The location of la plume de ma tante was not one of my major anxieties when I studied French conversation. The Naval Academy has a pragmatic approach to education. We studied French conversation from the Nautical Phrase Book. I was instructed how to address a capitaine de fregate or a capitaine de vaisseau and how to discourse about the events of le dernier voyage, but the acquisition of a vocabulary suitable for lighter situations was entirely extracurricular.
The Nautical Phrase Book, I must confess, was not solely responsible for my shortcomings as a linguist. Then, as now, it was necessary at the Naval Academy to achieve at least a passing grade in each single subject of the entire curriculum, or be consigned forever to the outer darkness of civilian life. My inability to converse in French very nearly terminated my naval career before it started. I often suspect, even of that austere institute of learning, where grades are determined with cold objectivity, that mercy tempered justice while the French Department conceded that I had attained a passing grade.
When the Nevada went to Brazil’s centennial in 1922, seventeen newly made ensigns were in her J.O. mess. Rio was wonderful, but all the most interesting girls, it seemed, spoke only French. My more versatile colleagues very rapidly supplemented the vocabulary of the Nautical Phrase Book with idioms having the potential to greatly enliven Naval Academy French conversation classes.
Even that incentive failed to improve my French. As a linguist I was hopeless, a defect that carried its own penalty in Rio, although one not absolutely vital. Many a naval officer, I knew, had managed somehow to get by, both at sea and ashore, with much less than perfect command of French. In many interesting situations, both nautical and amorous, it is often possible to be too vocal.
For me, however, the situation became complicated by the apparently irrelevant fact, that I had been a mediocre half-miler on the Naval Academy track squad. Brazil’s centennial celebration, of course, included suitable athletic competition, and the Nevada had to be represented by a track team. The track team had to have a coach. My messmates unanimously nominated me for that post. It was not an unmixed honor, nor altogether altruistic on their part; but then, altruism is a rare quality in any J.O. mess.
The Nevada’s executive officer was dedicated to the proposition that a successful athletic team was the firmest possible buttress of a ship’s morale, a proposition of which the lower echelons were much more dubious. To practice with the track squad, my gladiators were often excused from watches and ship’s work. The plebians had the extra watches, and the enthusiasm was less than hearty among the drudges with the extra work to do. There was widespread suspicion that my track squad included many who found track practice less onerous than ship’s work.
Unfortunately, my own division officer was among the most cynical. I was the junior officer of the electrical division, and he could keep me fully occupied without diverting any of my meager talents to a track team. My division officer was an old mustang lieutenant, with a very serious attitude toward his responsibility, and very doubtful of my protestations that I, too, was much more interested in volts and amperes than I was in athletics.
When I devoted my attention to the electrical division, the executive officer had me on the carpet demanding why I hadn’t arranged to take the track squad ashore for a workout. The electrical officer insisted on regarding those jaunts ashore as liberty, devoted to my unalloyed enjoyment. When we were at sea I worked out my track squad, under the watchful eye of the executive officer, by leading them in an interminable steeple chase around and around number four turret. This procedure, my division officer regarded as pure waste of a junior officer’s energy. I agreed with him, but I was powerless in the enmeshing chain of circumstances.
It wasn’t altogether an unprecedented situation for a young ensign. Junior officers were plentifully supplied with taskmasters, all of whom demanded that their particular interest must come first. The first lieutenant expected everyone to turn out at five o’clock reveille to spark the deck gang scrubbing down. All division officers had rigid programs of bag and hammock inspections and countless double bottoms to inspect. The navigator, in charge of the never-ending education of the J.O. mess, wanted beautiful and comprehensive notebooks as testimony to the efficiency of his instruction. The gunnery officer thought a junior officer’s main interest should be pointer and trainer drill, and there was boat officer duty and long night watches. Coaching a track squad in addition was piling on the last straw to load my woes above the Plimsoll’s mark.
I wasn’t long in discovering that I had a track squad with a wide range of talent, unrecognized by the American Olympic Association. A big fireman by the name of Dovak, who aspired to be a distance runner, could submerge in the middle of a cinder track and surface again in the nearest beer parlor. I would wake up in the middle of the night crying, “Where’s Dovak?”, reenacting in my sleep the nightmare of marshalling my charges in the motor launch to bring them back from practice. We had a broad jumper named Sturdy, and sturdy also by nature, who could stow away a dozen eggs at breakfast without even dulling the edge of his insatiable appetite. The track squad, in order that fatigue should not dull the keen edge of training, was excused from night watches, and their training table was plentifully supplied with the best food. “All night in and beans for breakfast” was their rallying cry.
It didn’t simplify my problem that among the ham and eggers, there were a few boot seamen, starry-eyed with dreams of glory. Dolan, a striker from my own electrical division, was one. His promise as an electrician far exceeded his ability as a quarter-miler. My division officer harbored a deep resentment against me because Dolan’s daydreams of breasting the tape, to the plaudits of the multitude, had lured a budding electrician’s mate away from the beauties of Ohm’s law.
