_January 31, 1942 - Patrolling the Eastern Seaboard_

Upon our return from Iceland, we'd expected to join up with the next convoy heading East, but instead, _Wasp_ and the rest of our task force began patrolling the East Coast. While we were away, a British freighter, SS _Cyclops_ had been sunk a couple of hundred miles off Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and a freighter and tanker were sunk off Halifax the following day. Before a week had passed, six other ships were sunk and one damaged off the northern East Coast. It only got worse from there, with my morning radio report from Norfolk listing a total of thirty-five ships sunk between Newfoundland and Bermuda. As the XO had said at the morning briefing, 'Ladies, this is serious'.

The problem was, nobody in the Navy Department had even considered the possibility, and ships were sailing independently up and down the coast, making them prime targets for crafty U-Boat skippers. All they had to do was avoid our patrols, which were scant, compared to the vastness of the sea we had to protect, and they could engage in what amounted to a 'turkey shoot' against unarmed merchies. That was made even more obvious by what hadn't been in the morning traffic from Norfolk - no reports of a single U-Boat being sunk anywhere along the East Coast.

After two weeks on patrol, having unsuccessfully prosecuted any of our sub sightings, which I suspected were all phantom products of wishful thinking, we put in at the recently opened NAD Charleston for fuel and munitions. I, and a number of other enlisted who weren't part of the deck or engineering divisions were given twenty-four hours of liberty. Sadly, Goose Creek was a podunk town which consisted of a dive bar and a diner.

The first thing I did was find a payphone and call Mille. She was surprised, but very happy to hear from me. She said she missed me and hoped we'd put into New York soon. I hoped so, too, for obvious reasons! We talked for about three minutes, and then after we said 'goodbye', I called my dad to let him know I was ashore and everything was fine - or at least as fine as it could be fighting a war. Dad told me Matt Ripko had been sent to Midway, Miles Bradford had been assigned to learn to fly Liberator bombers, and Billy Jones had been assigned to the USS _Yorktown_ after his training.

When I hung up, Scooter, Bobby, and I talked a local into driving us into Charleston with a promise of buying dinner and all the beer he could drink if he found us to a decent restaurant and bar, and hung around to get us back to the ship before our liberty expired. The three of us hopped into his 1934 Packard convertible and set out for Charleston, which was about thirty minutes away . Our host, Jack Tolvar, took us to a place where we had great steaks, and then a crowded bar with lots of action.

My first order of business was a couple of shots of bourbon, and then a nickel for the jukebox, then a dance. I saw a gorgeous redhead with two equally gorgeous brunettes and grabbed my shipmates for what I hoped would be a successful prosecution. Being the only guys in uniform helped, and the girls agreed to dance with us after playing coy for a bit. We danced the jitterbug to a couple of great songs by the Andrews Sisters and Glenn Miller, before buying the girls drinks. They drank Tom Collins while my fellow Chiefs and I had our third shots of bourbon.

The night panned out as we hoped, and Scooter, Bobby, and I ended up in the apartment the three girls shared where they showed us just how much they appreciated our contribution to national defense. Our host, Jack, had found a girl of his own, and we all met up early on Sunday morning so we could head back to Goose Creek and report before liberty ended.