kind of interesting. And I deliberately flunked out because I did not want to be a
radioman.

And they made a mess cook out of me. So I went down, and I had so much fun in
the galley preparing food for about 5,000 people. It was interesting to see how it
happened. Well, I ran around in that galley like a wild man and almost messed
myself up because now they wanted me to be a cook. I did not want to be a cook.
I finally got up the nerve enough to tell the commissary officer. I said, "Commander,
I want to go to sea." He laughed and said, "I cannot blame you. I do not like
Norfolk very well myself, either."

So I went down, and lo and behold here I was on a ship. We tore out to sea at
seven knots and we went to Guantdnamo, Cuba, and then down to Panama, and then
on up to San Diego [California]. And on the way up the west coast of Mexico, boy
was I having a ball. I really enjoyed myself; it was so fascinating. We had a choice
of what ship we should go on. Oh, I dallied with the idea of going on a destroyer or
submarine tender or what have you. But all of a sudden, there is the U.S.S. Langley,
the navy's first aircraft carrier. They had taken the forward part of the flight deck
off and changed it to a seaplane tender. But there was aviation, and I decided to go
there. So I went down, signed up for, and got aboard the Langley. When I reported
aboard the yeoman came up and took us down to the mess hall, and he was assigning
us to various divisions. He said kind of casually, "Do any of you type?" I held up my
hand. Good Lord, if I typed fifteen words a minute, it would have been surprising.
He said, "Do you want to strike for yeoman?" I did not realize at the time that the
two best ratings at sea are the yeoman (they are very influential because they are
stenographers) and the other is the quartermaster. The quartermaster runs the ship
from the bridge. He is the one who does the navigating and that sort of thing; a very
responsible job. But anyway, I said "Oh, no." So they put me out on deck. I was
swabbing decks and this, that, thus and the other, and [I was] the mess cook again.
All of a sudden, this fellow came up to me one day and said, "Hey Jonesy, come with
me. I want to show you something." I said, "What is it?" He said, "Come on, I want
to show you." So he took me down to armory and he said, "Look, I am the
navigator's yeoman. I am also the librarian. I am in here and the armory is the
office. Believe me, by 10:00 in the morning, work is over for the day. You have the
rest of the day to do as you please. This is really great and you do not stand any
watches." Well, I hated to stand watches. So, I said, "All right, I will take it Charles."
So I did.

[It was] one of the happiest things I ever did, because as the navigator's yeoman, my
special sea detail was on the bridge, anytime we had general quarters or were going
in to sea or out to port. The navigator, Logan C. Ramsey, was the nicest man. He
started teaching me navigation. And in all this spare time I had, I was all over that
ship: I was in the engine room, I was the flagpot, I was bothering the signalman, I
was in the galley aggravating the cooks. I knew that ship better than anybody else


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