After going through basic training at the U.S Naval Training at San Diego, California, I was assigned to the Electrician Mates School in Gulfport, Mississippi. It was a long five day trip across the southern states, in the middle of summer. We were on a troop train without air conditioning, that had to pull over on a siding every time a train with any priority would come through.
Electrical school was tough, as it was sixteen weeks of eight hour days of classes and two hours of home work every night. The competition for grades was fierce, as most of the class were young fellows just out of high school or college, and I had been out of school for years. We did get as far as New Orleans several times, but there wasn't' much else to do at that time.
After we graduated, one of my buddies, Lyal Burt, and myself were assigned to the U.S.S. Kearny, a destroyer, that we were to join in New York city. We were pleased with this assignment as we were the only ones in the class going to the Atlantic, the rest were going into amphibious duty in the Pacific, and that was not very good duty at that time.
We were soon to learn that the Navy was not as regulated as we thought. We spent nine days at Pier 92, which was the Naval receiving station for New York, and then another eight days at Norfork Virginia before our ship finally came in.
It was on February 1 1945 that we boarded the Kearny late in the evening, and were told by the officer of the day that there where no empty bunks on board, and we would have to find some place to sleep on our own, and to report to the electric shop the next morning. We did finally find a place where a pile of sea bags were stored and there we spent the night.
The next morning we reported for roll call with the electrical gang, and were told by the Electrician 1/C that they had a full crew and didn't know why they sent us. He took pity on us though,and told us he had a couple of young fellows in the crew that weren't doing too good and if we could talk them in to trading places with us he would be glad to have us. Burt and I shamelessly talked them into swapping, telling them what great shores leaves they giving on the base. We got their bunks and lockers and had a place to sleep that night. We later had reason to believe that it probably hadn't been that hard to convince them to swap. when we found out that a 300 foot long top heavy destroyer wasn't greatest way to cross the Atlantic in the cold stormy winter weather. We didn't know about about the times when the tilt gauge in the engine room would go past the point of no return, or when it would seem like we had run into a brick wall, but at last we were in the real Navy.
Gene Davis

The last time I visited the 432 was in Norfolk OpnBase, just after one of the scraps with the British sailors from the ships undergoing repairs across the river in the Summer l94l and the 'efforts' to locate American whitehats who had been involved.
When I came aboard, and saw my brother's black eye and asked him about it, he was pretty much abrupt and closed mouth about the source but I recalled someone on board told me the shiner came from a wave of 4 or 5 Brits swarming him under in a second floor bar (name forgotten), and that Capt Danis and other skippers were supposed to check the tin-can crews for signs of combat.
Also, that Capt Danis was very proud to find that None of his crew showed any such "honors-of-combat".
Sidney Bobe