An Inspection and an Examination

Although I was barely twenty-one years old and had been in the Navy less than three years, I considered myself an “old salt”.  I wore my white hat at a cocky angle over an eyebrow and my liberty neckerchief was non-regulation pressed black silk.  My tailored white uniforms were also non-regulation with wide bell-bottoms.

The imaged I had of myself was reinforced from the unlikely source one weekend shortly after we reported at NATTC.  On Friday afternoon just after we secured for the day, Lieutenant Dugan, the division officer for our class, informed us that there would be a surprise admiral’s inspection the following morning.  The class would fall in for inspection in the central passageway on the first deck.  Since the weather had turned warm the uniform of the day for inspection would be dress whites.

Come Saturday morning when I started to dress for inspection I was dismayed to find that I did not have a fresh clean suit of regulation whites.  Except for the gabardine tailor-mades I had bought in Honolulu, my white uniforms were in the laundry and for some unknown and unexplained reason our laundry, due on Thursday, had not yet come back.  Also, I could not find my regulation issue neckerchief that was worn rolled.  I had only the pressed black silk.  I knew that if the admiral was a hard-nose I could wind up on report for a non-regulation uniform but I had no choice.  I put them on.

When we fell in for inspection and Lt. Dugan looked us over, the division officer sharply ordered me to go get into regulation uniform.  I said, “Sorry, lieutenant—my issue whites are all in the laundry which didn’t come back this week.  It’s this or nothing.”

Lt. Dugan shrugged and turned away looking down the row of white-clad sailors, most of them looking as if they were just out of boot camp—many were—with baggy blouses and stovepipe-legged pants.  Their rolled black neckerchiefs were uneven and did not tie neatly.  Their crimped white hats sat squarely two fingers above the eyebrows.  They were regulation all right and were quite a contrast to my crisp white gaberdines that were pegged at the knee and had flared bell bottoms.  My white blouse was tailored to my slender frame so that I had to have a zipper under one arm to get it on and off.  The division officer shook his head and said, “Okay, Frieze,--don’t say I didn’t warn you!”

I never knew the inspecting admiral’s name but when he came down the line he had the appearance of a stern officer that went by the book.  I heard him cite two or three for non-regulation haircuts or for unsatisfactorily shined black shoes.  At least, I thought, I was in the base barber shop two days ago and I knew that the toes of my black shoes could have been used for shaving mirrors.

The admiral halted directly opposite and looked me up and down.  He took in the crimped but crisply clean white hat tilted just a bit over the right eyebrow, the three campaign ribbons over my pocket, the first class AMM “crow” and chevrons, and the gunner’s badge on my lower sleeve.  I was at rigid attention,--my back ramrod straight, my thumbs precisely on the inverted side creases of my trousers, and my gaze fixed in the distance past the admiral’s right ear.  The admiral’s scrutiny went to my bellbottom pants then he said softly, “What your name, sailor?”

I am happy to say my eyes never wavered as I responded, “Frieze, Sir,--Frieze, C.R.”

I waited for the senior officer to tell the yeoman at his elbow to take my name and offense but then my gaze fell to his as the admiral said, “Been in the Pacific, eh?”

“Yessir—two years, admiral.”

“Well done, son.”

Then the grey-haired admiral made my day.  He turned and looked back alpong the long line of baggy regulations uniforms, then turned to Lieutenant Dugan.  “Now there, lieutenant,” the admiral said mildly, “is a sailor!”

I never knew the admiral’s name but I went on liberty that Saturday evening feeling as if he had given me the Congressional Medal of Honor—or at least a Navy Cross!  Dutchy and I celebrated sufficiently after she got off work at the lounge that I did not make it back to 87^th & Anthony until after noon Sunday.  I woke up in Dutchy’s tiny apartment in the murphy bed between she and her blonde roommate Alicia.  “Allie” was a bit out of sorts that morning because she had not been able to find her nightgown the night before.  The missing nightgown bothered her a lot more than getting from bed to the bathroom stark naked.  I got my bellbottoms on and the three of us had breakfast before I headed back to NATTC.  It was a causal relationship and Dutchy, Allie, and I kept it that way.  The two were more than used to the sailors who came and went as the war went on.

One afternoon, still in April I believe, the NATTC education officer came looking for me.  The eager young lieutenant junior grade explained that he had been going thorough personnel records and he believed that with my high school record, I should apply for the Navy V-12 officer training program.

Until then I had never heard of the V-12 program.  When the lieutenant explained that it was a training program that would provide a complete college education to officer candidates followed by a commission in the Navy after midshipman’s school.  I tipped back my head and laughed.

