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MN: Okay, this is continuation of session four. We're still on March 2nd. And we were just talking about the time before the boys were about to leave the mainland for Europe. You folks went from Camp Shelby to Camp Patrick Henry, Newport News, Virginia, and then you folks headed for Europe. Tell me about that month-long journey across the Atlantic.

KM: We were told that the convoy that we were on was the largest convoy to go across to Europe at that time of the war. It was supposed to have been ninety victory ships, that small type. That's how Kaiser made his millions, and with the supporting military naval vessels. And because of the size, it took twenty-eight days from Newport News to Palermo, Sicily, where we first stopped, and it was a zigzag -- of course, we didn't know it was zigzag, because you couldn't tell from the boat. But most of our days were spent... we had regular calisthenics and whatnot, you know, in early in the morning, but as I said, at one time earlier, because we were going to be using a new panoramic sight, morning and afternoon, we had a practice session of using the brand new panoramic sight, because it was completely different from the one that we had trained on. The old panoramic sight, if you wanted to move the gun to the right, you had to move the knob to the left. And if you wanted it to go right, you moved to move, do the opposite. ut under the new panoramic sight, if you wanted to move the gun toward the right, you move the knob to the right. And if you wanted to move the gun to the left, you move to the left, and so it was a completely different concept. And so all of the twenty-eight days was training regular, because we had to have all of the gun crew, eight or nine of us, all of us fully prepared to take over from each other as far as the gun sight. Although the gunner corporal's main job, there were two of us fully assigned gunner corporal, but every other member of the gun crew was also fully trained to take the place of any one of us. And so it was, took up a lot of time in the morning, in the afternoon, preparing and getting acquainted with this new panoramic sight, so it took up most of our time. But as you inquired, going overseas, I don't recall the type of gambling that we used to have in camp will come in on the Lurline. I think most of us had already either spent the money or sent back home whatever cash we had on hand prior to going overseas, because we never expected to be spending money overseas. So what little gambling that went on overseas was only on paydays that we did get paid.

MN: But nothing like...

KM: Oh, nothing like in the camp while training on the Lurline.

MN: And then on this voyage, how are you? The earlier voyage...

KN: I was sick for one week, if I recall, I was not as bad as the others. But I was sick for one week and thereafter I was fine. I enjoyed the balance of the three weeks.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2021 Densho. All Rights Reserved.