Finishing up AMM School and Falling in Love with the PBY

Hall PH flying boat

The second half of the four months at AMM school in 1940 was the best part.  Early in November, after the written tests on the basic subjects, we had come out of the classroom onto the flight line and gunnery range.  We literally tore down and rebuilt the old Hall PH flying boats—rigging, control surfaces, instruments—and we removed the radial engines mounted in nacelles up between the wings, tore them down to the crankshafts, rebuilt and re-installed them and got them running and tuned up.

I came to love those big old radial aircraft engines and soon found that I had a knack of diagnosing a problem by listening to an engine run.  Those old piston engines did not scream as the jets in later years would do, telling the mechanic nothing.  At idle or low power settings, the radial engines would “talk” and at the higher power settings for takeoff and cruise they would sing.  It was possible to detect a grumbling complaint or sour note from an ailing engine and know what was wrong with reasonable accuracy.  The chiefs and first class petty officers who were our instructors taught us to recognize when a spark plug was misfiring, magneto points needed adjustment, or a carburetor was not functioning right.  An airplane engine, and indeed the airplane, became a living thing to me.

My second love, sparked by my desire to become a PBY mechanic and machine gunner, was the big fifty-caliber machine guns.  We trained on both those and on the lighter 30-caliber guns that were standard in the nose and tail of a patrol bomber was well as the rear cockpits of dive bombers and torpedo planes.  The big 50-caliber guns were installed in the waist hatches of the big patrol bombers.  The 30-caliber guns, firing a cartridge similar to a 30.06 Springfield rifle, fired at a rate of 1200 rounds per minute with a rapid chatter.  The fifties, however, fired a cartridge more than twice as large at a rate of 870 rounds per minute.  It fired with a very authoritative and satisfying thudding.

I could more than hold my own on the firing range with a Springfield rifle or either of the machine guns.  I never did mast the 45-caliber automatic pistols that were standard Navy sidearms.  No matter how I aimed or corrected, my clip of shots on the pistol range would usually go off down and to the right.

Brother Richard had been assigned to a PBY patrol squadron stationed in Hawaii, VP-23.  Peacetime Navy policy was that brothers could serve in the same ships or units if they so desire.  After the first of the year in 1941, I applied for patrol aviation in Hawaii.  With my grades in the upper percentile of the class, I got my choice.  On 15 January I was notified that upon graduation I would be assigned to Patrol Wing One based on Ford Island at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.

Langford scratched his head when he read the orders posted on the bulletin board.  “Whut in the hell,” he drawled, “is a tippy canoe?!”

None of knew what kind of ship it was.  Destroyers were named after famous people, cruisers after cities, and battleships after states.  We knew the name of all the aircraft carriers—Lexington, Saratoga, Yorktown, Enterprise, Hornet, Wasp, Ranger, and the old Langley.  We concluded that it must be a transport of some sort, but if so, why were we designated as “temporary ship’s company” instead of passengers?  We were to find that it was because we would work our way to Hawaii scraping and painting in the deck division.

We got our first clue as to the nature of the Tippecanoe when her number one motor whaleboat came alongside the Naval Air Station dock to transport us and our gear to the ship.  The grey paint of the boat was flaked in spots and the coxswain’s brass tiller and his bell for the motor mac needed shining.  The coxswain, a boson’s pipe on a braided thong about his neck and a sheath knife on this belt, was wearing oily dungarees and a grease-stained white hat neither of which appeared to have been near a laundry for a spell.  The motor mac and the bow hook were not much cleaner.

When the boat laid alongside, the unsmiling coxswain barked out, “Tippecanoe—get your gear and your butts aboard!”

Our spanking clean dress white uniforms were quite a contrast to the boat crew in their soiled dungarees.  They largely ignored us as the boat swung away from the dock and headed for Point Loma to the north except that, in response to a friendly greeting from Langford, the surly coxswain snarled, “Airedales—shee-it!”  and spat over the side of the whaleboat.

I made one more attempt with the Tippecanoe seaman who was sitting beside me in the bow of the boat, “What kind of ship is the Tippecanoe?”

He curled his lip wryly.  “You’ll find out soon enough, Mac. She’s a rusty old bucket and the crew is a bunch of goof-off!  I think they moored her out on Point Loma so she don’t clutter up their nice clean harbor!”

Christmas Leave 1940, but You Can't Go Home Again

My ten-day Christmas leave began on the 20^th of December.  I still had not saved enough money for either a bus or train ticket so I elected to hitch-hike home to Vancouver.  To get out of the San Diego and Los Angeles areas, I did buy a bus ticket to Bakersfield, California, then hitchhiked up Highway 99. Men in uniform had very good luck hitch-hiking in those days and I had the good fortune of decent weather in the Siskiyou mountains.  I arrived in Portland, Oregon, the morning of the 22^nd and caught the interurban bus to Vancouver.

