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Fed up with Washington bureaucracy after eight months, and pining for a more patriotic part, Nixon joined the Navy, asked for sea duty, and was promptly assigned to Ottumwa, Iowa. There he learned nothing about the sea but a good deal about the Midwest. Eventually Nixon wound up as an operations officer with SCAT (South Pacific Combat Air Transport Command), which had the difficult and dangerous task of hauling cargo to the combat zones. He spent 15 months in the South Pacific, once, on Bougainville, was under bombardment for 28 out of 30 nights. Says he: "I got used to it. The only things that really bothered me were lack of sleep and the centipedes."
Back in the U.S., he worked for the Navy as a lawyer, terminating war contracts. During one tour of duty in New York, he watched Dwight Eisenhower's triumphal victory parade, without an inkling that he, an obscure lieutenant commander in the U.S. Navy, would a few years later be campaigning at the general's side.
Political Debut. In November 1945, a Republican fact-finding committee in California's 12th Congressional District was looking for a candidate, preferably a serviceman, to run against popular Democrat Jerry Voorhis (who had held the seat for ten years). A family friend of the Nixons saw the group's ad in a paper, called Dick, then in Baltimore, and asked him whether he was a Republican. Nixon replied that he had voted for Tom Dewey in 1944. In that case, said the friend, Nixon ought to come home and try for the job. Recalls Nixon: "Voorhis looked impossible to beat. He was intelligent, experienced, came from a well-known family. Why did I take it? I'm a pessimist, but if I figure I've got a chance, I'll fight for it."
Dick and Pat fought hard. Short of cash, they lived in a bare little house in Whittier and were beset by a smelly, cannibalistic brood of minks kept by the people next door (says Nixon: "I've never had any use for minks since then, the Truman variety or any other kind"). Against the advice of professional politicians, Nixon took on his opponent in five public debates before audiences largely favorable to Voorhis. Nixon argued against the evil deeds of the New Deal as effectively as he had urged the good works of the praying mantis and the syrphid fly. He beat Voorhis by 15,592 votes.
In Washington, Nixon banded together with a few other freshmen Congressmen to exchange information on what was going on in their various committees and in Congress as a whole. They soon had 15 members, christened themselves "The Chowder and Marching Club," and met informally (there was usually a bottle of whisky but no chowder on the table; Nixon himself rarely takes a drink). By being well informed and determined, the group became a force in the House. Says one charter member: "Fifteen guys can do a lot with members who know little about a given bill."