Undertow

I’m not sure why it is that I’m drawn to water. Aside from drinking it, bathing with it and skating or snowshoeing on it, I’m not a huge fan. Scuba diving is down right terrifying and my Advanced Dive Medicine was worse than any horror show I’ve ever seen. Which makes it all the more puzzling why I volunteered to sail ships and subs in addition to suffering nearly incapacitating sea sickness. Maybe its because the open ocean resembles the wide expansive prairies that I love. This latter point I’ve read, is why so many men from the prairies joined the RCN and Merchant Marine during World War II. Or, perhaps it’s because I had a fantastic swimming teacher growing up, whose lessons gave me great confidence in the water and undoubtedly saved me countless times.

This story is about one of those times…thank you Sue.

All the best,

John

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On Boxing Day, 2004, while the majority of the North America slept soundly, their bellies full of turkey and Christmas Cheer, a major world event was taking place in the Indian Ocean. At approximately 8:00 am, a 9.1-9.3 magnitude earthquake occurred off the west coast of northern Sumatra, Indonesia.

The shifting of the earth's plates created massive tsunami waves rippling outwards from the epicenter, like those formed by a rock dropped into a puddle. Some of these waves reached heights of more than 100ft high and struck coastal communities in 14 countries with a devastating effect leaving nearly one quarter million people dead or missing. It is one of the worst natural disasters in recorded history.

At the time, I was travelling home to visit my folks in Eatonia, SK. from Petawawa, ON. where I was posted to 2 Field Ambulance. After landing in Calgary, AB. getting a rental car, and starting the drive home, the phone call came in that there was going to be a recall and the Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART) was likely going to deploy. Everyone was to get their asses back to base.

Sure enough, the DART deployed but it was slow, and we arrived in Colombo several weeks after the tsunami due to a lack of strategic air-movement capabilities. As a result, much of the urgent medical care had already been delivered by other nations, but there was still plenty to do. We moved into an abandoned sugar factory in the Ampara region of Sri Lanka, approximately 300 km (about 186.41 mi) from the capital.

The DART was a wonderful time, particularly because of the amazing people that deployed on it. There were all kinds of laughs and shenanigans. Water that we had bought off the economy had fecal content counts too high for consumption and was dumped into tanks for laundry or used for water fights. Trips to setup clinics in the community were undertaken by locally contracted van drivers who would race a breakneck speed along “roads” while passing slower vehicles on the inside, outside or whenever an opportunity presented itself. Monkeys that we evicted from the sugar factory would stalk us and prowl on the roof of the latrines scaring the bejesus out of people who needed to use the facilities at night. It was an amazing deployment.

But one memory stands out in my mind from my time in Sri Lanka.

The concept of ops (CONOPS) for the DART medical teams on this mission was to deploy small teams, usually a doctor, nurse, and a few Medical Technicians to villages that had been hard hit by the tsunami to run medical clinics. One location, if I recall correctly, was almost a full day's drive away from the main camp and the team would then stay there for a week before coming back. This town, the name of which escapes me, had a one room school near the beach which had survived the tsunami which is where we worked out of. We lived in some mod canvas tents not far from it and next to the beach. Despite the obvious destruction and heart wrenching human devastation, it was a paradise.

Aside from a cow with a particularly odd “moo”, whose story I will leave for one of my friends to tell, the location was surreal. Not 200 metres from our modular tent, huge waves crashed ashore, rushing up soft warm sand, burbling furiously, then hissing as they retreated into the surf. If you closed your eyes, you could imagine it sounded like a giant, breathing in, and out deeply and rhythmically. The sunsets were equally spectacular, the soft orange and pink light from the sun as it fell below the horizon would reflect off the waves like the most beautiful stained glass.

Most days after work everyone would change into their swimsuits and head down to the beach to wade in the water or dive under the incredible waves and then ride the next one back to shore. It was a fantastic way to wash off the grime and recharge after providing care all day and working with interpreters which made life easier in once sense but harder in another.

One evening though, everyone else was too tired for a swim, but I decided I need one and headed down to the beach alone. The waves appeared to be particularly high that evening but having had no problems diving under them and riding them back to shore previously, I dove in. I should have trusted my intuition.

As soon as I was under the water, I knew that something was different, the water was far more turbulent, and I at once felt myself being rolled and tossed in all sorts of directions. I had the sense not to fight the undertow until its tug slackened and I swam for the surface, not knowing for sure which way was up, but managed to find it after a few strokes. When I broke through on the surface and rode the next wave to its peak, I was chilled, despite the relative warmth of the water, to see that the beach was now over 100 metres away. Panic set in and I started to swim feverishly towards the shore. I was a strong swimmer and every stroke I felt like I was getting closer to land, but when I would appear from the trough of a wave, I found myself getting even further away.

I have heard that when people realize they are going to die, that it is inevitable, they are overcome with a sense of calm and clarity. For me then and there, that is exactly what I experienced. I was alone in the Indian Ocean, no one knew I had gone for a swim and no matter how hard I swam, I wasn’t going to make it back to shore. There was no point in yelling, the waves crashing on the shore would drown out my cries, so I just relaxed and treaded water and started to think about things as the currents pulled me further to sea.

Then out of nowhere, like mermaids appearing to sailor marooned at sea, two young Sri Lankan boys surfaced beside me smiling, but also appearing a bit tense. It was so surreal that I thought it was a dream. They had been playing on the beach not far from where I went in the water and must have seen I was in trouble. They motioned that I should mimic them, and then they showed me how to diver under the wave in front of me so the wave behind me would push me forward. After 10 mins of diving and hard swimming I felt my feet hit the sandy bottom. Exhausted from the effort I pulled myself on the beach and away from the undertow, gulping in large lungful’s of air after all the exertion. The two boys, who were barely even breathing heavy, smiled, waved, then ran off down the beach to carry on with their evening games.

I stumbled back up to the tent on weary legs and didn’t speak with anyone as I toweled off. I collapsed onto my cot, fatigued beyond words and thought, just before sleep washed over me, “maybe tomorrow I’ll just tan.”