My first leave in uniform was not the triumphant return I had envisioned and, in the end, it emphasized the point that already my life and my interests had diverged from those of my family and my old friends.  It began with the fact that the family had moved du9ring my absence of six months.  Instead of the familiar yellow house I had left in July, they now lived in a small shingled house on the eastern outskirts of town.  It was somehow not like “coming home”.

They were all glad to see me, of course, and admired my tailored uniform (Richard had come on boot leave in a regulation baggy blouse).  It was nice to be there for Christmas, but somehow there was a feeling that I no longer really belonged.

The same was true of the close friends I had left behind.  Dad still had the old Chevrolet and the first evening home I drove it down to Gearhart’s.  The only ones I saw were David Schaeffer and Ariel.  We had a Coca Cola and they asked me the usual polite questions about life in the Navy, but it quicky became obvious that they were not really all that interested.  I had been away and was not up to date on local happenings.  Our acquaintance had become casual.

I spent some time on evening with Shirley Mills and her family, but did not take her out on a date. She had started to Oregon State College and was only home for the Christmas holiday.  Again, I answered the usual questions about life in the Navy.  Shirley and her sister Mary admired my uniform, my suntan, and my muscles that had been hardened by daily calisthenics.  Mr. & Mrs. Mills asked polite questions also, but then they would suddenly be discussing local events or happening at OSC whih left me feeling very much the interloper.  Before long I excused myself on the basis that I had to get back to my family, but instead, I drove down to 13^th and Kaufman to see Patty Cross.

That was one fo two gratifying instances during my leave.  Pat wanted to hear everything I had been doing and, unless she was an accomplished actress at the age of fifteen, was truly interested.  Her mother welcomed me like a returning son and I spent a comfortable evening with them.

The other gratification was a movie date with dear Elaine.  She had enrolled at the University of Washington in Seattle and was home for the holiday.  I recall that she wore a simple black dress for our date and the scattershot high school girl was becoming a poised young lady.  She, too, was truly interested in what I have been doing and, with her rapid fire delivery, wanted to tell me all about the university.  She was a dear, sweet friend, but I did not have the feeling that a serious relationship could develop for us—I had too far to go out there in the world.

My leave was to be up on December 30^th.  I decided to leave Vancouver on the morning of the 27^th to allow time for hitch-hiking in case rides were slow or scarce.  The weather had turned rainy in Oregon with possible snow in the Siskiyou Mountains so, although he could not afford a ticket to San Diego and it was my responsibility, Dad insisted on buying me a cut-rate ticket on a small wildcat bus line in Portland that would get me into Northern California.  The crowded little bus deposited me in Redding and from there, with less than five dollars in my pocket, I was on my thumb.

I had good luck with rides down the long valley through Sacramento and by dawn on the 28^th had been left near a truck stop café in Lodi.  There my luck seemed to have run out.  After an hour or more with very few cars and trucks passing, I went to the café for a glass of milk and a doughnut (I still had not developed a taste for coffee).  The driver of an automobile transport truck loaded with wrecked and used cars was next to me at the café counter.

When the truck driver heard that I was headed for San Diego, he made me an offer.  He said that he could ick up the wreck of a Cadillac convertible in Modesto but that he had a full load of cars.  The rear car on his truck, however, was a driveable Chevrolet sedan and would I drive it for him to Los Angeles?

I jumped at the chance.  When he had finished his breakfast we drove to Modesto, unloaded the black Chev sedan, and loaded the wrecked Cadillac in its place.  He instructed me to simply stay on his tail and to flash my headlights when I needed to pull off for gas.

The drive was uneventful until we reached the top of that section of old Highway 99 past Bakersfield that was known as “The Grapevine”.  It was sunset when we pulled off at a café for some supper and was dark when we took to the road again.

That truck driver took the twisting curves of that steep mountain grade considerably faster than we comfortable for an inexperienced driver like me.  I had to keep his taillights in sight, however, because I did not have the address of the wrecking yard in L.A. that was his destination.  He had just said, “Aw, you won’t have any trouble keeping me in sight.  If I lose sight of you in my mirror, I’ll just pull over until you catch up,” so, with sweating palms on the steering wheel, I stayed glued to his tail.

The worst part was when we got into Los Angeles and its traffic and stop lights.  It seemed to me that at every stop light it would turn red while the truck was pulling through the intersection.  I was afraid that if I lost him he might make a turn before I caught up so I got the front bumper of the car as close to the truck as I dared and simply shot though the red lights.  It was fortunate that we did not encounter a police car as I left exasperated motorists honking at fifteen or twenty intersections, or so it seemed.

