Page:Jack Heaton, Wireless Operator (Collins, 1919).djvu/181

 that there would be big doings down there and, unlike the greasers, I did not let ma&ntilde;ana interfere with my patriotic obligations to Uncle Sam, but I went right over to a recruiting station on 23rd Street and enlisted in the Navy as an “electrician for wireless telegraphy.”

At that time a man who wanted to enlist in the Navy as a wireless operator had to have “a working knowledge of telephones, measuring instruments, call bells, etc., and he must be able to connect up same to batteries and make minor repairs to them.” Also “familiarity with ordinary telegraph instruments while an aid in acquiring a working knowledge of wireless telegraph instruments, is not an essential qualification for enlistment as a wireless telegraph operator.”

This is what the enlistment circular I was given to read said but, of course, it was meant for men who knew a little about electricity and nothing about wireless telegraphy to start with. But here I was a full fledged operator, who had worked with Marconi and had helped to install the equipment in the Arlington station!

The circular went on to say that “applicants would be enlisted as electricians, third class, at