With a last look around the torpedo room they turned to go back to the control room.
“Later,” Sutherland said to them as they stepped through the bulkhead door, “you’ll have target practice with special torpedoes that don’t blow up what you’re aiming at. As a matter of fact, there won’t be anything you can’t do by the time we get through with you.”
They Inspected the Torpedo Room
In the course of the next few weeks, March remembered that statement often. He went on countless trips in the training subs, until he felt as much at home in them as he did in his own quarters. For the first few times he observed. Then he took over one position after another and executed its duties.
Stan was with him on all these trips, but often they were at different ends of the boats during their short journeys. One day, March would take his position at the steering wheel. The next he would handle the big levers controlling the Kingston valves on the main ballast tanks. Then he would work with the men in the engine room, after having studied Diesels in some of his classes. He did a stretch in the torpedo room several times when they shot the practice torps at special targets towed by a surface boat. He worked the interphone system as orderly, took over the little radio shack, spent several hours in the battery room, working the diving planes.
“I’ve done everything so far but cook lunch and cut the crew’s hair,” he said to Stan one day, as they relaxed wearily for fifteen minutes after dinner before going to their studies.
“Same here,” Stan said. “But I haven’t been assistant pharmacist yet.”
“Oh, that’s right,” March recalled. “I haven’t passed out any pills yet. And I don’t think I’ll have to.”
“Do you feel that you know the crew’s jobs pretty well now, March?” Stan asked.