Another War Story

["E. F. Forrer" <forrere@ccmail.orst.edu>]

     Bruce Dicey's story reminded me of a base wide drill we ran while I 
     was an ELT in the Navy.  It was an annual event that the subbase ran, 
     usually a reactor accident on some boat.  This particular year it was 
     our boat that got to do the honors.  In order to involve the entire 
     base we would send a contaminated injured man up to the base hospital. 
      The doctors and corpsmen up on the hill did not like having to play 
     our silly little games so they usually waved a meter over the "victim" 
     and then booted him out.  This year we sent our corpsman up as the 
     injured man, only we did not tell them he had just had a nuclear 
     procedure done and was rather toasty.  I would have given anything to 
     see the doctors face when the corpsman told him he was contaminated.  
     Apparently the doctor waved him off with some comment like "I know he 
     is contaminated, its part of the drill", the corpsman then replied 
     (backing away from our guy, or so I was told) "No sir, HE'S REALLY 
     CONTAMINATED!!!"  They took the drill a little more seriously after 
     that.
     Another time one of our crew members had a Gadolinium series for 
     ulcers.  After he came back to the boat he used the urinal.  One of 
     our bright young ELT's thought it would be fun to swipe the urinal to 
     see how much the guy was excreting.  Needless to say the swipe was 
     hot.  Right about then the CO came in and wanted to know what was up.  
     We told him about the swipe, and he asked us to prove the 
     contamination did not come from his reactor.  We spent the better part 
     of the day decontaminating a urinal, collecting samples and taking 
     them to a jelly counter to prove to him it was from a medical 
     procedure.
     
     Gene Forrer