J. E. MacDonnell - 028 Page 2

  I've never heard him raise his voice. Not even on that classic occasion when the cable officer on the foc's'le was trying to warp the bow in, and the young sub-lieutenant three hundred feet away on the quarterdeck was zealously engaged in getting his end in first- with a large fender raft against the ship's side amidships.

  The Owner leaned over the port windbreak and called in a penetrating but controlled voice aft:

  "All right, Sub.-don't bend the bastard!"

  He has fifty thousand horsepower at his command, and he handles her three-hundred-and-fifty-feet length like a motor-boat, with that casual efficiency peculiar to destroyer drivers.

  Coming along side in any craft other than a destroyer is a pretty prosaic affair, but here one can really appreciate the touch of a master hand. He stands on his open bridge, which is about the size of a kitchen in a Bondi flat, and crammed with navigational, gunnery and torpedo-control instruments, and lots more besides, dressed in an old one-piece submarine suit from Gieve's in Bond-street, on his shoulders three salt-green gold rings. His cap is worn at that certain angle which only pukka naval officers seem able to effect.

  He brings her in at ten knots, the pier close by slipping by at seemingly suicidal speed-there's nearly two thousand tons of steel to stop. Then, precisely at the right moment, he leans to the voice-pipe,

  "Port twenty. Half astern both."

  The slim bow swings off, the stern comes in, she shudders under the pressure of her screws dragging her to a stop, then out go the lines. He turns to the first-lieutenant:

  "She's yours, Number One."

  Then, with wires singing everywhere, he's walking aft.

  The Old man is a disciplinarian, but combines with his tenets of regulations a happy understanding of the shortcomings attendant on crowding two hundred men in a ship three hundred and fifty feet long-luckily for us.

  The coxswain's favourite warning for requests for leave out of watch:

  "You're biting the apple deep, me lad."

  CHAPTER TWO

  WE JOIN THE FLEET

  IF YOU LIVE by the sea and you've seen at some time or other a ship of the Navy slipping down-harbour, a picture of seamanlike neatness from the anchor a'cockbill on her flare to the snowy white ensign on her gaff.

  But this appearance-one which invariably comes under the magnified scrutiny of the Senior Naval Officer-is obtained only through assiduous adherence to the first-lieutenant's Standing Orders.

  I've often thought of the strife in the hearts of men when I watch a destroyer put to sea. All you can see on the upper-deck are the lines of seamen smartly fallen-in-and cursing as the hot sun trickles the sweat down their backs. All the rest of the ship's company are shut inside the messdecks. Behind tightly-clipped watertight doors, at the barrier, so to speak, are cursing stokers unable to get aft to the engine-room, in their hands the fannies of water they've dashed forrard to get, and standing an excellent chance of copping a blast from the stoker P.O. for taking so bloody long about it.

  But the Christians in the arena had it soft compared to the bloke who'd dare to walk along that upper-deck out of the dress of the day once she'd slipped her berth.

  If there is a Fleet of any size in harbour, as you pass down the lines you pipe each ship. That means hands are called to attention and stood at ease as many as twenty times before the dirty little boom-vessel pipes you through-we're always senior to her...

  So one sunny morning H.M.A.S. Nepal eased her long length through the anti-submarine boom, zigzagged down the channel, turned, flicked a swirl of white foam from her counter and headed straight out into the Indian Ocean blue.

  Half-an-hour later all you could see of Australia was a low blue back past our wake; it mingled with the clouds till you weren't sure whether it was there or not; then the clouds changed, and you saw quite plainly the unbroken rim of the far horizon.

  For twelve drill-filled days she pursued a course straight across the ocean. The captain had told us we should raise the Seychelles Islands at 1600. At 1605 on the twelfth day the rim of blue ahead was broken by a jagged bump, then another, and an hour later we were snuggled in alongside the oiler waiting to receive us. The navigation, the organisation, were faultless. But then the Old Man had specialised-in navigation. It was in the Seychelles, sometimes called The Pearls of the Indian Ocean, that those amorous propensities which were later to gain for our credit the opprobrious appellation of "glamour ship" were first manifested.

  Most of the girls on this island paradise are French-and most of them were thirsty for a change of face, and method, and the excitement which the unexpected arrival of these burned Bondi Blokes seemed to promise. That night a dance was held.

  Thinking that Australian mothers and wives and sweethearts would be relieved to know how well their lads were looked after overseas, I went, for the purpose of interviewing for a Sydney women's magazine, Madame la Presidente.

  Madame was in charge of the welcome proceedings-why is it that destroyermen are feted everywhere overseas, while the cruiser unfortunates are left to fend for themselves? Perhaps a sympathy with our life aboard that two thousand tons of fighting efficiency we call home? Or maybe the talent ashore dreams that destroyermen are as dashing and virile as their vehicle?

  Whatever the reason, we never cavil. As Madame came towards the crowd, of which I have been put in charge, I though that this promised to be a very good night indeed. Madame was a widow- and very lovely.

