After about a month or so in San Francisco we were ready to move on, we had quite a bit of money and our wages were mounting up all the time as we were only getting subsistence or living ashore allowance. One morning at the Navy office we were told to have our gear outside the lodge at ten o'clock the next morning as we were going to take passage on an American ship as the "Lothian" was no longer calling at San Francisco.
The next morning a jeep called for us and we were taken down to the docks , we boarded a ship called the "General Hugh L Scott". This was a brand new liberty ship built to carry troops, but able to convert back to a cargo ship after the war,. We were shown our berths, we were to sleep in three tier bunks in large mess decks, the five of us were the only British navy men on board, the rest of the passengers were American soldiers and the biggest surprise I had was meeting a group of U.S soldiers that I had met on the Queen Mary coming from Europe. Although we weren't told where we were heading for it was obvious we were going into the war with Japan.
We set sail the same evening and Ill always remember passing through the Golden Gate and regretting that I had not gone to see the good lady from Oakland who had given me her address and the ten dollar bill, there just hadnt seemed to be the time, the American pace of life made the week spent in San Francisco seem like a week.
The routine aboard the Hugh L Scott was quite different from the Royal Navy routine. "Wakey Wakey!" was piped about 6.30 followed by the call, "All hands on deck, sweepers man your brooms empty all GI trash cans and trash tins!" The food on board was excellent, the funny thing was we always ate standing up. You were served on a tray with compartments cafeteria style, then you went to tables which slid up and down on poles, these were fixed about chest high to eat off and on a night they were slid to the deckhead/ceiling so that films could be shown. As we got nearer to the tropics of course, we spent most of our time on deck, you could buy almost anything you wanted on board from the American P.X. or Post Exchange which was the equivalent of our N.A.A.F.I. The American troops treated us very well and were always asking us about the air raids in England and what conditions were like there.
The ships crew had some exercises after a couple of days at sea, and I must say I wasn't very impressed by their shooting at floating targets, they weren't a patch on the R.N gunners that I had seen.
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