Last month, helping clean out my parents' attic, I discovered the letters that my Uncle Walter wrote my Dad when Walt was in the Marines back in World War II. I thought you might enjoy reading them.

November 2, 1943

Brother Bud,

After a month in Pearl Harbor, the USS Iowa set sail across the wide Pacific. We were at sea for seven weeks without the sight of land, or any clue where we were heading.

But 50 days out of Hawaii the USS Iowa crossed the Equator. This day long ritual gave me some excitement I never imagined in all my eighteen years back in Missoula Montana.

The initiation ceremony demonstrates that the crew has proper respect for the Most Venerable King Neptune. It safeguards the ship from any jinx, and gives us rookies opportunity to prove that we can take whatever shit the tough, old buzzards can dish out.

The fun began the night before the Iowa crossed the line. Shellbacks in Keystone Cops costumes rounded up all us scurvy pollywogs no matter what our age or rank.

The constables herded us below decks where barbers shaved our heads into god awful patchwork quilt designs and painted dark green P's onto the shaven portions of our skulls.

The constables stripped us to our boxer shorts, then hung us by our ankles from big meat hooks bolted to the ceiling. And so we spent the night. Any call of nature was a personal problem. A pollywog could either hold his piss or take a leak inside his briefs. (Remember, Brother Bud, that we wuz dangling upside down.)

Next morning constables herded us topside for a breakfast of cereal, orange juice, ground beef, raw eggs, cayenne pepper, and tabasco sauce--all mushed together in a trough. We had to slurp this mess up with our tongues because our hands were cuffed behind our backs. As we knelt down to lap the stinking gruel, the constables prodded our upturned butts with hot shots.

After breakfast we were washed down with power hoses and forced to swab the decks--with tooth brushes jammed in between our lips! Our upturned butts provided easy targets for hot shots, rubber hoses, broom handles, plus ice cubes the Shellbacks dumped in our briefs.

At noon a fanfare announced that the Venerable King Neptune and his Imperial Court had come aboard the Iowa. The oldest Shellbacks, dressed in Mardi Gras costumes, were given thrones of honor on the top deck. King Neptune's Court was quite a sight, including lots of big fat, hairy sailors dressed as Queen Amphitrine and her Lady Mermaids.

One by one us pollywogs were hauled before His Royal Majesty to be judged for our crimes and hear King Neptune's regal sentence. First to go were any high ranking officers and Annapolis graduates who never crossed the line before--they got the worst treatment of all.

By the time the Royal Bailiffs called Walt's name, the party was going full blast. The constables strapped me into a heavy wooden witness chair, where I was cross examined by the Royal Prosecutor.

The Prosecutor charged Young Walt with never having crossed the line before (a criminal offense). Every time that I tried to speak in my behalf, the witness chair gave me a hot shot in my butt. When I let out a yelp, the Royal Bailiff slammed a custard pie into my puss. To defuse the concealed weapon inside my briefs, the Bailiff fired cold seltzer at my crotch (and did that sting my baby blues!).

King Neptune pronounced his sentence--"Guilty as charged! Take him away for punishment!"

The constables forced me down on my knees. Stuffed raw eggs down my briefs. Rammed a cucumber up my asshole. My hands still cuffed behind my back, the constables forced me to crawl into a burlap tunnel the whole length of the main deck.

The tunnel ran along an incline, forcing me to wriggle uphill. The tunnel narrowed so I had to slither on my belly--while machine oil oozed along the burlap making me slide back as I struggled to crawl forward.

And struggle forward I did earnestly endeavor. Shellbacks formed a gauntlet outside the tunnel. Armed with paddles, rubber hoses, and broom handles, they slammed my butt every time I slipped backward. Of course the burlap chaffed my skin, rubbing against my crotch in none too pleasant ways. Making my passage even worse, high pressure hoses fired into the tunnel every ten feet or so. I had to force myself thru the sharp blasts of stinging cold water, or else my tender ass would suffer a stiff walloping from my tormentors standing guard along my road to glory.

My skin scraped raw and bleeding, my butt on fire with pain, (but my dick shooting a stiff rod!), I heaved my way thru one more blast of freezing cold water. Suddenly all my underpinnings fell away and down I tumbled thru the air and somersaulted plop into a pool of filthy water.

