by Dorien Grey
If they would just say to me: “Margason, you’re not leaving the ship till we get back,” I’d say: “Too bad, but OK.” Maybe they did stuff like that in the Confederate Navy, but not here. Here they say, in a sniveling, nasal tone: “You might get off. Maybe in Genoa, or Cannes. Then again, maybe you won’t get off. No, you won’t! Well, maybe….” Etc. ad nauseum.
The other happy bit of news for today is that yesterday, after shipping a huge package to Aunt Thyra’s, I find that the government allows you to send only $50 a month through the mail—everything else is liable to Customs. So, Aunt Thyra might get slapped with a bill for from $38 to $50. Oh, ho ho, what a jolly life we lead!
For breakfast we had boredom, for dinner monotony, and for supper limbo.
Which brings to mind a beautiful dream I had last night—I really enjoyed it and only wish I could remember more of it—it concerned a man who could fly (sometimes it was me, sometimes it was someone else—you know how dreams go). He/I had no wings, but could fly—by my time-worn method of two running steps and a leap, arms upward.
This man was married, and lived in a white house on a corner. His wife was ashamed that he could fly. The only time he was unable to fly was when wrapped in a blanket.
He was flying—over a sidewalk with bushes along it, and over a policeman, who didn’t seem at all surprised to see a man flying. This was the only time he was really happy—when he was flying.
He was walking toward his house—his wife came out with a blanket. I felt his/my sick fear and, crying, he leaped high into the air, twisted around, and plunged to the ground—.
It was so very real; no doubt there is a moral in there somewhere, and a very significant one, but I don’t know where to look.
So you see, aside from my dream world, there is very little to tell you. We are at sea, and the sea is no doubt very blue and very wet—I wouldn’t know, since I didn’t even get near the hangar deck all day.
I went to Personnel Office today to re-check the list of discharges—this morning my name was there, 17th from the bottom, and the list ended 14 August. Tonite I went back and the entire page with my name is gone—the list now ends at 7 August. See what I mean?
Tomorrow’s plan of the day promises that it will be no less nor no more exciting a day than this. More then.
Love
Roge
8 June 1956
Dear Folks
The day began at 0430 with the cheery clamor of the GQ warning. This time I was ready for ‘em. I’d carefully placed a book under my rack, which I grabbed along with my socks and T-shirt. Thank God today was the last of these exercises (we hope).
No, I am not coming home early. Oh, well….
We have started wearing whites, and nice as they may be in the States, where a cleaning service pulls up to the dock every day, they do not go over so big with yours truly here in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea. Already the pair I put on this morning looks like I’d been dragged through the streets.
Suda Bay tomorrow, operations with 13,000 Marines off Turkey from the 12th to 14th. Then a mad dash to make it to Genoa by the 16th.
You’ll probably be getting at least two letters today (your today, not mine); this one and yesterday’s. You’ve no doubt noticed they’re more or less in the same tone—namely a dull grey. If the Navy would stop playing its silly little games for long enough to make one definite statement and stick to it. Oh, well, all is not a bed of roses.
The Navy acts as an opium, deadening even the staunchest hearts, and blurring the brightest of eyes. This has its advantages—mainly that I have been counting the last 150 days of my enlistment; I am now down to sixty-five, and the preceding eighty-five have been just a “blah,” each a carbon copy of the one before. Next time the Navy offers me a $10,000 cruise, I’ll ask for the cash instead.
Oh, there have been bright spots—ones I wouldn’t change for the world—but at the moment it is hard for me to look at it that way. From where I stand, boredom stretches away in all directions. I use the word “boredom” not exactly in Webster’s sense. There is always the partial escape of reading—but only the mind gets away; the body still sits in the same general position, acquiring a secretarial or middle-age spread without being either.
So, for a change, I get up—I walk around the office in my battleship greys, hands behind my back. I sit down. I look at the paper and see nothing but Sanskrit—a rather illegible Sanskrit at that.
