General Sturgis (AP 137) - Naval Cruise Book

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memorable cry, Get down out of them trees! ' We really felt important and useful while we were in Ulithi, though after a time we began to long for snow and ice or any contrast. So back to Seattle, and a long month of the pleasures of home. How we hated to leave — and yet we had the prospect of visiting more new places. This time we all became shellbacks after an exciting and droll ceremony. New Guinea loomed up, green and mysterious. Finschafen seemed like something out of this world, with yellow-faced WACS clustering about, and most of us also had our first sight of the fabulous Fuzzy-Wuzzies. A quiet trip to Hollandia, with the reassuring shore line mounting higher, and then we were in a mag- nificent harbor, with steep tree-covered hills leading up endlessly. It didn ' t seem possible that Hol- landia was reconquered by the United Nations just one year before we arrived. Signs of the struggle were nonexistent. Manila was a different sight. Who can forget the tremendous sight of the 300 or more ships lying twisted and broken on the floor of the bay, or the gaunt misshapen skeletons of the modern buildings which once lined the waterfront? There were colorful sights too, the gaily painted cartellas, the tiny Philippine horses, the native sec- tions, more or less untouched by the war, the girls at the Red Cross canteen, the beer and the liquor . . . And how we hove to whenever we could snag a bundle of Jap money. At San Antonia, Samar, in Leyte Gulf, we came into our own in our search for souvenirs. There was ship ' s beer, and swimming, but chief delight was to wrangle for hours with a native for a hat or a hand- ful of shells. Trade you, Joe was the battle-cry, and each thought he had the better of the bargain. And so home again, on a sort of pleasure cruise. Where do we go from here? It ' s enough that we keep moving until that final day when we sail past Yokosuka into Tokyo Bay. 50

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7 Few of us have forgotten the day our orders came to New Construction. GENERAL STURGIS? Who was he, anyhow? And what does she look like? A transport — eh? and visions of the West Point and the Wakefield arose. And so our first sight of our new home was a little disappointing, for she looked more like an empty tanker than a transport. But when we swarmed over her, and she grew bigger by the minute, we realized that we had a real, fast, new ship, and that we were destined to go places. It wasn ' t long before we sailed down the beautiful Columbia and Willamette Rivers and landed in Portland. Who among us can forget Mt. Hood, Broadway, the Rathskellar, the Multnomal or Jant- zen ' s Beach? The consensus of opinion was, and still is, that Portland was the best port we ' ve hit. Then on to San Pedro, where they made us go through our paces, but also gave us a chance to go ashore once in awhile. And were the sights and sounds of San Pedro delightful, in fact, the attrac- tions were so ready at hand that few of us got to Los Angeles. Seattle ' s chilly reception was next, and we all froze without special clothing. Still, it was our introduc- tion to the rough virtues of that town and of the surrounding hamlets, of First Avenue, and our first souvenirs, this time of Indian manufacture. It was a beautiful sight when we saw Oahu rising from the sea, and put in at the Aloha tower. Re- member the band playing Aloha Oe, and the smell of land after our first real sea trip? Then we wandered over to see Pearl Harbor, and hunted souvenirs along Waikiki Beach and at the Sub-base. But Honolulu came to be a familiar sight after a few more visits, and we began to long for action, or at least a sight of the West Pacific. Then came orders, and the long trip to Ulithi. What a sight those atolls were, strewn, as some travelogue might have it, like a necklace of emeralds on the deep blue sea! Mogmog claimed our earnest footsteps, and it was there that we heard the 49 ■S r- : y

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