As if the engine room crew didn't have enough to do trying to keep an old Liberty ship going with its old boilers, practicing for various situations, standing watch, playing pranks on Marines, cutting off hot water to the folks in the laundry, finding time to attend to their uniforms and bodily functions, writing notes home begging for Bazooka bubble gum, etc., all short of a normal complement of men ... some busy body who worked on the bridge decided the engine room needed to be painted.
The annoyed junior officer grumbled under his breath but told his crew to go ahead and paint the engine room- any color but GRAY or that infamous pale green. Shortly after, one of the sailors came up and said there wasn't enough paint, to which the response was something along the lines of "What do you mean, there's not enough paint? This is the Navy!"
The sailor said that except for gray, they didn't have enough of any one color of paint to get the job done.
So they were told, "Mix it together- I don't care what color you end up with so long as it isn't GRAY or that godawful government green."
So the sailors found some white and red paint and the amphibious ship became- to the XO's embarassment when he took some visitors on a tour of the ship- the only one in the fleet with a hot PINK engine room.