Mr. Clower has just come in—an MAA and a mess cook have been waiting for him. The mess cook’s name is Reuben Gimple. He has been placed on report so many times we’re thinking of starting a file on his report slips.
I feel a little better now—just got back from the library, where I read some halfway recent magazines and listened to some light music. Still nothing new or exciting. They had a mail call tonite, but it was a very small one, and I got what the little boy shot at.
Think I’ll go to bed and play solitaire. Love
Roge
10 June 1956
Dear Folks
Though it is now well into June, we are 5,000 miles from home, and the temperature is sufficiently warm to scorch cloth, I sat in Hangar Bay 1 and watched the movie “White Christmas.” I’d seen it before, of course, but I liked it the second time almost as well.
Got a surprise during the “intermission” between the first and second movies—a guy walked up the aisle in civilian clothes (thereby he was an officer) and I’ll swear he went through Pensacola the same time I did. It was quite a shock.
Quite a bit going on for a change—Nick left this morning for transfer back to the States, while I still sit here. It sure will seem strange not to have him around.
It was a beautiful day, and the flight deck was littered with masochistic sun worshipers. I got brave and laid up there for an hour, watching helicopters take off like grasshoppers from the escort carrier Siboney (like the one we were on in Pensacola, mom). With me, though, a little sun is enough—I don’t get burned, but I just can’t see sitting and/or laying around doing nothing. I think when I get out, I’ll print books in assorted colors so that the glare won’t hurt your eyes so much.
Last two days I’ve read two books—one of them the biography of Robert Benchley, and the other a good pseudo-fantasy.
Naturally, they are having no less than five wonderful tours from Genoa—three days to Venice; three days to Florence; one day to Milan, etc. And I don’t dare go on any of them. Damn them.
In two days I have managed also to dirty two sets of whites. The ship generously deigns to press one pair a week. As you can see, things soon get out of hand if you don’t happen to have an iron.
On the Siboney came 79 new boots, all with the usual rosy cheeks and wide eyes. The first day they got here (Saturday) I overheard two of them complaining about the chow: “Gee, on that one we came over on we could get all we wanted to eat; we served ourselves, too.” I tried to explain to them that A) we have almost twice as many men as the Siboney, B) we have been over here seven months and are surprisingly short on “pate de fois gras” and roast guinea hen under glass, and C) if we tried giving everybody all they wanted, we’d last about two days. They were not satisfied.
As the Chief says: “We’re here to feed ’em, not fatten ‘em.”
Tomorrow morning we’re having Quarters for Leaving Port, which is almost as useless a tradition as I can think of at the moment. Here we are, surrounded by mountains, where nobody can see us, or would be very interested if they did, yet we fall in on the flight deck in whites and look very impressive.
Short, but sweet. More tomorrow.
Love
Roge
11–12 June 1956
Dear Folks
“You know, I’ve always wondered—how come you can touch the rails on an electric train and not get a shock?”
The train the Chief was speaking of was of the Lionel variety. This led into further mysteries, such as “What makes the whistle blow?” and awesome observatio
ns along the line of “I saw this one once, where it had a cattle car that made noises, and then when it stopped the cows came out on a ramp and went back in again. No they didn’t walk, they slid.”
Oh, well, as has been said before—it’s been a long cruise.
As for myself, after having read another book, I sit chewing the skin around my fingernails—the nails themselves are more or less intact. The movie on the mess decks tonite is “The Gun that Won the West”—a light situation comedy, I gather.
The USS Ticonderoga Literary and Letter-Writing Guild is gathering for its nightly meeting, armed with ink-less or leaky pens, pencil stubs, and writing paper of varying quality. They use these only as props, however, and their motto appears to be “Silence is Coal.”
Andy, one of the members, has a cold—I keep waiting for the next sniffle, which is on the same level of mental agony as the Chinese Water Torture.
