the crew. You will have a special officer and several of the ship's best petty officers over you during this time. This month's special training is given you so that you can have more time, more direct supervision, and a better opportunity to learn about your future home and how to carry on aboard it. 6. You will be shown how to swing your hammock and stow your clothes. Then you will be shown the head and wash rooms and told how to keep your clothes and persons clean. Then you will be given instruction in ship's routine and how you carry on a day's work aboard ship. Your drill periods will be taken up in learning every part of the ship. You will go into every department, and everything will be explained to you. Then they will tell you about the ship's organization, her captain, her executive officer, her heads of departments, and her division officers. Then you will be told about the emergency drills, general quarters, fire drill, abandon ship, fire and rescue party, and collision drill, and all the different alarms sounded for these drills. By the end of the month you will know your new home quite well and I will know how to live in it. This first month aboard is the hardest month of all. You feel completely lost-we all did. It is almost, you think, as bad as the detention period, but it is not. You get liberty, and, what is more, you soon get on to the life and you begin to like it at once. you are 7. At the end of this month, or, if you were in a small draft and were not put in Division X, assigned to divisions as stated in paragraph No. 4. Your division petty officer will show you where to hang your bag, stow your hammock, swing your hammock, where you eat, and, in general, the same as explained for Division X. You will start mingling with your new shipmates and your "troubles" will begin. Every one of your shipmates, especially those who have just "learned the ropes " themselves, will start having a lot of fun with you. They will send you after "hammock ladders," tell you to wind the anchor_watch," and thousands of similar jack-tar jokes. You will have to stand this good-natured hazing, for you can not stop it amongst these live youngsters. It is similar to what you would have to stand as a freshman if you entered a college. Grin and bear it. A few months hence you can try it on the next draft yourself. 8. Due to the natural skylarking tendency of your young shipmates, it is by far best that you ask whatever information you want from your petty officers. They know how to give it to you, and will gladly give you the information you want. 9. Your division officer will make out your proper station bill and will have a petty officer explain it carefully to you. Again, you must remember that your best friends are your officers and your petty officers. Go to them for help, watch them, and imitate them. 10. You will soon be deep in your division duties, and with work, drills, liberty, movies, athletics, happy hours, target practices, and cruising you will never be lonesome or unhappy. You are just starting up the ladder. To get up you must study and work hard. You have fine training courses to study, which are issued to you free of charge. Your officers and petty officers are anxious to help you in them. Everything is ready to make it easy for you to get ahead. With energy and ambition on your part your future is bright. If you do not get ahead in the long run, you will have to blame chiefly yourself. CHAPTER 18 SUBJECT A-DISCIPLINE AND DUTY THE TWOFOLD NATURE OF DUTY IN THE NAVY When a man enlists in the Navy, no matter in what rating, the nature of his duties is twofold. The duties are First, his military duties. Second, the special duties of the rating in which he enlists. (a) Military duties.—It can not be too strongly impressed, not only upon every recruit, but also upon every enlisted man, whatever his length of service. may be and whatever his rating, that, entirely apart from the duties of that rating, he has, by virtue of the mere fact that he is in a military service, certain duties of a military nature. Though his ordinary duties may be such as to reduce the amount of his military duties (for example, to lessen the amount of drill), nevertheless the military side of the profession is always present, and its responsibilities are always in evidence. However expert a fireman or a machinist, a yeoman, or a cook a man may be, he must realize the fact that when he enlists in the Navy the greatest difference between life in the service and in civil life is that in the Navy skill in his rating constitutes only a part of his duty. Your general quarters station and your duties at this station is your big job. This job must be done perfectly every time you take this station. The battle efficiency of your ship depends on |