[Un leu, un leu... Chapter XI] The Day of the Great White Shark

This is a continuation of the book "Un leu, un leu...", which was written in Romanian by my late godfather and uncle Bill Edwards, and published by Evenimentul, a now defunct Romanian publishing company. The book is being released for the first time in English exclusively online here on Steemit, as a serial. I hope you enjoy his writings as much as I do!
-Rob

Phù Cát Air Base, Vietnam. Image Source

In 1969-70, I was assigned to the 37th Tactical Fighter Wing (this is the same fighter wing which used the F-117 stealth fighter bomber in the recent Gulf War) at Phù Cát Air Base in the Central Highlands of the Republic of Viet Nam as Director of Information. I was a reserve captain on extended active duty with the United States Air Force. Having been born and raised in Key West, Florida, I was a lifelong skindiver, and I took every advantage of all opportunities to get over to any of the American bases on the eastern coastline of Viet Nam, particularly a base called Cam Ranh Bay, to get in some diving and spearfishing on the magnificent tropical reefs in the waters of the China Sea. Some of the beaches in Viet Nam were among the most beautiful I have seen anywhere in the world that I have been.

Cam Ranh Bay Hospital, Vietnam. Image Source

There were a couple of very large Army and Air Force medical facilities at Cam Ranh Bay, and when personnel at bases inland such as mine at Phù Cát had medical problems, or needed medical tests which couldn't be handled at the local base clinic, they were flown to a Hospital at Cam Ranh Bay. I had several minor medical problems which called for me to make a series of visits to one of these facilities.

The Director of Information of the air base at Cam Ranh Bay, Captain Emilio Tavernise, was a good friend of mine from the time we were second lieutenents years before in the Strategic Air Command (SAC). Emilio, a very interesting person, had immigrated to the United States as young boy with his parents from Northern Italy. He was fluent in five languages, had majored in Art History in college and later taught at the Air Force Academy. On my first trip to Cam Ranh Bay in 1969, I looked up Emilio, after phoning him that I would be visiting his base, I told him that between tests at the hospital I would be going spearfishing and diving for lobsters off of the beaches around Cam Ranh.

They were looking for something like this. Image Source

I introduced Emilio to the sport and he took to it with Mediterranean aplomb. Since he could dive every day at his base, if he wished to, he soon became very expert at the sport. On my last trip to Cam Ranh Bay in the Spring of 1970, Emilio, who by this time had become a very expert skindiver who knew all of the good spots around Cam Ranh Bay, suggested that we take his jeep and go to a spot he had heard of from a fellow diver. This diver had caught a lobster over three feet long— big enough to feed most of the officers in his air squadron — at this isolated spot in water at the base of a sixty foot cliff.

A 1.7 ton Great White shark. Image Source

As far as my panic goes, and I must face reality and call it panic, after the first seconds of seeing the shark, critically analyzing what it was, and realizing that it was seeing us, my reaction was to scream under water through my snorkel, to get Emilio's attention, "Shark! Shark! Get out of the water, get out of the water!" I surfaced, spat out my snorkel, still yelling "shark" and urging Emilio to get out of the water. We both beat a very rapid and frothy retreat to the rocks and shore about twenty feet away, fully expecting at any moment to be seized and taken by the beast we had seen. We did make it to the rocks and climbed out. I recall saying to my companion that we should back off the edge of the water as this type of shark was known to take seals and walruses from rocks out of the water. We laboriously climbed the cliff back to the jeep and drove to another area and continued to snorkel in water not as deep or isolated.

In thinking about this episode, then and in later years, the most striking thing in my mind was how massive the animal was. I had been in the water with many sharks before, the largest, a twelve-foot reef or mako shark, no more than two feet in diameter, on the deep side of a reef off of Key West many years before. This other creature, whose weight I estimated at well over two thousand pounds had a circumference of twelve feet. I had heard that there were large sharks off Viet Nam. Friends of mine who flew helicopters and small observation planes out over the water would frequently comment on seeing such sharks and on occasion, shoot at them or drop hand grenades on them.

And then there was the numerous human offal as a result of the war... dead bodies in the water. Why didn't it attack us? I have since read that a female white was big around enough to be a gravid female. I think that it was also significant that we had not shot any other fish and there was no blood in the water. Jokingly, Emilio and I came to another conclusion. We said that Emilio being white, and I being black, the shark could not decide at that moment if it wanted white or dark meat for that particular meal. A postscript to this story happened almost ten years later when I was off of active Air Force duty. I was at the Pentagon on some Air Reserve business and recognized Emilio, now a major and assigned to the Air Force Congressional Liaison Office. He was sitting with another officer in the cafeteria, and like me, having lunch. When he recognized me — we had not seen each other since Viet Nam — the first thing he said to the officer he was with on introducing me, was, "We were almost eaten by a great white spark in Viet Nam." To this day, when I think of this event in my life, twenty years before, I get chill bumps and goose flesh all over my body.

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