Dead or Alive?
Heroes Remember
Dead or Alive?
I was at sea for three years, and a year and a half I was seasick
and very seasick most of the time, and the next year and a half,
you couldn't make me seasick. And people who'd never been seasick
in some of the storms we had were seasick, and I wasn't,
and I couldn't figure out what was wrong with them. And it was,
it was... I've asked doctors. I've asked sailors. I've asked
people about it, and there doesn't seem to be a rhyme or reason.
They, it does occur exactly as it occurred to me. I just got up
one day and I wasn't seasick. I've no, never changed.
Interviewer: That must have been one of the best days
of the three years...
It was a better day, yeah. Well, I don't mean you were sick
everyday, but you didn't always feel the greatest, let's put it
that way, yeah. I always remember my, my first watch, which I
think was one of your questions, and... the chap that was the
chief operator had been torpedoed twice. Once off of Greenland,
in which the German submarine came up, they were on their own
at this time, and they took target practice on the ship as it
went down. And I'm not sure if it was the first or second time,
doesn't matter, he was torpedoed twice. He was in a lifeboat for
eighteen days in the Caribbean. Four of them died, and it was
only a Liberator Bomber that was going over just on a routine
flight that happened to spot them, or they would all have died
probably, sort of thing. And he was also at Singapore when it
fell, and took the Aussie troops aboard, and he was my chief
operator. And he did not think a lot of this young 19-year-old
kid from Craik, Saskatchewan, who thought he was an operator.
And I was quite seasick on my first watch, and I was only a
minute or two late, but he came down and met me and said,
"White, what's wrong?" I said, "I'm sick chief, but I'm on my
way up." And I was, I was on my way to my watch. He said,
"We don't have ‘sick' on this ship. You're either alive or dead.
I expect to be relieved five minutes ahead of watch time.
Now are you alive or dead? Because if you're dead," he said,
"we have a canvas and we wrap ya up in it and we throw ya
overboard. Now make a choice." Well, it didn't take me long
to make a decision, I was alive and on watch, and I was
never late again, sick or not sick. But it, that was
my first watch, so I learned quickly.
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