Going to Sea


So here I am In N.O., living at the edge of the French Quarter, with nothing to do but wait, drifting perilously close to my 18 birthday, when young men customarily got their 1A draft cards and prepared to go to boot camp. But I was privileged; I had my 2B, military deferment.

My draft card came from a draft board on Esplanade Ave, some 20 blocks north. (Actually that Draft Board had been the first to grant exemptions to merchant seamen, but that was long before my time.) We were at Rampart and Gov. Nicholls, two blocks from Esplanade. During those early (not in N.O.!) days of spring I used to take long walks in the evening, and frequently went as far as the draft board or even to the entrance to City Park.

I had a lot to think about: it was a kind of ageing experience, going from boyhood to manhood, a solitary experience. My mind soared. I read Durant's Story of Philosophy and fell in love with it, but have never pursued it very far.

Some time before my birthday I was enrolled with the War Shipping Administration and got a handsome (for that day) per diem, for which I had to report (briefly) every weekday morning to see if my services as a radio operator were needed.

My 18th birthday passed. Then one day I got word. Take a train to Mobile and board a T2 tanker named Wood Lake, brand new, right out of the shipyard.

I did it, went aboard the ship and found out that I was the third officer. We had to keep 24 hour a day watch of BAMS (Broadcasts to Allied Merchant Ships) from which new routing instructions might come at any moment. But not in port!! I'm getting ahead of myself.

We went out into the Gulf for our shakedown cruise; not much to it for us. We learned that a similar brand new tanker had been torpedoed by a U boat 30 miles off the coast the week before. Not to worry. I was too young to worry!

Eventually we filled up with 180,000 gallons of aviation gas, and ten P38 (Lightening) pursuit aircraft. (My brother-in-law flew one in the Pacific.) We steamed up to Halifax, the staging area for the gigantic convoys they were using in those days. There were 50 odd ships of various sorts. We did 14 knots, considered fast for tankers in those days. Liberty ships did 8 knots; they were the backbone of the military supply system.

In due course we arrived at Liverpool. We radio officers had no duty in port, and I conceived the notion of going to London (might be my only chance). I went to London, looked around, spent the night, looked some more, consider spending another night, but thought better of it and went back to Liverpool.

I got there just in time to catch the last liberty boat back to the Wood Lake, and we were out of there. (If I had spent another night in London, I would have become a castaway, an American castaway in wartime England; I shudder at the thought. Actually it happened to the Second Radio Operator the next trip, in Bristol. By then we were clued as to how fast those tankers turned over, and we were there for the departure. All but Fitzpatrick: a lady's man he showed up at the wharf just after we had cast off. Goodbye Fitz.

I met him years later in N.O. It had taken him two years to get back to the States, all that time working as a galley slave to earn his passage. No salary of course. That boy's disposition had changed tremendously. He was seriously studying printing, hoping to make something of himself after those wasted years.

We were in Liverpool two weeks before D-Day. On D-Day we were in Houston, TX. I remember being on the main street and going into a church, which seemed to be the thing to do at that moment. Glad I wasn't any closer to the beaches of France.