Then there was that time, coming back from the South China Sea on USS Galland MSO 489 that we stopped at Guam to try to repair our ever balky pitch system that changes the angles of the ship's propeller blades for different degrees of speed and power. Our captain and his boss, who for wartime purposes was actually called the Commodore (a bootstrap warrant officer as compared to our Annapolis graduate captain) debated and argued endlessly by radio about this defective pitch system. So there we were on Guam seemingly forever. The irked officers on our ship wouldn't travel any of the crew to town, so there we sat with the Navy base gym and running track as our only outlet. It was like lost in time. I never lived on Guam, but I was there forever. Luckily, this was a decade before Guam got infested with large green snakes (really) that showed up in houses, yards, and everywhere, apparently brought by shipping traffic, non-venomous but nasty. I'm glad I missed that aspect of life on Guam. But it was a long, long stay. Somewhere on the high seas, on the way back to Long Beach, I decided I might survive the war, and wondered what that meant -- pleased and grateful but much at sea, literally. When we got back to Long Beach, we eventually went into dry dock at Todd's Ship Yard where they worked on the pitch system some more. I left the ship before I found out if the pitch ever worked.