The Lower Deck 02

The next stage on my way to No. 8 Naval had been by way of the Mechanical Transport Depot at Wormwood Scrubs, where certain simple souls showed a most benevolent disposition towards enabling me to make a quick fortune at pontoon, and when in a moment of excessive virtue at an adjoining coffee house I offered to stand treat for supper to two of my would-be benefactors they chivalrously refused to permit it, insisting on being sportsmen and tossing for it. It was the odd man out who paid - and

there were two of them, you see, with a system.


We were very soon on a draft for France. It happened on a Friday and there were Thirteen of us proceeding to Tilbury Docks in a tender driven by a boss-eyed driver. Leading Mechanic Harry O’Driscoll drew our attention to the superstitious circumstances and expressed the view that something was sure to happen – and it did. As we stepped out of the tender at Tilbury we were told to return at once as we were all on draft for France.


And so home one day to my Arabella with my new issue of khaki. Arabella busied herself sewing on the red R.N.A.S. shoulder badge on a blue background and similarly the Albatross - the sign of the air mechanic. Arabella had tears in her eyes and fears in her heart. France was an awful place to her. I would surely catch cold, get in a draught or something. My physical comfort could not be ensured unless I could take an umbrella and a clean handkerchief. And then again, she had heard that the Navy was composed of men whose time was chiefly taken up with swearing when they were not fighting - who went to bed with their trousers on, etc., ate peas off their plate with their knives, never used serviettes, and were addicted to similar barbaric practices. But when she bade me goodbye she stood up like a good brave little English woman. And I promised I would write to her often.


We proceeded from Dover to Dunkirk aboard a monitor escorted by Ships of the Navy. The transport hut at the St. Pol Depot was a comfortable place in this bitter winter of February 1917 - with its tiers of bunks, its Canadian stove well stoked, its piano and its “rummy” atmosphere. Heavy hours of humping petrol, unloading coal from ships in the harbour, intermixed with noisy evenings of music and song. Bill Adams at the piano and Cozens (better known in concert party days as “Stewed Prunes and Prisms") chortling a song about-


“just as he was giving Mabel a squeeze,

Somebody would come in for a quarter of cheese.

Oh my it made him feel so funny,

He clean forgot to take the money.”

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