Voyage Nine
SS Sturdy Beggar - Page 3
I thought they were going to take me back to my ship - instead they went farther from town and pull up at their base. An officer stopped us and wanted to know who the hell I was and where I thought that I was going. I told him that I was an American merchant seaman. This sailor told him that he gave me a ride and intended putting me up for the night. The officer got angry and said only military could entered in the base - no civilians. The sailors pleaded with him that it was late and there was no reason to make me walk back. A sailor told him that he couldn't send me down a dark road on a stormy night and besides I was an AMERICAN. The officer would have none of it and ordered the sailors into base and threatened me to be off. The guy was really crummy.
I walked some miles in pitch darkness and rain until I came to a big river and a bombed out bridge. I'm afraid of heights but I managed to crawl on my hands and knees across what was just twisted steel girders. When I got to the other side it was way past midnight and I was soaked and worn out. I found an abandoned bombed out building and tried to sleep sitting up in a doorway. At first light I started down the road and finally did get back to the ship. I never forgot the sailors who tried to be a good Joes nor the other crummy bastard. I don't know what skin it would have been off his nose to have let me curl up in the back of a truck, or someplace dry, for the night.
I ran into a bunch of bastards like him who because they got a couple of stripes on their arm or a bar on their shoulder really enjoyed pushing their weight around. The military didn't treat merchant seamen very well generally, and I never could figured out why. We were doing a job that they needed done. We brought them all of the supplies they needed. We transported millions of them to where they had to go. Still many military treated us like crap.
They warned us that there
still were Japanese hold-outs on in the countryside - back in the mountains
and jungles. I don't know if some of their soldiers didn't get the word that
Japan had surrendered or maybe they didn't want to believe it. Anyway, it took
months after the official end of hostilities to clear all of them out or talk
them into giving up. The waters were still dangerous. Ships were still hitting
floating mines which was a problem for many months after the war.
I had made friends with a big guy on the Sturdy Beggar, a bit older than me
in his mid-twenties, named Hamilton "Hoppy" Maul. I think that he
was from Dallas and he had been to college. He was always reading and said that
he wanted to be a sports writer or newspaper man after the war. Some of the
crew had a running game with him. We'd come up with a word and he'd have to
spell it and give the definition of what it meant. We checked with a dictionary
he had but nobody ever stumped him. Somebody years later somebody told me that
they thought he had become a reporter in San Francisco.
Hoppy may have saved my life at Manila. I had been ashore and had taken a motor launch back to the ship anchored in the bay. When the launch got along side the ship I was too drunk to climb the Jacob's ladder up to the deck. One of the mates on duty got mad and started raising hell. He had them lower a rope to the launch and tie it around me and then he had them dunk me in the bay. They held me under a long time and I was swallowing plenty of sea water. They dunked me three times until Hoppy Maul ran up and told the mate to stop before he drowned me. Hoppy told him that if he didn't stop he would throw the mate overboard. The mate had me pulled aboard and they untied me, but I think he might have drowned me if Hoppy hadn't stepped in and stopped him. Ship's officers used to flog and keel-haul seamen in the past, but it was 1945!