Crane Operator

I always enjoyed my time on the ship. Russia was paying for war materials in gold bouillon. My duties on the ship were, on the British ship, were crane operator, and I remember in Murmansk loading boxes of gold with the crane. I remember by the time I’d finished loading this stuff onto the deck there was a pile of gold that must have been - gold boxes - it must have been 15, 20 feet square and about three feet high, four feet high. And another time I was in Setejordt (sp) in Iceland, and one of the destroyers, a man was injured. He was thrown across the stoke hold, he was in pretty bad shape, and they brought him to our ship because we had a medical team and a surgery and so on, on the ship. They brought him alongside in an open boat and he was in a, I think they call it a striker stretcher, a wired basket and there was about a five or six foot swell running so the boat when it came alongside the ship, it was going up and down and up and down. The hook on the crane had a big weight on it and I had to let that hook down so they could hook the basket onto it. And it was trying to control that weight that went down and bring it up in time with the rise and fall of the boat until they were able to hook onto it, but I managed it without dropping the hook on the fellow and we got him on board. I was operating the crane and I was up on a high pedestal. There was no protection from the wind. The wind was coming down the fjord in Iceland, and it was cold, cold. And I was operating controls that were just like they used to have on the street cars and you just turn them and run the hook in and out, or raise or lower the arm, or turn the crane. So, I was alright, but I remember it was awful cold. I remember one day going down for lunch and an old sailor sitting at the table said, “Where’ve you been? You’re late for dinner.” And I said, “Well, I’ve been on the crane all morning.” And that fellow turned and he handed me his whole mug of rum and he said, “Here, you drink this because you need it a lot more than I do.”