Here is a Navy letter that mentions my playing chess—one of many such; see the

passage in bold.

Aug. 23, 1945

16ØØ

Good afternoon everyone!

   Besides drill nothing much happened today. We had knot tying and this afternoon we had “Regimental Work Detail.” I was lucky to get the job of picking up paper (Ground Police) in a certain area which took just about 15 minutes. Tough work!

   I also played an exceedingly interesting game of chess (I lost it too – the first one I lost in quite a while) that took about three hours.

   Though there’s no official statement as yet, it is almost positive that unless we sign up for 4 years (which I don’t want to do!) R.T is out. That means General Sea Duty – which I don’t mind at all. Most of us think we’ll get out earlier – in any case – whether they did close R.T. or not, and no one is sad about it.

   Anyway – there was no announcement and all of this is scuttlebutt.

   Since nothing but scuttlebutt can be dug up, with this page –

                                    Au revoir

                                                      Rudy

   Chess is a recurring theme in these letters. I had a pocket set, “decorated” with my name in large letters, produced with the same stamp I used for more standard Navy gear. Since my colleagues in boot camp were all RT and hence almost certainly high school graduates, I had more than one chess partner to play with. When I reached China I badly wanted to buy one of those “realistic” carved chess sets that looked as if the pieces were made of ivory—though they were surely just made of bone. While those sets were not cheap, they were not horribly expensive. However, I never had enough money to buy one because, as you will see in later letters, “my” LST did not have a paymaster and we were never in port long enough to get to the head of the line to be paid. We had to make do with the few bucks they doled out now and then.

   My interest in chess persisted for quite some years. While I was teaching at San Francisco State College (1959-1968) I played quite regularly with Daniel Gerould, a colleague who had founded the Department of Comparative Literature. Indeed, I made a quite handsome chess table for our games which, a bit worn, is standing at right angles to the desk I am now using. We both left San Francisco at the same time, Dan for the Graduate Center of the City University of New York where he became a distinguished professor of theater arts.

   That was almost half a century ago and I have played very little chess since then. (The last time was a few years ago when I taught the game to my teenaged grandson. Max learned the game, but hasn’t become a player.) In retrospect I see why my playing petered out the way it did. I had enjoyed playing in the sense that I found it an agreeable way to spend a couple of hours. But while my playing wasn’t hopeless, it never really improved; I did not take the game seriously enough to read about it, not to mention studying important games so as to move up into the next category.

   I did once find out about that “higher” level when a college friend came to our house, then in New York City, before we were all to head for dinner and for the ballet (Those were the glorious Balanchine years.) Fannia, home from work, wanted to take a shower and change before heading out, so I asked Doug Davis (now an employee of IBM) to play a game of chess while we were waiting. Doug was very reluctant to play, but finally yielded to my entreaties. I was mate in ten minutes, not knowing what had hit me.    

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To get the ebook, A Sailor Writes Home from His Time in the U.S. Navy: Letters of 1945-1946, Aftermath of World War II, go to http://www.amazon.com/Rudolph-H.-Weingartner/e/B001H6NSB4 and click on the book.