Book excerpt: The book, in the main, grew out of my experience as one of the first of two African American women officers in the Navy. Before describing my application, acceptance, training, assignments and friendships in the service, I outline my life up to that cruicial point. Birth and early childhood were in Pennsylvania and New York. Following my discharge from the service, I relate adventures, largely growing out of that exposure. The last third of my story includes the happy experience of my second marriage, now in its forty-third year in stark contrast to the first, which endured here and in Paris, France for less than two months. The above was written in 1996. She died in 1998.