MR.
BLUNDON
by
Norval P. Caples
Life aboard a shiny new destroyer in 1944 took some
getting used to. This Navy business that had been okay thus far was becoming
something else. Discipline and ship-shape neatness seemed to be the watchwords
for ending the vicious war that we were engaged in. It was a hard go fitting in.
I'd forgotten everything my parents and teachers had taught and was becoming
convinced that these guys, in concert, were out to get me.
It all started in a Brooklyn, N.Y., shipyard. Our new
ship was receiving some finishing touches; welding arc lights and sputtering 4th
of July sparklers were everywhere. I was given a 1903 rifle and assigned to
repel boarders and saboteurs from the fantail (back end) of the ship. I had no
bullets for the gun (although I'd learned to shoot it back in boot camp) and
couldn't do anything about all those spies swarming on and off and across the
ship anyway that I knew of, so I sat down on a nearby davit (fiat topped steel
post for wrapping ropes around) and picked up a newspaper that had been
carelessly left nearby and began to read it.
This was too much for our captain who somehow had
escaped my notice and was standing on the dock, really just a few feet away,
resplendent in his dress white uniform with row upon row of decorations over the
left chest area and prestigious looking gold leaf ornamentations on the bill of
his cap.
Sternly he chewed me out right there in front of those
open-mouthed welders who were glad they weren't getting the business. Nor was
this all. My gunnery officer who was also a total stranger later gave me a
scathing dressing down in a nasal Harvard accent. Well, at least I was getting acquainted around here. Within a
day or so, I was summoned to a Captain's Mast. A veteran sailor told me what it
was but not to worry; he himself once had a Deck Court which was worse and look
at him now, a second class petty officer.
I needed one of my big brothers here to lean on and
draw strength and support from. My parents would tell me, "Only try and do
your best and friends will find you." Usually things did work out that way,
but my faith was diminished and my serf-confidence had receded to a low point as
well. My Great Expectations had turned into Bleak House as I tried to deal with
the "hard knocks" Pap had warned I'd get once away from home and
"out there amongst them" alone in the world.
I'll never learn, of course, but it's a fact: things
are seldom as bad as they seem. Someone was watching me all along and began
stepping in so skillfully on my behalf that only after many years have I finally
realized just how much help and encouragement I did receive.
Mr. Montague Blundon is called "Monty" by
officers and men alike now, but I cannot remember any form of address other than
Mr. Blundon. He was the assistant gunnery officer aboard the H.A. Wiley during
the period that I write of. He was (and is) a low key gentleman, confidently
assured without calling attention to himself, and he was "hands on".
Not to take away from anyone else, but he'd check on his guys and their guns
daily. He knew who was doing what and, best of all, I could talk to him....just
like people, no longer a trembling idiot forever being admonished to "get
to the point" or to "back up and start over."
The next day Mr. Blundon's mood would be the same as
it was the day before, and once I learned that, I began to relax, stopped
getting into so much trouble, and came to entertain the idea that this Navy job
wasn't too bad after all. Mr. Blundon was only a few years older than I and over
time I was delighted to learn that we shared many interests, but we were poles
apart when it came to education and sophistication. There Mr. Blundon was way
ahead of me. I had already learned that he had a college degree with a major in
chemistry which he put to good use at appropriate times.
Mr. Blundon and I were taking an inventory of
specialty munitions inflates, star shells, that sort of thing--and it was fun.
The war was now over and an inventory of our specialty munitions supply was
being prepared. There were chemical formulas stenciled onto the wooden boxes
plus many unpronounceable words such as tetra-ethyl, chameleon, lead-azide, and
many other strange names and markings. "This will slow him down some,"
I thought, and force him to use a printed identity key or something. Not at all.
He read those labels aloud as he rapidly checked off the contents of the various
crates on a clipboard. The opened containers had varying amounts in them, and
these were hand counted. I was of some help at this. We were soon famished, and
I was agape at how professionally and efficiently everything had been done and
more than a little envious.
Once the war had ended, there was no longer a need to
constantly service and man our anti-aircraft batteries, and I was given a cushy
catch-all job-cleaning, painting, and storing away our steel army-type helmets,
maintaining and keeping up with the rifles and pistols we had aboard (they were
kept under lock and key unless issued for a special purpose), and maintaining
the simply constructed steel tube-like device welded to the bridge skirting from
which signal flares could be shot skyward.
If you are thinking that I now had things good and had
grown into something of an apple polisher, you are absolutely right. I have no
excuses to offer other than to plead that these good events came about by
following one of my father's most repeated directives to his children, "Go
inside. Don't stand around looking in the windows." Our gun crew had
"been there" and "done that". Now we wanted inside.
I was 20 now, restless and aware for the first time
that some direction was needed in my life and that I would have to start
depending on myself. Our crew had begun to break up and head homeward without a
backward glance, or so it seemed at the time, and soon my turn came, and I left
too.
N.P.C.'94