The US Coast Guard Pulls Off the Most Unlikely Rescue Ever, Saving 3 Guys Stranded on a Deserted Island Who Wrote 'HELP' on the Beach

Handout. Getty Images.

As someone who's never had the courage to his neck out to save another human being, I have nothing but the utmost respect for those who do. Particularly the members of the five branches of the United States military. (It might be six now because of Space Force, though I don't know if that's official or what.) So when a certain young Marine I know joking referred to the US Coast Guard as The Puddle Pirates, I sat that one out. I'm not qualified to judge whether it's funny or not. It's not my place. 

Besides, when you hear a story about the harrowing work the USCG does on a daily basis, you can't help but admire them. Intercepting drug smugglers and human traffickers. Going out into the worst conditions imaginable to save boaters. (I highly recommend the book and the movie The Finest Hours, about the harrowing 1952 rescues off Cape Cod in one of the most savage storms to ever hit New England.) Or, in the case of this latest stories, the insane, odds-defying search and rescue they just completed:

Source - The U.S. Navy and Coast Guard found and rescued three men Tuesday from a tiny atoll south of Guam, where they spent more than a week after they were left stranded. 

The men, all in their 40s, set sail from Polowat Atoll, Micronesia, on March 31 in a small, open 20-foot skiff powered by an outboard motor, according to a news release from Coast Guard Forces Micronesia, Sector Guam. …

A week later, on April 6, a relative “reported her three uncles had not returned from Pikelot Atoll,” approximately 115 miles northwest of Polowat Atoll, a part of Chuuk State in the Federated States of Micronesia. 

Pikelot, a low coral island covered with palm trees and shrubs, is a speck just 2½ miles long and 1¾ miles wide in a search area the Coast Guard described as 78,800 square miles of the South Pacific. Joint Rescue Sub-Center Guam mobilized a search that drew a U.S. Navy P-8 Poseidon patrol aircraft from Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, and the Guam-based Coast Guard cutter Oliver Henry. 

The Poseidon crew found the three Sunday thanks to a message they left on the Pikelot beach. 

“In a remarkable testament to their will to be found, the mariners spelled out ‘HELP’ on the beach using palm leaves, a crucial factor in their discovery,” Coast Guard Lt. Chelsea Garcia, the search and rescue mission coordinator, said in the release. “This act of ingenuity was pivotal in guiding rescue efforts directly to their location.” 

First of all, getting stuck on a deserted island and trying to save yourself by writing "HELP" on the beach isn't a rescue plan. It's a Jimmy Fallon bit:

 It's a trope. It's a Far Side cartoon. Something Bugs Bunny did. And possibly Capt. Jack Sparrow. And Tom Hanks in Castaway. 

Though his search area was about six times bigger than theirs:

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As a matter of fact, I distinctly remember a Gilligan's Island where their plan was to get rescued by signalling a NASA spacecraft, and it going predictably wrong as hilarity ensued:

Fandom Wiki - The Professor tries contacting Scorpio 6, a space capsule with two astronauts, in orbit over the Island to get them rescued. Their initial plan to contact the capsule with a makeshift transmitter fails because their signal isn't strong enough, but their second plan to contact the astronauts with an SOS formed out of tree trunks almost works until Gilligan sets himself on fire and accidentally skews the SOS into "SOL." Astronaut Sol Tobias merely thinks it's a message to him.

Like the seven imbeciles who turned a three-hour tour around Oahu into a survival situation, getting stranded on a tiny spit of land in the middle of Nowhere, Micronesia is not the time for spelling out calls for help in the sand. It's the time to start plotting which of your fellow castaways you're going to eat first. It's planning to get them before they turn on you. Not only would I not waste my time gathering palm leaves, I wouldn't let them do it either. Because it would burn their calories and give me less to eat. 

And yet, this 100 billion-to-1 longshot somehow ended up in the W column. Thanks to the proud, brave, and vigilant members of the United States military. These three men are alive today instead of one of them wondering what kind of soup he can get out of the others bones, because our service personnel are still the best and brightest. And the form the finest military force in human history. Well done, USCG.