SPANISH PATROLS

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 37, 14 February 1938, Page 10

SPANISH PATROLS

ARDUOUS NAVAL LIFE

SUBMARINE DETECTION

Some of them fresh from duly with the British naval patrols in the Mediterranean, a draft of twelve Royal Navy ratings arrived at Auckland by Ihe Rangitiki from London on Saturday for service in ships on the New Zealand Station (stales the "New' Zealand Herald"). Sev.en are to join the Leith, three are to go to the Wellington, one is a New Zealander, who is to rejoin the Philomel, and the other is to serve on the Admiralty survey ship Endeavour.

Before they left England several of the men took a course of instruction at the Osprey training depot in submbarine detecting work, a part of the modern naval routine which has been made doubly important as the result of developments in the Mediterranean One of the men who arrived on Saturday said he had seen how uncertain life at sea had become in the Mediterranean since the Spanish, civil war had started. PLIGHT OF REFUGEES. ."In these days," he said, "ratings do not know from one day to another what they will be doing. One night they may be in a training depot and a few hours later packing up to go to Spain. Life out there is like it used to be in the war. We have done a lot of evacuation work with refugees and the plight of them was terrible. Many of those we saw had lost everything they had, and many of them were broken physically from either starvation or wounds.

"The war was getting worse every day," he continued. "Maybe one of these days we will catch a warship that is not Spanish shelling a merchantman, and then we might know what is going to happen. So far we just do not know what there is in front of us. One night we were lying at Valencia. A ship stole.in, fired fifty rounds into the city, and sneaked out again.

SUBMERGED SUBMARINES HEARD.

"A Spanish warship, so Franco has said. But the rate of fire was too rapid for any of the ships belonging to Spain. We know that. It was a modern cruiser. While we were out there we did not see any submarines on the surface but heard them down below, and let off a couple of depth charges, but although some oil came up, w.e don't know what happened. :

"In the Great War the German submarines! sometimes released some oil and bits of\ wreckage when they were attacked in order to deceive the attacking ship. So nobody can tell except the countries owning the submarines whether any have been destroyed.

"I know that the war out there has been keeping us busy. It would be out to Spain, then three months or so at sea, back into port for. a few days' leave, and off again once more. There has been nothing like' it since the Great War."

For the last few months the draft was distributed, at such training establishments as the Osprey, now an antisubmarine school, the Pembroke, and the Victory. Several of the men have been in New Zealand before. '