Foreign and Military Affairs

My tour of duty in the Gulf of Aden

(China Daily)
Updated: 2009-12-29 07:53

Editor's note: China Daily reporter Wang Hui spent four months living side by side with the crew of the Haikou, a destroyer sent to the Gulf of Aden in December last year as part of the PLA Navy's first escort fleet. Here is his story.

"Machine gun! Machine gun!" the captain shouted as the pirates closed in on their prey.

It was early March and nine speed boats, each carrying about five heavily armed men, were heading for a nearby merchant ship. They had ignored warning shots from the Haikou, a Chinese warship charged with escorting vessels through the dangerous waters off the coast of Somalia.

The pirates turned and fled after our gunners opened fire. This encounter was over. But we all knew there would be more to come.

An Italian merchant ship had also asked to sail alongside the Haikou and when the vessel stopped to repair its engine, two small pirate boats set a course to intercept it.

"Help, help!" begged the captain over the radio. It was too far away for a direct response, so the captain of the Haikou instead scrambled the helicopter, which fired warning shots at the potential invaders until they left.

The Haikou, along with two other warships, were in the Gulf of Aden off the east coast of Africa as a part of the first escort mission launched by the People's Liberation Army Navy outside of Chinese waters. Given the importance of the shipping channel to international trade, it is a mission of vital importance and one which most merchant sailors are grateful for.

When I was on a helicopter with the special operations forces for a patrol in early January this year, I saw the crew on one of the ships we were escorting, the Zhenhua 13, had written out "Salute the People's Army" on the deck.

On other days I saw sailors on the Hebei Aoxiang had painted "Long live the Motherland" on another banner, while the released crew of the Tianyu 8, a Chinese vessel seized by pirates in November, hung a banner on their ship that read: "Thank you, Motherland, Thank you, Chinese PLA Navy."

Experts say that one of the major causes of piracy off Somalia is the poverty experienced by people in the country. Liu Wentian, a young sailor of the Tianyu 8 from Sichuan province, told me the pirates were so poor and greedy that they removed all of their hostages' belongings, including even shoes.

The mission to protect vessels in the Gulf of Aden is not an easy one. During the four months we were away from China, we never docked. We missed our homes and families, and we became excited just at the sight of a remote harbor far off in the distance.

One officer said to me: "I have a wife but here it is as if I have no wife. Many soldiers have forgotten the feeling of their wives' hands."

However, my time on the Haikou was not always as serious or tough.

After the ship had driven off the pirates with machine gun fire, I vividly remember watching astonished as a group of dolphins leaped out of the water and swam besides our ship.