Section A: Poems Identified with VMF-213

                   THE BUG OF FATE!

Yes, there’s only one way to explain it,

            I’ve decided it really was fate.

For who’d think that a bug brought together,

            A cadet and a girl who is great?

I was minding my own damn good business

            (It was after my down-check on “B”)

When I started to cough and to sniffle,

            And a gold-brick decided to be.

Spent two days in the Sick Bay Dispensary,

            And I thought I’d be out on the third:

But a pharyngite bug had attacked me-

            Left a cough that was really a bird!

“Hmmm – There’s only one way to defeat it,”

            Said the doc, “So I think we’ll send

This young lad to the kind tender mercies

            Of the guys up on ‘Hospital Bend’”.

Now I won’t say I’m sorry it happened

            For I wasn’t up there very long,

When a wise-cracking cute little female

            Came into my life like a song.

She was standing right there in the doorway,

            (It was easy to see she’s a nurse)

And she said, with a pleasant expression,

            “Cadet Brown! – Are you better or worse?”

Once recovered from child-like confusion,

            And then seeing the chance that I had,

I quick gathered my wits and half muttered,

            “I’ve seen plenty, and, son – that’s not bad!!”

So the days that I stayed were a pleasure,

            (it was hard, tho’, to get magazines)

For she often dropped by isolation

            Till I was up and once more on the scenes.

When recovered and back in the running,

            I soon gave the sweet girl a few calls;

And we spent many pleasant long hours

            At the beach, at shows, and the balls.

There’s a moral that goes with this story:-

            To be safe as a bachelor mug,

I advise – and it freely is given –

            Don’t go fooling around with a bug!!!

                                                Guadalcanal – April 11, 1943.

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                                                Brown