“Hell, lieutenant, sir, I ain’t a college boy—I’m a fleet sailor!  They say they’ll make me a CPO when I get out of here in two months, then I can help form a new squadron and go back out to fight the Japs.  That’s where they started it and I aim to be there when we end it!  Besides, I got my application for AP school to learn to fly.”

Looking at the record of my high school grades that was in the personnel file in his hand, the JG—as I recall—said something like, “Okay, Frieze.  Fine.  Do me a favor though—let me fill out the application for the program.  You may not make it anyway.  They only need sixteen people form here this spring.”

Somehow that riled me a bit.  I thought about my Annapolis ambitions, the preparatory courses that I had taken in high school, and the injustice of my Annapolis examination being burned during the Japanese raid on Hawaii. I laughed and said, “Okay, lieutenant.  Fill out the papers and I’ll take the exam!”

The next Friday evening Byrd, Rineman, and I were at our usual table at the Crown Propeller Lounge.  I was reasonably sober when we got back to 87^th & Anthony but, I must admit, had a pretty fair hangover the next morning when Rineman woke me and said, “Hey, Frieze, aren’t you supposed to be taking that examination today?”

I groaned.  It was nearly oh eight hundred and the examination was scheduled for 0830.  I had a quick shower, but was still foggy when the education officer put the examination packet in front of me.  

It was not a snap exam.  There were sections on English, American History, World History, Geography, and Mathematics through solid geometry.  The answers came hard to my aching head.  At the four-hour deadline I turned in my papers with the thought, “Well, that takes care of any chances to go to officer candidate school!”

I went back to my classes on Monday feeling sure that I did not have a chance at V-12.  I recall clearly that I had just finished a class on the Stronberg-Carlson pressure injection aviation carburetor when I encountered Rineman in the passageway.  “Hey, Frieze,” he said, “they just posted the results of that exam you took for V-12.”

It wtas not exciting news and I figured that I probably finished way down on the list; however, I went by the bulletin board to have a look.  The names were listed in order of grade and a red line had been drawn beneath the sixteenth name.  To my astonishment that sixteenth name was “Frieze, C.R., AMM1/c”!

It was dizzying news.  I immediately called my parents to tell them I was going to go to college.  I also called Shirley and told her to put aside any wedding plans.  Officer candidates were not allowed to be married until they received their commissions and, going to school year ‘round, college and midshipman’s school would take more than three years.  I offered to break off the engagement, but she would have none of it and insisted that she would wait.  I let it ride.

On 21 June 1943 my orders arrived.  I was to report to the University of Notre Dame ion South Bend, Indiana, for my pre-major semester in the Navy V-12 college training program.  The orders included a seven-day delay enroute.  That was not enough to make a trip back to Vancouver, but I did not care.  I decided to go down to the Ozarks to see my grandparents and relatives.  I took the train to Kansas City, then the bus to Greenfield.

I had deliberately not notified my grandparents, but wanted to surprise them and easily found their little white house a block off the courthouse square.  When I walked up carrying my zippered blue ditty bag, Grandpa Stanley was out back painting the tailgate of the small pickup truck that he had in retirement.

It was a joyful reunion and my grandparents were flabbergasted when I told them that I was on my way to college.  I recall clearly that Grandpa blew his nose on his red bandanna and said, “Well, boy, we have been real proud of you and Richard and now we are especially proud of you!”  Grandma promptly got a dozen eggs and made me one of her fabulous angel food cakes.

The author's grandparents in Greenfield, MO 1943

We had three pleasant days of visiting.  The weather was clear and balmy and one evening we sat out on the front porch.  At my urging, Grandpa got out his old violin and played several pieces that had people stomping on the street in the twilight to listen.  His “Marching Through Georgia” was rousing and toe-tapping and when he played “Amazing Grace” there in the still and balmy twilight you could see and hear bagpipes in the Scottish Highlands.  (My mother told me in later years that it was probably the last time he touched his fiddle.  He already had the first signs of a terminal illness and died the following year.)

Naval Aviation Technical Training Center in Chicago

Chapter 33

NATTC, Chicago – 1943

When I arrived back at the Naval Aviation Technical Training Center at 87^th and Anthony ins South Chicago, the first man I encountered was an old shipmate from VP-11, J.P. Byrd.  With him was another VP-11 man, Rineman.  We checked in together and were assigned adjacent bunks in the second story barracks level of the huge training complex.  We would be in the same class.

J.P. Byrd was (and still is) quite a character.  He had a tall, spare, long-legged, but footed frame and shambling gait.  He was easy going and a shock of tousled brown hair topped an ever-present friendly grin on his lean face.  He was soft spoken with a sort of southern drawl and hardly ever spoke without a pun or a joke.  In his tight-fitting tailor-made dress blues with the badge of an AAM1/c, “J.P.” projected the image of the typical absent-minded professor dressed up as a sailor.  J.P. was not actually lazy, but professed to be an advocate of conservation of energy—save it because you never knew when you might need some!

