Creating a Ripple

This is the nature of a command performance. We wept salty tears in the last issue--any further demonstration of sentiment would be womanish and unsuitable in an officer and a gentleman (over though only by act of Congress!!) Shortly after this goes to press, all sixty-four of us will be on route to our duty stations and looking ahead, rather than backward. Our fellow-graduates across the river will be in similar situations. But the Supply Corps continues, and the Communication School plug on, and the QMC works modestly in mufti, so we'll write a post-valedictory piece since our valedictory appeared in the last issue for these who toil on towards that goal which is already ours.

As if the excitement of a graduation weren't enough to set even a WAVE all agog with excitement, the NSCS has tossed in as the piece de resistance a final examination on the very last morning of School. so while we sit at our desks surrounded by half-filled cruise boxes with our heads in a whirl of personal travel problems and considerations of to ship or not to ship, we try and try to concentrate on how to solve a mess treasure's messes, and how to set up housekeeping for Lulubelle Noble and her Lieutenant Commander. Privately, we're already feeling a little apologetic towards our instructors to whom will fall the thankless job of correcting those final masterpieces of ours. We did so want to leave a good impression, and then look what happens! Even if nobody but BuPers ever gets a look-in in what we wrote about civilian payrolls and stock ledger cards, we'll never fell quite easy about the whole thing.

Cruise-boxes are really a problem. We don't know about you, but we can't find anything to put into them. We've bought enough tooth-past and cigarettes and soap to last a year. We've dumped our and our roommate-s galoshes in as well; we even contemplate putting in an empty suitcase--but we may still have to find a medium-size person who doesn't mind being a little uncomfortable while en route!

A word tote worthies at Harvard: we leave you now for parts more or less unknown, but our places will be taken soon by others, this time one hundred and fifty strong. If they get half the cordial welcome we got we're sure they will leave Cambridge with as happy an impression as we have now. In our two and a half months here many things have happened to all of us personally, as well as to us as a group. We've tried to say our good-byes to most of our friends, but for those we've missed, take this good-bye until our paths cross again. And save a spot in your lives for the WAVES who come after.