Although at first many men could not dream of eating, forcing something down was advised to ward off the worst seasickness, and even the most prone to illness had to eat something in the next three weeks. One by one, the men gathered for breakfast the first morning, only to find that the John Pope was singularly ill equipped to feed so many people at one time. For those unlucky enough to find themselves stranded at the end, waiting in line to get fed in the galley could take hours, leaving them little time to eat before joining the line once again for lunch. Once the soldiers finally reached the front of the line, they found a poor bill of fare: sickly green powdered eggs, unidentifiable hunks of meat, and stale bread. Shocked that his long wait had resulted only in a nearly inedible meal, Kirby Spain, a country boy from a farm in Arkansas, lamented to a nearby friend that “this is the sorriest damn food I have ever eaten in my life. Our hogs on the farm have a higher quality of slop to eat." Having procured their delicacies, the men had to stand at metal tables to eat; the risk posed by the ever-pitching deck was too great to allow for chairs. Regardless of precautions, though, at nearly every meal food flew in all directions, and drinks constantly sloshed over as the ship rolled with the swells. As in the troop bays, there were 55-gallon drums located at strategic areas throughout the galley for those who could not avoid illness. Often, though, nausea would set in too quickly, resulting in a soldier puking directly into his lunch, which usually had the effect of setting off a chain reaction of sympathy barfs at the unfortunate's table.
Even with all the illness, it was sheer boredom that quickly became enemy number one aboard the John Pope. By the end of the first day of the journey, Lieutenant Lynn Hunt became quite concerned that there was not enough to do on board to keep his men occupied and out of trouble. Sure there was waiting in line, the occasional bad movie, and a ship's library - but the men had far too much time on their hands. Hunt and the other officers tried to intervene by scheduling physical training every day, but workouts on a rolling ship were fraught with danger. If the deck heaved at the wrong moment, a jumping jack might loft a man up to 7 feet in the air, leaving him to crash down onto the deck.
World History
