After 18 months of holystoning the decks, side cleaning and other special details. I knew that wasn't my vision as a naval career man. After many "chits" for transfer were denied, I guess Lt. Hunter was convinced I was seriously unhappy with old Siggy, so he offered to put me in turret 2 as a GM stricker. Yes Sir! I said. My belated thanks to you, Admiral R.P. Hunter.

One day while returning to port, we were all assembled on deck, when all of a sudden the port side anchor chain broke loose. We were lucky no one was hurt, talk about moving fast.

After ramming the Indiana we returned to Pearl Harbor for temporary repairs. We went ashore to the commissary to drink beer. We got off early and took up all the seats. The Marines came in after their training and were not to happy to see that all their usual seats were taken by us sailors. Fifteen minutes before closing four Marines picked a fight with me. One pushed me then the fight was on. The Shore Patrol broke it up and shoved my buddy and me outside. By that time someone had shouted "fight" and a lot of Marines came running, as their barracks were close by. Two Marines grabbed my arms and four Marines beat the hell out of me. I returned to the ship and word spread around the ship what the Marines had done to me. Everyone on the ship lined up on deck to go repay the Marines for what they had done to me, but the Officer of the Day closed the gang plank. It turned out my brother was in the Marines there but was working when all this occurred. I went to see him two days later and he could not recognize me. He wanted to get a few of his buddies to go after the guys who beat me but I told him not to.

There are many shipmates, places, things and occurrences that touched my life aboard the USS Washington. But of all of the ones that standout in my mind today is one that could have ended her service early in the war, with the Washington meeting the same fate as HMS Hood.

However after the emergency was over, the events that took place was quite comical to me.

This event took place in turret two. I don't recall why we were loading H.E. projectiles with proximity fuse unless we were firing target or bombardment. I was primerman on gun one, when the gun captain turned on the hoist to bring a projectile into loading position. The hoist jammed and hoisted the projectile straight up. Seeing this the gun crew abandoned the turret In the bat of an eye.

By the time I could climb up the gun deck from the primerman's platform the hoist had stopped, and I must say, "God was merciful that day" as the nose of the fuse was so close to the top of the turret, I doubt if you could slide a sheet of paper between them. When the crew returned I was standing by the projectile laughing, and ask "Where in the H@## did you think you were going?"

If my memory hasn't failed me the high explosive 16" projectile was about 1800 pounds of HE and steel balls which could have resiled back to the magazine which would have been a major disaster.

In March 1942 my ship, the new battleship Washington, was anchored in Casco Bay, the harbor of Portland, ME, for a little over two weeks. While there I had my first experience with really cold weather. It was early Spring in South Carolina where I was from, but in Maine it was just like the dead of winter. Everything was covered with snow, and it was so cold no duties could be performed on the ship's weather decks without wearing heavy foul-weather gear. You really couldn't put on enough clothing to keep warm.

In the Navy everything except the men's regular duties is done by details of men called "working parties". One night when my section had the duty a working party was my bad luck to be a member of it. As usual nobody told us where we were going or what for, just to put on Foul-weather gear. We mustered at the after gangway, got into a motor whaleboat and after about a twenty minute freezing cold ride, we arrived at the net tender (it opened and closed the torpedo net for ships to enter and leave the harbor).

On boarding the tender we were shown a watch-list assigning us to take turns, throughout the night, standing guard on the forecastle of the little ship. Armed with a Springfield rifle and a 45 automatic sidearm, we had to watch the harbor entrance for enemy submarines and, presumably, any other kind of ship. With an ice-like wind that felt like it was coming directly from the North Pole blowing snow across the deck, it was so cold one could only take a half-hour of it at a time. During my off-watch periods I never did really get warmed up before it was time to relieve the watch again.

We didn’t have any place to sleep except just lying on the deck, so a lot of our time off we sat around and talked. That's when I learned this had been going on for some time; it was just the first time the Washington's turn had come to send men for it. I don't know if our ship drew that duty again or not, if so I had the good fortune not to he put on it.

With the benefit of hindsight what we were doing might seem ridiculous, but not if you can remember the times. German submarines were sinking ships all over the Atlantic and up and down our East Coast, so the prevailing wisdom was to take every precaution and not leave anything to chance.

Of course, if we had seen a submarine approach there wouldn't have been anything the guard could do except notify the Officer of the Deck so he could report to the proper authority. The small arms we carried would have been useless, and we weren't expected to use them; the only reason for carrying them was that they were standard equipment for sailors on guard duty anywhere.

When we got back to our ship after that miserable and seemingly endless night, I had never appreciated my warm sleeping compartment so much. I realized then that though I'd been aboard for a fairly short time. I was already starting to think of the Washington as my home away from home. For all practical purpose it was home. I ate, slept, worked and stood my watches aboard her; everything except liberty and leave.

For some reason this episode sticks in my mind better than any other one while in the navy, and I wonder if I'm the only one still alive who was on the deep-freeze working party. O'Neal T. Price from Alabama is the only other man I can remember who was on it with me.