Meeting History

We met history this morning.

Last night my kids and I joined my son's Boy Scout pack on an overnight encampment on the battleship USS New Jersey. It was a lot of fun. We got special tours of the ship, got served dinner and breakfast in the mess hall, got to explore areas of the ship normally closed off to the public, took lots ...

... and lots ...

... and lots ....

... of pictures, and got to sleep in the enlisted berthing areas!

OK, that last part wasn't nearly as fun.

My daughter asked why they called them the berthing areas, what with the lack of anybody actually being born there. After trying to squeeze my hefty frame into a less-than-hefty-sized bunk, I have a hypothesis of my own. For a person like me, the berthing area was about as roomy as your standard-issue womb. And when I emerged from the bunk, it did resemble birthing.

Breach.

With my shoulders squeezed tightly between the mattress and the ceiling and my head turned in a position last seen in The Exorcist, I woke up at 0300 with a massive headache and Quasimodo-like posture. I yanked my sleeping bag and pillow off the bunk and set up new quarters on the linoleum floor. I slept like a baby for the rest of the night - albeit a neglected baby - and woke up this morning straight-backed and headache-free.

After our hearty breakfast (my son wound up on KP), we meandered around the ship for a while. One of the volunteers reminded us parents that the brig was open. "Get pictures of your kids in there now," the guide said, "while it's still funny. Ten years from now, if they're in a cell won't be nearly as humorous."

While we were up by the bridge, we got into a discussion with one of the veteran volunteers about the history of the ship. Being that she was designed for battleship-to-battleship contact - the heavyweight bouts of the naval warfare world - and she saw combat service in WWII, Korea, Vietnam, and the Middle East over her many decades of service, I asked the obvious question. Did the New Jersey take any direct hits? The volunteer confirmed that yes, she had taken a hit from a 5" gun on shore. The volunteer also brought up a tale of a non-combat casualty in which a sailor was killed when he and a turret wound up occupying the same space.

After about 15 hours aboard, we packed up our gear and finally left the ship. We made a quick stop at the gift shop for the obligatory tchotchkes (a Yiddish word for trinkets that the Blogger spell-check wants to replace with "crotchless"), then headed towards the car.

An old guy and his two middle-age sons were walking towards the ship. Looking at our gear, the old guy asked if we slept aboard the ship. I told him we did. "Do they still have the metal bunks" he asked.

It turns out this guy served on the New Jersey in the fifties in Korea. With the tour information fresh in mind I asked "wasn't the ship hit in Korea?"

"Yes," he replied. "I was in the turret when it happened."

The turrets are protected by nine inches of armor on the sides. The five-inch shell did not penetrate. "It mainly scratched the paint," he said. My daughter then brought up the story of the guy who was killed by the turret. The old man was silent for a moment, then said "that was Bob. He was a friend of mine."

(The man did say Bob's last name, but unfortunately I don't remember it.)

It was one thing to walk around this storied battleship, but it was quite another to meet a someone who experienced some of the most memorable moments first-hand. And to think if I had done my normal routine of hurrying the kids past the gift-shop we would have missed that opportunity. It was something special.

My daughter made the moment. I thanked the old man for sharing his experiences with us. Then my daughter added, "thank you for your service."

As he was heading off to re-visit the ship on which he lived and served over fifty-five years ago, you could see in his eye that he appreciated that thank-you.