Salud my sweet…
Last night was unpleasant. In the late afternoon a good wind
came up, which, combined with a moderate swell, made the ship flip her fanny in
a most unladylike manner. Late in the afternoon a wave hit us just right and
pair of the rafts which are in racks along the rail slipped into the sea. We
turned back after them which meant that for a while we were in the trough of
the waves. We really rocked. Then when we were pulling the ships back aboard we
were not under power. We bounced along like a cork.
The kids on KP had quite a time. They were trying to keep
the pots and pans in place, the tea from spilling, and various pieces of
heavier equipment from climbing their frames. They lost all the tea in one big
wave and a considerable amount of creamed chicken (no less) in another.
Topside, the biggest of the waves piled GI spectators four deep along the rail.
In the latrine one man fell in a urinal. That same wave caught me walking across
the officers’ mess with a plate of creamed chicken. I landed on top of a table,
chest down on the plate. In all the confusion no one was hurt, although a
couple of men were shaken up a bit.
We continued to bounce around during the night. I felt bad.
I don’t believe I was seasick, because my stomach was not upset. But I kept
having fever and chills and my head ached. So I went to bed early. I mentioned
in the last letter that I have a top bunk. That is a good thing ordinarily, but
not in yesterday’s weather. I’m about ten feet from the floor and whenever the
ship rolled enough I found myself hanging over the edge of the cot. My dreams
were feverish. I kept dreaming of falling into pots of boiling metal, and I
would wake up to look down at the floor, glowing dully in the light of the red
night lanterns. The little clock stopped about a quarter to 12, and that made
the night seem even longer. Doors banged and tin hats clanged against the
walls. I got tangled up in the sleeping bag, which really is two bags, one
inside the other. And then, crowning touch, I went to sleep about seven and almost
slept through breakfast.
…I am, as usual, being troubled by manifestations of race
prejudice among the men. We have some Negro personnel among the navy troops
aboard and it annoys me to hear them referred to as coons, etc. They are Jim
Crowed a little, but less than might be expected. For instance, they use the
same washrooms as the rest of us and eat at mess with the rest of the naval
personnel. This bothers a few of our southern boys. … Other racial remarks: by
Joe –“He’s smart in a Jewish sort of way,” and by Tom – “a good guy even if he
is a Jew.” While on the subject, there is a good and brave and restrained
chapter on race prejudice in the Penguin book, “Psychology for the Fighting
Man.” Sometime when you are in the University Book Store take a look at it. The
Penguins are in a little case by the stairs going up to the Record section.
Gee, I’d like to hear some good music. I am now getting an
overdose of Blueberry Hill, as done by the bunk boys.
An interesting story from Joe [Miller]: He had discovered an
old man who claimed to be Philadelphia Obrien, an ex boxing great. He wrote his
life story for the Sunday supplement of the Lewiston paper and got a stranded
boxer from Maine t pose with him for some pictures. Afterwards he staked the
Maine man to a couple of meals and found him a room at the home of a friend.
The day the AP killed the Obrien story as a phony (Obrien was dead) police
arrested the Maine boy for a triple ax murder in Spokane.
…
When we boarded ship there were no Red Cross girls on the
dock to give us coffee and kiss the boys goodbye. But today Red Cross gift kits
were distributed. They are green cloth bags containing soap in an oiled cloth
bag, a pack of red-backed playing cards, a large pack of Red Cross stationery,
a package of life savers, a sewing kit with needles, thread and buttons, a
shoeshine cloth and an extra pair of shoelaces (very welcome), and a Pocket
Book. My book is Earle Stanley Gardner’s “The Case of the Sulky Girl.”