We finally found the wrecking yard on the south side of L.A. and I heaved a sigh of relief when I parked at the yard and, since he lived in Long Beach, I had hi drop me at the bus station there.  He had paid for my supper andI had just enough money left to buy a ticket on the late bus to San Diego.  IT had only a few passengers so I stretched out on the long rear seat and slept.

From the downtown San Diego bus station, it was but a short walk down to the Broadway Landing where I caught the “nickel snatcher” foot passenger ferry out to North Island.  I arrived on the Naval Air Station dock just at morning colors and, as I walked to the barracks past the tall flag pole with the stars and stripes waving against the blue sky in the warm breeze, I had the feeling that I had truly come “home”.  I belonged there.  I loved my close knit family dearly and would always be concerned for them; however, never once again would I feel any real pangs of homesickness.  For a long time to come the Navy would be my real home and my squadron would be my “family”.

[I would argue that the Navy remained what defined my father for his entire life.  Although only a relative short part of his life in actuality he thought of himself as “an old Navy man” until the day he died.]

Boot Camp Graduation

The balance of our boot camp training went swiftly and smoothly.  We had liberty every weekend that was usually very uneventful since our apprentice seaman’s pay was only $21 a month minus any allotments and whatever we had charged at the Ship’s Service store for toothpaste, tobacco, etc.  Tailor-made cigarettes were twenty cents a pack so most of us made do with roll-your-own Bull Durham (five cents a sack) or, as I did, bought a pipe.  (After all these year, I still have the now-cracked yellow-bowl pip that I bought then.)

I usually went on liberty with either Langford or one or both of the Olsen brothers.  With little to spend, we sometimes went to the San Diego Zoo, a movie, or for a big evening to the ballroom at the top of Broadway.  We had neither the funds or the desire to patronize the red light district even though the price was only two dollars.

Our graduation picture was taken on the 5^th of September 1940 and, having become reasonably adept at the tools of a sailor’s trade such as knots, and Naval regulations and tradition, we graduated from boot camp on 20 September 1940.

The afternoon of graduation day was a relaxed time.  Our two training CPOs, Nelson and Logan, circulated among us with friendly last words of advice.  During training, we had been required to treat them as officers and call them “sir”.  When I called Nelson “sir” while he was chatting with me he shook his head with a friendly grin.

“No more ‘sir’ to a CPO, Frieze,” he said.  “From now on you only say ‘sir’ to a gold braid and don’t forget to salute the first time each day you see an officer.  After that it doesn’t matter or you would wear your arm out.  A CPO you just call “chief” and if you don’t know a shipmate’s name just call him ‘Mac’.  You are now a full-fledged sailor in Uncle Sam’s Navy.”

After morning chow on the 21^st we lashed our hammocks around our seabags and scattered to our duty assignments.  Those of us assigned to AMM school on North Island reported to the dock and a motor whaleboat too us across San Diego Bay to the Naval Air Station on the island.

Competition on the Parade Ground and in the Barracks

The balance of August went by rapidly in a blur of classes and rowing whaleboats on San Diego Bay.  (Later I did not understand their insistence that we know how to row as all of the whaleboats in the U.S. Navy by then had gasoline engines.)  It callused our hands and toughened our back muscles.

During the first week of September examinations for special training were give.  I requested aviation machinist mate (AMM) school.  The Bluejacket’s Manuel spelled out the duties as: “Assemble, service and repair airplanes and airplane engines.  Splice aircraft wiring.  Know principles and theory of flying.”

Richard had been correct.  The examination was a snap.  It dealt primarily with identification and use of basic hand tools and question concerning mechanical knowledge and skills.  The time limit was one hour.  I finished in 35 minutes and when the grades were posted I had a 4.0 and was accepted for AMM school on North Island.

Sometime around then, we from the Pacific Northwest had a real run-in with the Texans in the first platoon.  One evening just before taps I was coming back from the library and there was a commotion outside our barracks.  I found a circle of Texans taunting Jimmy Williams, a small fellow from Astoria.  In high spirits, they were calling hi a “prune-pickers” and using him as a human medicine ball; pushing him from one side to the other.  The ringleader appeared to ba a tall, drawling Texan, named D.S. Langford.

Jimmy was not particularly enjoying the game.  I shoved my way through the group and confronted Langford.  “Okay,” I said, “why don’t you guys pick on someone your own size?!”

Langford looked down at me from his more than six-foot height.  “Well, if it ain’t our plane spotter!  Why don’t you find someone my size?”