One of the mess cooks, Andres (a boy from Durand, Ill.), fell asleep while sun bathing and now resembles a cherry popsicle. He’s in agony, but since it is a court martial offense to become sunburned so badly it interferes with your work, he’s working.
News is that we’re planning on playing games tomorrow morning about 0430 (again). If it would be all right with them, I’d just as soon not join in, but that would dampen the “camaraderie” and jolly good humor which is expected of eager young sailors of His Majesty’s Fleet.
My name is back on the list at Personnel—only about fifty guys ahead of me. By my name is “5 August,” which means I must be back in the States by 5 August—one week before discharge. We get back on the 3rd. Oh, well….
New day, and I’ve decided to go to Venice and to hell with sitting around chewing my nails. I know when my discharge date is, and have enough confidence in the Navy to think they can get me back before that time. Just to make sure, I’m going to ask Mr. Clower to check with the Personnel Officer to see if he has any ideas. The more I think of it, the more sure I am.
Cities I have visited up till now—Paris, Cannes, Nice, Genoa, Rome, Naples, Beirut, Istanbul, Athens, and Valencia. That’s only the bigger ones. Venice will just about top it all off.
Another nice day, only not as sharply defined as yesterday—the sky was a milky-mist, and the water was choppy (beautiful blue-and-white contrasts in the waves) but not too high.
Oh; we didn’t play games at 0430, but my sleep was ruined nevertheless, because I kept waking up every half hour waiting for it.
Glancing down at my shoes, I see they are badly in need of a shine. They look as though everyone had walked on them but me. The designers of this ship are largely to blame. Every hatch combing is exactly one half inch higher than I think it is—with the result that I almost never fail to stub my toe.
The decks around here are actually dangerous—it’s a wonder several people haven’t been killed or seriously injured by falling down on them. The least little spot of water makes them as slippery as ice, and with nothing to fall on or against but metal. Twice I have fallen (with poise and dignity, of course) flat on my face. It’s especially dangerous if you happen to be stepping through a hatch and slip—I still have the scars from the time it happened to me.
Before me sit two Special Request Chits, requesting that I be allowed to go on a 3 day tour to Venice, which I filled out between the first page of this letter and this one.
Oh, well, such is life.
A book I would like to get ahold of (a literary phrase from the ancient Gaelic) is “The Search for Bridey Murphy”—a true story of a modern woman who claims, under hypnotism, to have lived in the 18th Century in Ireland as one “Bridey Murphy.” Though a Reader’s Digest article pretty well disproves it, it seems like it might make interesting reading. Why do you see if you can get it for me, mother?
And speaking of getting things, what happened to Tchaikovski?
Oh, let there be singing and dancing in the streets—two months from today I’ll be out!!
And so to bed.
Love
Roge
14–17 June 1956
Dear Folks
I saw an ice cream machine today. It drips white, and when you try to carry five cups of semi-fluid ice cream (two in each hand and one clenched in your teeth), you drip white, too. I left a trail like a punctured milk truck all the way from the forward Gedunk to the office. I passed an officer who said very cheerily: “Say, where are they selling the ice cream?” I hope he wasn’t hurt when I didn’t answer; not intelligibly, anyway.
When one’s entire daily adventures reach the state where a trip to the ice-cream stand is a newsworthy item, things are not exactly at their peak. I still wish we had sea monsters. Things like that made a voyage interesting. Nowadays you can’t even find a halfway decent mermaid. Oh, well, times have changed.
No mail call now for a week. Somebody in the Post Office Department is under the happy illusion that we arrived back in the states the 23rd of May and is holding it at the dock for us. His supper will be cold.
Latest “who’s-getting-out-when?” news is that everyone with discharge dates prior to 11 August 1956 will leave in Genoa. I get out 12 August. Ha-ha. Is that not a funny joke on me? No, it is not.
Taps, and goodnight.
Now wasn’t that the fastest three days on record. I’m sorry for not having written, but no mail has come on or gone off in that time, so it is only the volume, not the frequency of delivery, that suffers.
