This book is a memoir of my service in the United States Navy during World War II. To refresh my memory, I had three sources of information. First of all, I secured a copy of the ship's log for each of the ships on which I served for the time I was aboard, the USS Pyro and the USS Las Vegas Victory. On my second ship the preparation of the ship's log was part of my duty as the Navigator. Secondly, Commander William F. Lally, the captain of my second ship, at the end of the war had submitted to the Department of the Navy a brief history of the ship. The Department of the Navy sent me a copy of this history. And lastly, I referred to the letters I had written home during the war. My mother had kept all of them intact. Due to censoring we were not allowed to write about where we were or what we were doing, but several of the narratives come from those letters. Harold J. Cook