Waddling to War on LST 834

Of the sixteen million people who served in the United States military during World War II, few could have been as ill prepared for the experience as me.  Nonetheless, at age eighteen, off I went to war.  American kids like me lost their provincialism in a hurry.  Young men who had never seen an ocean or been on the water in anything bigger than a rowboat became highly proficient seamen, knowledgeable in the ways of war, effective in combat.  Boys quickly acquired the skills and savvy in specializations completely unknown to them before entering the Navy.  They were possibilists, pragmatists.  “If it works, it’s good,” became their modus operandi, the principle they relied on.  Luck was a factor they learned to regard with awe and respect.  Being the fickle factor, luck dealt these novice seamen the good and the bad, handing out life-saving and life-destroying events indiscriminately, whimsically.  I, too, became attuned to these realities.

For two years I was a sailor, twenty-three months and sixteen days, traveling half-way round the world to war at Okinawa.  I was not good at sailoring, not serious about the Navy or the tasks I was to perform.  But because of, or maybe in spite of, a lack of seriousness I collected a million memorable experiences that have stayed with me.  These experiences are the text for this story.