US Naval Reserve Midshipmens School - Capstan Yearbook (Notre Dame, IN)

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Captainls inspection was discovered to have a meaning not apparent to the casual onlooker, and to involve an onerous routine which got under way about 18 hours beforehand with swabbing of the deck. Seaman Door used to think that this was the only Navy term he understood, but he knew now that he had not fully appreciated its implica- tions. The bare elements of getting a room in order for inspection include, he learned: tal sweeping, Cbl swabbing, and CCH going over the floor withifinger- nails to capture any stray broom straws, or grains of sand, making up the beds according to a prec-ise formula, with somewhat less tolerance permitted in the angle of blanket folds than in solution of a navigation problem, getting the ends of an un- symmetrical towel to hang absolutely square, thorough dusting, especially of the most unlikely places, such as the crevice inside the bottom of locker doors, or any cranny that is either beyond reach or out of sight, scrubbing the washbowlg keeping the wastebasket empty and the ashtray burnished, and seeing that shoes under the bed are lined up along the shortest distance between two arbitrarily selected Cgenerally by the inspect- ing oflicerj points. Somewhat harried after the first two or three days ofliving in a hell ofa hurry, Seaman Door had come to relish warmly every second of his seven hours and fifty minutes in bed. It was with some chagrin, then, that he drew the last half of the midwatch as mate of the third deck, where he grudgingly put in two hours noting in the log his own and the roving watchls reports that all was secure, sir, and ruefully pondering man,s in- humanity to man. The bits of miscellaneous information assimilated by Seaman Door in a remarkably short-time would 38

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'L .fm it V' tion of the original orders. Now and then mates of the deck were found to possess the two prime qualifications of a train announcer: a highly pene- trating voice, coupled with a total inability to make themselves understood. Seaman Door was soon removed from the fool's paradise hc had built for himself around the item in his orders stating that there would be no formal classwork during the indoctrination period. Sup- plied with eight textbooks Cincluding Bowditchj he quickly concluded that f'formal in the Navy must mean white ties and tails. Between times, there were periods for athletics and plenty of infantry drill. Before long, he was able to take drill even two hours of it in the rain in stride. Calisthenics, however, was a horse of another color. The first time his company did a bending exercise, so many joints cracked that the drill field sounded like a rifle range, and a salty lieutenant who happened to be standing by was moved to sing out absently, Cease firing! Seamanship, ordnance, and math for navigators l37l turned out to be the subjects of class instruction, and it soon appeared that the most rugged of these was math for navigators. There was much feverish resurrecting of badly decayed knowledge of geom- etry, algebra, astronomy, plane and spherical tif anyj trigonometry, and mechanical drawing. ln some ways, Seaman Door reflected while go- ing to formation on the double, the general atmos- phere resembled that at college, except that the men were obviously much more intent on getting something out of their instruction. There was more good humor, and less horseplay, perhaps due partly to the ever-present spectre of clemerits. Immunization f'shots, which made life hardly worth living on Tuesdays, and generally YVednes- days, too, were a major tribulation. Besides the severe muscular soreness and general doggy feel- ing which nearly everyone suffered, the faint of heart were terrorized by the most sadistic brand of seuttlebutt while waiting in the line leading into the sick bay. lf the reaction to the shots were any criterion, Seaman Door felt certain after the fifth or sixth round that he was immune to all the af- Hictions of man or beast, including ergophobia.

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make a long list, but some of the more noteworthy items were: That in spite of considerable legwork, to put it mildly, sailors' shoes are likely to wear out on the top as soon as on the bottom, due to in- cessant shiningg that it is possible, nay, judicious, to distinguish a commissioned ofhcer at 500 yards with the naked eyeg and that you will always know where you are going when you get there. Well over a thousand men comprised the in- doctrination class which matriculated on Oct. 5, and was due to become the first midshipmenis class at Notre Dame. Colleges and universities in all parts of the country were represented, Seaman Door found, and there was such a variety of accents that a muster sounded like the Biblical confusion of tongues. The first Saturday at 12:30 came the anxiously- awaited proclamation of liberty. Striding freely along the broad and bustling streets of South Bend, 39 Seaman Door thought he knew now how Atlas must have felt when someone spared him off for a few hours. South Bend residents were so anxious to be pleas- ant and helpful to men in uniform that Seaman Door, one week on active duty, felt like an ancient and honored mariner, grown hoary in the service of his country. The city's Servicemenls Center, operated by a group of public spirited people, con- tained all that a young man could ask, vizg, a goodly stock of beauteous damsels, food and drink, reading and writing materials, and the speedy and cheerful solution of almost any personal problem. lXfonday was an evil day for Seaman Door, who found himself on a work detail because his ashtray had been left on his desk, his soap dish was dirty, and his locker was somewhat out of order. By way of penance, he put in two hours lugging desks, files,