EVERY JANUARY FIRST

It’s a tradition that’s unknown to almost all except those who have served in the U.S. Navy, and has left a paper trail of eyewitness accounts and reflections from major conflicts in U.S. history. And up until now, it’s been hidden away. No one knows how the tradition of writing a poem into a deck log or squadron log on Jan. 1 of each year, on the watch from 1 a.m. to 4 a.m., began, but it’s left a lifetime and a half of information about our country sitting in the military archives. So I set out to resurrect these pages of verse from their dusty book jackets, and piece together the stories that they tell of the people and places of the U.S. Navy through time.