Pearl Harbor

From a conversation with a sailor.

When the first bomb hit, a pressure

shock blew my hat off. I jumped to my feet

and took off running. No direction. No

reason. More bombs punched through the

deck. Bulkheads tore apart and 

mangled my shipmates. Black

smoke poured out of the breaches. 

Fuel swept over the deck, and my feet

went from under me. I tried getting

up, but I kept going a*s over bandboxes

in the same spot. I yelled to God, 

"I'll swear off if you let me live!"

He crushed another volcano in his fist 

and threw down the slag. A three-hundred

-pound hatch flew into the air. As high as 

the ship's bridge, it went. It came down next to

me so hard that my feet went numb. That's

when I started crawling for the ship's 

rail, crawling blind because of the

fuel in my eyes. Something jagged slashed

my right hand open. I didn't know what.

I couldn't see! I reached out, felt the ship's rail, 

then dropped over the side. That's how I escaped 

that tub. She'd been a proud ship once, 

a heavy cruiser with eight-inch guns. 

Six months later, I shipped out on a destroyer. 

A U-boat sent her to the bottom with a single torpedo. 

Down she went, and back into the water I went. 

I felt sure the sharks were gonna rip me up. 

Instead, a rescue operation came along….