Today being Sunday, I slept till eight thirty, which was a pleasant change. I have shore patrol from 3 this afternoon till about 0300 tomorrow morning; which should be lots of fun.
Yesterday I went over to Genoa, and walked at least two miles (uphill) in the wrong direction looking for the down-town area. I finally spotted it—by locating the 24-story skyscraper—from the top of a mountain, and walked back down again.
I had only ten feet of film in my camera, and the ship is completely out. I tramped all over Genoa trying to find 8mm Magazine, Color. Some places had 8mm Magazine, but in black and white. Finally found a shop that had some, and paid L3,900 (roughly $7.00) for one roll. That one is going to have to last me until the ship gets some more.
Walked around window shopping for a couple hours, and decided to go to a movie. There are quite a few new American movies playing here, but all are in Italian. Since I had read the book “The Man Who Never Was,” I figured I could struggle through. It was very good, and I must see it again in English so I can hear what it’s all about.
The theatre was modern and comfortable, even though they had an intermission halfway through, plus ten or fifteen minutes of Technicolor and very elaborate commercials before the main feature.
After the movie, I was walking down the street when I started shaking like a leaf—I wasn’t cold, though, particularly It was more like spasms, and I had to bite my lip and fight like mad to try and stop. Don’t know what caused it and I wouldn’t care to have it happen again; I was afraid I was cracking up.
Just goes to show what the Ti and an eight month cruise can do.
All in all, Genoa is much the way I remember it—I still have to remember to hold my breath while walking past the butcher shops.
Well, I’ll end this now, to make sure it gets off, and will write more later.
Love
Roge
56 Days
18 June 1956
Dear Folks
After three false starts (one got up to ¼ page) and several detours, I’m back again. The mail finally caught up with us—I got four or five letters from you, which came as a very welcome relief from the somnambulistic molasses existence I’ve been leading.
Yes, I know it’s easy to say “stiff upper lip” (have you ever actually tried to keep a stiff upper lip?) and all that; I can do it myself when I’m in the right mood. At the moment, I’m sort of on the upswing.
Last night I had Shore Patrol. It rained. I did not bring a raincoat. Our “beat” was the long ramp from fleet landing to the heavily ornate Maritime
Building, where the Shore Patrol Headquarters was. Running parallel to the town, the “ramp” had as a background a long, viaduct-like passageway, with a long building underneath. People stood in droves along the rail, watching the two American destroyers tied up, fantail-first, to the ramp—about halfway between the Maritime Bldg. and the pier on which fleet landing was located. Our liberty launches were sharing the pier with the liner “Constitution” out of New York. She pulled out while we were there; it was almost as much fun to watch as trains used to be.
There was a cold wind, and the rain, when it came, didn’t help much. To climax the evening’s festivities, boating was canceled due to heavy seas. Being the Navy, however, they did not say: “Go, my children, and find a nice warm bed for the night.” They instead canceled it “temporarily,” from seven o’clock on. We spent most of the evening huddled under the viaduct, or sitting in a tiny restaurant eating pizza (not too good) and drinking hot chocolate. Whenever the rain let up, we made the rounds of a few bars, checking to see that none of our flock got into trouble. None did. When we arrived at 5:30, the first casualties began to come back—liberty had begun at 1:00. One kid, an SA (Seaman Apprentice) obviously just over from the States, came up in the arms of one of his buddies, an SN (Seaman) and therefore more accustomed to drinking. When he saw us, he stopped short (the Shore Patrol brassard does that to a lot of people) and turned to his buddy with tears in his eyes and said: “They’re gonna write me up.”
“Nah, they wouldn’t do that.”
“Oh yes they would—I’m drunk and they’re gonna write me up.”
Reminded me of a mother trying to convince Junior that Santa Claus won’t bite.
One of the bars we visited, which wasn’t on our regular beat but fairly close to it, was owned by an acquaintance of my partner.
Never will I get used to these bars over here—the ones with hot and cold running blondes.
