_Along Battleship Row, beneath a pall of smoke from the burning_
Arizona (_BB-39_) _lies_ Maryland (_BB-46_), _her 5-inch/25
antiaircraft battery bristling._ Oklahoma (_BB-37_) _lies “turned
turtle,” capsized, at right. This view shows the distance “Okie”
survivors swam to the inboard battleship, where they manned
antiaircraft batteries and rescued their shipmates._]
Sergeant Woodrow A. Polk, a bomb fragment in his left hip, sprained
his right ankle in abandoning ship, while someone clambered into
a launch over Sergeant Leo G. Wears and nearly drowned him in the
process. Gunnery Sergeant Norman L. Currier stepped from _Oklahoma_’s
red hull to a boat, dry-shod. Wears--as Hailey and Curran--soon found
a short-handed antiaircraft gun on _Maryland_’s boat deck and helped
pass ammunition. Private First Class Arthur J. Bruktenis, whose column
in the December 1941 issue of _The Leatherneck_ would be the last to
chronicle the peacetime activities of _Oklahoma_’s Marines, dislocated
his left shoulder in the abandonment, but survived.
[Illustration: