A Cuppa Joe
By John Powell Riley; Jr., Artwork by Robert C. Semler
For an electronics officer on board the light cruiser Nashville in late 1944, a cup of stale Navy coffee was all that came between him and the grim consequences of a kamikaze attack.
People who never have been in naval combat owe it to those who have to try to understand what it is like. In combat, life or death depends often on some seemingly insignificant coincidence, an act of God, a yet-unknown sense, or just plain luck. This is my story of only one of the hundreds of kamikaze attacks that made life on board U.S. ships a living hell in the final days of World War II, and how a cup of coffee—a cuppa joe, as we all called it—saved my life.
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