Todd war diary, 3 August 1914-29 February 1916 / Arthur Todd - Page 244
Primary tabs
Transcription
[Page 244]
high-pitched scream of the enemy shells; these, added to the sense of personal danger, make up a horror which leaves its mark on even the least impressionable of us. The whole atmosphere around the roaring guns seems rarefied, and at each discharge one catches one's breath and feels as if one had been hit or pushed by a large unseen hand. On gunnery people and the older hands no doubt the effect is less; but I am speaking particularly of those who hear the guns going off in full earnest for the first time. A naval action strikes the writer as about the most cold-blooded calculating brand of murder of which one could well conceive. Two ships miles apart, with an aggregate speed of over fifty miles an hour, and with course and direction constantly changing, by the aid of wizardry contrive to hammer each other to pieces. For those especially whose duties involve periods of waiting and inactivity, there is not much of the element of personal excitement, there is none of the exhilaration of personal combat; one simply sees the flash of enemy guns, hears a muffled boom; and then waits and wonders, fearfully perhaps, where the shell will land. Then there is the scream of the shell, and one ducks involuntarily; but the shell has luckily gone by. Upon those who are very busy on deck it may be that the strain is less.
Below the upper deck with its battery of guns, and forward of the wardroom, runs a long narrow steel tube three feet wide and a little higher than a man. Crowded down in