The Military Page's ~ Email From "Hambone"

This is a reply to an email I sent Don "Hambone" Collins who was on the Blue the same time as my father

November 13, 2002
Darla, Thanks again for the update. You never did say what your Dad's address prior to the time he died.
So far as his rank/rate, Some folks aboard weren't all that concerned trying to go up in rank. It took quite a lot of reading and testing and many weren't interested and that's probably what happened to Leo. His rating was QMSN which stands for Quartermaster Seaman. This meant he was a striking (learning how to read flags, semaphore, work flashing light with Morse code and blinkers using Morse code) Seaman in the Quartermaster group. Otherwise he would have had to stay on the Deck Force, chipping paint, doing a lot of the drudgery work that most sailors never liked. So long as a person was a "striker" for a specific rating he stayed out of the "Deck Force". That way he worked on the bridge of the ship and even though we did a little scrapping of paint it was minimal and we were kinda like a small clique. Many other sailors were jealous of us because we were on the bridge where all the action was and we always knew what was going on. Most of the time the ship made turns based on our flags or flashing light or blinker signals to other ships. If the other ships didn't turn or didn't understand our signals we had to get on the 36" search light and send Morse code message explaining what they were to do. I say we because our ship was the "guide ship" for eight other Destroyers who were part of our command. We had the Commodore of Destroyer Squadron 13 aboard our ship so we were always looked upon to make the right signals in whatever maneuver we were carrying out.

Another thing we did which caused some envy by other shipmates we always had a big pot of coffee going as all the officers who were commanding the ship were on the bridge and all of us always had coffee to drink whereas most of the other sailors only had it when they had chow. As I said before a QM always was on the bridge to record (ships' QM Log) everything that happened as it happened. We did all the Navigation using various charts so we wouldn't run aground or always make sure where we were going. One of us (QMs) had the duty of being in the stern (back) of the ship below decks in what was called the Aft Steering so if the ships' bridge was blown away or blown out of control the QM in Aft Steering would actually steer the ship from below until it could be repaired. Thankfully that never happened but we still had to be there in case it did happen.

The QMs had all kinds of large binoculars, long glasses & real powerful dual glasses (magnified thousands of times) so we could read other ships flags or signals by light and relay the message to the Officer of the Deck who was on the bridge. Often times we sent or read five lettered coded messages which were secret and after reading them and recording them we would give them to other parties on the ship to be translated as most of us didn't have Top Secret clearance. We had to know all the other ship's call letters so when you called them they would know you're talking to them and not some other ship. Our voice call sign was Firefly (that was the Blue). The Commodore's call was Ganymede from the Shakespeare story.

Hope this doesn't confuse you too much but thought you might want to know a little about what Leo did on board.

And No, being AWOL once generally would not have caused a reduction in rank, however, if you did it several times it definitely could get you "busted" to a lower rank.

Regards,

Don "Hambone" Collins

 

 

Web Author: Darla Vanderlip
To reach me by E-mail: Darvee729@aol.com
Web Site: The Military Page
Page Created: November 3, 2002
Revised: April 7, 2003
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