Voyage Eight
Charles H. Lanham - Page 5 - Recollections
Another time that we were in England the Navy came on board and gave the Armed Guard Arctic gear - insulated special heavy weather gear. The rumor was that they were sending us to Russia. I don't know for sure, remember that they never told the crew anything, but the mates told us that the Captain had raised hell because he was told by the Navy that they didn't have enough gear for the crew - that we were civilians and were responsible for our own gear. Supposedly the Captain got real mad and asked them how we were supposed to get gear and who did they think was going to sail the ship to Russia and back - the Armed Guard? He refused to go unless they properly outfitted his crew.
Anyhow, rumor was that because of his protests and the Navy's inability or refusal to clothe us properly, they routed us someplace else. This could have been when we were in Hull and they later sent us down into France or earlier when we were in Scotland and they sent us to the Mediterranean. Both those voyages we would have been in a British ports that made Russian convoys and with winter coming on. If that was true, then it was lucky that the skipper talked the Navy into sending us somewhere else, because nobody in their right mind wanted to make the trip to Russia and back.
The Red Cross came on board once when we were in England and passed out sweaters, mittens and scarfs to the Navy gunners. We asked if we could have some and the Red Cross guy was nasty in how he told us these gifts were for "our fighting men" and not for civilians. What in the hell did he think we were doing on the ship in a war zone? I never contributed nothing to the Red Cross since then.
One of the trips to France a guy sold me a German pistol, a 9-mm P-38. He was a Frenchman who sold me the pistol. I forget how much I paid for it. It had fancy pistol grips, not just plain black ones and had some colored stones set in the grips. It had the Nazi eagle and swastika stamped into it. The guy said it was taken off a German officer or official of some rank. We were drinking and arguing the price and I finally bought it and he threw in some military trinkets to boot. When we got back to New York and docked, U. S. Customs came on board. The agents were checking what we had to declare. So I told this guy I brought back a pistol. He wanted to see it. He was impressed with it and told me I couldn't declare it and would have to turn it over to him. He wasn't going to let me bring it ashore. One of the crew said these New York customs agents were taking all the souvenirs guys were bringing home and keeping them. I walked over to the railing and threw it over the side into the East River. He wanted to know why in the hell I did that. I told him, so he wouldn't get it. Christ, did that guy get pissed off! He got so mad he left and didn't even look through the rest of my stuff.
I got pretty familiar with parts of New York and New Jersey during the war. I had bars and restaurants that I got used to hanging out in while I was there. I was at this bar in New York that I used to hangout in at one afternoon drinking a beer. I think that I was the only person in the bar beside the bartender. Anyway, this colored guy walks in and up to the bar and orders a drink. The bartender put a glass in front of him and poured him a drink and then stood there with his arms crossed and watched the guy drink his drink. Then the bartender picked up the glass and threw it on the floor and broke it. The colored man looked surprised and embarrassed. I was shocked. The bartender said, "OK nigger you got your drink now get the hell out of here and don't come back. " The colored man said that he was going and that he wasn't looking for any trouble.
After he left, I asked the bartender why in the hell he did that. I was from down South where I had grown up with everything segregated, but this was the North where things were supposed to be different. The bartender said that in his neighborhood they didn't like coloreds and that lots of Northerners didn't want to have anything to do with them. It kind of shocked me. I grew up in a town that was half black and I was used to being around colored folks. Up North I had often been in bars or cafes with blacks and it didn't bother me. I really didn't see why the bartender had to be so nasty. If he didn't want to serve the man he should have told him. He didn't have to do what he did. I saw lots of racism up North - every bit as ugly as it could be in the deep South. And unlike what I was used to, up East people lived more separated lives, in more separated neighborhoods. The Yankees didn't treat blacks all that well and there were race riots up there during the war.
Most of the crews that I sail in were a bunch of young guys. The officers and the bos'ns were older men in their thirties and forties with a few even in their fifties and sixties. Some of the Able Bodied Seamen and a cook or two were in their thirties and forties. But mostly we were in our teens and early twenties - most working class kids that grew up in the Depression. I guess we were pretty cocky and some thought that they were pretty tough. There were some misfits but most were pretty decent boys. I ran into many of them from time to time during the years after the war. Some kept going to sea and I ran into them when their ships made port in Galveston.
One trip when we were docked in New Orleans and I was ashore walking down the street, I ran into Terry Garland's brother, Jimmy. I asked him what he was doing in New Orleans. Jimmy said he had a defense job there building boats for the Navy. He asked if I could meet him that evening for supper. He said we'd go eat with his sister, Trudy. Trudy was older than us but I knew her well from when I was a kid growing up. She was a really nice girl who had gone into the convent to become a nun.
Jimmy and I met later and he took me down to this big Catholic hospital where Trudy was a nurse. We ate with her and some of the nuns and nurses. They put out a big spread - really good food. Man, I couldn't eat all the food those women gave us, but Jimmy said I had to because the nuns didn't like to waste anything. While we ate Trudy told us all about her work at the hospital, we talked about where I had been since shipping and what was going on with folks back home. That was nice seeing Trudy again. She was a wonderful woman and really smart. I was told that after the war she became the head operating room nurse at that hospital.