At the same time they were passing out the kits, the Red
Cross men opened boxes of books and magazines. Quite a few of the books were of
the Army Services Imprint, the first I have seen. They are about the same shape
as a pocketbook but the binding is across the narrow part. They type is in two
columns on each page. They are very easy to read. I picked up Graham Greene’s Ministry
of Fear. At present I am on page forty and fascinated. … Greene, you
recall, is Gracene’s playmate. Even so he writes very well…Among other titles
on board now are Howard Fast’s The Unvanquished, Saint Exupery’s Wind,
Sand and Stars, Herman Melville’s Typee, and Murray Morgan’s Day
of the Dead.
D of D is already a chapter longer than when I boarded ship.
I have just killed Felix and introduced Angel to the blonde’s bedroom where, at
this very moment, the poor boy is being held at the point of a gun. The
situations are stereotyped a trifle? It is quite a novel. Even I am not sure
what is going to happen next, and I would not be surprised if good did not
triumph in the end. …
In addition to reading Greene and some extracts from The
Telephone Booth Indian, I’ve done a little work on the Spanish texts.
Already I am appalled by what I have been saying. If I can make myself work at
it, we should be in pretty good shape to talk Spanish when we go back to
Mexico. How are your conversations with Senora Fett proceeding? I can guess—in
English.
…
This has been a day of modest excitements. In the morning,
after breakfast, Neil and I were on deck when we heard a plane. At first it
struck us as nothing unusual and then we realized we were out of sight of land
and that, conceivably, this plane might not be friendly. But it was friendly,
of course. It circled us three or four times, and went away. I recalled the
story of how on his first Atlantic flight Lindbergh swept down at midsea and
tried to shout at some fishermen to ask directions. Now the sight of a plane in
mid-ocean is almost commonplace.
Until about an hour ago, the weather had been quite calm and
many more men were on deck than before. The variety of costumes is amazing.
There is no specific dress required for the GIs aboard ship and the men wear
everything from their fatigues to their Arctic issue. The most common costume
is an open shirt, OD pants, Arctic field jacket and Arctic wool helmet cap (the
one that pulls down over your ears.) Some of the men wear their fatigue caps
with the same outfit, and a few, including myself, are reveling in our first
chance in some time to be outdoors bareheaded. The navy personnel are equally
varied in their clothes. About half wear their blues, plus the pea jackets
which you admired recently as we went down on the streetcar. Others wear their
rich blue fatigues, which look like something Gordon Ford would enjoy. Headgear
runs from the white beanies to black, tightfitting wool caps, these latter
especially popular with the Negroes.
The civilians, of course, have the most interesting
clothing. They are all men going out to the construction projects and their
gear and get-up makes the days of the gold rush seem very near: furlined caps
with big earflaps, blazers in colors that would make Fletcher Pratt blanch,
leather deerslayer jackets straight from Abercrombie and Fitch, mukluks, tin
pants dark with the dirt of England, North Ireland, Iceland, Greenland, Africa.
Oddly, the Filipino workers are the most conservative in their costumes, either
because they were not so well fixed financially before boarding ship or because
previous experience with the weather where we are going has taught them what
they will need.
The old-time construction workers, who were in the game
before the war, form an elite. They say little and unlike most other passengers
freely admit they do not know where we are going or when we will get there.
While most of us know our ultimate destination none know the route. The
old-time civilians do not even speculate. Nor do they indulge in the fanciful
worries about subs and storms which plague many of the men. Most are old hands
at ocean crossings and more than one have been in Atlantic convoys under
attack.
One old boy, who has been doing construction work ever since
the last war and has been around the world often enough to misplace his
birthday by a week, was in a convey that was scattered a couple of years ago
somewhere between England and Iceland. His ship headed for the state, going
north of Greenland to get off the usual lanes and to take advantage of the long
Arctic night. “And, he assured me, “I’ll be a son of a beehive if we didn’t see
the most beautiful northern lights for two full days and the lighted the water
so that the British officers, who had not given up their cameras, the sons,
could take pictures and have them do out just fine, and it was the most
beautiful, most ugly, most awful thing in the world because we wanted it dark
and here it was light as a virgin’s heart.” Not long after this speech I saw
him sitting on a bulkhead, reading The Daring Young Man on the Flying
Trapeze.
