Another incident involved with gunnery practice was on the pistol range. There were about 40 or 50 student officers lined up on the pistol range, each with a .45 caliber automatic pistol facing the targets. The instructor in charge gave the command: "ready on the right!, ready on the left!, ready on the firing line!", and before he could get out the word "fire" a shot rang out followed by the words "give that man ZERO FUKO". It was my roommate Bloski. Whenever anyone would pass Bloski after that, in place of saying Hi!, they would say to him: "Give that man ZERO FUKO"

One evening after dinner, Bates and Bloski got to throwing water on each other. It eventually developed into a full-scale war between Bates and Glista's room and ours. Water soon soaked the hallway. After things settled down and Bates and Glista were in bed, Bloski and I took the water filled fire extinguisher off the wall crept down to their door threw it open and emptied the extinguisher on both of them right in the middle of their beds. We dropped the extinguisher and ran for our room locking the door behind us. Our room was on the second floor. In a few minutes we could hear noises in the attic. Bates and Glista had gotten another extinguisher and were crawling through the attic to where they figured they were right over our room. The next thing we knew they had punched a hole in the ceiling and were pumping water down on us. My bed was not hit too badly but Bloski's was soaked. At Some time, Sy Gonzales and Bill Tuohimaa had gotten involved but somehow Michelich was left out. He was in his room (a single, no roommate) sound asleep. The six of us filled a condom with a couple of gallons of water. Carefully cradling it in our arms we carried it into his room with the intention of laying it in bed beside him. Unfortunately, as we tried to hold it out over the bed it broke. He was fit to be tied but there wasn't much he could do about it. The four rooms and the hallway were a mess and water was running down the staircase to the lobby.

Even though the "big game" was over the incident was not closed. The next afternoon when we returned from the flight line we found an order for the entire student body, not just the seven of us but all students, were to muster in front of the administration building at 1700 hours. Once there the whole regiment received a tongue lashing by an irate Marine Major, who warned the entire student body that any further acts of vandalism would result in a summary court marshal for the perpetrators for willful destruction of government property. We were not singled out even though we knew that they knew who the guilty parties were.

Another incident involving my friend Bloski concerned a young lady that I had met while with Bates and Glista in a nearby town. This woman was very cute but unfortunately married to a pilot who was at that time flying in the South Pacific. He, also, had been a buddy to another pilot whom had gone to the same high school as I but was in a grade behind me (small world!). My high school friend had been killed in the crash of a B-25 bomber in Texas. This woman and her husband escorted his body back to Des Moines for the funeral. Anyhow, as far as I was concerned, this woman was a very loyal and dedicated wife and she was not for the picking. "Not so!", says Bloski", they can all be made. Give me her name, address and telephone number and on my next liberty I'll show you". A bet was made and he was off. The day he returned from his next liberty he was claiming he had spent the night with her in a hotel. I can't say for positive whether he was telling the truth, but he confessed to me that he was a little worried and whipped out his tool and "lo and behold" the end of it was about three times what it's normal size should have been. The only advice I could give him was " go to sick-bay!". He did and the doctor told him not to worry that the muscle in the foreskin had retracted and cut off circulation to the skin on the wrong side. The doctor pushed the swollen skin back under the retracted muscle and told Bloski to stick around, he was going to be circumcised and was. He spent the next three days in the hospital. The bet was conceded to him.

The assignment to operational training was for the purpose of introducing a student pilot to genuine, honest to God combat airplane. In this case the Grumman F4F Wildcat. This plane had been the number one carrier based fighter aircraft until the introduction of the Grumman F6F Hellcat and the Vought F4U, Corsair. The F4F remained an operating combat plane until the end of the war but had been relegated to CVEs (Escort Carriers) because of the inability of the F6F and the F4U to operate from the small carriers. At this time we had no idea as to which one of the three planes we would wind up flying in combat.

The first thing I remember about flying the F4F was that it was a single seat plane and that I would have no instructor riding along on my first flight. A couple of things that I learned on the preflight familiarization class was that it took 28 turns of a crank to wind up the wheels after take-off and that prior to starting your run for take-off it was necessary to tighten the friction screw on the throttle to prevent the vibration of the plane under full power from causing the throttle to creep back while you cranked up the wheels. Kind of familiar because the 28 turns of the crank reminded me of the SNV and its flaps. So on my first take-off I opened the throttle all the way released the brakes and after gaining enough speed I lifted the plane in the air. Having gotten off the ground about 20 feet high I released the throttle, reached down and began cranking and counting. To do this requires that you bend over and you can no longer see where you are going. After about half the turns I raised up to take a peek. To my surprise I saw that the plane was nearly back on the ground and headed for the trees at the end of the runway. By the sound of the engine I knew that I had lost power and immediately realized that I hadn't tightened the friction screw. I gave the engine full power and cleared the trees by not much. If I had cranked those wheels all the way up without looking I would have plowed into the trees