Testing

One of the classes during Specialist training was learning to thread a movie projector. About a dozen of us gathered around the machine to watch the Lieutenant demonstrate the procedure. Because I was a people person and not a machine person, I didn’t give my whole attention to the demonstration, but studied the girls and the officer as they acted out their machine role. Then suddenly the Lieutenant had finished and asked me to load the machine. I’d been standing exactly beside the beast with a direct view of its insides, while some others saw it only at an angle. Shock of all shocks, I threaded it perfectly and unhesitatingly on one try. That was not ability; that was luck. Never in my life afterwards did I need to feed a movie projector with a reel, for there was always someone around, usually a male, who was only too happy to do so for me, such as a student in the classroom.

Many times in the years following, and based on other events that happened, I have come to the conclusion that an X, or some similar notation, might have appeared beside my name on any list—because I had opted for OCS. Perhaps I was tested in every thing I did to prove or disprove I was officer material. One oral test seemed strikingly telling. The only question that I remember went like this: “Let’s pretend you are an officer, say, a Lieutenant, Junior Grade. The Waves you are responsible for are officers superior to you in rank. If it’s a few minutes after curfew time, yet a Captain is still out on the front steps with her date, would you have what it takes to tell her to come inside?” This needed a few seconds of thinking before I replied, even while I knew an answer should come pronto from a person of leadership. I knew I could tell the Captain to come inside, but was it the sensible thing to do, such as embarrass a superior officer and make enemies of my associates? I took another second to think. Then I had it. I could put on an act in several ways. I could even step outside as if I didn’t know the couple was there, and say, “Oh, you’re back, Captain! Just in time, if you hurry.” Or have another officer in the barracks come to my office, asking for her, at which point I would simply call her in. I must have answered the question suitably, for I was promoted fast.

[In retrospect, I realized many WAVE officers, if not most, would soon be demobilized. Word could have come down, even from President Truman, to integrate a new group of officers in short order. All of this could be carried out without the participants’ awareness of the soon-to-be-reckoned-with atomic bomb.]

At the end of Specialist School, we all became Seaman, First Class, and got our choices of new location. Mine was California. But in no time at all, in just a few weeks, in fact, I became a Petty Officer, Third Class, and now had my first chevron on my sleeve. Altogether, I was in the WAVES only fourteen months and was discharged as a Petty Officer, Second Class. Unless ratings are different today, that’s the same as Staff Sergeant in the Army, which takes years for the men to attain. But it was different for the men in service—there had always been men in the service—but WAVES was something new. My brother served four years in the Army, reaching the level of Corporal. You see? My promotions came too fast. There had to be a reason. If I stayed in the service, I could have become an officer without OCS. But the WAVES was an emergency branch of the Navy and the emergency was over. I needed to get back to college.

When I was discharged in San Francisco, I signed up for the Reserves. But this group was not fully organized at that time and we did nothing. After a few more months, it was organized and we had a new option, either to sign up again or to drop out. I dropped out. When I resumed college, in Idaho, I discovered my naval training was worth 17 college credits, a full semester’s worth, in Physical Education, Health, and Applied Sociology.

But there is more to write about my summer of 1945 in New York. To be continued.

♥