After about six months, another 1st class machinist mate wanted to swap jobs. This is just what I wanted because he had charge of the machine shop. We got permission from our division officer, David L. Jones. He was a Chief Warrant Officer and he also came from Bridgeport, Connecticut. We got along real good and I liked my new job very much. This was where I met my best friend, Edwin (Eddie) Bartlett. He came from West Springfield, Massachusetts; a real clean living kid that had quite a lot of machine shop experience. He was a 2nd class machinist mate and about 6 years younger than me. We also had a 2nd class machinist mate named Robert Morrell working with us. He was a good worker but when he went ashore he usually came back with a big hang-over.

After being in Brooklyn Navy Yard for a couple of months we were making trial runs with the ship off the coast of New York, trying out the new ship and testing out the turbine engines. I was still assigned to the boats at this time. During the night on one of our trial runs, the officer of the bridge, a junior officer, decided to make a sharp turn when we were going top speed, about 30 knots or more. The ship heeled over on its starboard side and I really thought we were going to tip over. I was lying on my stomach and holding on to my bunk for dear life. The captain nearly fell out of his bunk. He was an old Merchant Marine captain, Captain DeMott. He came up to the bridge and cursed that deck officer with every swear word he could think of. Then he relieved the officer from the bridge. The captain scared the hell out of everyone on the bridge with his rage. This captain really could handle a ship. He even brought the ship into port and knew how to put it alongside a dock without the help of a tugboat.

We started on our shakedown cruise in December of 1939. After spending the holidays in Annapolis, we headed for South America. Our first stop was in Montevideo, Uruguay. On our way in we saw the German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee which was scuttled by the captain and crew. The ship was chased into the Rio de La Plata estuary by 3 British cruisers after a sea battle.

Admiral Graf Spee (German Armored Ship, 1936)

The Admiral Graf Spee hoped to get repaired while in Montevideo, but they were refused by the government. So they decided to blow up the ship. They took it out where the river widens up and sunk it. The whole crew was interned for the duration of the war in Buenos Aires, Argentina, which is a neighbor of Uruguay. The captain, Captain Langsdorff committed suicide. He was certain Germany would win the war, and didn't want to go back to Germany after the war to face Hitler and the Gestapo after losing the ship. ²

Several of our officers took a whaleboat over to the wreck and came back with some souvenirs. One of the officers gave me a bronze sign which he had removed from the battleship's klaxon. The klaxon had been used to call the battleship's crew to general quarters. My daughter has it now. Many of the German sailors were in town following the destruction of their ship. They were awaiting transfer to Argentina where they would be interned for the rest of the war. Our captain invited the German sailors to visit our ship, the top deck only, and we treated them to coffee, doughnuts, and butter. They loved our food, especially the butter. They really plastered the butter on those doughnuts. They hadn't tasted real butter for 18 months, they told us. We were a neutral country in January of 1940, and our visitors were professional and very friendly. I was teamed up with a German sailor named Helmut Gess because I could speak German. He was a petty officer like me and we were both machinist mates. We enjoyed talking to each other. For him, the war was over. For me, it was to begin in less than two years.

The Helena's next stop was Buenos Aires, Argentina, where we tied up to the dock. We were given liberty in Buenos Aires and they treated us very friendly. Most restaurants had German waiters, so I had no trouble ordering for my friends. Argentina is a cattle country so we enjoyed good steaks at a reasonable price. I also bought a number of butterfly trays which I brought home. They were selling for $2.00 each, a real bargain. I also learned a few Spanish words while in Argentina, especially how to order 2 beers, “Dos Cerveza.” So I learned how to order 2 beers and the meals I ordered in German. My friend John Cone wanted to show off a little bit so he ordered in Spanish and the waitress laughed like hell. He had just ordered horsemeat.

Also in Buenos Aries they used to have what they called the Osada. One of our big meat packing companies in Chicago put it on and the Natives would drive sticks in the ground make a big circle and take a sheep and cut it in half and light fires in the middle and cook that stuff. Now I ate some of it, but when we got back to the ship one of the guys said “them round things, they tasted real good.” He didn’t know what they were. He was told they were mountain oysters. Mountain oysters, someone explained to him, were sheep’s nuts. Well, he didn’t throw them up. That was one of the happiest moments, good laughs.

