Morsum Magnificat Article

We've been working on this thing for many months now. We know it personally. Tom and I work very well together. Sometimes there's lots of chatter and sometimes there's silence as we go about our work. And sometimes something else happens.

Sometimes one of us stops and just stares at the panel, at the meters and the tune-up chart composed by some long gone radioman. And when one of us does that the other knows that pictures are beginning to form in the his partner's mind. Pictures of the guys who must have sat in front of this very panel over the years, sweating or freezing as the latitude demanded, wearing the 'phones well forward like a real radioman does, copying the weather on a clattering mill, straining to hear any weak signal that might pipe up during the silent period, writing NIL in the log except for that one time when a real SOS caused him to suddenly sit up straight in his seat in disbelief.

The other one knows that these pictures are forming with dramatic reality. These men and the occasional woman were heroes but didn't know it. For every surley heavy drinker there were five who took pride in their work but said little about it. For every lazy shirker there were ten who did what was required of them and more without complaint. All of them knew it might eventually come to them to stay at the key as the water rose and the ship's plant failed and the only light was the 12V bulb over the emergency transmitter. None of them, shirker and drunkard included, would leave that key until ordered. And even then they'd lock it down before taking to boats - not forgetting to drag along the hand cranked lifeboat transmitter - to give the rescue ships a 500kc. signal to DF on.

"Hey, bud, you gonna' stare at that thing all day or gonna' finish polishing that commutator?"

"Huh?" "I said, are you gonna'..."

"Yeah, yeah, I heard you... So did you hear the one about that op on the run to Java back in '49? The guys said he had a fist that sounded like he wuz beating two spoons together. So anyway..."

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