The Lex was a sixty-million dollar job, the third in the new "Essex" class of 27,000-ton combat carriers, and would most definitely see action in the Pacific and stand up well under it. She had a good name and a good captain, and she would go into battle in the first wave of the new American offensive against the Japs. The long sea campaign in the Solomons had just ended to our advantage, and the Lex would be in on the raids on, and occupation of, the islands in the Central Pacific, from the Gilberts and Marshalls right over to the Philippines. We were lucky to be signed to her, and our subsequent experience aboard her more than took the taste of Quonset from our mouths.

But I still flinch whenever I think back to this training period ashore. Perhaps this is in sub-conscious recollection of the ancient and wicked game called "Flinch," which Dick Scheele revived whenever we showed signs of complete spiritual breakdown. The game consists of feinting a blow at someone in the hope that he will flinch from it. If he does, you are entitled to poke him on the arm seven times, hard. We added many refinements to the game: a person was required to flinch on Sunday, for instance, and if the seventh punishing blow was not "rubbed in," the "winner" could be dealt fourteen retaliatory cracks. Meat-Axe Thompson showed the most common sense of anyone; he always returned every blow laid on him, game or no game. But the rest of us had to be on our toes seven hours a day or come home with actual black-and-blue spots on our arms.

For Torpedo 16, Quonset was the darkest hour that comes before the dawn.