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FIRST HONORABLE MENTION, ENLISTED ESSAY CONTEST
When we join the armed services, we swear to protect our country from all enemies-foreign and domestic. We know it is possible our country will go to war, and that we might give our lives protecting it. Dying for our country in wartime is honorable; in peacetime, when a service member dies while performing his duty, it is almost always preventable. The deaths of Coast Guardsmen Scott Chism and Chris Ferreby, and others like them, have left a dark question mark on our hearts and consciences.
On 23 March 2001, Scott, Chris, and two other crewmen got under way in a 22-foot open inflatable boat from Station Niagara, New York, for a routine law enforcement patrol. It was snowing and the temperature was 32degF. The communications watchstander made the required radio check-in call with the boat 30 minutes after it left the pier (this is called an ops and position report). This report-- to be done every 15 minutes and no less than every 30 minutes, depending on the size of the boat-is meant to keep the station in contact with the boat, by radio or telephone, so the station can keep track of the boat's last known position and its activities. This information is used, among other things, in the event of an emergency to minimize the search area so the vessel can be located quickly. Procedure dictates that if the watchstander is unable to raise the boat crew within the allotted time, the entire command is notified and another boat is launched to begin a search.
The boat crew did not respond to the watchstander's first 30-minute ops and position request, although in this particular case this was not unusual and did not cause alarm. At Station Niagara, as with many other Coast Guard stations, there are "dead spots" where radios sometimes fail to pick up the call. This usually happens in the first 30 minutes as the boat rounds the first buoy. Not wanting to overreact, the...