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PAGE 15
could still see my fingerprints on that ladder going up and down." That really scared me.
(laughs). You know, that flying bridge is about sixty feet above the water and where the wheel
house and everything is. Your lights set out over, you can look straight, and that didn't bother
me so much but, that really got next to me going up on that mast. I guess it's because I could
look into the ocean and knowing the ship was way over there, and so, I've always thought that
was a interesting thing.
Mr. Nichols:
Mr. Kenney:
Mrs. Kenney:
Mr. Kenney:
Mr. Nichols:
Mr. Kenney:
How tall is the mast?
Oh, golly. It's a normal tanker mast. I felt like it was about eight hundred feet when I started
climbing it. I just wasn't used to that. I didn't go up and set in the, you know, when they go for
lookouts. I didn't never go up in that thing and set there, so it was all new to me Like I said, it
didn't really bother me too much until I looked down and saw my ship over here and me out
over the water here. That was, altogether, like, if I had fell off, they would have never found
me. It was rough water and I didn't even wear a life jacket. I just didn't think to much about it
until I was up there where I was and then I wasn't going to back down and then back up again.
So, I just kept on going. I can truthfully say it was a good experience for me and I learned a
lot.
And to serve your country.
Yeah. It was a lot of, you know, it was a lot of boys that went in and, it's interesting like in
convoys, how they maneuver all those ships. One night we had a bunch of ships and you go
and then, all of a sudden, when it gets a certain time, and you all change, and go like this. Then
you go like this and maybe back like that. One night, we all turned and the outside ship didn't
turn and it was just going and missing the bow of one ship and the stern went all the way
through the convoy . It was like two o'clock in the morning, so then they have to put one of
escorts back with that ship because it's a ship out there by itself. Then they take it and put the
escort back with it and everybody else kind of, watches and then they bring that ship back
around and it's like four o'clock in the afternoon before they got that ship back up in it's place
again. The only bad thing I ever saw about the convoy it just didn't make a turn but, it's
amazing. They turn at slow speeds and up speeds, maneuver and everything like, at one o'clock
in the morning, or whatever it is, and everything just keeps going. Those escorts! At nighttime
sometimes, you'll be standing on the bridge and they'll just come in a go around your ship two
or three times, looking for submarines. They are just really something else.
So you were changing headings all the way across the....?
Yeah, sometimes. Of course when we wasn't in convoy, there wasn't any, like in a danger zone,
we just travel a straight course. You get where there are submarines and things, they give you a
zig-zag course and you move them back and forth. They had zig-zag clocks that had a pin for
every minute and it's just full all the way around. When you get a zig-zag course, if you're
going to go, like, one way for fourteen minutes, they put a pin there. So, up in the wheelhouse,
when it hits there, you know to make a course change.
I never was on a ship with an automatic, anyway, where the ship turned the rudder. We always
had helmsmen to do the work.
The Panama Canal was real interesting because they it was such a strategic thing during World