photo courtesy Bill Cook, ET2 USS Tidewater 1962-1965

Now here's a memory this sailor wouldn't forget. Having a severe case of appendicitis, he is being sent to the Tidewater from his ship on the left via a cradle. This was a basket hung from a wire and pulley apparatus between the ships - something like hanging your laundry out the window of your tenement building over there in Naples. Once he sets foot on AD31, he'll be rushed to the ship's operating room where his appendix will be mustered out of the service.

A case of which is worse, the illness or the cure. Seas were about 5 feet.

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