The day of the international track meet came like the end of a long beat to windward. I had no anticipation it would be a Nevada triumph, but with the track meet over, the track squad could quietly lapse into the oblivion it so richly deserved. The schedule of events was due to begin in the early afternoon, a familiar situation to which I knew the standard solution. A man runs best on a nearly empty stomach. I lined up my squad in the galley and fed them each a cup of beef broth and a slice of dry toast, watching carefully that no one sneaked a couple of steaks to tide him over. Then I quickly loaded them aboard the motor launch and shoved off for the track meet.
The Brazilians were famously hospitable. The track squad was borne off by enthusiastic guides to the dressing rooms, and shortly I found myself in a little office with a Brazilian naval officer, a grade or two my senior.
“O senhor fala português?” he inquired. I shook my head.
I knew he was merely flattering me by suggesting that I could speak his language. With brash American assurance, I expected him to shift then into excellent English. He surprised me by inquiring,
“Parlez vous Française?” and it slowly dawned on me that this was the opportunity for my Naval Academy French to pay off.
We had the schedule of events to go over, the entries to consider, rules to discuss—and the weak crutch of my lame French to support the whole discussion. Even so, I think we would have been able to complete the task not more than a half hour late if there had been no other complications. We sketched a clock face and agreed on time by drawing in the hour and minute hands, and fortunately, Arabic numerals are universal. Sign language is wonderful—but sometimes subject to misinterpretation as I found out later.
The French, and the British, and the Argentine, and the Chilean, and the Spanish representatives must have all come to an agreement some time earlier. There must have been another meeting, at which somehow the Americanos del Norte had been left out. But everything would have been straightened out all right if it hadn’t been for another oversight. The Japanese also seemed to have been left off the agenda.
There was a commotion at the door as a young Japanese naval officer was escorted in. There was excited discussion among the Brazilians in Portuguese which I, of course, didn’t understand. The new arrival bowed deeply from the hips, hissed politely and “Nihongo ga dekimasa ka?” he inquired of my Brazilian friend.
The Brazilian admitted that he spoke no Japanese. It looked as though we were at an impasse until my Japanese analogue spotted my uniform. His face lit up like a star shell target, and he launched into a torrent of language. I was at a loss as to why he should consider I was any better at Oriental languages than my Brazilian colleague. Then I vaguely recognized the pattern of a few sounds. He was talking to me in his best Japanese Naval Academy English. I’ll bet his marks in English weren’t any better than mine in French.
So the situation became a little more complicated. The Japanese representative explained to me, in what he fondly hoped was English, his desires about the order of events, and who they had for entries, and probably, in muttered Japanese aside, commented on my ancestry. Firmly he believed that English must be loud to be clear, and that the louder he shouted the easier he could be understood. When I thought I understood what he was shouting about I translated into punctilious and idiomatic French, and often had to repeat it several times before my Brazilian friend comprehended. Of course, following the unwritten law governing such situations, each repetition had to be a little louder. We were all hoarse and sweaty. The track meet was more strenuous for the coaches than it was for the contestants.
Fortunately it wasn’t necessary to hold up everything until the whole schedule was worked out. As soon as we were agreed on any one event, the Brazilian scribbled some instructions in Portuguese for the officials in the field. We sent hurried instructions in our respective languages to our various contingents, and the struggle for that particular event was transferred to the track. We gained very slowly on the execution of the schedule of events, so the track meet was half over before I ever saw the field.
Over where the field events were being run off there was a wildly milling group of Nevada sailors. At first I thought it was a riot, and for some strange reason they were beating up on Sturdy. When I came nearer, I could make out that our broad jump entry was occupied in devouring a huge sandwich; while modestly accepting the enthusiastic congratulations of the crowd. It seems that Sturdy became convinced that he wasn’t going to be fed until his event was over, so in desperation his first jump was so broad that no one else had been able to approach his mark. Already he had a blue ribbon, lettered “First Place” in gold, pinned to his jersey, but it was the sandwich that made him happy. I barely had time to add my congratulations before I noticed that they were lining up for the four hundred meter race.
There was time for only a few words with Dolan, who was our entry. I had at my tongue’s tip the usual platitudes when I noticed Dolan was licking his lips in a suggestive fashion.
“You haven’t had anything to eat, have you Dolan?” I inquired hopefully.
“Yes, sir,” he admitted in a resentful tone, “my Brazilian buddy found out you didn’t let us have lunch before we left the ship, so he took me around to his own mess.”
There was nothing I could do but hope. The starter was calling for places. Dolan crouched at the starting line, and with the gun, got off to his usual slow start. I watched him at the turn, saw him waver, and stagger, and then fall flat upon the cinders. The Brazilian first aid was efficiently organized. They were there with a stretcher as soon as I was.
