Todd war diary, 3 August 1914-29 February 1916 / Arthur Todd - Page 96
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[Page 96]
assiduously for fleas much to the indignation of their mamma. This same monkey was no respecter of persons. One day two or three of us including the Admiral were standing underneath a beam the monkey was on the beam and the inevitable happened. It was the Old mans last clean suit but he appreciated the joke as much as me.
Every day we strove to keep fit by playing medicine ball. The sailmaker made a bag we stole some sand from the Engineer Commander much to his disgust and tossed the ball which weighed about twelve pounds back and forth across a rope. The score was as is in tennis and the object was not to drop the ball. It was very strenuous and in a day or so we all were nursing fingers. It was now getting late in March and except for a few odd letters in Gibraltar in December the ship had had no mail since leaving Australia. No one in authority at any rate seemed to know where we were and we had wind of mails being sent to us at all manner of outlandish places.
The long silence was beginning to bore people and everyone was hungry for news. It is a strain to write letter after letter and get none in return and as ships censor one noticed the falling off in the flow of correspondence.
The sailors remarks about the war in general and our job in particular which as censor I had to read were in the best Service manner and the condition of the mail department very searching They could not quite understand why no letters came