Looking back on a kaleidoscope of great events, one is apt to be struck by the wealth of insignificant detail with which memory burdens itself. Of all the thunderous panorama in which a Fleet Action presents itself to the imagination, very little is recorded in the mind of a participant at the time. Later on a man may fit the details together into an orderly comprehensive tableau for the benefit of relations and others, supplying from hearsay and imagination all that he missed as an insignificant actor in the great drama.
Groping among the memories of the Battle of Jutland and the part played therein by the fleet flagship, it is not unnatural, therefore, that a private of marines should come most readily to mind. He it was who in enjoyment of his office of servant jerked aside the curtain of a cabin door about 3.15 p.m. on May 31st, 1916, and announced in laconic tones that the fleet was going to “Action Stations” in half an hour’s time.
The Onlooker had kept the morning watch, and was engaged on his bunk in what is colloquially known as a “stretch off the land.”
“Eh?” he said.
“’Arf an hour,” repeated the messenger of Mars. There was in his tone that note of impassive stoicism usually reserved for the announcement that the Onlooker’s gold links had gone, in the cuffs of a shirt, to the wash—or similarly soul-shaking tidings. The latter descended from his bunk in search of the sinews of war.
“Where the devil’s my gas-mask?” he queried, after a breathless search.
“’Andy,” replied the stoic. He rummaged in an obscure “glory-hole” and produced in turn his master’s boot-cleaning gear, his own ditty-box, private stock of tobacco, fiancée’s portrait, and finally his master’s gas-mask. This, emptied of a further assortment of his personal possessions, he gravely handed to the Onlooker.
That worthy rapidly collected his remaining impedimenta and struggled into a “British warm”; as he did so certain obscure warnings of the distant past (those far-off days when we read handbooks and attended lectures on war in the abstract) came back to mind. “By the way,” he said—“underclothing. In the Russo-Japanese war they always put on clean underclothing before going into action, I remember. Septic wounds, and all that. When did I have a clean shift last?”
His official valet closed his eyes, as if contemplating a vista of time greater than the human memory could in justice be expected to span. Finally he shook his head gloomily. “Couldn’t rightly say, but——”
“Never mind,” interrupted the Onlooker hastily. “I haven’t time now, anyway,” and made for the door. His servant’s impassive countenance softened; perhaps he was reflecting that they might never again forgather in that cabin. “It’s goin’ to be cold up there——” he jerked his head towards the upper-deck and forebridge, and eyed his master compassionately. “Better ’ave your woolly muffler—what your wife knitted for you.”