Nimitz Class

Dinner for the ten participants involved in the drafting process — which included Scott Dunsmore and Josh Paul — consisted of ham sandwiches and coffee. By the time the last sandwich had gone, the American public was being blitzed by news, news of death and destruction in a faraway ocean, news of massive incompetence by the U.S. Navy, news of evasion by service Chiefs, news implying a cover-up, news designed to spread consternation, uneasiness, and, above all else, news to make the public want more. Much more.

Meanwhile, the two service Chiefs left for the Pentagon at 8:30 P.M. At just about the same time the Navy jet from San Diego and Dallas touched down at Andrews Air Force Base. There was a Navy helicopter on the runway, waiting to fly them in, direct to the Pentagon.

Twenty-five minutes later, the President, wearing a perfectly cut dark blue suit and a jet-black silk tie, left the Oval Office with Dick Stafford, and walked down the long corridor to face the media; Stafford for the second time that day, the President for the first time in six weeks. His mood was one of wary contempt. His party might dominate the Senate, but it did not dominate the awaiting pack. He would have to face them alone, with all of his formidable intellect, and all of his renowned rattlesnake cunning under pressure.

Stafford announced there might be a limited “questions and answers” at the conclusion of the speech. But too little was yet known by the Navy’s investigating professionals. There would however be a major briefing at the Pentagon at 1100 hours tomorrow morning. Then he requested silence for the President of the United States, who walked steadily to the dais and stood before hundreds of microphones. The cameras whirred. The lighting was dazzling, the mood pseudo-reverential.

The President spoke carefully, in the thoughtful tones that unfailingly mesmerized a big audience. And right now he had one of the biggest television audiences in history. Maybe the biggest.

“My fellow Americans,” he began, I address you this evening on one of the truly saddest days in the entire history of the United States — a day when we have lost several thousand of our finest men in what appears to have been a freak accident, a one-in-a-billion chance, which is baffling our most senior military scientists.

There has never been a nuclear accident in our armed forces — and the sheer scale of this one, which this afternoon devastated the great aircraft carrier, the Thomas Jefferson, has brought to each one of us a sense of shock; of grief for the anguished families of the men who served in her; of sorrow for colleagues and friends.

This most appalling event will in the coming days touch every corner of our country, because the scale of this disaster will spread its sorrow into communities for which death has usually been of intimate local importance, brushing only those lives which came close to a lost friend or relative.

The bereavement we all face now is of another dimension. I too had friends serving on board the Thomas Jefferson. And I am all too aware of the sadness their deaths will bring to lonely farming communities in the High Plains of the state of Kansas. One of them was a beloved senior admiral, another a first-class captain, destined for the very highest office in the service.

I know there will be personal sorrow too in little towns along the coast of Maine, in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, and the Carolinas…the traditional recruiting grounds for some of our finest Navy commanders.

In Georgia and Florida, too. In the South and the Midwest, and perhaps most of all, up and down the coast of California…in particular in the great port of San Diego, which was home to the Thomas Jefferson, and to so many of those who sailed in her.

At this time I would ask your forbearance in what I am about to say. For I come only to praise them, these finest of American patriots, who have made the final sacrifice of their calling in the most unforeseen way. But death to them, in the split-second unconscious heart stop of a nuclear fireball, was not quite what a similar death might have been to us — we, whose risks are so minimal, whose lives are mostly led without fear and ever-present tension.

For these men who died on the Thomas Jefferson, death, and its unseen threat, was a perpetual companion.

Because peacetime to us did not mean peacetime to them. We have a perception of peacetime only because of them. They were not part of its blessing. They were the cause of it; they were its guardian and its savior. No more in life than in death. They were not ordinary men. They were men who went down to the sea in ships; who patrolled the world’s oceans beneath the flag of this great nation. They were men who demanded peace. Pax Americana—peace on the terms laid down by the great steadying hand of the United States of America. Peace because we say there’s going to be peace, because we say the world’s free trade must always be permitted…in peaceful waters. Peace because we say so.

How many times, in moments of international strife, have you read the words: ‘The United States has warned…’? The United States can issue warnings only because of the men who died on the Thomas Jefferson. They were not like other men. They even have a joke about facing death in battle: ‘You shouldn’t have joined if you can’t take a joke.’ The words of our military men down the ages.

Each man who sailed in the great warship knew that deep in her bowels there were weapons of destruction that did not merely pack sufficient punch to blow up any enemy; they formed the barricade behind which all of the free world lives in peace. The men on the Thomas Jefferson knew that. As they gazed out at the awesome fighter/attack bombers that flew from her decks they saw the fire and the fury we could use against any aggressor. They knew that.

But these men had joined the United States Navy. And they knew something else. They also knew that in their most dangerous calling they might be asked to make the final sacrifice, in war, or in peace, at any time. They always knew that. For them, few days passed without reminders of the proximity of death. For their workplace was lethal — filled with mach-one fighter aircraft screaming in over the stern of the carrier; with guided missiles; with great Navy guns and bombs; with nuclear submarines. These men, the men of the Thomas Jefferson Battle Group, knew the frightening responsibilities of their profession. And they knew the great honor that profession bestowed upon them, and all of their families — every day of their lives. They died with suddenness, all of them in the prime of their being…these were the men for whom we sing, ‘For those in peril on the sea…’—the sailor’s hymn.

Which brings me, as it brought many other occupants of this office, to the lines written by the English poet Laurence Binyon:

They shall grow not old,
as we that are left grow old.
Age shall not weary them,
nor the years condemn,
At the going down of the sun
and in the morning
We will remember them.

And now I would like to ask each one of you to reflect, in the memory of these men, upon an issue which each one of them held dear until the end. Should the United States continue to police the world’s oceans? Is the danger, the shocking danger of it all, just too much to ask? I know my answer, and I believe I know the answer we would have received from the admiral who commanded the Thomas Jefferson—down all six thousand men, to the most junior rating, to the youngest of the missile officers. Is it worth it? That the USA should take on such onerous obligations and risks in order that we as a nation, and most of the world, may live without fear from any enemy?

Is it worth it? Is it right? Should we go on doing it? Each time in the future, whenever that question is asked, the beloved memories of the men of the Thomas Jefferson will stand before us all.