My short-fused temper asserted itself.  “Why don’t you Texans get off our backs,” I fumed.  “You think you are God’s gift to creation but you are as full of crap as a Christmas goose!”

Langford came at me and I ducked a wild swing and tripped him onto the ground.  He came up swinging and a melee erupted.  Jimmy went scooting up the stairs yelling for the second platoon.

In less time than it takes to tell, a battle royal was in progress that worked its way into the first floor barracks.  As more of the second platoon prune pickers poured down the stairs there were blows, grunts, and a crashing of metal bunk frames.  It halted abruptly when there was a sudden roar, “A-TEN-shun!!”

“All right!  Who started this?”

Langford was standing directly across the aisle from me.  He looked at me and I stared back at him.  After a hesitation he said, “I reckon maybe I might have, sir.  I threw the first punch, I guess.”

That did not seem right to me so I spoke up, “Only after I tripped him, Chief.”

The others caught on and there was a chorus of voices all taking the blame.  Nelson finally shook his head.  “Okay, you people, get this mess cleaned up by taps and hit the sack.  I will be back and I do not want to hear one sound that the base commander might hear at his house on the hill!”

Both platoons pitched in and we had the first floor barracks set to rights by the time the bugle notes of taps echoed across the compound and the lights went out.  I had just fallen asleep an hour later when the man in the next bunk nudged me and whispered, “Pass the word, fall in in uniform with leggings and rifles!”

In the moonlight I could see Chief Nelson glowering from the doorway.  I could hear muffled noises from the floor below as the Texans turned out.  Nelson got us in ranks and marched us out onto the grinder. For two hours we marched in close order drill to muttered commands in a moonlight parade.

As it turned out, Nelson’s playing one platoon against the other paid off.  There was no company on the station that marched with the precision of 40-52 as each platoon endeavored to be the best.  The following weekend all companies, in dress whites with leggings and rifles, were transported to the Marine Training station for a dress parade and admiral’s marching competition.

Just before we marched out with Chief Nelson in the lead, he addressed us, “Okay, you people, we are gonna have our own little competition today.  I want to see who the best platoon may be.  See if you can keep those lines straight and stay in step!”

It was a heady feeling when we marched out onto that huge parade ground to the beat of the marine band playing Sousa marches like “Under the Double Eagle” and “The Stars and Stripes Forever”.  Our lines were precise and our heels hit the ground as one man, all eyes straight ahead with our bayonetted rifles exactly aligned.  There were ten companies of sailors and ten of marines.

It was an even more heady feeling when, at the conclusion and we were all drawn up on the parade ground at parade rest, Chief Nelson was called front and center with our recruit company commander and they were presented by the admiral’s lady with the blue and gold Navy E flag for excellence.  Company 40-52 was the best, including the Marine Corps!

Finally, we of Company 40-52 were Navy shipmates.  It no longer mattered where we were from, we were the best.  We celebrated together.

The admiral’s review at the marine base had been on a Friday.  The next day while we were getting ready to go on liberty, word was passed that the results of the tests we had and assignments had been posted on the bulletin board.  I hurried to check the list and there was my name on the assignments to AMM school, North Island.  The name immediately beneath mine in the alphabetical order was “Langford, D.S.”

As I turned to go, the tall Texan and onetime foe was standing behind me.  He grinned.  “Well, Frieze, looks like we have not seen the last of each other!”

I smiled ruefully.  “No, I guess not.  You know, Langford, you didn’t have to try to take the blame for that ruckus that got us the moonlight parade last week.”

“Well hell,” he said, “you didn’t have to chime in either.  Sure was a good little se-to while it lasted.  No hard feelings?”  He stuck out his hand.

I laughed and shook his hand.  “No, no hard feelings.  What say we go ashore and have a couple of beers to celebrate?”

We went and had a great liberty afternoon.

Liberty at Last!

When we got our first liberty, I went ashore with the Olsen brother from Portland.  Dan, the older, was about Dick’s age and Bud was my age.  Our standard issue uniforms with the single cuff stripe of an apprentice seaman and the baggy blouses marked us for boots.  (One of the first things we would do later when we went to our assignments would be to get the uniforms tailored.)

We rode the bus to downtown San Diego and got off at Broadway, the heart of the tenderloin.  The wide street, ending at the Broadway Landing where all the liberty boats form the fleet came in, was lined with neon signs of bars, cheap jewelry stores where many boots bought their first wristwatch, and uniform stores specializing in tailor-made uniforms with tight fitting blouses and bell bottom trousers.

The street was also well lined with the girls we called “seagulls”—not prostitutes, but young girls out looking for a sailor or marine to show them a good time.  Many of the “seagulls” that hung around the Broadway Landing were obviously minors.  When approached by one of them, the sailor’s answer was to flip them a nickel and say, “No thanks, little girl.  Call me next cruise.!”

