World War: Reuben James to Davy Jones

Gunner's Mate Walter Sorensen of the Reuben James sat down and scrawled what was perhaps to be his last letter:

"Dear Sis," he wrote, "... I think we will make another trip to Iceland before we go to the Navy Yards. I sure hope I can come home on leave even if it is only for a few days. . . . We sure don't get much time in any more. . . . We are here only until Thursday morning and then back to Portland. From there I don't know. . . ."

From there the Reuben James picked up a convoy and worked up toward where it was chilly. Walter Sorensen did not know where she was bound: some of the guys said probably Russia; others said no, just Iceland again.

On the way there was the usual routine for Walter Sorensen: cleaning the breech-blocks and oiling the six 3-inch A.A.s, checking the trip-mechanisms for the ash cans (depth charges all set because the waters up around Iceland were, as the boys said, "stiff with subs"). It was hard work. The whole crew had been ordered onto Condition Baker—watch and watch, four hours on and four off.

Still, there was time in the watches below to cork off and think about what it's like to be in the U.S.N.

For Walter Sorensen, 19 years old, six feet tall, yellow-haired and hopeful, it was good fun. It had not always been. He went into the Navy at 17—two years ago —just to get away from the tired smallness of his father's farm on the outskirts of Omaha. But the Great Lakes Naval Training Station had been grim: the inoculations made him sick, being away from home did too.

Later he started moving, and that was better—Key West, Costa Rica, the Virgin Islands. Sorensen studied, took some exams, got two promotions. Within a year and a half he was hauling down $62 a month.

They put him on the Reuben James. She was one of the old four-stacker crack-erboxes that were finished too late for the other war; she was two years older than he, and shrewish in a choppy sea. But he got to like her, learned to refer to her as Rube and developed a heap of respect for the commanding officer, Lieut. Commander Heywood L. Edwards. That name Heywood did not mean a thing: it was better to call him Tex and pay heed to his calm voice: he was six feet two and used to be an Olympic wrestler.

Walter Sorensen heard the story of the original Reuben James. They said he was born in Delaware in the big year, 1776. He went to sea just like anybody and got to be a bosun's mate. In the fighting against the pirates of Tripoli in 1804, he did his big deed. There was a fierce hand-to-hand fight one day. James's boss, Captain Stephen Decatur, was knocked down by a Tripolitan. Another pirate lifted his scimitar to kill the Captain. James dived and took the blow on the back of the head. Captain Decatur said if he would only recover, Reuben James could have anything he wanted. Decatur expected his bosun's mate to ask to be an officer.

Said the original Rube: "Please, sir, I don't want to have to roll up my hammock in the mornings ever again." He recovered, never rolled his hammock.