TRANSCRIBED FROM THE ATKINS CHRONICLE FEBRUARY 8, 1918 P. 1
Editor Atkins Chronicle,
Atkins, Arkansas
Dear Sir and friend:
To inland people the navy and naval methods are ever a puzzle. It was so with me, and is still, but the training one receives at this station tends to enlighten one to some degree.
The mode of life here is so removed from everything that is civilian i begin to feel that anything pertaining to civil life is wrong and holds no place in the world. We are kept very busy. Promptly at 5 o’clock we are told to “hit the deck,” which in real English means come out of your hammock. At 7 we have “chow”. Drill or class from eight to eleven fifteen. Doctor’s inspection at eleven thirty, mess at twelve. Drill or class from one to four thirty. Mess at five. After five o’clock “chow” we have until nine o’clock to do as we please.
To do as we please means study in our Blue Jacket’s manual, learn to tie a part of the million or so knots a sailor must know, learn and practice the semaphone system of signaling and a few other things one must do. Washing one’s clothes for instance. That is a job every sailor hates, yet he must do it.
To hear a Jackie on “shore leave” express his opinion of the Great Lakes Training Station one hears something like this: From Great Lakes? Yes, a great place. Then he expands his chest and continues. That is the largest naval training station in the world. There we have the largest drill hall in the U. S. It is 700 feet long and 150 feet wide without a post or column in it. We have next to the largest wireless station in the United States. The aeriel towers being 400 feet high. There is a laundry that washes 10000000 pieces each week. We have cooks that feed the 3000 men there well and plentiful. Then there is the beautiful Lake Michigan. From its waters come vapor, which condensing, gives us plenty of snow. Within a period of two weeks we have had three real blizzards. The snow fell for hours and drifted from five to ten feet high. That makes life fine and the youth grinned and went his way.
Personally I am getting alone fine. My company has been unfortunate enough to be in quarentine most of the time. I have been here, so that even though I have heard Luther Hawkins, I am unable to see him, as he is likewise quarantined in his camp a very short two miles away.
Time draws near for “lights out” so with best regards to all my friends and the insinuation that letters from friends at home brings with them good cheer. I remain
Fred Carter
Co. E, 1st Reg., Bat., Camp Dewey, Great Lakes, Ill.
NOTES:
TRANSCRIBED BY MIKE POLSTON