My Friends are in the Wrong Place

It’s sad that I can’t see all those guys again. I wish I could see them. I saw some of them but they are in the wrong place. A friend of mine, Ben Riley was his name, Benjamin Riley. He was in the Canadian Navy during the war on corvettes, convoy work back and forth to Britain. Not long before he died I said, “Spike, how many trips did you actually make across that Atlantic in convoy? ’ He said, “Forty-two!” And I said, “I don’t know how you lived aboard those little escort vessels.” “Oh,” Spike said, “we got hard laying pay, 25 cents a day!” War profiteers, ya, 25 cents a day! They called it hard laying pay, guys like that won the war. That’s a long time ago, 70 years, 70 years…