A MOTLEY CREW.

Bruce Herald, Volume LVI, Issue 13, 16 February 1920, Page 5

A MOTLEY CREW.

An' amazing description of an alarm call to 'action stations' on Christmas Day is told by one of the crow of the Birmingham in the 'Cornhill Magazine':—'lt was early in the afternoon, I believe, that one of tho submarine lookouts reported sighting tho wake of a periscope and instantly tho alarmboll sent everyone to "Action Stations.' Not even in tho days when !Captain Kidd flew tho "Jolly Roger," and terrorised the Spanish Main, can a fighting ship have been manned by so motley a crew as was the : ' Birmingham that Christmas Day, A half-rouged Red Cross nurse, with a purple stocking on one leg and a sea-boot on the other, brought mo> a signal from the flagship, and a '''grizzly bear" (his hido tho remnants of a shaggy collision-mat), rolling along on his "haunches," bumped me in a doorway. • 'lh an after-flat I saw a buxom "Red Riding Hood" hurdling handily over a "Wolf" that had slipped on the deck and was blocking her rush for a ladder, and.in the waist was a Wild West cowboy, in sombrero and "chaps," helping a "Charlie Chaplin" and a Salvation Army lassie hcavo up shells and cordite. A spider-legged "Gaby Deslys," with a very imitation ostrichfeather head-dress, cut a>-grotesquc figure swarming up the mast to her station in the fore-top; but perhaps tho crowning touch of all was lent by ono qf the gunners on tho fo'c'sle, who, stripped to the waist, according to good old British tradition, 'still retained the blond Manila hemp ringlets and the pink cotton tights he had worn as a ballet dancer.'