The Brazilian sick bay was like our own, but neither Dolan nor I could shake off that feeling we were strangers in a strange land, sick and alone. Dolan lay on the bunk with his knees doubled up groaning like a banshee, and whenever I stepped away from him he pleaded with me not to leave him. My French was probably as much like Portuguese as it was like French, and occasionally the hospital corpsmen seemed to understand me. Maybe to Dolan I sounded glib and loquacious, but it was frustrating to do no more than keep repeating “le docteur toute de suite.”
A portly and important-looking individual, with an impressive kit of tools in a little black bag, wasn’t long in arriving. I was familiar with Brazilian naval uniforms, but I didn’t recognize his insignia. I asked in limping French if he was “le docteur” and got a torrent of Portuguese in return, when all that I hoped for was a simple “Oui” or “Si." I gathered that this was not le docteur, and Dolan was quick to catch alarm. He held on tight to my hand, as though it was his only connection with this world below, and his mental anguish must have been exceeded only by the pain in his belly.
The hospital corpsmen tried to reassure me, and it was obvious that the portly party was someone in authority connected with the medical profession. His tools surely had a medical look, but he may have been the veterinarian—or even the mortician. It took a lot of Portuguese and French before I caught on that my friend was the warrant pharmacist. Then I felt more confident for I knew that in our own navy the pharmacist would be quite competent to handle an emergency such as this one.
“Faire vomité,” I demanded with appropriate gestures and references to Dolan’s symptoms of distress.
“Si, faire vomir,” the pharmacist agreed, and drew from his bag a hypodermic syringe which he promptly proceeded to fill, with meticulous care.
That was my first introduction to apo- morphine. It seemed fantastic to me that anyone should administer a shot in the arm as an emetic. My doubts about the pharmacist returned, and I protested vigorously with one hand. Dolan was frantically clutching the other. The entire assembly united in trying to reassure me, in half the languages of Europe, that this hypodermic was “faire vomir.” I realized that there was no one present who knew less about medicine than I did, but I felt that all the responsibility for this decision was mine. I tried to reassure Dolan that everything would be all right and nodded to the pharmacist to proceed.
It was “a faire vomir” all right. The needle had hardly been withdrawn from Dolan’s arm before his recent light lunch of black beans and bananas was all over the place. After that he relaxed into a kind of stupor, but his cramps were gone.
The track meet must have been well over before I even thought of it again. Then my imagination conjured up visions of the binge that Sturdy and Dovak and their pals would put on to break training. The executive officer would certainly blame me for it all. I stayed there holding Dolan’s hand, and I confess I felt more useful than at any of the other diverse duties of a track coach. The real doctor arrived after a long while. He said we could take Dolan back to Nevada.
They sent us back in style, in the big steam hospital launch, with a Red Cross on the funnel, and the floodlight playing on it. They insisted that Dolan had to be carried aboard Nevada in a stretcher. Our return was quite dramatic. My division officer was on deck. I expected some cynical remarks from him, but I just went about my business seeing that Dolan was comfortably fixed up in sick bay, before I retreated to the J.O. mess. It wasn’t very many minutes before my division officer followed me there.
“You did all right,” he conceded in the only words of praise I ever got from him.
Dolan’s story had been that only my facility as a linguist, and my learned instructions to the whole Brazilian medical corps, had saved his life. I tried to admit the fact that I was as scared and confused as Dolan, but it sounded like false modesty. Anyway I expected I would need something to my credit when the executive officer put me under hack for what probably had happened to the track squad.
The blow wasn’t long in falling. The executive officer sent for me to report to his cabin. I was surprised to find him in a very affable mood. I had sense enough to keep quiet until I found out why. It seems the Brazilians, no doubt activated by concern for beautiful Rio, had kept my track squad from being turned loose on the city. Sturdy and Dovak and all the others had been politely but firmly returned to Nevada. What would happen on their next liberty was not my responsibility. Moreover, Dovak had won first place in the discus throw!
I was too dumbfounded to inquire how my distance runner discovered the existence of a discus, so the executive officer went on to congratulate me on my astute strategy. It seems, according to the story told by the track squad, that I had discovered that the Japanese had entered three ex-ricksha runners for the five thousand meter run, and I had promptly scratched Dovak’s name from that event and entered him as a discus thrower.
Dovak had never seen a discus before, but he had thrown plenty of plates in barroom riots, and he was quick to pick up an improved technique. He practically heaved that platter out of the arena.
I grinned modestly and accepted the kudos that I hadn’t earned. It would have been impossible to explain that Dovak’s entry in the discus throw had resulted solely from the confusion caused by my attempt at three-way translation. I just quietly resolved that the hazards of athletic coaching were too great for me, and as soon as I could, I left that field to more intrepid men than I.