I could not be surprised by an unannounced visitor to my little kingdom. More than one person at a time was cacophony. ![]() When people were moving quickly up or down on the ladders the noise was a constant, ear piercing rattle. The ladders had handrails made from three quarter inch piping that made the whole apparatus roll and rock causing more metal to metal noise. There was no way a grown person could step on the ladders without that metal to metal clanging noise happening. The ladders were attached with pins and clevis fasteners on both ends, upper and lower. Anyone coming down the ladders, four in all, had to make noise on the metal steps that were part of the steep metal stair cases that we, in the Navy, all called ladders. Once or twice a day I would hear someone coming down the ladder from the decks above. All I was ordered to do was to give a mattress and a pillow to anyone who showed up at the window of the door at the cage I was in that was the mattress locker. I’ll tell you now that I never ever washed, cleaned, brushed, or otherwise did anything to sanitize the mattresses or the pillows that were put into my charge. Every new sailor reporting aboard who had a bunk needed to come to the mattress locker and be issued a mattress and a pillow. The mattress locker was down 4 decks, which was a major convenience to me as I discovered soon after assignment. Just storage spaces and some maintenance shops were below the second deck. Many of the berthing areas were no further down than the second deck. It was down about 4 decks from the main deck. The mattress locker was in the forward portion of the ship in the vicinity of all the berthing areas. My first duty assignment, and my last if I recall, on board Orion was to be the sole worker in the ship’s mattress locker. The MA I worked for is but a vague memory to me now but I remember that he was a big guy and fairly likable. The MA’s were given specific areas of the ship to police and to supervise the conducting of general conditions. Basically, the CMAA was a cop and his underlings, who were all senior rated petty officers, were called MA’s, or Master at Arms. X Division was the charge of the CMAA, or Chief Master at Arms. Typically, X Division lasted around two weeks or more depending on the needs of the ship. X Division gave one a chance to get acquainted with the routine of shipboard duty and find out how to get from your berthing area to the mess hall and other sorts of orientation. New sailors always ended up there if you were just graduated from bootcamp or school right after bootcamp. Upon reporting aboard the USS Orion, I was assigned immediately to the X Division.
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