“Silence!”
It was the middie, but for all save the pitch of the voice it might have been a veteran commander.
“Cast off and drift astern,” directed a basso from the transport’s deck.
Our little man expeditiously carried out the order and slowly we drifted astern until there came sudden twangs from the hawsers, startling because everything had been so quiet or muffled before. This was as the hawsers coupling boats and barges went taut as each boat in succession, filling with men, drew suddenly to a halt its drifting predecessor.
Two of the men in our boat who were standing were caught by the jerk of the hawser and snapped overboard. They were fished out with boathooks under the rapid, cool direction of the indignant middie.
“Disgusting carelessness,” he called the incident.
The Military Cross
When all the boats of our string had been filled, there came the order to the tugs: “Full steam ahead!”
Our tug was quite ready for it. Our string straightened out in a jiffy and we got off to a racing start—bounding, dipping and rolling. Sometimes we shot ahead in a straight line, sometimes in a half circle.