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Interviewer:
Veteran:
Interviewer:
Veteran:
machinist, they had a little lathe there and some gears and stuff, and I'll tell you,
they could fix it. They were on the ball. They were all first class petty officers,
and I was just a first class fireman. Fireman and first class seaman were just
about equal.
Were there any perks about the job you had?
I did have a little bit of an advantage being a welder. I say it was an advantage in
one way, but if anything broke down, then it wasn't. Those mines were copper
lines and they were lead coated, and I had patches on top of patches on that pipe.
If they sprung a leak, I had to fix it one way or another. We didn't have some
extra pipe, and I just made a cold patch on it like on a tire tube and soldered it on
there. I did have some patches that went bad-they just wore out. They weren't
all that bad, but over a period of time, I did have quite a few leaks that they
sprung, and then they'd have to shut the engine down. They didn't want you
moving around too much while you were fixing it. Like I say, I wasn't all that
experienced, but the thing of it was I was the only one that knew anything about
welding.
Was there anybody on your ship that you knew from home?
No. The only man that I met after I got out was a guy by the name of Woods, and
he worked with a company in Houston, and actually he was on the gun when we
got hit. He got hit at the same time, but he went back. I never did go back to the
ship. When I left boot camp, it was a three-man draft out of boot camp, and there
were three of us that were firemen. They pulled all three of us out, and then I
went to Treasure Island off of Los Angeles, and was pulled out on a one-man
draft on that, and I almost cried because I didn't know nobody. When I got there,
I seen some other guys that I'd went through boot camp with. They put us on
running the dishwasher there. This guy told me, "You get set, because you're
gonna be here for about ninety days," and I said, "Well, good!" I was there about
two weeks, and everything was real good because we had good liberty there in
Los Angeles, and I was having a lot of fun. I came in there one evening, and a
guy came in and called out my name and said, "Lash your sea bag. You're gonna
be gone in about an hour." I said, "What in the world are you talking about?" He
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