In March of 1945 being a punk of only 17 years of age, I was too young yet for the military service, and my brother had been drafted and put into the Navy. I too, having quit school and eager to do my share toward the war effort, tried to join any branch of the military, but was rebuffed because of my young age.
I had a pal down the street from my house that I hung around with (my same age). Next door to him was a man that was the Captain of a ship that was owned by the U.S. Army. One day while he was home on leave, my buddy & I started talking to him about the services, relating to him our plight about being rejected by all of the services
because of our age, even the U.S. Maritime service.
Well, he told us that he could pull some strings with the service that he was in named the U.S. Civil Service. This branch of the Govt. hired people to serve on the ships that were owned by of all things the U.S. Army! These ships were mostly repair ships that were staffed by skilled Army repair technicians for various aircraft repair, PT boats etc., but knew nothing about manning a ship and sailing it. (they were good workers and eaters though!)
So we went with the Captain one day down to the headquarters in San Pedro and went through the interview and sign up process. Beings that we didn't have Maritime papers to qualify us to go to sea, the Civil Service took care of that and got them for us. Imagine now, 2 young numbnuts wide eyed, ignorant, and signing our lives away to a contract that was about to put us aboard a sea going vessel complete with cannons and machine guns, depth charges etc., to begin our worldly adventure in the war zone!
We had absolutely NO experience whatsoever at anything! so we were assigned to the galley serving food and washing dishes and pots and pans! That's OK we said, we just wanted to go overseas!
We were allowed to return home and say goodbye to our families, and report back the next morning to the clothing warehouse and get our uniforms and then our assignment to a ship. Well, did we get a rude awakening- we were assigned to 2 different ships! Right from the start, they were going to make men of us! Both ships sailed out of the harbor 6 hours later, and we got to wave good-bye to each other as we sailed down the channel to open sea and headed in different directions. Never saw my buddy again for 2 years!
