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Poet's Corner

Hazing in the Med, 1937
 

By: Thomas C. Blow
USS Reid (DD-369)
 

 

Grandpa, he asked, what is hazing?
Does the Navy really do that?
That's what we do to a new Man
I replied to him as we sat.

 

I'll tell ye what happened to me
In our shakedown cruise on the Reid.
It was my very first sea duty
An I was really raw indeed.

 

I happened to be port lookout
On the day we approached the Med
And the Navigator told me
Gibraltar's light was dead ahead.

 

He said you will never miss it,

The Prudential Insurance Light.

You've seen it in the magazines;

Let me know when it comes in sight.

 

I then bent every effort

To be the first lookout to see

And adjusted my long glass lens

To the very sharpest degree.

 

When Gibraltar was well astern,

It was then that I knew, my lad,

From those laughs in the pilot house

That I had been royally had.


    

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