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Otherwise, I found life onboard ship boring as usual, so much so, that one day I was moved to paint what I was feeling after having been assigned to paint some pipes that ran up beside an exterior bulkhead along the starboard side of the hangar bay. Since these pipes had already been prepped, I [...]
As the ship steamed relentlessly southward at full speed ahead, the mood of the crew grew conspicuously more somber. Forced to let go of the frenzied and orgiastic pleasures of a Dionysian holiday in Japan, they unwillingly surrendered themselves to the more Apollonian way of life found onboard the ship. Totally incapable of seeing beyond [...]
Not long afterwords, was I ordered to report to the XO’s stateroom. With some anxiety, did I proceed to his stateroom, for I had been on pretty good behavior, of late, or so I thought. “Come in,“ responded the XO to the knock on his door. “Mr. Drury, Sir,“ I reported upon entering his stateroom. [...]
Over the next thirty days, I was made to perform the most inane work imaginable, tasks strictly meant to be punitive. Many an evening was I forced to scrub oily decks down in the bilges, on my hands and knees, with an old brush and can of scouring powder. Or worse yet, was I made [...]
I was so overwhelmed by my own existential pain that, to this very day, I can recall little else about the trip back to Yokuska. O how I did long for a way out of the nightmare that haunted me, both day and night. O how I ached for the physical presence of Mary, as [...]
Having been relieved of my duties, I was sent below, never to stand another watch while I remained in First Division. Even I had to laugh as variations of the story, about how I’d hit the old man in the head with orange peelings, filtered back down to me through the crew. Lest I get [...]
As Fate would have Her way, I was not destined to enjoy any pleasure cruise, for She was bound and determined to stir up the waters of life, enough to keep me at odds with the Navy. Unable to circumvent my fate for very long, I began to see why She had earned the name [...]
Then, one day, upon the breath of a sigh from Fate, Herself, were a number of new guys wafted onboard–reservists, like myself, who were still very much alive with the warmth and the feeling of their own humanity–a welcome sight for sore eyes. The first person I met was Greg. From Los Angeles, he was [...]
Around this time, I bought some civilian clothes so that I could go down to Waikiki Beach, in the evenings, and blend in with the rest of the tourists. For the sake of my humanity, I needed to get away from that menagerie of animals back onboard the ship, as much as possible, to avoid [...]
SENIOR MEMBER: In this psychiatric evaluation of you, the clinical psychologist clearly indicated, at one point, that you had presented no evidence of ever having had any delusions or loosened associations. During the course of your interview then, did you not discuss with him any of the very vivid visual and auditory fantasies you had [...]
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