O:JA&L FLASH NONFICTION: ALL MILITARY
Flash Memoir, CNF, or Vignette
Clement Valot
February 2008, Straits of Hormuz, Arabian Gulf
(Excerpted from WIP Liberty)
Hour four of the transit kicked off. It was pitch black outside except for the navigation lights of other vessels. There were not many out here, but the few that were got mixed in with the background lighting and made it hard to tell what was an actual contact or not. If it wasn’t for the brilliant view of stars in the sky it would be hard to tell where the sky ended, and the land or sea began. I scanned the horizon with night vision goggles astern of our ship to help make out any contacts that might be overtaking us. Certain that we were moving quicker than the merchant traffic, what I saw visually correlated in that none of the contacts appeared to be closing us from astern.
“My God there are a lot more stars out there looking through the NVGs.” I commented. I did not get a reply. We probably had this conversation at least a half dozen times before on this deployment. Bramon was behind me sitting on the ready service locker while I took my turn standing behind the gun. He was probably close to dozing off. We had been out here a while with no action, and I am sure Bramon was second guessing our decision to stay out here longer just as I was. My unobstructed view of the night sky through the NVGs suddenly became washed out, and the entire sector of vision became a bright green. “The fuck!” I pulled the NVGs off my head and my dilated pupils were flushed by a bright white light. My night vision was gone and with shock to my loss of sight I could now hear a small boat engine revving loud over the sound of the warship we were riding on. “Bramon, contact right below us!”
Jerry jumped up from the locker and scrambled to put the sound powered phones on his head for the initial report to the Gun Control Officer. “Christ! GCO, mount 9 we have a surface contact directly below our mount.”
“Jerry, I have a small gray hulled speed boat 25 yards off our stern shining a spotlight on us.” Bramon began. “Fuck, weapons displayed top side and there is a gunner on the mount.” It was almost directly below our mount, hanging off the aft end of our ship, approximately fifty feet below us. As my vision corrected, I could now make out what had snuck up on us. The military style speedboat was matching our course and speed. Two personnel were topside on the bow of the vessel; one person was manning a mounted spotlight, and the other was manning a huge crew-served weapon.
Having a weapon pointed directly at me made me feel as though I was naked on the suicide mount. With zero cover or concealment, I was a sitting duck in their sights. The sensation that took over my body was a combination of an ice-cold chill that ran down my spine, through my stomach, and down to my toes. I did not realize how bad I had to piss and shit until that exact moment. I clenched my ass and groin with all my focus to prevent from shitting and pissing my pants right there on the mount. The only sense of protection I could give myself was to point my fifty cal directly back at them. They were now in my sights as well, and it took all my brainpower to steady the men in my sights. My arms and legs started to shake I was tensing them so much. The concentration of keeping the sight alignment matched on the sight picture distracted me from the sensation of having to relieve myself immediately. My index and middle fingers rested on the trigger of the condition one weapon and my right thumb hovered on the safety, ready to slide it over and start squeezing the triggers.
I could not hear a word Bramon was reporting to the GCO. “Permission to fire warning shots!” Thankfully my muscle memory was ready to react. I kept the small boat in my sights, but I was ready to employ the warning shots. Aim, offset, depress, was the method we use for warning shots. I would flick the safety off and squeeze, hold, and release. These were the ditties we say in our heads to help time trigger control. This would allow a short burst of the machine gun ideally right in front of the target showing a flash from the muzzle of the gun, a tracer round or two, and a splash in the water warning the small boat that if they did not fall back the next controlled burst would be into their gunner, spotlight, and small cabin controlling the vessel.
That is, if they did not cut me in half first by firing their own weapon.
“Negative warning shots! Negative warning shots!” Bramon screamed at me. He must have gotten the direction from the GCO. Bramon was now immediately on my back with one hand on my shoulder and one hand on the button of the sound powered phone mouthpiece he was speaking into. Both of us were now in their sights.
“Fuck that, grab the flares. Request permission to fire flares.” I shouted at Bramon, and he must have agreed with me. He moved from his position directly behind me and dashed for the locker one more time. He grabbed the pencil flares.
“GCO, mount 9, permission to fire flares.” He requested while he broke out the pack of signaling devices from the locker. I could hear him clearly making reports now as a moment of clarity finally came over me. The initial adrenaline dump to my system was settling out. What must have been only seconds overwhelmed my senses to the point that I wondered if this moment was going to define the rest of my life.
About the writer:
Clement Valot served in the United States Navy for over twenty years, with ten years enlisted, advancing to Chief Gunner’s Mate, and ten years commissioned as a Surface Warfare Officer, advancing to Lieutenant. His service began in December of 2005 and concludes in August of 2026. His military occupational specialties include small arms and machine gun instructor, ammunition administration, anti-terrorism training supervisor, and non-compliant visit, board, search, and seizure (VBSS) member and officer, as well as several other classifications. LT Valot’s Naval career is highlighted with a Doctoral Degree, over ten deployments, and a circumnavigation of the globe.
Image: ROE (AI-assisted digital image) by O:JA&L staff creative. 2026. Public domain via Midjourney AI.
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