There were few streetwalker prostitutes on Broadway because San Diego was well policed by both Navy shore patrols and city policemen and detectives.  Prostitution was not legal, but it flourished in military towns because the authorities realized that it was a necessary evil for the men.  Without “camp followers” the incident of rape and unwanted pregnancies of city girls would undoubtedly go up.  I would find that the same was true of Honolulu, if anything, even more so.

The houses of prostitution were clustered in the waterfront area to the south of Broadway.  Red lights abounded, and there was a Navy prophylactic station in the vicinity for those who wished to participate in the delights of the tenderloin and have some protection against venereal disease.

The Olsen brothers and I were not looking for that kind of entertainment when we hit Broadway.  Bud wanted a few drinks.  Dan, a more sober type than his ebullient younger brother, had other ideas.  He had played the bass in a small combo in Portland before joining the Navy and he wanted to find some music.  We had heard of a ballroom at the top of Broadway so Da took his leave and headed up that way.

Bud was all for hitting the nearest bar.  We picked one with a neon sign of a palm tree and marched in boldly.  Inside the door was a far as we got.  A burly bouncer accosted us, “Hey, boots, let’s see the liberty cards!”

We were both only eighteen.  The bouncer disgustedly shoved the cards into our jumper breast pockets and prodded us toward the door.  “Want to bring the Shore Patrol down on us?  Come on, get lost!”

Back out on the street we paused trying to decide what to do.  While we discussed the problem, a slightly built young man dressed in grey slacks and a soft print shirt approached us.  “Hi, sailors!  Wouldn’t let you in would they?  How would you boys like to go to a gay party?”

Bud pulled back his fist to punch the man’s face, but it would have been a mistake as there were two shore patrolmen walking toward us.  Bud was saved.  From behind us an arm in a Navy blouse seized Bud’s wrist.

“Don’t do it, Mac,” a friendly voice said.  “Only land you in the brig for the night.”

It was a second class petty officer with the red hash mark of four years on his lower sleeve.  He looked us over.  “Still at boot camp, eh?  Tell you what, if you want a drink, there is a place a block down and a block south called McQuinn’s.  McQuinn won’t ask to see your liberty cards and the Shore Patrol never hassles him because everyone realizes that we all need a place to blow off some steam.  Just don’t give him any trouble or he will throw you out.  McQuinn used to be a Navy Pacific fleet welterweight champion in the old days.”

We thanked the man and he waved a hand at us.  “Us swabbies got to stick together, Mac.  Stay away from the queers and the seagulls and have a good time.”

McQuinn’s was as advertised, a well-kept saloon with McQuinn presiding behind the long bar.  We took stools and shoved back our white hats as the rocky-faced short man with a cauliflower ear and wearing a white apron approached.

“Well, now, and what might you two swabbies be wanting?”

Bid ordered a rum and coke.  I was at a momentary loss because I was not used to ordering drinks in a bar.  In fact, this was the first bar, other than taverns, that I had been into.  Finally, I thought of a drink I had heard about and said, “I’ll have a whiskey sour.”

McQuinn snorted and leaned his muscular arms on the bar.  “Look, Mac, I know you are not dry behind the ears yet so let me give you some advice.  Don’t start out with them fancy women’s drinks!  Bad for your stomach.  I don’t even like to make them.  Have an honest shot of booze instead, like a bourbon and water or something.”

Somewhat abashed, I settled for the bourbon and water.  Bud and I sipped our drinks slowly and sat there talking, sometimes joined by McQuinn because business was slow at that early hour.  He told us some sea stories, some of which we believed.  We each had a second drink.

Being totally unaccustomed to hard booze, we got pretty vociferous.  I noticed that I was beginning to have some difficulty in following the conversation and the tip of my nose was becoming unaccountably numb.  My eyes did not seem to focus on everything.

Bud ordered another round of drinks in a voice that was a bit slurred.  McQuinn refused.  “Look, you boots, why don’t you take a break.  Go to a movie or up to the Aragon Ballroom or something.  I got a good arrangement with the Shore Patrol.  I don’t let anyone overdo it and they don’t bother me.  Enjoy your liberty and come back some other time.  Always be glad to see you.”

We wandered outside a bit unsteadily.  It had gotten dark while we were in McQinn’s.  The bright lights of Broadway were a block north.  To the south was a darkened waterfront area where several red lights showed.  Bud looked around and pointed to a blue neon sign in the next block that read “Anchor Rooms”.  It fronted the stairway of a dingy red brick building. 

“Oh no,” Bud said, “that’s gotta be a cathouse!  Let’s amble over there and get laid.  Hear tell it’s only two bucks!”

