Sights of the Oil Fires in the Distance

Heroes Remember - Gulf War

Sights of the Oil Fires in the Distance

Transcript

The only thing I witnessed was I went up and it was much the same as a real extremely foggy day here in the harbour. You couldn’t see anything out, visibility was down to probably fifty yards and that was it and it really had that real bad smell. So whenever we went up on the upper decks we wore surgical masks because we were breathing that stuff in so we wore masks. But there wasn’t really anything to see, it was just grey. It was like a cloudy, foggy day except really hot. I remember running my finger down the side, on the side of the ship and it was charcoal black from the soot. You didn’t feel clean. It was, your skin was oily. It was very disgusting. Now granted when we were over there you went to bed wet, you woke up wet, your clothes were always wet, you showered, you sweat, after your done showering so we couldn’t stay dry. We had de-humidifiers in the mess and they were emptied two or three times a day. There was that much humidity in the air so with this smoke and this stuff in the air it was just really uncomfortable and you couldn’t get the smell off you. The sweaty smell or the burning oil smell, it was really disgusting but I’ll never forget it. I will definitely never forget it. Interviewer: And everyone was the same? Yes. I mean some guys didn’t like going out, they didn’t go on top because of that but I said I got to go out, I got to see this, right? So we couldn’t see land but we were within two miles of it. The helicopter did go in and do a sortie and they actually did shot a video tape that once they brought the video tape back all the messes watched it. Right along the coast and you could see see the mines on the beaches, all the damage from the missiles and the combats along the coast and smoke because everything was on fire. It was really, it was weird to see. That I am actually watching this on a video when I’m there but I can’t see it. Like if there wasn’t smoke, we could see the coast but we couldn’t even see the coast. It was kind of weird. It was like a foggy day except hot, really.

Description

Realizing the burning oil fires were close, Mr. Mellor describes the sights from on board the ship with the smell and foggy surroundings.

Bruce Mellor

Mr. Bruce Mellor was born August 5, 1968 in Hamilton, Ontario. Always having the desire to join the military, Mr. Mellor joined the navy as ordinary seaman on board the HMCS Athabaskan. When instructions were given by the military to take part in the Persian Gulf War, he expressed his strong desire to be a part of this and spent his time at sea as a part of the engineering department with duties as stoker. With 20 years of military service, Mr. Mellor holds great pride for the contribution he made to the navy. Mr. Mellor now resides in Halifax with his family.

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