with me more at age 50, and I supose it will for the rest of my life.  It took more than twenty years for me to finally deal with P.T.S.D. issues that were caused by that incident. With the help of the V.A system, I am able to deal with it today.

I will allways be proud to be a Navy Veteran and a veteran of the T.C.Hart crew. I still have the Med Cruise jacket and the T.C.Hart Uniform rocker.
 
Warren R Reade Jr