Our next stop was Santos, Brazil. We were treated very well here also. Their largest city was San Paolo but we had to take a cog railway to get to that very high altitude city. The population was about 3 million at that time, 1940. They had a large snake farm in San Paolo, where we saw the caretakers milk the venom from rattlesnakes and other species.

The Helena came back to Brooklyn Navy Yard for some minor changes and repairs. One of the main things they did was put 600 tons of lead weights in our double bottoms and also remove some weight from our top-side. The ship was top-heavy and we nearly learned that the hard way when it almost tipped over on our first trial run.

We stayed in Brooklyn Navy Yard a few more months and during this time I went home on most weekends by train. My brother Danny and his wife Emma fixed me up on my first date with Alma, my future wife to be. We went to movies in Hartford a few times and Danny would keep telling Alma to hold my hand. I finally got nerve up enough to make the first move and I took her hand. Things progressed pretty well in the romantic behavior and I finally got nerve up to kiss her on my second date. Adolph, my brother, let me use his car on weekends so I was on my own. On July 4th of 1940 I proposed to Alma and gave her an engagement ring. We visited my sister Lynne and her husband Jim Goff who rented a house in Winsted at the time. We had to tell somebody. They had Gail at that time and we took her for a ride in her stroller up to Highland Lake. Gail was about 2 to 3 years old at that time.

I tried to stay on the East Coast by complaining to the ship’s doctor about a pilonidal cyst that had busted open on my tailbone. It broke open as a result of the tremendous beating we took when we crossed the equator on the shake-down cruise. It was part of what the Navy calls “becoming a shellback.” It is a brutal ritual to “initiate” sailors on their first crossing of the equator, and involves being beaten by veteran shellbacks. I think it is a stupid ordeal that was handed down from the old sailing ship days. They would take a canvas sack and wrap rags around it and soak it in salt water. And then everybody was beating your back, your butt. Then they make you crawl through a tunnel like, they made canvas shoots just big enough to crawl through and they saved garbage for three or four days and put it in that tunnel and you had to crawl though that garbage and guts and all that stuff. And meanwhile you better not put your ass up or your head up top there, they were on top waiting to hit you. That was mean. They made the captain buy a box of cigars and he got away cheap. But any other officer they sent them through. My behind was black and blue for more than 3 months.³ Anyway, I stayed in Brooklyn Navy Hospital for a couple of months. The wound required surgery and was slow to heal. When they went to change the bandages it took about 8 yards of gauze that were soaked in iodine. They put that into the meat they cut out of the tailbone. I was able to go home on weekends after the second week.

The Helena was ordered to the west coast but they wouldn’t leave me to heal up in Brooklyn Navy Hospital, the Helena ship’s doctor said he could look after me from then on. We also had a new captain; Captain Robert H. English took command as we headed out. It was my second trip through the Panama Canal and we stopped a short time in San Francisco.

We arrived in Hawaii about July 1941 and had a lot of gunnery practice on targets and also sleeves that were towed by planes. The Helena was a light cruiser which had five turrets containing fifteen six inch guns and eight five inch antiaircraft guns.

Our gun crews were excellent, in my opinion, the best in the fleet. I made 1st class machinist mate and was assigned to the machine shop, a job I always wanted. I was also standing watches in the engine room while underway. They told me to be eligible for Chief, I had to have engine room experience. I told the engineering officer that I had 3 years engine room experience on the USS Mississippi, so I had to prove myself on the main throttle in the engine room. I would spend most of my spare time at night by writing letters home to Alma and Lynne and my oldest sister Olga. Also I made a lamp which I sent home. I would go ashore on most weekends that I had off, stay a few hours at the YMCA, have a swim in their pool and enjoy a good chocolate milk shake and hamburger. Then get back to the ship by dark and watch a movie on the ship.