RUSHMORE TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS IN HAWAII

PEARL HARBOR, HAWAII – What do you do when you set out on a road trip only to
discover an hour into the trip that you forgot a few things? Do you find a store in the
next town you come to? What if you’re on a tight schedule? Do you pull up outside the
store and let one person run in while everybody else waits outside with the engine
running?

Now, what if your road trip is actually a trans-Pacific crossing and your car is the
Tarawa Amphibious Ready Group (ARG)? What do you do? The answer is; you pull up
outside the store and let one person run in while everybody else waits outside with the
engine running.

That is exactly what happened recently as the Tarawa ARG neared Pearl Harbor,
Hawaii, having left its homeport of San Diego one week earlier. While a schedule
change told Tarawa ARG to bypass Hawaii, it was determined that somebody needed to
run to the store. That job fell to the USS Rushmore (LSD 47), the quickest of the three
ships making up the group. The mission was simple, get in to Pearl Harbor, get what
they needed, and get out. The time frame to accomplish this; six hours. All this, while
the other ships waited outside with the engines running. The evolution had the air of a
scavenger hunt. One group headed out for supplies, while another handled mail and still
another loaded stores.

For a group of eight of Rushmore’s Storekeepers and Repair Parts Petty Officers
(RPPO) the adventure kicked off as soon as the ship moored. “We were waiting on the
quarter deck for the brow to drop. We had a vehicle waiting on the pier, two SK’s with
government credit cards, six of the ship’s RPPO’s, and a shopping list for ourselves and
the USS Duluth (LPD 6)” said SK2 (SW) Robert Gurule. “It was like an extreme
shopping spree. I’ve been an SK for 3 1⁄2 years and I’ve never done anything like it.”

While the Rushmore’s designated shoppers tore through the local economy, back
on the ship, Deck department was hustling to load up 18 palletts of stores that were
waiting for the ARG. “It was pretty busy the whole time, ” said BM2 Mark Boyce. “We
went straight from sea and anchor detail into crane ops and working party’s and then
right back to sea and anchor.”

Elsewhere on the ship, others were working on something that would bring smiles
to sailors and Marines throughout the ARG. “We brought on over 700 pounds of mail for
the group,” said PC2 (SW) Nick Lewandski, the Rushmore’s Postal Clerk. “We had
three separate deliveries with over 35 bags total. If we had waited until our next port,
there would have been thousands of pounds.”

Just about everyone on the ship had a part to play. Engineering personnel brought
on 16 barrels of lube oil for the Tarawa, the quartermasters went looking for charts, and
of course someone always needs an ID card. But there were a few who managed to
accomplish what was maybe the most important stop of the day; according to EM3
Jonathan Fisher, “I had to go pick up a part for the ship’s degaussing system, the super
size value meal just happened to be along the way.”

With the work on the ship and pier completed and the clock ticking down, the
Rushmore stationed the sea and anchor detail. There was only one problem, the shopping
team had not returned yet. “We had problems checking out at one of the stores, then we
had to fight lunch time traffic back onto the base,” said Gurule. “The ship was scheduled
to be underway at 1300. We made it onto the pier at 1247. They had people waiting on
the pier to help unload the vehicle and get it on the ship. When I got onboard, I headed to
the supply office. No sooner had I walked through the door when they passed the word
“underway, shift colors.”

With the “pit stop” completed, the Rushmore headed back out to rejoin the ARG.
There was still much work ahead, even though the crew had somehow accomplished all
that was needed. It would take two days of vertical replenishments (VERTREPS) to
transfer the supplies to the other ships. But because of the hard work put in by the
Rushmore crew, the Tarawa ARG is ready to continue on with whatever mission may be
put before it.

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