mileage the longest regular run of the war. Not only would fresh water be rationed even more severely, but chow would be pretty awful. The storage compartments and the food freezers just weren't big enough to handle supplies for beyond a certain number of days. But the main thing was the fresh water. Showers were turned off completely. To get a bath, you drew a half-pail of water and did the best you could. Or you could take a salt-water shower and use your allowance of fresh water to rinse off some of the brine. Considering how much worse off a lot of other fellows were during the war, ours was a pretty small gripe. But all the same, it seemed grim at the time.

So when a hard rain squall hit us two days later, everybody who was off-duty saw a chance to get a fresh-water shower, about as fresh a fresh-water shower as we were ever going to get. Right out of the clouds. We stripped off our dungarees (we hadn't been able to wash them either) and soaped down on the fantail, naked in the downpour, cavorting like sparrows in a puddle, letting the cold tropical rain rinse off the soap suds and with them the sweaty smell which had been getting a little intense since the fresh water in the head was turned off. We yelled and flicked soap and felt wonderful again as the rain seeped through our hair, dripped off our noses and our chins, and cascaded down our bodies.

Then I saw him watching me. He wasn't undressed, he was standing out of the rain under a little overhang that led from the fantail. And he was watching

me.

In the sack after chow that evening, I was trying to finish up a crossword puzzle by way of killing time and hoping to get sleepy enough to doze a couple of hours before I was called at midnight to go on watch. I glanced up. He was standing by my bunk.

"Hi", I said.

He grinned. "You had a good time in the rain today."

"Sure did", I replied. "Why weren't you out there?"

The grin melted and his eyes fell. He looked puzzled. "I don't know", he said. It was obvious that he did not. "I guess I just couldn't undress outdoors like that. In the head it isn't so bad, but outside-It don't seem to bother you. But He stopped. Quite suddenly he looked up. "You looked good out there." And he was gone.

From that time on, he began to stop by my bunk pretty regularly. It was obvious he wanted to talk, but was a little shy about it. I gave him as much encouragement as I could by making a few casual remarks of one kind or another, and he responded with that quick grin which brightened his whole face like a searchlight. Apparently he just liked to be near me. It was as if he had found a buddy. And we talked.

About books. About home. I learned a lot about him. I learned that he had been a leader in the small rural high school from which he had graduated just before he was inducted. He had never been away from home before. I learned that his family had been extremely puritan in outlook. And he was completely ignorant regarding sex. That he had not been around was obvious from his whole deportment. He appeared too gentle, much too shy, to have knocked about much. Even so, his reserve when it came to matters of sex was, I felt, abnormally puritan. Just as he avoided seeing nakedness in the shower, he seemed to avoid any consciousness of sex. For him, it apparently did not exist. The result was a most astonishing quality of innocence.

In time, I found that the rest of the crew also sensed that he was different.

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