MY HEROIC WWII NAVAL CAREER PART I

In June of 1944, I was graduated from Saranac Lake High School with the sterling overall average of 71.6. I had set new standards for academic irresponsibility, and the fact that I was dubbed "Class Clown" had absolutely nothing to do with it. I'm afraid that I had been far too preoccupied with what I had learned in Mr. Ladd's Chemistry class; especially making different kinds of explosives. I'll be more specific in that area at a later time.

I should, however, mention the summer job that I got that year at a beautiful private camp,(THE KNOLLWOOD) on Lower Saranac Lake...as the boatboy. The large and fancy boathouse (which had such things as a pool table and piano on the second floor) was meant to store the boats of the residents of the six posh "cottages," (the designation of which as such somehow seeming humorous.) And they had renowned residents, such as the Bloomingdales (the store) the Sulzbergers (New York Times) and four other cottages, the sixth of which had as a summer resident ALBERT EINSTEIN I saw that famous man frequently during that summer. His favorite pastime was going out on the lake in his sailboat where he would sit, gently rocking on the water and playing his violin. How could I have had any idea that this individual would make such a cosmic change in our world!! I remember helping him into his sailboat once, and had my hand on his shoulder to steady him.

I have an fascinating story about an incident involving me which related to Albert Einstein that summer, which I'll mention at a later time.

Unfortunately, I was fired from the job in August when Mama Bloomingdale entered the boathouse just as I jumped off its considerable roof into the water while using a beach umbrella as a parachute. (Are you starting to get a picture of me as a young man?)

So now the 1944 fall approached. D-Day had come; the fighting was fierce and the war seemed a long way from over. The Battle of the Bulge was to occur and no one realized that the beginning of the end was in sight. During this time, having gotten out of school, I did nothing much but hang out downtown with the few remaining guys there were. I was seventeen years old, and the prospect of going in the service (and war) was very much on my mind. After much rumination, I concluded that If I were going to die in the war, I would much prefer dying on a sinking ship than languishing in the misery and mud of a foxhole. So in January, '45, Dick Talbert (a classmate) and I enlisted in the Navy. I had already passed a V-6 test in high school which resulted in my going to Rochester for a physical to see if I could be a likely candidate to be an officer. When I had my physical, my skinniness was so severe, my sensitive corpsman examiner invited a couple of other examiners into the room where they could laugh at my pitiable physical condition in unison. Final blow: their designation on the medical form was "emaciated." (Do you wonder that I found it necessary to learn to play boogie-woogie?) I honestly feel that experience was one of the demeaning and cruel I've had in an entire lifetime.

Fortunately, when Talbert and I had our physicals to be just plain sailors, nobody gave any heed to my emaciation. No one even looked at me twice. I passed, and was on my way to being a sailor/defender of our national freedom! We got sworn in in Syracuse, drunk in Utica, and had a miserable hung-over ride back to Saranac on the jouncing, coal-driven New York Central. After a respite of about a week we jumped on the train and made our way to Sampson Naval Bass, near Geneva, N.Y. for Boot Camp.

Sampson was divided into units with capital letter names. We ended up in C unit. Sometimes the letter was made significant as in "G" unit What could be more natural than to call it the "Gestapo" unit? Almost from the first day we arrived, two rumors began to circulate and did so for the full ten weeks. That was that every time we lined up without a reason, we were going to get either a needle or "short-arm" inspection, which was to be done by the corpsmen (or "pecker-checkers.) I don't ever remember either. (I believe that particular paranoia existed on every military installation.) Our company commander was Harry Gobelman...also known as "Horseshit-Harry.) Everybody seemed to be fond of alliteration!

Each unit had a dozen of more double barracks. The two sides had two floors with 120 "men" on each floor; a total of 480 "men." (I'm using all of these quote marks because I was one of the "men.") The barracks had what seemed like an insufficient number of toilets and urinals on each floor. (By the way - modesty vanished; there were no stalls.) The toilet room was called the "head." Right away, a cleaning crew was assigned to keep the head squeaky clean. They did their cleaning while we were all at breakfast. Soon after breakfast came "inspection." Not wanting their handiwork to get besmirched, the cleaning crew roped off the head in such a way, when that when 120 guys returned from breakfast (many of them with diarrhea in the early days...) only a couple of toilets and urinals were available. The rest of the facilities were standing sparkling for "inspection." The result was comical (in a "black humor" fashion!) But this was a fraction of the idiocy that constituted Boot Camp.

The only other thing which was memorable about Boot Camp was the 2nd or 3rd week, which was known as "work week." Memorable, because of the way I outfoxed it. I managed to become a "dive bomber." That meant that I had a stick with a nail in the end, and a bag over my shoulder and was supposed to rove around spearing bits of trash. I perfected a routine, which worked like a charm for a week. I'd go in back of the barracks to the trash cans and load up my bag with trash from the cans. Then I found a favorite culvert where I could sleep for a good spell. You see, that's when and where I discovered that sleep (called crapping-out) is the most prized activity everywhere in the service, because by and large, everything is B-O-R-I-N-G-! And sleep is your escape and most-prized activity. At this time, every sailor's greatest fear was that upon leaving Boot Camp he would be sent to the "amphibs", which meant being in a sea-to-shore invasion. The worst possible scene! I'll close this brief Boot Camp description with the words of a song we used to sing there. These words may be sung to the melody of MY BONNIE LIES OVER THE OCEAN.

"Take down that blue star, Mother! - And hang up a gold one instead. Your son's an amphibious sailor; before he's eighteen, he's he'll be dead! T.S........T.S.........before he's eighteen he'll be dead, be dead! T.S.......T.S....... Before he's eighteen, he'll be dead!"

This is not a complete picture by any means of Boot Camp, but it gives and idea of the atmosphere. I learned that I was going to be transferred to Bainbridge, Md. to go to Quartermaster school. * More to come. We'll have some music between this and the next WWII episode! *"Quartermaster" in the Navy and Army denotes totally different duties.