  Her hair was blackly lustrous, her evening gown was off-shoulder and startingly white against the tanned gold of her skin, and it subscribed fully to that decolette effort for which French ladies are nicely known. Her lips made a scarlet wound in the oval of her face. She saw the notebook in my hand. Her voice was vivacious:

  "Ah-the correspondent! Tonight I will give you something to write about...!"

  A very good night indeed... I heard an appreciative murmur from the forcedly celibate mob behind me. Then, from a room near the end, by the orchestra dais, which I found later led to a wide, tree-shaded verandah, a bevy of manna for sea-struck sailors flowed into the room. Some looked demure, most wore their eyes and their lips opened. It seemed everything was to be provided. The mob surged forward.

  It may, of course, have been the moon. Or perhaps the slumbrous, scented tropic night. Or maybe destroyer sailors need no meteorological aid. But as I passed from the light of the ballroom to the velvet shadows not long afterwards I saw figures, everywhere, very close together in a friendly and purposeful national alliance. The fleet was in.

  One heard: "Come early, please. Edouard will be at the hospital till five, and we will take the car and go into the mountains."That had taken a fraction over fifteen minutes!

  Anxiously, two couples further down:

  "Beely, please, you must not drink any more of that wine-it is made in the native village. It will keel you! And you weel be no good for..."

  "This? Gorgeous, if I could set up a stand of this jungle-juice in Wynyard right now, you could have my deferrers!"

  Beely was the only-official-casualty of the action. The captain, happening to notice the inanimate mass in the bottom of the liberty boat as she came along-side, required his presence on board for the next fourteen days.

  Madame requested that I should have the captain allow us ashore early the next day, and to extend the leave till midnight, when she would show us what colonial French hospitality really could provide!

  I assured her grandly that I should have no trouble with the Old Man; probably bring him along too-one's capacity for Sydney beer being a rather unreliable measure when jungle-juice was the order of the night. We left the good people at ten that night, revictualled and reconditioned after our twelve days at sea, and ready, nay eager, for the morrow. Next day we sailed.

  Heading still straight across we passed to the north of Madagascar. Here the ship was covering old ground. She'd been screening close inshore with the British Battle Fleet when a cruiser's broadsides whistled overhead to silence a
refractory battery on the shore, and had stood by the commandos when they went in at Tamatave Bay.

  A few days before we were due to sail into our East African base, Dad informed us pleasantly that as the ship's paintwork haddeteriorated somewhat on the trip across, despite flat, calm seas, we could look forward to plenty of dirty work, all the odd, uninteresting jobs, on arrival, for Commodore (Destroyers) had a salutary knack of apportioning them to the chattiest of the flock under his command.

  We had two days; and at the end of that time there sailed into Mombasa harbour a sleek thing of shining beauty. There came the expected flicker of light from a hut beneath the White Ensign ashore. Suddenly dubious, we waited. The message ran: "Your ship looks quite neat-if there had been one man fallen-in on the upper deck."

  In our zeal to make this first impression stick we had turned out boats and booms instead. But another destroyer went to sea that afternoon.

  Followed the usual run of jobs for a long-range destroyer- screening the Battle Fleet (small as yet, though with developments elsewhere, promising to be shortly enlarged) on exercises, escorting the more valuable convoys, with now and then a return trip to Mauritius and the Seychelles.

  Once, in the Seychelles, Nemesis came stalking-or boating. Or so a certain petty-officer who shall be nameless except for the initials "N.D." thought.

  We were waiting to go ashore, all lined up near the tubes, when this boat hove in sight. Curious, we saw that it held a native coxswain, and a middle-aged man dressed in white duck in the stern-sheets. What intrigued us was that we knew he was Edouard K-a doctor ashore; what fascinated us with an unholy delight was that he had laid across his knees a double-barrelled shotgun.

  This looked like first-class entertainment. Edouard had changed from cuckold to killer. N.D. changed from an idle spectator to a white-clad streak bolting for the safety of A-magazine.

  The boat came alongside and its armed occupant came up the gangway. The officer of the day met him firmly-not, it must be recorded, through any sympathy with the bolted one's amorous doings ashore, but because a shotgun delivers via its mouth many steel messengers, and the captain might not take too kindly to having half-a-dozen of his men incapacitated through the reprehensible conduct of one. But the officer of the day's stern approach was met with a friendly smile. Even then, he was not wholly disarmed of his caution. These Frenchmen... especially middle-aged Frenchmen with beautiful young wives... But the visitor merely said:

  "Good afternoon. I am Doctor K-from the hospital ashore. I was passing on my way to a little duck-shooting on the island yonder and I wondered if your sick-bay had all the supplies it requires?"

  The officer of the day breathed in deeply, and then out again. He smiled. We felt thwarted.

