“And those docs find it out before you go out,” March agreed.
March spent the evening with Bigelow and began to like the red-headed young man more as he got to know him better. Stan Bigelow was a chunky, broad-shouldered fellow who looked so hard that a tank could not bowl him over. A broken nose, covered with freckles, added greatly to his appearance of toughness, even though it had come, as he told March, from nothing more pugilistic than a fall out of a tree when he was sixteen years old.
“Landed just wrong on a pile of rocks,” he said. “Didn’t hurt a thing but my nose. I was at a summer camp and the doc there didn’t fix it up right. By the time somebody tried to put it back into a decent shape the bones had set too well.”
Despite Stan’s look of a waterfront bruiser, he was really a serious-minded student. He had graduated from one of the country’s top-flight engineering schools just before going into the Navy, and then had attended one of the Navy’s technical schools. Diesel engines were his specialty and he felt sure that this knowledge would quickly get him into submarine work where he wanted to be. But his work at the technical school had been so brilliant that they kept him on as an instructor despite his pleas for transfer to New London. Finally, after a year of teaching, he had been recommended for submarines by an understanding commanding officer.
“So here I am,” he concluded. “And right now I’m scared to death that it won’t make any difference how much I want to be a submariner or how much I know about Diesels. If I get jittery in the pressure tank tomorrow—out I’ll go!”
“You don’t even need to get jittery,” March laughed. “How do you know whether you can stand pressure or not? Even in perfect physical shape, some people just can’t, that’s all. I don’t mean because they’re nervous. Maybe their noses bleed or their ears won’t make the right adjustment or something.”
“Well—we won’t know until we try it!” Stan exclaimed. “I’m just going to keep my fingers crossed.”
After breakfast the next morning March and Stan Bigelow, along with the other new officer-students, reported to the little building at the base of the tall escape tower. They were joined by the new class of enlisted men who were to undergo the same tests. During preliminary training, there was no difference between officers and men in the examinations and work they had to undergo. Only later, when actual classes of study began, did they separate—for the enlisted men to learn their particular trades in reference to submarines and for the officers to get the highly technical studies and executive training they must have.
March saw Scott, the radio petty officer, and the others who had ridden to the sub base on the same bus with him. He called a friendly hello to them as they all stood waiting for the Chief Petty Officer in charge to call the roll.
After roll was called all the students were instructed to strip to the swimming trunks they had been instructed to wear, eyeing the pressure chamber suspiciously all the time.