The Great Story below was written by Pete Pehl of US Navy
From 1978 to 1980 I was stationed aboard the USS Grayback which was a submarine home ported at the US Navy Base, Subic Bay Republic of the Philipines. Late in 1978 we encountered a group of Boat People at sea that had just been through a terrible experience the day before. They had been attacked by Thai Pirates!
We first became aware of the situation when our lookouts saw a bed sheet on the boat with SOS written on it and the Captain order the sub to approach it. We put an inflatable boat over the side and one of our officers who was married to a Vietnamese lady and he could speak the Vietnamese language was sent to find out the nature of the assistance needed.
The leader of the group on the boat was a former officer in the Republic of South Viet Nam Army and he told us how at gun point the men had been thrown overboard, the women and children raped and brutalized and all their valuables, food, and water looted. After the pirates left the Vietnamese men swam back to the boat and started looking for help. We encountered them the following morning.
This was possibly one of the first encounters of a US Navy vessel with the Boat People and there was no official policy on what to do. Our Captain sent a message to his commander for guidance. He really wanted to take everyone aboard but there were more people than we could accommodate. There was also the problem of where do you take the people to. Our Captain received a message ordering him to render as much assistance as possible short of actually taking the boat in tow.
We filled all of the boats empty water jugs, gave them all the rice as we had on board, we also gave them our emergency c-rations, can goods, and powdered milk. Our ships doctor and medical corpsman tended to those who were injured. Fortunately there didn’t appear to be any immediate life threatening injuries but you could see the trauma in the eyes of the young children. We also gave them tools so they could keep their engine going, material to patch their hull if it sprang a leak, charts of the South China Sea area and a navigational fix to help them get to Malaysia.
The next day we spotted another Vietnamese boat and this time it appeared that a Thai fishing boat was approaching them. Our submarine maneuvered in between the two vessels and the captain ordered us to mount machine guns in the submarines sail (conning tower). When the fishing boat saw that we were ready for action they took off and didn’t look back. This Vietnamese boat needed only water from us which gave them along with navigational information
I have attached one of the pictures that I have in my archives of us bringing water to the first boat and a picture of the submarine. If anyone in your group is familiar with this story or were present when it unfolded I would appreciate very much to hear from them.
Sincerely,
Peter Pehl II, Lieutenant USN (retired)
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Pete Pehl
P2 Diving Services
1270 NE Big Berry Loop
Oak Harbor WA 98277
(360) 672 2058
Courtesy of boatpeople.org