There is remarkably little mingling between the civilian and
military groups aboard. This is due in part to the fact that some of the men
resent the $100-$150 a week salaries the civilians are said to be making. But
more, I believe, it is just a different approach to the whole thing. The soldiers
are being sent, the civilians are going
of their own accord. That makes a profound difference. One group does not
readily understand the other. It is another angle of the thing that worried me
at Adair.
As to my reading, I have finished Ministry of Fear,
which in spite of Greene’s occasional lapses into Cory-ish religious references
is a good book. … I am about to start Typee, by Melville. Red-haired,
sad-faced Tom Kelly, strong of seed, is now reading Homer, for the first time.
He assures me, “That boy is good. What a line! When he told a woman he wanted
her! I didn’t know the Greeks were like that.” Neil is reading Bell for
Adano and making unkind references to the army in general , General Patton
in particular. Joe Miller has finished
all of James Farrell’s short stories and looks bilious.
Another beautiful day, calm sea, moderate swell and some
porpoise or seal playing far off the starboard side. So far no planes, no fire
drills: not even the routine breaks in the routine.
Breakfast was good: stewed apricots, little pigs, scrambled
powdered eggs, bread and jam, mixed dry cereals (grape nuts, puffed wheat, corn
flakes) with powdered milk, coffee and cream. Hardly anyone was sick and there
was no repetition of the unpleasant experience of seeing a man take a bit,
stop, and fill his messkit with vomit.
…
A trio of men are sitting, back to me, on the bunk two down,
listening to a fourth, a black Irishman, tell about a date he had in Seattle
just before leaving. The gal had been drinking beer and her met her while she
was leaning against the wall of the Moore Theatre, urinating. “Hell,” he said. “She
just bent over a little, and I figured
any girl that could do that was the girl for me. We got along swell until she
rolled me for six and when I found out I said gimme back my six. She said what
six, so I let her have five, knuckles up, and it knocked out all her teeth and
I reached down the front of her dress and felt around until I found the six
bucks and I got out of the taxi. There was a sailor standing there and he saw
her out cold in the corner, her mouth all bloody, and I thought he was going to
climb my frame but instead he says, how was she. I told him fine and he gave me
two bucks to let him take me over. So I took his dough and got the hell out of
there. Christ, I wonder what the taxi driver thought.” After which one of the
men with a guitar went into a song:
I fought the battle of Seattle
From First to Ninth and Pine
I met every kind of woman they is
And none of them were kind.
Another man
on one of the nearby bunks was telling his experiences last night. He had met a
woman welder from Boeings at a restaurant and found her pleasant to talk to.
She turned him down on a date, so he followed her home. She wouldn’t invite him
in and wouldn’t accept his invitation to go out to dinner. Finally she told him
to come around the next day for dinner. It was a very nice meal, better than
his wife had cooked while he had been home on a furlough, a few days before.
She let him kiss her, but no more. They had several dinners together and one
night she bought him a case of beer. That night their necking became a bit
tempestuous and finally she said, “If we’re going to do a thing like that, let’s
go to bed.” So they did. “And by God,” he said. “She just wouldn’t let me go.”
He kept calling every night until just before the ship sailed. He told her
about his home town and found that she had lived in it. When she asked him if
he was married, he told her yes. She said, “That’s too bad because I’m going to
break it up.” She told him she was going back to his home town to tell his wife
about everything. He tried to talk her out of it, but she didn’t seem
convinced. “Christ,” he said, “How I hope I don’t get any mail.”
…
I have to
close this now so that it can be censored and be ready to go out as soon as we
reach port. … To say how much I miss you, how much I love you is still beyond
my ability with words, Nunny. I only hope that you do not miss me much as I
miss you.
Best to
Carmen, Jean, Bill, Myrtle, Haj, et al, and all my love to you,
M
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