I looked at the rundown building and felt a stirring of excitement but it occurred to me that we had not had evening chow and the drinks were making me queasy.  I shook my head.  “No thanks, Bud.  I need to go find a hamburger joint and get something to eat.”

We did that, then—sobered by some food—kinked up Broadway to the dance hall looking for Dan.  We did not find him, but spent the rest of the evening dancing with some girls and caught the bus back to the base.

Proving Himself on the Firing Range

It was a great relief when we were moved into North Unit for the more advanced part of our training.  Now we were eligible for liberty on weekends.  We also did not have to wear the canvas leggings every day and were attending classes at Gravely Hall.

Our North Unit curriculum was quite comprehensive.  It included types of ships, types of aircraft, small arms (including rifle and pistol qualification on the firing range), whaleboat rowing, semaphore, Morse code with blinker lights, marlinspike seamanship (knots and line splicing), and ships organization.

It was on the firing range at rifle practice that I scored a minor triumph.  We were taught the various position from which to fire and our first firing was from the prone position.  To an old squirrel hunter that was duck soup as it was a lot surer than firing offhand as I was used to doing.

We were given a clip of five rounds of ammunition to fire at a target seventy-five yards away.  The paper target was about four feet across and the black bullseye in the center was as large as a dinner plate.  I did not see how anyone could miss it if the sights on the rifle were any good.

I adjusted the rear peep sight on the old Springfield and, at the command to fire, zeroed in on the center of the bullseye.  My shot hit the black so counted as a bullseye but was low and to the left of center when the little marker came up out of the pit to show the hit. I adjusted for that and my next three shots were comfortably close to the center.  After my last shot however, the red flag (known as “Maggie’s Drawers”) waved back and forth indicating that I had missed the entire target.

I was appalled.  There was no way I could have missed the four-foot square at that distance.  At the cease fire I hailed the CPO in charge of the firing line.  “Sir,” I said flatly, “there was no way I could miss that big target at this distance.  Could we please have a closer look at it?”

He agreed and phoned the gun butt.  A seaman came trotting up the range with my target.  We spread it on the ground.  There was the first shot, in the black, but a little low and to the left.  Three other holes near the center of the bullseye could have been covered with a silver dollar.  There was no trace of the fifth shot until we looked closely at the three in the center.  One hole was slightly elongated.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” the CPO exclaimed.  “You hit another hole and they overlooked it!  Can you do that again?”

Another target was put up and I fired another clip, this time calling out the location of the hit before the marker came up.  All five shots were comfortably in the black.  The chief petty officer was so delighted that he called the firing range officer, a lieutenant jg, to come and see what I was doing.

“Only one other man this year could shoot like that,” the CPO said.  “Guy came through here this spring.

I chuckled.  “Five will get you ten that was my brother Dick.  Came through here last April.  We grew up shooting squirrels.  He’s a better shot than I am.”

While I was off the firing line watching, I was amazed at how many times Maggie’s Drawers were waved.  I simply could not understand how anyone could miss that huge target.  Not until I went on the pistol range, that is.  Never having been permitted to practice with a hand gun, I could not hit the broad side of a barn with that heavy military 45-caliber automatic.

Lessons from Boot Camp

On the second day we were issued World War vintage 30-36 Springfield rifles, webbed belts, and bayonets that would be part of our attire in South Unit while we learned close order drill.  For the next three weeks, without liberty to leave the compound, our days would blend one into another.

Each morning we assembled at sunup for muster and calisthenics before breakfast.  After morning chow we hit the grinder and marched and drilled until noon.  Noon chow was a very brief respite, then it was back to the grinder for more drill and practice of the manual of arms with the rifle.  After we secured at sixteen hundred hours, we showered and did our laundry, then there was evening chow and class sessions that followed to occupy us until nearly taps at twenty-two hundred (10:00 PM).

Richard had by no means described everything at book camp.  Our South Unit curriculum included personal hygiene and first aid, naval customs and courtesies, organization of the Navy, and the seemingly unending close order drill and manual of arms.  It was not long before our response to orders were automatic and immediate.

My deep interest in airplanes caused me a problem with Chief Nelson on afternoon.  Flights of Navy training planes (the military version of the Ryan ST low-wing, open cockpit, monoplane) regularly took off from North Island and flew over the training station on their way to their practice areas.  This day, a flight of three of the Ryans passed low overhead.  As we marched I looked up at the airplanes, missed a step, and almost tripped the man close behind me.

Chief Nelson called a halt and pivoted us to company front.  Then he barked, “Frieze, front and center!”

