Topeka (CL 67) - Naval Cruise Book

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MNA Anyone who has served on a ship knows the truth of an old sailors' saying that a ship has a so11l. An old chief who had served on many ships during his navy career said that the Topeka was a thoroughbred from the start and always would be. The soul of a ship is what her officers and men make it. It is a spirit, an esprit de corps. There are friendly ships and unfriendly ships, efficient and inefficient ships. clean and dirty, good feeders and poor, sharp ships and indolent ships. She is like people having that mysterious thing called personality. She is attractive or unattractive, and as inex- plicable so as any person. She has that certain something or she does not. As we said her personality comes from her men. lt is not anything the shipbuilders can give her. Ships? com- panies are different so ships are different. The thing we are talking about usually starts at the top with the Captain and the Executive officer. The first skipper, exec, and crew give the ship her soul which is mighty hard to change for good or bad thereafter. The Topeka was a champion at the start with Captain Thomas L. Wattles as her commanding officer, and Comman- der 0. H. Dodson as her Executive Officer, with a ward- room and compartments full of eager, smart, and energetic American youngsters. Youngsters is right, too, because the average age of the officers hardly touched twenty five, and the men's was barely twenty. The story of the Topeka officers and men is really amaz- ing. The large majority of the officers were civilian reserv- ists. Many of them were bearrdless collegiates who had never been to sea. The others were professional and busi- ness men, some long in the war, and veterans of many sea campaigns all over the lworld when they reported for duty to the Topeka. The men, too, were mostly civilians, from everywhere, and nowhere, with conglomerate and varied occupations that more than rivaled the officers'. Most of the men were high school graduates. There were a few collegiates, and a number of college graduates. One man had been a high school principal, one edited a mag- azine, another was a successful artist, others were farmers, ranchers, glass blowers, policemen, clerks, accountants, draftsmen, printers, photographers, musicians, newspaper reporters, radio announcers, and entertainers. Some were rich and some were poor, but most of them came from the substantial American middle class homes. They came from nearly every state in the Union, though the preponderant majority was from the East coast. The men from New England and the Middle Atlantic States out- numbered those from any other section. A slightly larger number came from the cities than from the towns and country. But the score was surprisingly close. There were Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Agnostics, and Atheists, in that order as far as numbers were concerned, and about in the same proportion as the population of the 66 East from which most of them came. As a perfect cross section of American manhood, the crew had as many national and racial backgrounds as there are nations and races in the world. If all the men who were bilingual had spoken their second languages in concert there would have been greater confusion aboard the Topeka than occurred at the Tower of Babel. Russian, Philipino Czech, German, Spanish, French, Swedish, Hebrew, and Japanese, are some of the languages spoken-while every dialect of English from broad Oxfordian and Boston Ameri can counterpart to the throaty mid-western of the great plains, up-state New York twang, soft Southern drawl, and the inimitable Brooklynese afforded a daily linguistic sym phony beyond musical comparison. The menis names were American to a syllable, Smith Llewllyn, etc, etc. There were tall men and short men, lean and fat, light and dark. The average Topeka sailor about five feet ten inches tall, weighed about 160 pounds, was fair with light brown hair, more than likely curly, and blue eyes. He was a handsome lad which was attested to by the uncommon at tention he received from the young fairer sex wherever he went. He jitter-bugged and Zombied with usual American zest and agility, while he was serious about his work and ambitious for promotion and advancement. His favorite pastime aboard ship was sleeping-according to his own unblushing account. His favorite movie star was as likely to be Bing Crosby as Hedy Lamar-which should give Hedy something to worry about, and the producers something to think about. His choice of authors ran the gamut from Burroughs to Shakespeare, and magazines from Pic to Mercury. On the average he read twenty magazines and two books a month. As a sportsman he was more of a participant than a spec tator. His favorite-right in the American tradition--was baseball. He played the game with average skill, and lots of pep. The whole truth is that he was a seasonal sports enthusiast. In the summer it was baseball,,tennis, golf swimming, in the fall football and hunting, in the winter skiing and ice skating, in the spring fishing. He handled his fists- fearlessly, developed a better than average boxing team, was an inveterate fight fan, and gave his team active as well as articulate support. The fact is that you know this man very well. He may be your son, brother or sweetheart. He may be the father of some of you old enough to read. All of you have met him on the street in his disheveled school attire looking as irre sponsible as an ancient ant-eater. Or he is the boy who de livered your paper, getting it to your door with a bang just after the clang of the milkman had half brought you to unwilling consciousness. It may be that he was the milk man. He could have been the kid who cut your lawn--as grudgingly as you work for your own dollars-or washed your car, or fixed your favorite sundae or ushakei' at the Brown, Jones, Love, Lopez, Cohen, Mashinski, Dwyer,

