After enthusiastically joining the Navy with the hope of becoming an electrician, Carl Clark was told that black sailors could only be mess attendants, those sailors who served and cleaned up after the white officers. Threatened with a court-martial and possible prison time if he refused, Clark had no choice but to comply. Thus began a twenty-two-year career, in which he saw much of the world, earned promotions and commendations, and was awarded a Purple Heart for his courage on the USS Aaron Ward, the World War II destroyer. In this memoir, Clark writes not only of his experiences growing up poor during the lean Depression years, but also of his struggles as an African American sailor during a time of extreme racial segregation in the armed forces, and of his fellow black sailors, given the most hazardous duties aboard ship, who died heroically for a country that treated them so unfairly.