I came out of ranks, smartly executing my ninety degree corners, and came to a halt in a rigid position of attention in front of the little CPO.  He looked me up and down from my sunburned face to thetips of my shoes and snarled, “You like to watch airplanes, Frieze?”

“Yessir!”

All right, Frieze, we will give you an opportunity to watch airplanes.  You are not on plane watch.  On the deck, flat on your back, and at attention.  Whenever you see an airplane, you sing out lud and clear with its identity and direction!”

I hit the deck and came to attention, my rifle at my side.  Nelson marched the company away leaving me in the center of the paved grinder.  For a very few minutes it was a relief from the marching then it got very uncomfortable.  The blacktop was hot as a griddle and the afternoon sun burned down on my unprotected face.  I was soon soaked with sweat.

From a distance I heard Nelson yell, “I hear an airplane, Frieze!  Where away?!”

I sang out, “PBY, sir!  Low over the water south!”

Nelson left me there and continued the routing for the better part of an hour.  It was a relief to get back in ranks.  After dismissal I had to endure the jibes from my shipmates and it took me an extra-long time to scrub the grime from the back of my whites so that I was nearly late for chow formation.

By the time supper was over, I was in agony from sunburn.  My face was red and blisters the size of silver dollars appeared on my neck where the sun had found the vee of my jumper.  It was so painful that I finally got permission from the duty petty officer to visit the sick bay to get some tannic acid put on it.  When I came out, Chief Logan was waiting for me.

“Got yourself a little fried, eh, Frieze?”

I grinned ruefully.  “Guess I did, sir.  Reckon it was my own fault, though.  I should have been paying attention and not goofing off watching the airplanes.”

“Well,” Logan said in a kindly voice, “it will heal.  Don’t hold it against Nelson—he is just trying to instill some discipline in all of you.  Not paying attention can be dangerous to your shipmates some time.  I did think he left you out there longer than necessary.  I have spoken to him about that.  Sorry.”

“Been sunburned before, sir,--I’ll survive and I will watch it next time, and I don’t mean airplanes!

Dick came over from North Island to see me the following Sunday.  Although I was still in detention, I was allowed to visit with him in the unit library.  He grinned as he looked at my sunburned face and my neck where the big blisters had not yet fully healed.

“Been enjoying the old grinder, I see.  How the heck did you get blistered like that?!”

I related what had happened and he just laughed, “Serves you right for goofing off and getting caught!”

I told him that I would have my first liberty in two more weeks and could get together with him in town.  He shook his head.  “I would like to but it won’t happen.  We graduate form mech school next week and they are shipping me out to Hawaii.  I kept my grades at the top of the class—which is not hard with some of the dummies that get in—and got my choice.  Our orders came out yesterday.  I’m being sent to a PBY squadron, VP-23, on Ford Island at a place called Pearl Harbor near Honolulu.”

Once more I had an old familiar feeling—that of trailing behind Dick and running to catch up.  Damn, I thought, if it had not been for that missing tooth, I would be the one already shipping out!

“Great,” I said.  “if I make mech school and get a choice, I’ll see you out there.”

“Oh, you’ll make it all right,” Dick said with confidence.  “The test is a cinch and the training is fun.  If you should goof off and flunk it, I’ll disown you as my brother!”

“What happens to the ones that flunk?”

“Hah, they send them to sea on a fast tin can!  You sure as heck don’t want that.  About the best you could do then would be to strike for boatswain’s mate or something like that.

We passed the time of day until his hour was up, then shook hands and said “so long” quite casually.  I was pleased that each time I saw him, Dick was treating me more and more as an equal and not like a little brother.

Boot Camp, Company 40-52

Southern California was a new and delightful experience for all we recruits from the Pacific Northwest.  We saw our first palm trees somewhere in the vicinity of San Francisco as we rolled south.  The rolling hills in that area were brown from the summer heat, not the lush green of our Douglas fir forests.

When we stepped off the train at the station in San Diego into bright sunshine, we inhaled the warm clear air.  The sky, studded with a few puffy cumulus clouds, was an impossible blue. A grey-painted Navy bus was waiting to transport us to the Naval Training Station through downtown San Diego and out beyond Lindbergh Field where The Spirit of St. Louis had been built for Charles Lindbergh’s historic solo flight across the Atlantic.

It was obvious at a glance that San Diego was a Navy town.  Broadway was thronged with white-uniformed sailors and a scattering of Marines.  The broad expanse of San Diego Bay held a multitude of grey Navy warships—many destroyers, cruisers, supply ships, and I could see one aircraft carrier.  Silver airplanes were taking off and landing on North Island against the far horizon of the blue Pacific.

