The Pittsburgh Press (February 9, 1944)
Clapper: Flat top
By Raymond Clapper
This is another of the dispatches written by Mr. Clapper before his death in a collision of airplanes during the battle of the Marshalls.
Aboard an aircraft carrier, somewhere in the Pacific –
After a couple of weeks with the Army and the Marines in the jungles of South Pacific islands, I cam aboard this big, new, and most modern airplane carrier last night. I feel like a country boy going to the city, as I shift from the mud and the dirt to come aboard this floating community of some 3,000 persons.
As far as personal living is concerned, it is like a big hotel with an airfield on the roof.
My Army gear, which had been knocked around through the mud with the Marines at Cape Gloucester and Munda and Guadalcanal, suddenly looked filthy and out of place when I saw it in my cabin with its neatly-made bed and white sheets, its fresh-painted walls – and its modern bathroom instead of those ladders out over the water that we were using a few days ago.
‘Everything’s up to date’
I feel like the country boy in Oklahoma! who sings my favorite song, “Everything’s Up to Date in Kansas City.” For here they have “gone about as far as they can go.” You turn a knob over your bed and you hear the radio from San Francisco. But our colored mess attendant tells me confidentially that although it sounds as if the music is coming from San Francisco:
You know they take it down and play it on records right here on the ship. You ain’t listenin’ to San Francisco. You just thinks you is.
This boy’s name is Charles, and from Charles I have learned about city life again. My one pair of shows had worn through walking on the coral rock of the islands. Charles said he could have my shores resoled at the ship’s shoe shop. I asked how long it would take. He said:
Oh, they can have them back this afternoon.
This is not only city life, it’s a darn sight better city life than you can get in most places at home right now.
Of course there isn’t a man on this ship who wouldn’t rather take life at home, but if you have to be away the Navy has it over the Army in many things. As one sailor said:
Why should anybody want to live in the mud when he can live on a ship? Of course, you might get hit, but you can also get it in the Army, and it’s better to have it happen in a place like this than out in a foxhole full of mud and water.
Seven barbers aboard
Every day the ship’s canteen sells 80 gallons of ice cream to the sailors, and 24 gallons of Coca-Cola. On my first night aboard I had filet mignon, although that was probably very special. For lunch today we had hamburger and black-eyed peas – and two helpings.
They have seven barbers aboard. I got a much-needed haircut from a young fellow who learned barbering in a small town in Tennessee.
He said:
I didn’t want to do barbering in the Navy. I just wanted to be a sailor. But they caught up with me, and so I’m barbering again.
He works mostly on officers. He said:
They don’t like Navy G.I. haircuts, so I have to do it a little more fancy. They all want hair tonic. I only have one kind, but I’ve got their backs to the mirror so I just give them anything they ask for out of this one bottle. They can’t tell the difference.
He hopes to have his own shop when he gets out of the Navy.