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ENGINEERING DEPARTMENT
The Snipes Lament
Now each of us from time to time has gazed upon the sea and watched the warships pulling out to keep this country free. Most of us have read a book, or heard a lusty tale, about the men who sail these ships through lightning, wind and hail. But there's a place within each ship that legends fail to teach. It's down below the waterline, it takes a living toll. A hot metal living hell, that sailors call "the hole." It houses engines run by steam, that makes the shafts go 'round. A place of fire, noise, and heat, that beats your spirits down. Where boilers like a hellish heart, with blood of angry steam, are molded Gods without remorse, are nightmares in a dream. Whose threat that from the first roar, like a lining doubt, that any minute would scorn, escape and crush you out. Where turbines scream like tortured souls, alone and lost in hell, as orders from above somewhere, they answer every bell. The men who keep the fires lit and make the engines run are strangers to the world of light, and rarely see the sun. They have no time for man or God, no tolerance for fear, their as |
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pect pays no living thing, the tribute to a tear. For there's not much that men can do, that these men haven't done. Beneath the decks, deep in the hole, to make the engines run. And every hour of every day, they keep the watch in hell, for if the fires ever fail, their ship's a useless shell. When ships converge to have a war upon an angry sea, the men below just grimly smile at what their fate might be. They're locked down below like men fore doomed, who hear no battle cry, it's well assumed that if they're hit, the men below will die. For every day is ware down there, when the gauges all read red, six hundred pounds of heated steam, can kill you mighty dead. So if you ever write their sons, or try to tell their tales, the very words would make you hear a fired furnace's wall. And people as a general rule don't hear of men of steal, so little is heard about the place that sailors call "the hole," but I can sing about this place, and try to make you see, the hardened life of men down there, "cause one of them is me." I've seen these sweat soaked heroes fight in superheated air, to keep their ship alive and right, thought no one knows they're there. And thus they'll fight for ages on 'till warships sail no more, amid
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the boilers heat and the turbines hellish roar. So when you see a ship pull out to meet a warlike foe, remember faintly if you can, "The Men Down Below."
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SM1 1945-46 Yanvary,Gabriel
RD1 1951-55 Fitzgerald,William D.
BMSN 1952-53 Amunson,Richard
SN 1952-54 Hopper,Everett
SN 1956-60 Castillo,Richard (Dicky)
PN3 1956-60 Esparaza,Joseph
QM2 1958-60 Dey,Jerold
SM3 1958-60 Smith,Burl
MM3 1958-61 Shave,Bill
SN 1959-60 Gamradt,Max
SN 1960-61 Jones,Dale
SN 1961-62 Gibbs,Charles
SHSN 1961-62 Sidwell,Junior
EN1 1962-63 Porter,Scottie
FN 1963-64 Walz,Charles
YN2 1963-65 Strunk,Alan
GM2 1963-66 Christianson,Chris
SM2 1963-68 Howe,Wayne E.
BM3 1964-65 Corr,Turnage
SF3 1964-66 McKee,David
SF3 1964-68 Kitchen,Jim
MM3 1965-68 Grubb,Jack
EM3 1966-68 Brown,Beryle
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