Photo taken just before we got underway for Korea. Watch out for small sanpans and others just trying to get us. Mines all around and we are loaded with ammo. One story about us almost hitting a mine. Looked down and saw this mine just two feet from my ship, I was standing on the aft gunwale just behind the superstructure. Notified the bridge and a damage control was ordered to fire his M1 to explode it. Nothing doing so called the 50 cal machine gun crew. They fired and fired as we circled closer and closer to the mine. Soon the barrel was below the gunwale and when they fired it blew them up and scattered them over the deck. I saw one laughing as he was carried to sick bay. Lt English. Ok, then we had to summon a destroyer who stalked the mine and with one shot from her 3 inch blew it up and away they went. Close call, as we would have exploded for three or four days if we had hit it. Just one true story.