  N.D. did not go ashore that afternoon. He thought of it, and had gone so far as to arrange a signalling system between the duty signalman on board and the petty-officer of the patrol ashore, but that small boat could return from, or deviate from, that duck-haunted island without the signalman seeing it, and our philanderer was not sure, not at all, whether the Frenchman's appearance on board was not an elaborate decoy to get him ashore. He had a craven lack of relish for being set up as a duck himself...

  So the rest of us-N.D. being the only man of loose morals amongst us-dipped out on our entertainment, and instead mildly entertained ourselves with what a sailor usually does ashore in islands like the Seychelles; buying tortoise shell ware, rare books, visiting the local opera house, things like that.

  I had taken a good deal of deliberation, as is usual in a step of such magnitude, much heated argument as to the dubious advantages to be gained, and the obvious drawbacks should we ever be lucky enough to make Durban again, before the four of us put in to see the first-lieutenant. There were the torpedo gunner's mate, the chief quartermaster, the petty-officer of the gunner's party, and myself.

  The first-lieutenant rapped with his pencil on the request-book before him. "Now look here, you men. You must understand that it's regulations to keep your beards on for at least three months."

  He looked at the T.G.M. Dave had just got really started with a fine black growth when the ship had gone to Durban, and that city being what it is, a sailor's paradise, had put a certain passionate pansy before King's Regulations and shaved it off.

  "Even if we return to Sydney"-we smiled-"you must still keep it on." I started for the door, but was stopped by a quick hand, and a voice murmuring savagely:

  "No you don't! All in, remember?"

  The first-lieutenant, a bishop's son, grinned spitefully, and said:

  "Permission granted."

  The second day we looked merely unshaven; the third, looked, and felt, grubby; the fourth, like beachcombers; the fifth, like nothing on this earth.

  At this stage of growth the bristles are about an eighth of an inch long and, particularly under the chin, itch like all hell, I longed for a sharp, clean sweep of my razor, but someone had remarked that I should look noble with a neatly-trimmed Spanish type. Though the someone was the gun-trainer, who might have had an eye to the future and a spot of leave out of watch, I secretly agreed with him, and put up with the itch.

  Unfortunately, not all my shipmates were gifted with such keenness of perception, and one heard sotto voice remarks as one went by, chief among which being something about the "wandering Jew."

  Fourteen days went by, before, one fine morning, I applied my hair brush. Tenderly, reverently, hopefully, I applied it. To my dismay it slipped easily over the hair on my upper-face. Then, as it approached the more hirsute mass on the chin, I felt the bristles grip. I was a man!

  Followed such tender care as passeth belief. All day there was at least one of us before the mirror, stroking, brushing, studying carefully the growth. I watched my friends' production carefully, prepared in the intolerable event of being outgrown to apply the Samson and Delilah act. But we remained much the same, and in three weeks we had the first trim.

  Then, of course, came the day when we put into Durban for a minor refit. On the way up harbour we passed an Australian destroyer on her way out. That night the ladies of the city invited the ship's company to a dance at an hotel.

  In the full pridefullness of conscious manhood-we'd found at Basra up the Persian Gulf the houris of Omar delighted that the infidels showed some sign of following in the ways of the Prophet, and acted accordingly-we entered the gaily decorated ballroom and surveyed the talent.

  I spotted a charming curly-headed drop of promise down near the orchestra, and crossed for the first dance. She seemed to shudder as I bent. "I'm sorry. I have this one."

  There were plenty of girls. Why bother? But when I'd been refused four times I began to get a bit hot under the beard. They couldn't all have been engaged, for there were no men not dancing. None, that is, without beards. Now, I'm really not such a hideous looking fellow, and really I dance quite well. This was no good. I approached the first curly-headed lass.

  "Look here. You're not dancing. What is there about me that repels you?"

  She looked at my lower face.

  "What, this?" stroking it with practised hand. "Please remember I'm only asking you to dance."

  Then she spoke. Her voice would've made ice-cream shiver.

  "How dare you even come near to me, let alone speak to me! Don't come closer! Keep away, now! I know what you are. It's a wonder they allow you ashore at all!"

  "For the love of Mike, why not!"

  "You know well enough why not! Don't try that innocent act with me, sailor! All right, if you want it spelled out for you-I know that all you men with beards have contracted a-a-social disease."

  "Good God! who told you that?"

  "You can't fool us. The Australian sailors from the other ship told us to beware of all men with beards, and told us why. Now you can get out of here."

  We got out of there, the quartet of pariahs. Some day we'll get into a port ahead of our racial defamers.

  With the commander-in-chief's promise of
forthcoming operations against an enemy with whom we'd been up to now mainly on the defensive, an exercise was carried out whose smoothness and efficacy of execution was imperative if we were to reach his bases: oiling from a battleship at sea.

  It was rough, with big furrows of toppling green rolling down on us as we drew slowly alongside the flagship.

  Our bow passed her stern, eased cautiously ahead till we were in position to pass the hoses. The two ships, battleship and destroyer, thrashed along side by side, forty feet apart, the slightest mistake on either captain's part, with those waves lifting us thirty feet each time, promising to send us right inboard.