The Naval Training Station in San Diego was, indeed, a brand new world for me and the other recruits.  When the Navy bus pulled through the main gate into the main quadrangle and I looked at the stars and stripes flying over the grassy compound, I somehow felt that I had come “home”.  This was where I was meant to be.

The station was not the big college-type campus that you find in San Diego today.  It, enclosed by a stuccoed wall, was only two quadrangles bordered by double-deck Spanish-style barracks buildings with red tiled roofs.  They were connected by covered walkways, also in Spanish motif.

The first quadrangle, called as we learned “North Unit” was the main part of the training station.  The second, enclosed by a high chain-link fence, was the isolation unit where all new recruits spent the first three weeks so that any communicable diseases would have time to develop.  It was known as “South Unit” and it was the part of the station that contained that contained “the grinder”.

The grinder was simply a black-topped area of about two acres that was the parade ground where we would spend our detention time learning to march and do military drill with a rifle.  We would become all too familiar with “the grinder” but it would instill us with discipline.

Like North Unit, the South Unit quadrangle was bordered with those beige red tiles roofed buildings behind which were concreted areas where tall poles supported a spider web of clothes lines.  The area in front of the barracks buildings was a green lawn bordered with palm trees and crisscrossed with concrete sidewalks centering on a tall flagpole from which the colors flew against that blue sky.  The scene was orderly, clean, and quite beautiful.

When we recruits stepped down from the bus, we were met by two chief petty officers who would be our company commanders.  Both were dressed in uniforms of peaked caps with white covers, light blue shirts with black neckties, dark trousers confined in shiny black puttees, and glossily shined black shoes.  One of the two, who was a very small dark-haired waspish individual named Nelson.  The other, the assistant company commander, was a large sand-haired “good old boy” type who seemed friendly.  His name was Chief Logan.

(We were to learn at the end that both CPOs were friendly individuals; however, for the training program they took turns being the “bad guy” and the “good guy”.  For Company 40-52, it was Nelsn’s turn to be the bad guy.)

Chief Logan lined us up in two rows, showing us how to dress off into straight and properly spaced lines.  The dark-haired little chief then walked up and down the lines, his hands clasped behind him and curling his lip as he looked at the motley crew.

I do not recall his exact acid comments, but the gist of his greeting was that we were, without a doubt, the sorriest-looking bunch he had ever seen.  He had grave doubts that he could make sailors out of us but it was his job, and that of Chief Logan, to try.  Some of us would not make it.  His intent was to make us feel like the lowest things on the face of the Earth.  He pretty much succeeded; however, I saw through his tactic three weeks later.  They had me waxing the red-tiled floor of the nearby chiefs’ mess and wardroom and I overheard another training chief make exactly the same welcoming speech to another arriving batch for Company 40-53.

It was late afternoon so we were lined up for Navy haircuts (I came out feeling like a shorn lamb), given supper (thereafter to be known as “evening chow”), and quartered for the night in a receiving barracks.  The next day, after morning chow, our lives started moving on the double.

We endured another physical examination then were issued more clothing and gear than most of us had ever possessed.  There were four suits of “undress” whites, a dress white jumper with a blue collar, a black silk neckerchief, a pair of work shoes, a woolen knitted watch cap, flat hat, four white hats, a dark jersey, black socks and grey socks, four underwear (known as “skivvies”) of boxer shorts and white tee shirts, gloves, handkerchiefs, shoe polishing gear, rubber overshoes, and a pair of khaki leggings.  It was all topped off with a thin horsehair mattress, two mattress covers and pillow cases, a small pillow, canvas hammock, canvas seabag, a ditty bag for small articles, and a Bluejacket’s Manual.  Our dress uniform would come later when we were out of South Unit and eligible for liberty.

Most of the balance of that day was devoted to stenciling our names on each article of clothing and equipment.  It was a court martial offense to be in possession of another’s clothes.  We also shifted into Navy uniforms of undress whites.  All our civilian clothes were boxed up and shipped home.

For the balance of our time in South Unit, our daily garb would be undresss whites (meaning without black neckerchiefs which were only worn for dress parades or going ashore), that is, clean undress whites and the canvas leggings for marching.  Each afternoon when we secured from the days marching and drills we were required to shower and in large wood troughs behind the barracks, scrub every article of clothing we had worn that day.  They were hung on the communal clothes lines radiating form a central pole.  Cleanliness was a fetish with the Navy.

We from the Pacific Northwest were the second platoon of Company 40-52 and were assigned to the second deck of our barracks.  The first floor was occupied by the first platoon made up of Texans who had arrived two days ahead of us.  That ethnic division was to result in some keep competition (and more than one fight) between platoons that would result in Company 40-52 earning a Navy E flag for excellence in military drill as each tried to outdo the other.