Fred Ings, a Navy veteran and USS Cole survivor from Johnstown, Pennsylvania, discusses the tragic events that transpired during his time on the ship, and his determination to honor his shipmates’ legacy.

Transcript

I joined the Navy in 1998. I was wounded on board the USS Cole. There ain’t a day goes by I don’t think about people that were wounded or dead or killed. When I got on the Cole, it was on its maiden deployment. So I did four months of that deployment. We came back and we did all the normal INSURVs and all that stuff, working up for our next deployment when we deployed in August of 2000. I had a family, my daughter had just been born in September. September 9th you know, and she was a month old. I was undesignated when I joined, I got to the USS Cole. Got interested in Bos’n Mate, driving boats and working all the small stuff and the equipment around the ship, really something different every day. You didn’t have to get stuck in the same thing. So I struck Bos’n Mate and stayed with it the rest of my career. I think the most thing that I saw from the Cole incident, from the time I was there before they took me to the hospital and then shipped me back home was training. Everybody, training gets monotonous and it’s boring. And it’s like, why are we doing this again? Why are we doing this again, over and over? I was E-4 at the time, three years in the Navy. I went down so I didn’t get to react. You know, I just got carried back to the battle station. You know, at battle dressing station. And alls I could see is people that always screwed around in training, they knew exactly what to do. And the people that knew what to do that went down, they filled their shoes and it was just, it all just went together, you know? Training just, it was natural for everybody to react to it. And they knew what to do even though it was horrible. They knew what to do. After the bombing, I wasn’t really sure I wanted to stay in, but watching the families go through the grieving processes. When they have us all, a tragedy, they had us, all us injured, all the family members staying in hotels on Norfolk Naval base. Had a lot of briefings and debriefings and from the FBI, from the Navy, NCIS, all that. And really watching the families grieve my friends and my family that died. Made me want to stay in just for them. To represent and try to keep their legacy alive. When you’re third class or second class or first class walking around with a purple ribbon on your chest that nobody really knows what it is, you’re constantly getting asked what’s that, you know? ‘Cause it’s above everything and then you tell them and then the stories come out. You know, over the years it was hard because you have to deal with that. And you don’t want the extra recognition. You just want that part of your life to kind of move on, move on with your career. And remember it, it’s all about being able to move on even though the demons are still inside. Dealing with them, being able to overcome it and not letting my shipmates’ deaths stand for nothing by me giving up. (mournful trumpet playing)