Columbia (CL 56) - Naval Cruise Book

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to the head to wait in line: first to wash and shave, and second to attend to Nature's neces- sities. Then we would dash to the breakfast line. After a morning of classes we would dash to the noon chow line that would often curl aft to the fantail, curve around the turrets, and even to the bow. After chow, it was the ship's service line, a line to get laundry, and another for mail. In the afternoon there were the lines tb get paint scrapers and the line to get buckets and rags. Later there were the lines to get on the liberty boat and a line to get off fof course, that was according to an old Navy traditionj. As a final act of the day, there were the lines to get on the liberty boat, and still another to get aboard the ship. For variety, there were the intermittent lines that came up occasionally, such as the small stores line, the pay line, the line to submit cleaning, and the line to draw it out again . . . and the crowning touch, a line to get discharged. Although we soon fell into the routine of waiting in line about half the day, we did, however, become forcibly aware during the cruise that they had things well lined up! At first we were confused, then amazed at the weird noises that came over gadgets that were latter called nsquawk boxes. These strange noises varied from a garble of notes that re- sembled Harry James playing Shostakovich to a shrill ear-splitting call that lapsed occasionally into a canary warble. When we first heard these sounds, we would turn blankly to each other and guess what they could be about. We knew they meant some- thing, and we feared that we might, indeed, miss the pay line sometime unless we could get the word on this secret code system. Finally one day, one of the braver souls, who cared nothing for his reputation as a salt, dashed up to a seaman after the latest outburst and asked, What in the hell was that? The seaman's face lit up like a lightning bug on a dark night . . . he reached over, patted our hero's head affec- tionately, and drawled in a sable voice, What in the hell was what . . . sir? The atmosphere became heated with guesses as to the reason for it all. Some charged that it was a dog whistle for the ship's mascot, if it

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dered in the maze of passageways and compart- ments until by luck or sheer fortitude, we found our berths. Later, when the bilges were cleaned, two half-starved, dazed men were found whose first statement was, Our names are Henderson and Gilmore. Please tell us where B-302-L isf' The way back to the main deck was care- fully retraced to prevent any further confusion. We now waited for our luggage. It soon came aboard by the netfuls. Pictures that had been carefully packed away were broken or bent by the ponderous weight of twenty other bags piled on top. Lighter fluid carefully packed upright was spilled over everything when the bags were turned upside down. We all gained, however, the great truth of Burns that The best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agleyf' We then struggled back to our compartments to start the task of stowing our gear. With the help of a book of math tables and a slide rule fwhich each of our professors at the various universities told us would be indispensablej we integrated the area of our lockers and indi- vidually found a secret formula by which we could pack, squeeze, and cram the most in our lockers. The rest we stowed away again in our bags. The compartments became congested beyond description. To walk ten feet was to step on at least one foot, get hit in the stomach 'by a very hard elbow, to trip over some hapless soul pack- ing gear in a lower locker, and to say, pardon me until it became a reflex action. for I-at-F. ., Uniforms were hurriedly carried to a com- partment and stowed there until the steel rods assigned the gargantuan task gave up with a creak and collapsed. Then they were put in every conceivable and a few inconceivable places. Peacoat lockers were filled to the over- flowing and each corner was solidly Hlled with bags piled in Leaning Tower of Pisa fashion. Later we wandered around the ship trying to orient ourselves. Much to our embarassment we wandered too far, for we were shooed from place after place declared as restricted territory until we discovered ourselves just wandering around our living compartments making notes of the ventilator ports. That Hrst night as we slumped wearily into our sacks and fell into the arms of Morpheus, we were carried away to a night riddled with nightmares of lockers with bulging sides ex- ploding a geyser of clothes, or a locker door opening to release an avalanche of clothes, papers, bottles, etc. on the hapless owner. But we had a feeling of getting settled, for we had at least claimed and cleaned a place to sleep. We were not long in discovering the in- evitable lines, for as soon as we left the ladder to come aboard, we were greeted by a line to collect our orders. This, we discovered, was only the beginning, for our whole existence soon became centered around a certain routine of lines. Upon awakening from our sleep, we would -roll out of our Beautyrest mattresses and dash 0 l -fx le-as ssgkxi- 'fiilll fl i Q-it ,ji QL:-1

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had one, but this was discarded when the bugle calls could not be explained. Some swore it was a modern orchestra practicing, but these strange calls hailed from the quarterdeck, and we knew that nothing so terrible would be allowed there. Some said that it could be a series of love calls of the inhabitants, but this was immediately ruled out because of the limited effective range of the Hsquawk boxes. The Hnal conclusion, and the one still most generally believed, was put forward by a psy- chology major. This learned gentleman de- clared that undoubtedly this was the result of a distorted conception of the old phrase that Music hath charm to sooth the savage. He supposed that someone had taken this to heart and had immediately arranged for this strange music to soothe and relax us during our day's labors. He further pointed out that the whole reasoning was wrong, for truly instead of civil- ized music to soothe the savage, savage music had been imported to soothe the civilized. The attempt had, therefore, been in vain as evi- denced by those poor souls wandering dazedly around the deck strumming their lips. We have 1 X0 A -if in 2 OWL 1 I i t ar by X galil' it I 1 2 twenty - ll np it - Q? 1 'f ,, Ml 17 Q., be , l 8 I Xl lf J- Tx' if 5 ca -any 1 l wq . mV. , A K I: . iff XE, 3 ar ' V: - N K I reported as much to the Navy Department in a coded dispatch on the subject, but, unfor- tunately, it seems to have been lost in red tape for these eerie interludes still continue. We came aboard on Friday. After two days on a bar-room floor for some and watches for the rest, we launched into a regular schedule on Monday. We were divided into groups and sent to various departments for instruction. Some were sent to Gunnery, some to C8zR, some to Communications, some to Engineering, some to Navigation, and some to C.I.C. After we served out our time in one department, we would shift to another, so that by the time the cruise was over we would have spent some time in each department learning the intricacies of each departmenfs duties and where they scraped paint. For most of us the classes were boring .... damned boring .... for we saw old Films and studied already familiar books once again. Some of the periods were interest- ing as we recaptured an old skill of a former rate or as we looked in detail Qscrubhing detail, scraping detail, steel wool detailj into the deep secrets of the modern technical fields. Our class day was divided into four periods.