After he graduated high school in 1935, Earnest Borgnine sold vegetables on the street. He saw a Navy recruitment poster, and decided that being a sailor beat his current occupation. He enlisted, and ended up aboard the destroyer/ minesweeper USS Lamberton, until his honorable discharge in October, 1941. A few months later, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and Borgnine reenlisted. He spent the war patrolling the Atlantic coast aboard the USS Sylph, on antisubmarine duty, until his discharge in 1945 as a Gunner’s Mate, 1st Class.