chapter 211 | | for forgod godand andcountry country
Anchors Aweigh
Sunday, June 28, 1942 For the first time – Mass at 0900. Attendance: 20; Communions – 3; Confessions – 10. Plan of the Day reads: 0830 – Chaplain Foley will hold Confessions in Troop Commander’s Stateroom. Church Call. Divine services on board. Protestant services will be held in the Yard as noted below. Men desiring to attend will be permitted to do so. Young enlisted man cried yesterday when told that I was a Catholic priest. He said that he had been praying since he heard that a Chaplain was coming aboard and that he would be Catholic. Charleston, a Southern city, that is damp, with soggy tropical heat. Intermittently the clouds spill out their loads without warning. One street will be drenched; the next will be as dry as a match. Fr. Wolfe took me all around the city. I saw old slave trading posts, an old French Huguenot church de-christianized with no altar and only a cold pulpit in its place. Today no congregation; just a museum for tourists to visit and pay their respects. A sailor beside me in a drugstore said, “Sometimes as you walk along the streets in a strange city and see the nice homes, warm lights on, you feel like walking up, ringing the doorbell and asking if they would mind if you came in and sat down on a sofa for a little while.” I buy the Atlanta Journal at the hotel stand. Its byline: “Covers Dixie like the dew.”
Monday, June 29, 1942 The HMS Ilex is tied up in dry-dock just behind us.
18 | chapter 2: anchors aweigh
Philipps, an English able-bodied seaman on guard duty, said her back was broken by dive bombers in the Mediterranean. He had just received word that his mother was going blind.
2130 – Down in the engine room, I met one of the men on duty at the generator with the temperature 105. He says two Rosaries every time he stands his four-hour watch.
Tuesday, June 30, 1942 0900 – Off to the city jail to handle the case of Sayvitch, A. S., in prison for appropriation of a car without permission and for careless and reckless driving. Arrived at the dingy Charleston City Jail and identified myself. The boy, who had been drinking, was brought out. The owner of the car parked it; then five minutes later it was missing. Sayvitch’s story, “A stranger in beer parlor offered to lend him his car for $10.; he beat him down to $5. First thing he knew an officer forced him over to the side of the road.” The owner, officer and self went over to the Magistrate’s Court. Judge Matthews presiding. The square room was coming apart at the seams. A white and colored line of flotsam and jetsam queued up outside it. Judge was trying a case of a colored man accused of molesting people in a house with a knife at midnight. Judge: “Understand me distinctly. If you so much as set foot inside that house again, I’ll send you under the bridge. You will go under the bridge. Do you hear?” They took us into a small anteroom. In the meantime the owner has been persuaded not to press charges of misappropriation. Judge informed the boy of the seriousness of the offense and told him