Out of the frying pan into the fire. The pool was the domain of Royal Bears, the biggest, meanest Shellbacks on the Iowa.

The Bears dangled me upside down and made me dunk for raw eggs in the garbage filled bilge water. I had to retrieve the eggs in my mouth without breaking the shell. Of course as soon as I bobbed up with one, the Beastly Bears slapped on my jaw and the egg shattered in my mouth! And then the big brutes dunked me down to fetch another egg

Finally I escaped the Bears by slithering up a long hemp rope that dangled down into the pool. Of course the Bears helped me along with lots of hot shots to my ass. They also ripped my boxers off so that I scrambled up the rope bare assed naked for all the crew to see and razz. By the way, Bud, the Shellbacks filmed and photographed the entire ceremony. Every crew member got a photo album of the day's events.

So now I'm climbing bare assed naked up a twenty four foot coarse hemp rope, chaffing between my thighs and rubbing my already tender crotch. When at long last I reached the upper deck, the Royal Medics pounced on me.

My physical examination was the most embarrassing, humiliating ordeal of the whole initiation. The Royal Medics strapped me to an examining table bare assed naked (with a roaring boner!), Spot lights illuminated me up for all the crew to see. And razz young Walt, with crude, rude comments about his predicament.

Meanwhile, the Royal Medics took my temperature by shoving a fat turkey baster way into my asshole. A lotta laffs the crew got outta that stunt!

The Medics sprayed shaving cream in my ears, squirted lemonade into my eyes (stings like hell, Bud!), stuffed garlic cloves into my nostrils so I sneezed my brains out. Then the medics tested my reflexes, pounding my knees with heavy wooden mallets, jabbing my feet with pins, and focusing the sun's rays on my nipples with a magnifying glass (burns like the very devil, Brother Bud!).

The Shellbacks prescribed the worst tortures they could think up for my cure. First off I had to take my medicine--enormous pills made up of flour dough, garlic, cayenne pepper, salt, and day old bacon grease (Ecch!) washed down with concoctions of quinine, atabrine, tabasco sauce, cod liver oil, and vinegar. (Uggh!)

Next the Medics discovered lice infecting young Walt's pelt. To kill the lice eggs they rubbed quick drying cement glue in my furry armpits. Using a straight razor (but no shaving cream), the Medics sheared all the hair off my chest. When I thought the Shellbacks had completed my torture, the Medics shaved my pubic bush and nuts and asshole. All this under the spotlights with the Shellbacks hooting, hollering, and giving Walt the razzing of his young life!

After the shave the Royal Medics sprayed Walt's tender private parts with stinging witch hazel (Yaaaaaaaaaaaaa!), giving the Shellbacks one more chance to roar their heads off. Then the Medics painted concentric circles round my tits and ass and belly button with mercurochrome, and decorated my cock just like Johnson's barber pole (mercurochrome again). Walt was the Shellback's idea of a living canvas, but it took days to scour the artwork off.

Now at last came the grand finale. The Shellbacks strapped me in a bosun's chair and hoisted me high up above the decks. The Shellback's swung the bosun's chair in a wide arc around the ship, dunking me seven times under the ocean (for each of the seven seas). Frogmen with hot shots lurked in the waters to make sure Walt swallowed his share of Neptune's Royal Seawater. (Phew!)

As I was swung over the ship the seventh time, the Shellbacks baptized me with maple syrup and dunked me in a tub of feathers! So now Walt was transformed into a seagull!

And that, believe it or not, was the end of my ordeal. The Shellbacks forbade the wogs to wash up or get dressed, but our rite of passage was completed. Now we could stand out on the foredeck, completely nude, covered with feathers, watching more scurvy wogs undergoing their torments.

At night, after the last miserable wogs had been initiated, the Shellbacks transformed the top deck into a sock hop. The mess crew brought up tables piled with grub. And we could eat off plates with knives and forks! The PA system played Glen Miller and the Dorsey brothers bands. Still bare assed, us former wogs danced to the jitterbug, the lindy, and the Big Apple till after midnight.

At first I felt real shy, but I was now a Shellback and the older guys had stopped razzing the rookies. I still had a boner (lots of guys did!), but now it's party time.

When I return to Missoula, Montana I'll tell little brother all the details!

Walter Wolf, USMC

Honorable Shellback