Oral History Interview with Voris C. Riley, November 1, 2005 Page: 6

                                
World War II Memories of
Voris C. Riley

any conception of what the engine room on a big ship is like.

Myers           No.
071             It would be probably three or four feet of water in the bilge or hold. They'd throw in a
15 or 20 gallons of gasoline, set it on fire, give you a hose, a nozzle, a spray hose you
Riley           and your buddy and tell you to put it out. That was it. Our ropes that we were tied
together with through our D-rings had a quarter-inch cable in the center of them so if the
rope got burned, they could still pull you out. Anyway
Myers           So you actually went through that in training?
Riley           Oh yeah, yeah.
Myers           Because that's what you were going to go through in actual stuff, I guess.
Riley           That has to do with my experience. Every station we went into we had to take one day
of firefighting. If we went through this school at eliminating, we didn't have to. I'd
already had two days of stuff and that I didn't like it. So I decided I would take the
whole course. I did. Now this-- on firefighting in the Navy, you might be interested in
this, there is no rank. So when I went into this firefighting school, they assigned me a
buddy. We went through that six days, and he was a good one, well we went through it
fine. When we go down for our exercising class, I am a fireman first class and he is a
full commander he wore three stripes.
Now that's firefighting in the Navy. You see, the Navy the sailors are not afraid of
drowning fire is their main fear. Fire. You see these pictures even on TV right now
of ships on fire, you can get a vague idea. Fire is something we had now on a
firefighting on a ship, the chaplains are in charge. It's no rank.
Myers           Everybody's doing their job equally, huh?
Riley           Everybody does the best they can  not only to save their buddy's life but to save their
own.
Myers           Yeah. Okay. About how long was your training from beginning to end?
Riley           Oh, altogether? More than I spent aboard the ship, I would say, probably six or seven
months, something like that.
Myers           And then finally you got onto the ship that you were going to be assigned to.
Riley           Yea, they finally assigned me to a ship.
Myers           And what ship were you assigned to?

097             The U.S.S. Lake Champlain, CB 39. And you will find in that document, I think I have
give you a fairly well description of our shakedown cruise. Which was something else
Riley           to find out. If there was a loose bolt on that thing we were going to find it.
U.S.S. LAKE
CHAMPLAIN
Myers           Right. And you did?

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