“It was largely because the stunt I had in mind promised to cost little more than a new coat of paint and a few rehearsals, which could easily be carried on in the course of our ordinary patrol duties, that I finally received somewhat grudging authorisation to go ahead with it. It was not till the whole show was over that I learned from the
laughing admission of the officer who helped secure that authorization, that the fact that the output of real M.L.’s was becoming large enough so that they were about independent of the use of yachts and other pleasure craft for patrol work, also had a good deal to do with the granting of it.
“I already had several well-trained machine-gunners in the crew, so that about the only addition I had to make to the ship’s company was a half-dozen boys to masquerade as ladies. As they were not meant to stand inspection at close range, nothing elaborate in the way of costume or makeup was necessary. They wore middy jackets, with short duck skirts, which gave them plenty of liberty of action. Most of them (as there was nothing much below the waist going to show anyway) simply rolled up their sailor breeches and went barelegged, and one who went in for white stockings and tennis shoes was considered rather a swanker. Their millinery was somewhat variegated, the only thing in common to the motley units of head-gear being conspicuousness. There was a much beribboned broad-brimmed straw, a droopy Panama, a green and a purple motor veil, and a very chic yachting effect in a converted cap of a lieutenant of Marines with a red band round it. Less in keeping, if more striking, was a Gainsborough, with magenta ostrich plumes, a remnant from some ‘ship’ theatricals.
“Hair wasn’t a very important item, but they all seemed to take so much pleasure in ‘coiffeuring’ that I took good care not to discourage their efforts in that direction. The spirit that you enter that kind of a game in makes all the difference in the world in its success, and these lads—and, indeed, the whole lot of us—were like children playing house. All of them were blondes—even a boy born in Durban, who had more than a touch of the ‘tar brush,’ and one—a roly-poly young Scot, who had made himself a pair of tawny braids from rope ravellings—looked like a cross between ‘Brunnhilde’ and ‘The Viking’s Daughter.’
“It was only during rehearsals, of course, that these lads were ‘ladies of leisure.’ The rest of the time I kept them on brass polishing and deck-scrubbing, with the result that the little old ‘——’ regained, outwardly at least, much of her pristine ship-shapiness. The ‘gentlemen friends’ of the ‘ladies’ were even more of a ‘make-ship’ product than the latter.
“Indeed, they were really costumes rather than individuals. I don’t mean that we used dummies, but only that there were eight or ten flannel jackets and boater hats laid ready, and these were to be worn more or less indiscriminately by any of the regular crew not on watch. Their rôle was simply to loll on the quarterdeck with the ‘ladies’ while the U-boat was sizing us up, then to join for a few minutes in the ‘panic’ following the hoped-for
attack, and finally to beat it to their action stations.
“That a ‘baby’ was by far the most effective disguise for the first lance-bomb we hoped to chuck home was obvious at the outset. Both of them had heads, their general shapes (when dressed) were not dissimilar, while the ‘long clothes’ of the infant was found to have a real steadying effect on the missile, on the same principle that ‘streamers’ act to bring an air-bomb down nose-first. Of course, a child in arms, like this one was to be, wasn’t just the kind of thing one would take pleasure yachting; but I knew the Huns took their nurslings to beer gardens, and thought that that might make them think that the Englanders—who were incomprehensible folk anyhow—might take this strange way of accustoming their young to the waves which they sang so loudly of ruling.
“The decisive consideration, however, was the fact a baby was the only thing except a jewel-case that a panicky woman in fear of being torpedoed would stick to. As you can’t get a lance-bomb in a jewel-case, it was plainly ‘baby’ or nothing.