Chapter 18 Version 2
1943
The train pulled into the Geneva NY station and Stanley
gathered his meager belongings and exited along with most of the other
passengers. The only extra item he was toting was a copy of the US Navy
brochure that contained instructions on what to bring and what to expect at the
Sampson Naval Training Station. He just came with the clothes he was wearing, a
deck of cards, pencil and stationary to write back to Jeanette and his mother,
five dollars in cash and three cigarettes left in his pack of Camels. He
stopped and bought another pack of Camels before moving toward the Greyhound
buses bound for Sampson. He could see Seneca Lake. It was big but not as big as
the ocean he looked out upon when he was visiting his aunt Tekla in New Bedford.
He boarded the bus and it moved east toward Seneca Falls before taking a right
hand turn over the Seneca River. From his seat he could see that the lake was a
few miles wide but nearly 38 miles long. What he couldn’t see was that it was
over 600 feet deep and home to some huge trout but there would be no time for
fishing.
To the east of Seneca Lake was Cayuga Lake which was not
quite as large. The Seneca River emptied into Cayuga Lake after passing through
Seneca Falls, the cradle of the women’s suffrage movement and home to Elizabeth
Cady Stanton. The Seneca River then flowed out to the Erie Canal which
stretches from Albany to Buffalo and the Great Lakes. To the west of Seneca
Lake is Keuka Lake, also known as Crooked Lake with a shape like a Y and
steeply sloped banks. The city of Penn Yan lies at the north end of the lake.
It was settled by Pennsylvania and Yankee Quakers led by a charismatic and
controversial Rhode Islander named Jemima Wilkerson. She called herself the
Publick Universal Friend and claimed spiritual unity with God from her
experience in a high typhoid fever coma. After the fever, she used an unpronounceable
symbol instead of a name. She moved from Rhode Island to Worcester
Massachusetts and then to Pennsylvania before moving to the city she called
Jerusalem but eventually was named Penn Yan. The local Seneca leader Red Jacket
recognized her as the chieftain of the settlers. Red Jacket was later
approached by missionaries who wanted to bring Christianity to the Indians of
the Seneca Lake area. Red Jacket refused on the basis of the conflict that he
saw between rival Christian sects that resulted in the deaths over religious
beliefs. Native Americans had their own religion and beliefs that were
consistent between the tribes and never resulted in religious conflict
according to Red Jacket. He made an eloquent, impassioned and reasoned
presentation to the US Senate concerning Indian rights for freedom of religion in
1805. A statue of Red Jacket was erected in Penn Yan.
All of the recruits at Sampson NTS were required to attend
service on Sunday. A chaplain would be part of the lives in the military in
boot camp and beyond.
“Welcome to Sampson Naval Training Station. The detention
center will be your home for the next three weeks. You will be examined here to
be sure you have no communicable diseases. You will learn to keep your clothes
ship shape. You will undergo physical training. You will take tests to help
determine where you will be assigned after completing your basic training…”
Stanley followed his company leader and was issued his navy
uniforms which were $119.19 worth of clothes. Replacement clothes would need to
be purchased using a clothing allowance included in each pay. He knew from
brother Joe’s experience that his civilian clothes would be sent back to his
home as they will no longer be needed. Hair would also not be needed and the
new recruits would be referred to as skinheads for an obvious reason.
Immunization shots were given. Life insurance for $10,000.00 was purchased by
99.5% of recruits. A locker 20” square and 30” high would be assigned to house
a recruit’s entire collection of worldly goods. Stanley looked at the full sea
bag and wondered how he was ever going to fit everything in the locker. That
was the first test and you didn’t move out of the detention center until that
was accomplished. The precise folding of everything needed to be mastered to do
that storage feat but training was given and eventually, everyone moved on. The
brochure instructed recruits not to bring anything of value both due to the
possibility of theft and the limited space for storage. Besides, there wasn’t
much time for anything but military matters here.
The daily schedule at Sampson was a non-stop parade of
assemblies, drills, and training sessions. Training included swimming classes,
rifle range, and more technical classes like how to keep a boat headed in the
right direction based on a compass heading. Freezing cold with plenty of lake
effect snow in the winter and hot in the summer, the spring and the fall were
the sweet spots to have boot camp at Sampson. Reveille was at 5:30am and supper
was at 5:30pm or 17:30 military time when each company was marched to the mess
hall. Evenings were free time if you didn’t have guard duty and were spent
studying for placement tests and recovering from exhaustion. Sick call was at
18:00 but every day in the infirmary delayed graduation from boot camp.
Stanley arrived at Sampson on June 9th, 1943 a
few days before Joe completed his basic training. Stanley had been working at
Cardanic Company in Easthampton as an electrician for the past six months and
he was classified as 1-A on May 13. He
also came with six years of experience as an electrical repairman at Worthington
Pump in Holyoke working on automatic relays and machinery. In civilian life he
had taken a six week course as a machinist. At the end of boot camp on August
19, 1943, Stanley was assigned aboard the USS Rocky Mountain and was sent to
Brooklyn NY with a rating of S2c or Seaman 2nd Class. A seaman is a general classification
performing all jobs on a ship.
Cousin Edwin was actually the first to get assigned to a
ship. Edwin was trained as a fireman which in navy terms meant that he was part
of a ship’s crew that ran the coal boilers or diesel engines of the ship. A
fireman’s rating is higher than a seaman’s rating as the job is more physical
as well as more technical in nature. He was assigned to the USS Reid, a
destroyer on active duty in the Pacific Theater. The Reid had an early initiation
into the war as it was involved in the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor.
Joe was inducted voluntarily on April 7th and was
called up and arrived at Sampson on April 13. He arrived as an Apprentice Seaman and left
with a rating of F3c – Fireman Third Class. More importantly, Joe had qualified
to go onto additional school for four months at Wentworth Institute in Boston
toward becoming a machinist mate being trained on motors, boilers and pumps.
The training would start on July 14th. There was a part of Sampson
NTS where boot camp graduates stayed in barracks until receiving their orders.
Joe stayed for about a month overlooking Seneca Lake while Stanley was in his
three week stint in the detention center.
This was Joe’s first experience at what he would later call
the military’s policy of “Hurry up and wait” but would not be the last.
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