When the first bomb hit, a pressure
shock blew my hat off. I jumped to my feet
and took off running. No direction. No
reason. More bombs punched through the
deck. Bulkheads tore apart and
mangled my shipmates. Black
smoke poured out of the breaches.
Fuel swept over the deck, and my feet
went from under me. I tried getting
up, but I kept going *** over bandboxes
in the same spot. I yelled to God,
"I'll swear off if you let me live!"
He crushed another volcano in his fist
and threw down the ****. A three-hundred
-pound hatch flew into the air. As high as
the ship's bridge, it went. It came down next to
me so hard that my feet went numb. That's
when I started crawling for the ship's
rail, crawling blind because of the
fuel in my eyes. Something jagged slashed
my right hand open. I didn't know what.
I couldn't see! I reached out, felt the ship's rail,
then dropped over the side. That's how I escaped
that tub. She'd been a proud ship once,
a heavy cruiser with eight-inch guns. 
Six months later, I shipped out on a destroyer.
A U-boat sent her to the bottom with a single torpedo.
Down she went, and back into the water I went.
I felt sure the sharks were gonna rip me up.
Instead, a rescue operation came along….