US Marine Corps - The Black Vault

22 Antpbjbza?ls cunze To Conquer
Oh it is great to be out on the bounding, pounding, howling, raging deep
at such a time—just fine! I know of no pleasure gre~ter than to be gazing
down into the green, foamy, cr~wling shining w~ter and wonder if the fish
that got your last meal enjoyed it any more than you did, and you know
there’s no help for it either; you know that the blooming old ship won’t go
down and so give you a little relief. Those old freaks who decided that hell
is of fire, hfid it all wrong. I’m sure it’s much more like a storm at sea on a
warship. When you realize that on one day we constantly rolled over to an
angle of 37 degrees on each side of the perpendicular, perhaps you can
imagine that a sailor’s life is not what it’s cracked up to be.
A-fter we got into smooth water the most popul~r song on board went like
this:
‘A farmer’s life, a farmer’s life,
A farmer’s life for me, for me,
If I could lead 3 farmer’s life
How happy I would be.’ 81
Early in Second Class Year, Midshipman Turner wrote to his mother:
Well you never saw half as busy z mm as I tim now, and as I expect to be
all the rest of the yem. I have written over fifty letters in the last week and a
half to other colleges and universities concerning g~mes for our baseball team
next spring . . and on top of this, I have been trying to get the work
on the “Lucky Bag” well underway. This is rather hard to do. It is a thing
that must be created rather than just put together. . . .
Second class year is, deservedly I have discovered, given the name of being
the very hardest year in the Academy. I hive been boning very steadily since
coming back and find that it takes all my concentrating to get anything out of
the stuff-Watson’s Physics—Theoretical Mechanics (with problems by
J Gow) Biegs Naval Boilers, Naval Engines and Machines . . Exterior
Ballistics :md the Elastic Strength of Guns, both intensely theoretical
and both with formulas anywhere from one foot to ten in length.cz
Richmond was a good correspondent with his mother with seven letters
during the two and a half months of the summer cruise. He confided in one
letter:
We of the Navy are worse gossips than a bunch of women. That and hard
work is about all we do. o:;
Only 14 midshipmen were dropped out of the 1908 class during Second
Class Year. Midshipman Turner still stood number 7, and was the last
man to achieve the enviable stars on his collar that denoted academic ex-
0’RKT to Mother, letter, 8 Nov. 1906.
WRKT to Mother, letter, 1i Oct. 1906.
mRKT to Mother, letter, 18 Oct. 1906.