Steve's Life...continued

     Steve is on a boat heading towards South Korea. It's late 1950 and the boat is carrying supplies to aid the war effort in the Korean War.

    The conditions on the boat were terrible.
    "The food we  ate was garbage," Steve recalls. "The seas of the Pacific  were rough and dangerous. Remember this was winter and the winds and the seas were treacherous."
     Steve remembers many times when the shp nearly sank. Then were the skippers who were harsh and tyrannical. But they often had to confront tough crew members, some of whom like Steve were communists and others who were anarchists.
     Steve can't recall how many times he crossed the Pacific during the Korean War."It must have been four or five times."
     Steve ended up ro a tiime in England where he worked in a movie studio. He was shipwrecked off the Horn of Africa, carrying a dangerous hernia in his groin. "I needed an operation, but the British officers in Somalia wouldn't give me the time of day. But the Italians were great. They operated on me and saved my life."
    Steve sailed to Austrlia meeting communists on the way. But in what he calls 'Aussie Land" former comrades he knew, turned their back on him. "They'd become bourgeios," Steve says, "and wanted nothing to do with me."
    By 1962, Steve's journeys were over. He sailed into Vancouver's harbour on another small boat and went back to work in his native land. The anti-communist hysteria had died down a bit. It had broken the communist party to some extent. So it was no longer needed - for now. But the Cold War still raged on.
     But first Steve needed money for he was broke. So he went to a local welfare office. "But it was terrible there," he says." It was the most humiliating experience I was ever put through. I never went to the welfare office again."
    "I'd rather die than go on welfare." And he never did go on welfare again.