Black Outs

Lt. (j.g.) Gilbert Steingart

          U.S.S. Ocelot, F.P.O. San Francisco
             Friday 8 December 1944, 10:10 PM

My Dearest,

          Couldn't find time to write before the movie because of certain things that needed my attention, so here I am after the picture.

          Last night the movie was a fair one. It was "Headin' for God's Country" with a lot of unknowns. 

          This morning I had my usual busy morning, and I worked through till 11:30.  Then I distributed the V-mail Xmas greetings.  So now I've got that off my mind.  The mail today brought those song books and calendar from our darlings and a magazine you sent on to me.

          This afternoon I got the yeoman, who has been assigned to me, to help with my nonprofessional duties, to cut several stencils for song sheets. I gave up the slides and will endeavor to have enough light on deck to read the words from sheets.  After that I went back to "Prodigal Women" and before I knew it was 5:30 and time to shower, shave and change for dinner.

          This evening I supervised the installation of our record player in sick bay.  I had it moved down there so that I could control the playing of it and the records used.  By the way, I played the recording Dave sent about the dentist and it went over the whole ship.  Everybody got a laugh out of it.

          Tonight's picture was a Hopalong Cassidy that I hadn't seen and a short, in color, about trained eagles and dragons.  Very interesting.

          Darling do you remember the black outs in the early days of the war and the trouble they had getting effective results?  Well you should see how it's done in the Navy.  The alarm goes off and the men seem to fly to their stations and in no time (seemingly), all stations are fully manned and if it's night time all lights except battle lights are out.  My station is in the forward battle dressing station.  I have an emergency operating room and dressing station all set up in a few minutes.  I have three corpsmen as assistants.  Don't take this to indicate that I am in a danger zone.  We just don't take chances. When any contact--undersea, surface or air is made--GQ (battle stations) is immediately sounded and everybody moves but fast.  Well dear, after the war there won't be any more blackouts and when we go into the dark we'll have better reasons for doing so.

          Good night my Sweet, I love you dearly but I still haven't any poetry to spout.

Love

Gil