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I hopped out onto the main deck on one leg and started up to
the wardroom where the doctor was. However, smoke and steam from
the forward engine room, which received three direct hits and is
just below the machine shop where I was, drove me back. Some of
the boys were fighting a fire just aft of me and I observed a hole
there big enough to drive a truck through.

After a few minutes the steam and smoke cleared and I started
up forward again. Everything was literall a mass of wreckage,
debris and twisted steel and I had some difficulty hopping through
it all on one leg. The lights went out throughout the ship when
we were hit so the doctor was outside on the main deck administer-
ing treatment to the wounded. After looking at some of the boys
coming to the doctor I decided I wasn’t so badly hurt after all
so I sat down to wait.

There was very little confusion on board and the doctor was
calmly working just as if it was morning sick call. He carried
on with machine-like precision and when the word was passed to
abandon ship he was one of the last men to leave the ship. I
learned later that he was up two days and nights with the men
who were wounded and when the Army doctors tried to get him to
stop and get some sleep he replied, "They are my boys and I
should be the one to take care of them". I understand he was
later awarded a Bronze Star for the courage he showed and I am
convinced he deserved it if anyone did.

A chief water tender was brought up from the engine room on
a stretcher, ninety-five per cent burned. When given a blood

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