USS Cole attack @ 17 Years

The explosion was sudden, violent, and deafening. It was so intense that the 8,500 ton USS Cole (DDG 67) was lifted out of the water. The very metal of the ship shimmered and rippled in front of their eyes, according to survivors. The force threw retired Master Chief Sonar Technician Paul Abney out of his chair and sent a shipmate flying over his head. Everything went black. When the ship arrived at the port in Aden, Yemen, on the morning of Oct. 12, 2000, some sailors had gut feelings of doom. "I didn't have good feelings when we pulled into Aden," retired Master Chief Hospital Corpsman James Parlier, the ship's command master chief, explained. The rusting port presented an eerie sight. “Those things … didn't seem right.” The ship was on Force Protection Bravo (the second lowest of five levels describing a situation with a somewhat predictable terrorist threat, and information suggests probable violence, but nothing indicates that the ship was a target. “Even if we were at a higher force protection, there's no way we would have found the explosives in that boat alongside the ship," Parlier recounted. Minutes after the explosion, Parlier (an independent duty corpsman) was hard at work triaging patients. He quickly provided some battlefield training to crewmen on how to move the wounded and to provide rudimentary medical care. There were a lot of shrapnel wounds, broken bones, and blast injuries. One 19-year-old Sailor, he recalled, “was in horrific condition. The crew didn't know what to do with him. … We took him out on the fantail on the flight deck. ... I tried to do CPR on him … He was the first guy I've ever lost in my life, and I had to make a call because we had over 25 casualties on the fantail and flight deck. Seventeen Sailors died. Most were in the chiefs’ mess and galley, lined up for chow. (All Hands 10/17) Gulf Coast Note: Retired master chief Parlier served as a senior enlisted advisor for two of Naval Hospital Pensacola, Fla.’s branch medical clinics at Naval Air Technical Training Center aboard NAS Pensacola, and the former Naval Station Pascagoula, Miss. He was one of two sailors with ties to Navy Pensacola. Retired master chief Eric Kafla, son of retired and former command master chief at Naval Hospital Pensacola, Randy Kafka. USS Cole was built and refurbished at then-Litton Ingalls’ shipyard in Pascagoula.