In March of 1945 being a punk of only 17 years of age, I was too young yet for the military service, and my brother had been drafted and put into the Navy. I too, having quit school and eager to do my share toward the war effort, tried to join any branch of the military, but was rebuffed because of my young age.

So we went with the Captain one day down to the headquarters in San Pedro and went through the interview and sign up process. Beings that we didn't have Maritime papers to qualify us to go to sea, the Civil Service took care of that and got them for us. Imagine now, 2 young numbnuts wide eyed, ignorant, and signing our lives away to a contract that was about to put us aboard a sea going vessel complete with cannons and machine guns, depth charges etc., to begin our worldly adventure in the war zone!

We had absolutely NO experience whatsoever at anything! so we were assigned to the galley serving food and washing dishes and pots and pans! That's OK we said, we just wanted to go overseas!

We were allowed to return home and say goodbye to our families, and report back the next morning to the clothing warehouse and get our uniforms and then our assignment to a ship. Well, did we get a rude awakening- we were assigned to 2 different ships! Right from the start, they were going to make men of us! Both ships sailed out of the harbor 6 hours later, and we got to wave good-bye to each other as we sailed down the channel to open sea and headed in different directions. Never saw my buddy again for 2 years!

Mel, Bud, Jarret (Don)

Dad would sometimes talk about his experience during WWII. Usually it was after watching an old war movie with John Wayne or Audie Murphy. I got him to write some of his stories before he passed away.

Now here comes the big laugh! After about 3 more hours out on the big ocean it was getting dark, and I showed my real stupidity by asking one of the old seasoned sea go-ers, when does the ship park for the night! The guy looked at me and then busted out in laughter and said "you sure that your Mother knows where you are?!" Later on we became good friends, had to... we were confined to a 180 ft of ship!

There were 25 of us Civil Service guys that drove the ship, and there were 100 Army technicians. aboard. When we left San Pedro the ship had taken on a new cook, the one that came with the ship was drunk in a bar at sailing time, so they hurried and grabbed whatever was available for a cook!

We got through the first nights meal OK, but during the night we ran into a pretty good storm that set us to rocking pretty good, and also made the cook VERY seasick!

He couldn't answer the call the next morning to fix breakfast and the Captain got real pissed about missing breakfast! It turned out that the new cook was a chronic sea sicker and another drunk! The Captain put him in the sick bay under arrest until we reached our next port, Honolulu Hawaii, and the MP's came and removed him from the ship.

The story continues on the next page.