Continuing with our recent pattern of only one letter a day, this is Dart’s turn to write – and it’s a long one.
He’s back now from Point Montara with a change of heart about the place. More on that later.
He and his classmates learned a great deal about gunnery during their four days of practice. “We got the color scared out of us when the big guns went off while we were in the magazine getting own ammunition. We bit off the tips of our hearts when one of the loaders dropped a live shell on the steel deck of the gun mount. We shot up several hundred dollars worth of antiaircraft ammunition. (So pay your taxes) We did night firing a couple of times and we unloaded a couple of truckloads of ammunition.”
Changing gears, he admits to being very worried about his dad. Pop works in a machine shop very near where a huge explosion happened in Cleveland. The building he’s in is a very old tumbledown place with a wooden roof and dubious brick walls.
He and his mates are happy to be clean once again. They returned to Treasure Island with four days of grit, grease, sweat and whiskers clinging to them like barnacles. Now, he’s clean, “from the skin out and the sox up.”
In a revised review of Point Montara, he says, “The point was a rather pretty place, and it seemed as though we were having a vacation while we were there. The huge swells of the Pacific boil among the rocks at the base of the 5-foot cliff on which is situated the firing line. Seals play on the rocks and in the water, completely oblivious to the heavy gunfire above them.”
He reports that it’s a thrilling experience to fire one of those guns. They each got multiple turns at the various positions needed to fire their gun. The target was usually a kite, pulled at the end of a long line attached to a Navy dive bomber. When thick fog reduced visibility of the kite, they used large red balloons that floated past the firing line.
He describes the sensations of being so near the large guns when they’re fired. “The five-inchers make a heavy roar, and you feel as if you’d been jostled in a crowded bus. A sudden wave of pressure ruffles your clothing and makes it seem as if your eyeballs are trying to push your earplugs out from inside.”
Back at Treasure Island, big things are afoot. The Shore Patrol is cracking down on the slightest infraction of the rules. Guys are being thrown into the brig for such “crimes” as walking down the street with an arm around their wife, wearing their hats too far back on their heads (known as “salty hats”), for wearing a pea coat unbuttoned, for the use of even the mildest profanity or for being slightly drunk.
He closes in a hurry to make the mail pick-up. He knows he and Dot will be terribly disappointed if his leave doesn’t come through, but he reminds her to remember what happened when he was in the hospital, one signature and mere hours away from a leave.
