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In
Bill's own words:
Greetings,
I was fortunate to make the Radioman
school list upon graduating from bootcamp at Camp Robert
Smalls, Great
Lakes, April 1943. My school was located in a
barracks on Camp Robert Smalls where I began classes, A new
school facility was near completion on the same
site,being occupied
in late June. Our class began with 28
students and ended
with 12. Our course was 12 weeks.
We began with one copy of DNC-5 and JANAP 119. We had
a
Bohme Keyer, loudspeaker and we copied code with
pencils.
The new school had typewriters, (we knew them as
"mills", headsets,
("cans"), made by TRIMM, regular operating positions and
strict adherence to the instructor's repeated direction "Feet
flat on the deck and fingers on the
home keys!" Most of our
day was spent learning to copy code. The
remainder was
learning the contents of the two mentioned
publications and
extra hours of typing. Few had had typing
in high school. I
was blessed. The last three weeks or
so were spent
standing four hour radio watches in a
special booth made
just for that purpose. We copied
the fleet broadcasts of
NSS, NPG, NPM and any other source
we had. Our five letter
code group copy was reviewed by
a crypto activity to
determine our accuracy. Plain
language copy was non-existent on the air.
I graduated as a Seaman First
class radioman
striker. After a short tour of mess cook
duty in
Galley "E", Treasure Island, I went aboard the
yard
oiler YO-119, fueling ships with bunker oil and
later,
submarines with diesel fuel just before they headed
to
open sea from San Francisco. I made third
class after
taking my test at NavRad NPG, San Francisco
which was
then located in the Federal
Building.
After duty served
in Hawaii at Kaneohe Bay and Wahiawa,
I was discharged
in December, 1945.I saved my rate by
joining the
Reserve and attending drill night sessions.
Later
on I saw the light and returned as station
keeper
reservist and then regular Navy until 1978 when I
retired.
Thank you for asking about the school. It
changed
my life far beyond what I could ever have hoped
for. 73.
William R. (Bill) Morse
Union
City, CA
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