You meet some mild mannered gentleman and talk
about the weather, and then find later that he is a survivor from some
desperate episode that makes your blood tingle. I would that we were
over on the North Sea side, where Providence might lay us alongside a
German destroyer some gray dawn. This submarine-chasing business is much
like the proverbial skinning of a skunk--useful, but not especially
pleasant or glorious.
JUNE 1.
[Sidenote: Glad to be in the big game.]
When I said good-bye to you at home, I don't think that either of us
realized that I was coming over here to stay. Perhaps it was just as
well. Human nature is such that we subconsciously refuse to accept an
idea, even when we know it to be a true one, because it is totally
new--beyond our experience. Pursuant to which, I could not believe that
my fondest hopes were to be realized, and that not only I, but the whole
of America, would really get into the big game. Oh, it is big all right,
and it grows on you the more you get into it.
Now, I realize that it is asking too much of you or of any woman to view
with perfect complacency having a husband suddenly injected into war.
But just consider--suppose I was a prosperous dentist or produce
merchant on shore, instead of in the Navy. By now you and I would be
undergoing all the agonies of indecision as to whether I should enlist
or no; it would darken our lives for weeks or months, and in the end I
should go anyhow, letting my means of livelihood and yours go hang, and
be away just as long and stand as good a chance of being blown up as I
do now.
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