You Had to Prove You’re one of Them.

You’re in the army, you don’t know what you’re going to get. As I say, I was happy to go aboard the ship, but I’d never seen a patient before, until they put you in the ward. It was quite an experience, but they were a wonderful bunch of boys on the ship there. They’d been, they started out up in Ontario, I think, kind of formed a unit and come down. A lot of them had been together a year and a half before I went on. And, like Eddie Crean and them fellows, different ones. I remember Ralph Smith from Kelly’s Cross come to me just after the first trip out, I guess. He said, “You won’t find the boys very friendly,” he said. “They’re kind of a little stand-off.” But he said, “Once they get to know you,” he said, “they’re a real fine bunch of guys.” But they’ve been together for a year and a half, two years and so on, together, and they kind of had their own. You had to prove you’re one of them before you got in. I think the ship was something different. We had perfect discipline in a way, but no real discipline. Perfect respect, I guess you’d call it. Like an officer, you didn’t stand to attention to an officer on the ship, for the nurses, I mean. You just walked by them, more or less. You know, if you convened you could stand to attention perhaps, but everybody was on the same level.