Submarine dare devils and fire at sea

The German submarine guys, they were dare-devil guys, you know, they weren’t afraid and they were doing, at that time, the German submarine was really braving havoc on the Atlantic. They thought that maybe, until the Americans got in, I don’t think it they would have lasted we’d get nothing over there, from the stories we used to hear. I mean, they didn’t tell you anything because they didn’t want the enemy to know how bad things were. Well, you’re always afraid when you’re on something like that, because there’s nobody to help you. You end up in the water and there’s oil burning all over. You know, that’s what happens. Most of the burns were people falling into the oil after the ship explodes and starts to break up. All its fuel goes all over the water and it doesn’t sink and it’s always burning. You can dive under and come up into the flame. A lot of people got really badly burnt, the sailors especially. And the air force had a lot of that problem too. They were getting burnt. That’s where they learned the saline solution. Well, this goes back quite a few years. They didn’t know too much about plastic surgery then. And to heal wounds when they put you in what they call saline which is salty water, it had some effect on your skin that you didn’t get scar tissue that you would get from ordinary water. So they used that on us all the time. They had little tubs to put you in, soak you in, get the bandages off, and keep you... the nurses would swab you with the salt. It wasn’t really strong salt, but it’s called it a saline solution, and that’s where they learned to use it.