Death of a Wooden Shoe - U.S. Coast Guard

Maurice (Robby) (Bos’n) Robbins relates to me a tear-filled story of his Mom’s
situation. In addition to his Mom being quite ill and elderly, she lives alone. Her
only company and assistance is Robby’s wife who happens to be pregnant. She
has no auto and has to walk a great distance almost daily to look after Robby’s
mom. I don’t understand because if Robby explained his situation to our
superiors, I believe he would be given home-base duty. Radioman Schafer’s
situation is almost a carbon copy of Robby’s.
I break away from Robby because my sympathy is upsetting me. I converse with
Radioman 1/c Charles A. (Rolly) Rolston. He too is homesick and lays his sorrow
onto me, yipes!! I now have an idea how my Catholic priest feels when listening
to confessions. Only Guns Owens manages to stay dry-eyed out of all I have
spoken to. He must not be married, has no sweetheart, and is an incubator
person without parents.
I work on 50 caliber machine guns and fire two of them. One jammed but I
managed to hit a balloon anyway. We are all experiencing some degree of
accuracy now.
The aircraft carrier Ranger passes nearby. She is a super magnificent piece of
hardware! She blots out the entire horizon. I would take a pay cut just to serve
and scramble across her decks! What beauty! What class! What awesome
power!
Guns keeps us awake half the night telling joke after joke, embellished with his
delightful tar-heel-twang accent. He continues to drawl on as I fall asleep.
July 3, Friday; Nanok, at Constitution Wharf.
Spent early morning firing guns until my ears turned inside out. We caught the
truck and train back to Boston and the Nanok. Flirted with four pretties on the
train and received invitation for weekend house party on the beach.
Been stationed aboard the Nanok twelve days now. Getting restless to move on
and hopefully find something to help obliterate homesickness. Got cleaned up
and went to visit my good friend Howard (Howie) Fox, the bartender in the
Brunswick Hotel’s basement bar.
I enjoyed a chat with Howie and had a couple glasses of beer at the bar. I sat
near an outer corner, around the corner sat an older man that was probably in his
late fifties. I don’t feel like conversing but he does so we converse. After learning
I am of Polish decent, he said he was too, but his family came from Russia rather
than Poland.
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