The Lower Deck 11

Two tiers of bunks down each side and down the middle; at the end a window of canvas and the beloved Canadian stove; the lane down each side of the centre bunks a cramped and crowded hive of industry. Twenty odd men, twenty odd kit bags, twenty odd “Primus” stoves, twenty odd petrol tins with one side cut out to form a washing basin, a stewing pan, a footbath or some other vessel of necessity - all in the narrow lane, and all the men active on some job or another, Some washing, some having a

footbath, some shaving, some boiling their water preparatory to making a hot cup of coffee, some toasting cheese a la Welsh Rabbit, some cooking savoury onions, bacon, bits of meat, pork and greens, scrounged from old Brearley, the Ship’s Steward, Bowry (the man who sent a lorry up in flames) eternally pumping up his “Primus” stove, to the mortal horror of his immediate neighbour who kept his boots on ready to make for the door when the bally thing burst. Men just in from the mud, and bringing mud up the floor; stepping carefully over the evening suppers and hot baths, and being threatened with some dismal discomfort if they mismanaged their feet - and in the corner the little Joe Fagan crying above the hubbub: “Anybody else not had his tot of rum.”


The old hut had a smell like mother’s scullery on a washing day, a bone-boiling factory, a fried fish shop, a coffee shop kitchen, and a cat’s meat shop on a July day, all mixed in one.  The cleaning, cooking, eating and washing-up over, letter writing, leg pulling and chaffing filled up the evening until bed time, and ultimately with the electric lights going out at “Lights Out" quiet was gradually obtained, broken only by some incorrigible gabbler who could not be stopped even by the well-aimed boot or boot brush, and who only subsided temporarily when the door opened and the Duty Officer, accompanied by the Duty Petty Officer, appeared doing “the rounds,” at which precise moment silence in the hut was broken only by the snorers. And so to sleep, dreaming sometimes of the gargantuan feats we should have to relate when we returned to Blighty.


The War was won upon the well-filled stomachs of the personnel. You would not have seen the figure of our Jaunty in those days and doubted this principle.


Petty Officer Hammond’s anecdote is an
excerpt from the book ‘Naval Eight’, which is
reviewed in the Bibliography at this link:


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