Two weeks out of high school, I raised my right hand and took the Oath of Enlistment. Lacking the test scores that would have promised me a school after boot camp, I found myself assigned to the CGC Bramble (a sister ship to the Sundew) as a common seaman apprentice. This was not the Coast Guard I had foreseen myself a part of, with day after day spent performing the routine ship's maintenance of either painting or chipping paint rather than chasing saboteurs about New York Harbor or signaling the first wave of landing craft on the assault of Iwo Jima. The feeling of purpose and glamour evaporated within days of reporting aboard, and I vowed to do whatever was necessary to remove myself from my present boredom and feeling of insignificance.

Back then, the rate of signalman had been done away with and combined with the rate of quartermaster. The guy with the semaphore flags and blinker light still existed but was now primarily tasked to an expert helmsman, assistant to the navigator and keeper of the ship's log, in addition to visual signaler. There existed no school for this rate, which required an apprenticeship (known as striking for a rate), along with a self-study correspondence course and fleetwide examination for advancement.

The initial training consisted of hours upon hours of endless steering (there were no autopilots on CG cutters then) in order to obtain a sixth sense for feeling the pulse of a ship. With experience and ability, the trainee advanced to close maneuvering such as docking, getting underway or man-overboard recovery. Drills were conducted, with the apprentice steering blindly from after-steering, within the bowels of the ship, by usage of a gyro repeater and a "trick wheel," in the event of a broken linkage to the bridge. When proficient, a complete steering failure would be simulated, where a tiller would be lifted into position upon the rudderpost manually and connected to either bulkhead by chain falls. The quartermaster directing an endless sequence of "jacking," by a small navy of seamen whose wrath he soon earned.

Graduation finally came - entrusted at the helm while breaking a freighter out of the ice. Commanding officers of such cutters tended to have a very close relationship with their bridge crew, as they held his next assignment in their hands. Breaking a track as close as 40 to 50 feet off a ship's beam, her entire length while at full power, pretty much gave the quartermaster a free hand in maneuvering. To misjudge a pressure ridge of ice with such momentum and proximity could easily result in collision from a glancing blow created from a sudden increase in thickness before any correction or intervention could occur.

During one such operation at Buffalo Harbor, breaking out several freighters besieged in the ice, I can still recall the final directions from the executive officer, who, after having explained the basic plan of approach to me, stated, "Whatever you do, don't embarrass us and hit somebody!"