Item 02: N. G. Linton diary, 31 October 1916- 4 August 1918 - Page 11

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Transcription

[Page 11]

1916   
Dec 5 to watch sports practice.   Duncan Woolley got hurt in wheelbarrow race with L'Estrange.   Fell on neck and face and was badly chafed and bruised.   After tea went on deck and spent the rest of the daylight in playing quoits with some of the boys.   Nothing very startling to-day.

Dec  6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12

 Nothing special.   Concert on night of 6th.   Smooth sea and weather good.   Received news of fall of Bucharest to the Huns, with disgust.   Entered tropics.   Feel off from the time we did so as the humid heat seems unbrearable to those not accustomed to it.   Had a slight touch of the sun, but quite enough to give one a good idea of what a bad stroke must be.
Dec 13 Entering port again after a good spell of the sea at a navigating rate equal to the fastest speed of the slowest vessel in convoy.     I should say it was about 10 knots, or less.   The "Boonah" set the pace.   Some speed.   Dropped anchor.   Found out that the place was none other than Free Town, the capital of British Sierra Leone.   3 pm., 12 transports in the bay.   Some of them been there for two to three weeks.   Hear we are likely to be in here for some time.   It is stiflingly hot and sultry.   I long for the cooler weather.   The town on the shore at the foot of the purple hills, which rise sheer out of the sea, looks pretty with its bright reds, blues, crimsons, and the other bright colours one associates with tropical places.   One can imagine the forest, that clothes these mountains, inhabited by all the wild animals and birds of prey that one has read and learned about through life.   The scene is certainly a very impressive one - but to have to lie here for the rest of my life gazing at it, not for me.
Dec 14 Leave granted from 11.30 until 4.30.   Embarked on a barge in the boiling sun with breeches, and shirt sleeves rolled up.   No tunics worn.   We were kept in the barge alongside the ship for what seemed to be hours.   Our eyebrows crawled with sweat.   It seemed a poor omen for our visit ashore, where there could be none of the scarce perceptible breeze which wafted out across the water every now and then, as if it came from some human bellow somewhere in the distant hills.   However, we at long last reached the mud of mother earth again and scrambled ashore, only too glad to be able to get real dirt on our hands once again after about 3 weeks on the water.   We did not find Free Town what we had thought it.   It was not a modern town at all, as its appearance from the ship suggested; but a dirty lot of old hovels and brothels infested by blacks of all grades and nationalities, it seemed, but, for the most part, low and immoral.   In fact, the natives here have no morals at all and make no pretension at having any, even from the children up.   Although it does not strike one as a pity, for they appear so black as to be almost akin to the animal.   At mid-day we hunted round for a

  

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