High School Memories

I was thinking today about the Russian submarine they called the Kursk. When I was a high school senior, it sank. One of its torpedoes, which did not have warheads and were not tested according to very exacting standards, failed and exploded. All the sailors aboard, numbering over a hundred, perished inside the sub, which had come to rest in something less than four hundred feet of water. It was quite a tragedy.

I was upset at the time that the Russians declined offers of help from other governments to attempt rescue of the men aboard. It seemed to be some matter of pride, or perhaps of a desire to protect information concerning Russia's submarines. I recall writing some report in my English class on the subject, and being a senior I'm sure I thought I knew it all. I still knew it all through college, and only starting to get dumb thereafter.

In any case, Russia had claimed that the men were killed too early for rescue attempts to have been worth attempting, and yet numerous sailors were later found with notes by them when the ship was finally salvaged. This is how Russia seems to operate, typically. Chechen hostage-takers have found no profit in that enterprise, as the Russians don't value captive citizens any more than they do imperiled sailors.

I don't know what got me thinking about the matter. I read something online that reminded me of it. It was something that made me rather sad, dragging on as it did several days. I don't recall people around me taking much notice of it, but I was accustomed even then to thinking of different things from everyone else. It's a more pronounced thing with me these days, considering few people cared about the Kursk then and I'm still ruminating on it now.