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Show Ernie Pyle With the Navy: Lots of Men Needed to Keep Aircraft Carriers Going Life Aboard Ship Monotonous, But Preferable to Foxhole By Ernie Pyle IN THE WESTERN PACIFIC The men aboard an aircraft air-craft carrier could be divided, for purposes of clarity, into three groups. There are the fliers, both officer-pilots and enlisted radiomen radio-men and gunners, who actually fly in combat. They do nothing but fly, and study, and prepare to fly. Then there are the men who maintain the fliers. The air officers, offi-cers, the mechanics, and myriads of plane handlers who shift and -n push and man- ' MM:WiM0hxi handle the planes ' ' a dozen times a 1 day around the wMSffm deck. I , These men are ; SI ordinarily known ' , 1 as "Airedales," ' f ' , but the term isn't it':K ;M$l fy much used on our sSiijf ship. Usually they Ernie Pyle just call themselves them-selves "plane-pushers." And third is the ship's crew the deck hands, engineers, signalmen, cooks, plumbers and barbers. They run the ship, just as though it were any ship in the navy. The fliers aren't looked upon as Gods by the rest of the crew, but they are respected. Hardly a man on the crew would trade places with - them. They've seen enough crash-landings on deck to know what the fliers go through. But there is a feeling a slight one between the ship's regular crew and the air maintenance crew. The feeling is on the part of the ship's crew. They feel that the plane-handlers think they're prima donnas. They say to you "Them Airedales Aire-dales is the ones that gets all the glory. Nobody ever hears about us. All we do is keep the damn ship going." It is these "plane-pushers" who make the flight deck of an aircraft carrier look as gay and wildly colorful color-ful as a Walt Disney cartoon. For they dress in bright colors. They wear cloth helmets and sweaters that are blue, green, red, yellow, white or brown. They make the flight deck look like a flower garden in June. This colorful gear isn't just .a whim. Each color' identifies a special spe-cial type of workman, so they can be picked out quickly and sent on hurried tasks. Red is the gasoline and fire-fighting detail. Blue is for the guys who just push the planes around. Brown is for plane captains and mechanics. White stands for radiomen and the engineering bosses. Yellow is for the plane directors. Yellow is what a pilot looks for the moment he gets on deck. For the plane directors guide him as though they were leading a blind man. They use a sign language with their hands that is the same all over the navy, and by obeying their signs explicitly, the pilot can taxi his plane within two inches of another one without ever looking at it. Comfortable Quarters Enjoyed by Crew All the pilots and ship's officers live in "officers' country" in the forward for-ward part of the ship. They live in comfortable cabins, housing from one to four men. The crew lives in compartments. They are of all shapes and sizes. Some hold as little as half a dozen men. Others are big and house a hundred men. The navy doesn't use hammocks anymore. Every man has a bed. It is called a "rack." It's merely a tubular framework, with wire springs stretched across it. It is attached at-tached to the wall by hinges, and is folded -up against the wall in the daytime. The "racks" aren't let down till about seven in the evening (except for men standing regular watch who must sleep in the daytime). A light carrier, such as mine, has only about a third as many planes as the big carriers, and less than half the crew, but it does exactly the same kind of work. Of the three types of carriers in the navy, ours has the narrowest flight deck of all. It's so narrow that when planes take off they use the left side of the deck, in order that their right wingtip won't come too close to the "island" as they pass. Our pilots and crew are quite Sj proud that we have the narrowest narrow-est flight deck in existence. They're proud they can even hit the damn thing. It's easy to get acquainted aboard a naval vessel. The sailors are just as friendly as the soldiers I'd known on the other side. Furthermore, they're so delighted to see a stranger and have somebody new to talk to, that they aren't a bit standoffish. They're all sick to death of the. isolation and monotony of the vast Pacific. I believe they talk more about wanting to go home than even the soldiers in Europe. Their lives really are empty lives. They have their work, and their movies, and their mail, and that's just about all they do have. And nothing to look forward to. They never see anybody but themselves, and that gets mighty old. They sail and sail, and never arrive anywhere. They've not even seen a native village for a year. Three times they've been to remote, re-mote, lifeless sandbars in the Pacific, and have been allowed to go ashore for a few hours and sit under palm trees and drink three cans, of beer. That's all. Finds Eats Aboard Best of the War Yet they do live well. Their food is the best I've run onto in this war. They have steaks and ice cream they probably eat better than they would at home. They take baths daily, and the laundry washes their clothes. Their quarters are crowded, but each man has a bunk with mattress and sheets, and a private locker to keep his stuff in. They work hard, but their hours are regular. The boys ask you a thousand times how this compares with the other side. I can only answer that this is much better. They seem to expect you to say that, but they are a little disappointed too. They say "But it's tough to be away from home for more than a year, and never see anything but water and an occasional atoll." And I say yes I know it is, but there are boys who have been in Europe more than three years, and have slept on the ground a good part of that time. And they say yes, they guess in contrast their lives are pretty good. Seaman Paul Begley looks at his wartime life philosophically. He is a farm boy from Eogersville, Tenn. He talks a lot in a soft voice that is southern clear through. He's one ol the plane-pushers on the flight deck. "I can stand this monotony all right," he says. "The point with us is that we've got a pretty gooi chance of living through this. Thin) of the marines who have to take th beaches, and the infantry in Germany. Ger-many. I can stand a lot of monotony if I know my chances are pretty good for coming out of it alive." But others yell their heads ofl about their lot, and feel they're being be-ing persecuted by being kept out oi America a year. I've heard some boys say "I'd trade this for a foxhole fox-hole any day." You just have tc keep your mouth shut to a remark like that. At least 50 per cent of the sailors' sail-ors' conversation, when talking to a newcomer like myself, is about three things: The terrible typhoon they weni through off the Philippines; the times they were hit by Jap bombs; and their desire to get back tc America. The typhoon was awful. Many thought.they would go the same way as the three destroyers that capsized. cap-sized. This ship is inclined to roll badly anyhow. Today she still has immense dents in her smokestacks where they smacked the water when she rolled that far over. A lot oi experienced people were seasick during that storm. Very few of the boys have developed devel-oped any real love for the sea the kind that will draw them back to il for a lifetime. Some of course will come back if things get tough after the war. But mostly they are temporary sailors, and the sea is not in their blood. |