Bob Rineman was a shorter man with black hair above a pleasant face.  He was also an agreeable shipmate and the three of us were to be frequently liberty companions with our first class petty officer “crows”, aerial machine gunner emblems, and campaign ribbons identifying us as veterans of the Pacific theater of war, we were accorded some degree of deference by our fellow trainees.  More often than not, they also resulted in civilians in bars insisting on buying us drinks or driving us in their cars wherever we wanted to go.  It no doubt made us a bit cocky but, with sarcastic humor, we kept each other in perspective.

Since we were, indeed, real veterans and the memories of war were still fresh, we were to be a bit embarrassed the first morning at NATTC.  Barracks were the wide open second floors of the two or three large buildings.  At each end there were large double doors leading to large landings at the wide stairways.  The three of us were assigned bunks not far inside the entry doors.  It seemed to be a convenient location but we were to find one bad flaw in it.

We did not know that first night that reveille at NATTC was held by what amounted to a small drum and bugle corps.  About six musicians, three drums and three bugles, would assemble outside the entry doors.  On the stroke of six, the doors would be thrown open and the band would cut loose while they marched the length of the long barracks down a wide central aisle way.

We were sleeping in blissful ignorance that first morning at reveille.  When the drums and bugles cut loose it was such an unholy din that shattered our slumbers that both Byrd and I thought we were in the middle of a Jap attack.  Before we were awake we hit the deck and were ten yards down the aisle ahead of the band running for cover when we became aware of where we were.  We went sheepishly back to our bunks to get our clothes to the laughter and kidding of our bunkmates.  After that episode we would hear the sounds of the band assembling outside the doors and could prepare ourselves by buying our heads under our pillows when the loud music started.

Although I continued to have ambivalent feeling about my engagement to Shirley Mills, shortly after my arrival in Chicago I decided that if it were to stand it should be formalized with a ring.  I rode the El to the loop, found a reputable jewelry store, and although my savings was dwindling, spent two hundred dollars on a small diamond rind.  (That was in 1943 dollars.  It was, I think, something less than a half carat and would probably be worth ten times that today.)

After a few drinks on the way back to 87^th & Anthony I decided that the ring should not simply arrive in the mail.  I gift-wrapped it and mailed it to my brother Rex with the request that he hand-deliver it with some flowers.  He did so.

Despite the urgency of war for more trained men as the might of the United States began to flex its muscles, our classes at NATTC were on a five-day week and we had liberty every weekend.  Byrd, Rineman, and I found the classes relatively easy after our training at North Island and our two years of practical experience in VP-11 and the engine change shop on Ile Nou so we made the most of liberty in Chicago.

During our first liberty weekend, we explored the Chicago Loop area in the city, but other than movie houses and two large ballrooms, the Trianon and the Aragon, I believe they were, downtown had little more to offer than the South Side.  One weekend we did go to a professional football game at Soldier Field.  In the main we made liberty at an area of small night clubs, movie theaters, and bars at 63^rd and Cottage Grove.

In the days of World War II, The Chicago South Side was still thriving.  We could walk a few blocks east and catch the train that ran between the Chicago Loop and through Gary to South Bend, Indiana.

Our favorite watering hole was a small night club on Cottage Grove called “Crown Propeller Lounge”.  (The sign outside was a neon airplane propeller.)  It was run by a retired Irish cop and featured a small live combo.  Sometimes there was a small “floor show” by an aspiring singer, magician, or standup comedian.  The waitresses were friendly, the drinks relatively cheap, and the owner always bought every second or third round for men in uniform who were veterans of the War in the Pacific.  The bandleader soon learned our favorite songs and would stop a piece and shit to one when we came in and took a table—more often than not “Sentimental Journey” which I liked and often requested.

We felt comfortably at home at the Crown Propeller Lounge and knew that we could always count on getting back to the barracks at 87^th & Anthony.  On the occasions that we celebrated too much and the staff of the lounge thought we might run into a Shore Patrol or have trouble finding our way, the Irishman would call a cab at closing time and make sure we had enough money for the ride back.

Although we never got into trouble that might land us on report or in the brig, the three of us “old salts” had some high old times.  There was on chubby little waitress called “Dutchy”, a brown-haired woman about thirty, who took a liking for me.  Sometimes at the midnight closing time for bars, Dutchy and a friend would take us to one of the many illegal after-fours bars in the city.

I recall one after-hours joint in particular.  From the outside the place appeared to be nothing but an abandoned ice cream parlor.  Behind the counter the door that once led to a kitchen opened into a draped anteroom and then into a very nice nightclub with a bar, dance floor, and very good band.  Dutchy liked to dance and it was her favorite place to relax after work.