On June 6, Petty Officer 2nd Class Kevin Gordon finally did it, when a small inflatable boat caught fire on a voyage to
A wrestler and star running back for the Marlins, Gordon had scholarship offers from a couple of Division II schools to play football, but he opted instead to join the Navy.
“I knew the dive program was a good thing to do, but they were overmanned,” Gordon said during a phone interview from the USS Bataan, a multipurpose amphibious assault ship somewhere in the
He trained instead to be a helicopter rescue swimmer. His training included spending about a year at
Otherwise, the training was intense.
There’s a training drill called sharks and daisies that Gordon said was more intense than the others. It combines physical and tactical skills, and it’s designed to prepare rescuers to deal with a panicked victim. Someone playing the role of the victim grabs hold of the rescuer, who must escape. A recruit was killed during a sharks and daisies drill in 1988.
“They forge into your mind that failure is not accepted at all,” he said of his training.
Gordon’s wrestling training helped him in the drill, and he became a rescue swimmer.
“We’re basically the world’s 911 in the
He’s been called on 100 times, he said, but he went into the water for the first time June 6. The inflatable boat was carrying 50 or 60 people, mostly from
He said he was not scared of dying; he was scared of failing, which in that situation could very well mean death.
The first man he came to was near death, suffering from burns and hypothermia, he said. But when Gordon tried to grab him, the man panicked and fought.
All those sharks and daisies drills paid off; he got the man to safety and went back — again and again.
“I got 11 guys out of the water that day,” he said.
Gordon’s third deployment ends in the fall, but he’s not ready to give such exciting work.
“I plan on making (the Navy) a career,” Gordon said. “I need that adrenaline rush every once in a while.”