The recruits sat way down in the high, dark leather bus seats. They didn't talk much; just stared at the flowing green field, the browsing herds and the old New England houses as the bus hurtled down the highway from Providence toward Newport Naval Training Station, writes Meyer Berger in the New York "Times" They were glum; merely under self. and maybe a bit choked up with leaving home. They edged closer to the windows as the bus slowed in the narrow Newport streets. Young eyes looked beyond the station gates, excitedly shifting as they tried to take in everything at Once—ihe rich fields, rolling voluptuously toward blue horizon; buildings blinding whites in se sun; white roads breaking from stretches of cool dapple shade to dar? up verdant slopes.
The recruits stepped out of vacuum-wrapped silence into a fresh green world sweet with sound. IS had been stuffy in the bus and they had been too deeply sunk in thought to remember to open windows. Out here the breeze off Narragansett Bay was cool on their hot young faces and sweat-beaded foreheads. Gulls idly coasted down blue emptiness: colours and pennants slapped contentedly in the clean air.
The dark Italian boy brushed a black forelock from his bright eyes. He said. "Its like painted scenery." The red-haired Brooklyn kid couldn't take his eyes from it. "It's kay." he murmured.
In this batch were foui'een, up from the recruiting station in lower Manhattan. They averaged round nineteen yets of age. t were high-school graduates. tve had One year of college. The others had ei"mentary school training and some trade. Man for man they Were better potential sailors than the old salt-water types; cleaner and brighter. They were shipping for four years with the Naval Reserve active duty only so long as there is an emergency—as against the six-year regular Navy enlistment. though plenty are still signing for that. The majority were eager for specialist rating and were set on passing the examination for Navy trade and clerical schools. They had passed superficial physical and mental tests at the recruiting depot and were already sworn 'Even these superficial tests incidentally, are fairly stiff. More than 60 per cent. of all applicants fail. Bad eyes and bad teeth rule out the majority. A man must read letters' only three-sixteenths of an inch high at a distance of nat less than fifteen feet. They first try them ous at twenty feet. All applicants are fingerprinted and if the FBI and the police won't give them a clean bill the Navy won't have them.
The Navy is recruiting these volunteers at the rate of round 8000 a month io man the growing fleet. The New York station sends two bashes a work, sometimes by night boat to Providence with staterooms and meals paid for. sometimes by train. with berth and meals paid. They spend <ight weeks at the training station as against the sixteen weeks required in normal times. Newport is only one of four training stations in ths United States. Men recuited in other parts of the country may be shipped Great Lakes station in Illinois, to San Diego station in California or to Norfolk Training station in Virginia.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.