in time of war. Naturally, it is a story which only a medical officer of the Navy can tell.
About forty-five years ago two brothers, born in a small town in Pennsylvania, set out from home to seek their fortunes on the seas. One, Joseph Wallace Oman, had an appointment to Annapolis. The other, myself, took the longer road, which led through the University of Pennsylvania's Medical School. Six months after graduation I was commissioned assistant surgeon in the United States Navy. That was in February 1902. A month later I had my orders to accompany a detachment of Marines to an Asiatic station. My brother was then serving as ensign aboard the U.S.S. Helena. Back in Pennsylvania the neighbors said, "So those two Oman boys have gone to sea," as though that marked us as a bad lot. For the intervening forty years both of us followed the sea, Wallace in the Line and I in the Medical Corps, passing through the various grades of the service until both of us attained the rank of rear admiral.
My brother has gone now, and there is only one seafaring Oman left. But the love of the sea, of the ships, and the men who sail it, which actuated both of us as boys and as men, is not diminished. It is concentrated now in me and is the primary cause of this book.
