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[Page 59]
as you strove to keep that will o' the wisp, the blue stern light of the next ahead within your range - it sort of came over one that there were better things in life than hunting illusive submarines in an arctic Adriatic. Everyone wore the regulation "lammy" or duffle suits served out to the crews of T.B.D. & T.Bs and other small craft during the European winter by a motherly Admiralty.
These suits consist of a coat which fastens with wooden toggles and cord beckets, and instead of a collar, a hood which pulls well down round the ears, is fitted. Trousers made very wide, in order to pull on over sea boots and held up by a cord sewn in to the waist completes the suit. They are made from pure wool and are very thick and a godsend to those who earn their bread upon the waters in winter time.
Most of our men felt the cold pretty acutely. It must be remembered that from 1914 until September 1917 we had spent our time entirely in tropical waters and the change to conditions of an arctic severity came as a bit of a shock. So fat were we all on account of the multitude of garments in which we clothed ourselves when going on watch, that it was only by wriggling and squirming that one could get up a ladder or through a hatch way.
During this time one never completely undressed except in port. Baths were luxuries only obtainable in the peaceful security of the harbour, and in leaving it you put a bit of vaseline on your razor and bade good bye to it for four days or what time you returned to the base.
The return of the incoming patrol was always quite a small event in Brindisi during our first few months there.
Covered in salt the funnels and deck cowls all white, the guns and tubes so rusted that they might have been lying for months at the bottom of the sea yet, with all their working parts well greased and in perfect order and rotund "lammy" clad unshavened company of sea weary pirates drawn up at either end of the ships by way of observing the courtesies by returning salute for salute the greetings paid to and by the various allied ships passed on our way up harbour we were a rather picturesque processioon, in which the long shore population of Brindisi