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'cSweet Tooth Emporium downtown. All the men were not youngsters, of course. Even some of them who we-re quite young had long been shouldering responsibilities as heavy as any you know. They really ranged in age from 16 - and maybe younger - to 39. Many of them were family men with from one to six children. One oldster of twenty-six received word while we were at sea fighting the enemy that his sixth daughter had arrived. He and his wife had been married all of seven years. Such champions make a champion ship. All in all the Topeka family was numerous and scattered all over the world from Australia to the countries of Europe. One of the cooks had a wife in Australia, and a new baby daughter whom, at the end of the war, he had not yet seen. Most of the newer families of the men were living with parents-for the most part perhaps with the girlsi parents. ln more incidents than you would guess, babies 'were born while the fathers were at sea. The most prevalent pin-ups on the Topeka were new babies in their girlish mothers' arms-or those shameless exposures of babies which so de- light parents, especially fathers, and embarrass children at least until they marry and have children of their own. In this matter man seems to learn so little from experience. These pictures play an important role in an unabashed blackmail practice used by every adult generation on the younger. Of course many of the men had already established homes, and were in the process of paying off the mortgage when the war caught them up. They were typical of the American places of which we are justly very proud-full of modern gadgets that make the American wife several grades higher than a slave, and giving evidence at every turn of the handiness and loving concern of her husband. He had that way about his work, whether he liked it or not, which astonishes people of every other country, and leads to some of the grossest misunderstandings about Americans and their country. Work to him is always at once a pleasure and a drudge so that he always appears to be fighting it or playing with it. And even when he fights he plays. It never seems that he is taking the thing serious- ly. For this and other reasons a foolish Hitler called him decadent, and the unhumorous Japanese attacked him with a stab in the back. The Japanese must understand by now that they have been defeated by these same irresponsible American youths. But one wonders whether they know, or would believe it if they were told what is the truth, that these men often prayed that enemy planes would come in close enough for some sure shooting-any action even dan- gerous action was preferable to withering boredom. The navy did an astonishingly fine job placing round pegs in round holes. But there are limits to which even psychologists can go. The Topeka did not carry cows S0 one dairy man was an electrican, and another a firecon- trolman. Farmers on the whole seem to be able to do any- thing and everything. For that matter so do soda jerkers, artists, truck drivers, or hobos. The American youth is the most versatile fellow in the world. A sales-manager for a large grocery house was a laundryman, a milkman was an evaporator operator, a building contractor was a cook- a thing We are pledged b'y a sacred oath never to reveal to his wife-an artist was a laboratory technician, a radio an- nouncer and script writer was a sergeant in the marines, a boxer a shipfitter, and so it went throughout the ship, men throwing around talents and skills no one including them- selves evetr knew they had. Naturally there were many career navy men who had been in the servic.e anywhere from five to thirty and more years. They were the cream in the coffee, as one might say, professionals who poured out their Hknow-hown and Hwhatw to the ample amateurs that did everything but out-know them. Add to these the professionals among the officers and the conglomerate amateurs with them and you have the mass- that was moulded into the unbeatable Topeka crew. Nothing was more astounding than the way these men got along with one another in crowded quarters which never offered any privacy, and at times under most tense circum- stances. You would not believe it if we told you that there neve-r was a cross word or a fight. You would be right be- cause it would not be true. There were sharp words at times, but really ver.y few, when men would fly at one an- other with brutal purpose. Even loving brothers do that at times, and that was about how it was. They were friends before they fought, while they fought, and after they fought. For instance here is a conversation between the Chaplain and one of the men whose one eye looked the worse for wear. '6Fight, son? HYes, Padre. 4'Did you hit him back? '4Yes, sir . 4'Did you shake hands when it was over?,' f'Oh, yes sirn. MOK, sonw. A spirit of genuine and warm camaraderie pervaded the ship from stem to stern within departments and as well be- tween departments. There was good natured rivalry for excellent performance, but the height of pride was in the ship and not in any single department. lt is pretty hard to compare the excellence of a cake with perfect gunnery, which is a very helpful factor in the cause of peace. Rivalry is a good thing but cooperation is absolutely necessary in the operation of a fighting ship. Our young Americans seemed to come by cooperation as naturally as they did their spirited love of contest. Willing helpful hands constantly tested your own initiative and ambition. They were attracted to undermanned jobs like ants to sugar. Of c.ourse there were slackers and gold-brickelrs, but they were too small a minority to set the tone of the crew. Many of them were shamed, cajoled, and disciplined to some gen- uine, or at least a semblance, of willing effort. Even the hardest could not forever withstand the pervading spirit. On one occasion a large numbelr of the men were taken suddenly and violently ill-it was something they ate-and before anyone could snap his fingers electricians, shipfit- ters, radio technicians, cooks et al became working hospital corpsmen. They stood by their buddy-patients doing some of the most unpleasant jobs imaginable in spite of the fact that they had had very little sleep for days, could have had some then, and had little promise of any for some time to c.ome. But that was only typical of what was going on in the ship every hour of every day. It is no wonder that the men who have served aboard the Topeka mention her with an inflection that denotes and at times oozes affection. 68