XIII

group of pledges undergo the same punishment at his hands. Well, the soldiers now are blaming everything on the enemy as a whole rather than the government of the United States and their superior officer.

Surprisingly, time aboard ship passes very quickly, as there is no room to drill or have assemblies or anything like that, so our time is our own all day, except if we have assignments. I have I have wandered the length and breadth of the ship and have visited every nook and cranny that there is, having struck up an aquaintanceship with most of the sailors, most of whom were civilians not so long ago. We get along fine with them, and there hasn’t been a single fight aboardship.  They are marvelous fabricators, though, because all of them had a different story to tell about the initial invasion of Africa, in which this ship participated, some of our original line companies being aboard. This was the first ship into the harbor that was attacked, when the soldiers made amphibious landings from it. There wasn’t a great deal of opposition encountered, the p biggest difficulty being the tremendous surf that had to be gotten through in the landings. The convoy that this ship was in last time sunk something like thirty-two sumbarin submarines. I don’t think this convoy will have much difficulties in getting to port or hope not anyways, as the convoy system is marvelous, and their various methods of avoiding submarine trips is excellent.

Up to now, I’ve had no trouble adjusting myself to all conditions and have found in myself a very warm feeling towards the ocean. As a matter of fact, at the height of the storm we went through, I was a little disappointed, because from the numerous movies I have seen of ocean storms of the same intensity as this one, I expected a great deal more than I got. Like everything else, the movies glamorizes a storm, showing it in a great deal more terrific aspect than it actually is.  Each day, we

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