DYNAMITE!

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 77, 4 February 1942, Page 1

DYNAMITE!

A BRITISH ADMIRAL J If World War II turns out as the British are positive it will, some ; day a biography will be written of : ginger-haired, dynamitish Admiral Sir John Croyn Tovey, 55, now C-in-C of Britain’s Home Fleet. [Mentioned 1 as likely Supreme C-in-C of Allied Naval Forces in the Atlantic.] Foot- ' note material to such a work was orally contributed by one of his former shipmates who arrived last week in New York (insisting naturally that he be not quoted by name). "The Admiral signs his orders with J the name Jack, though his proper Christian name’s John; but below decks everybody calls him Splash Guts. I don’t know why this is, except maybe it's because he’s so full of splash and dash, and he’s got more guts than any man in the whole Royal Navy. He's a bit of a diplomat, too. One day when he was going up to Chequers to see Winnie Churchill a soldier came up to him on the station platform and says: ‘Excuse me, could you tell me what time the train for So-and-So leaves?’ Old Splash Gut-: drew himself up and looked at him. Excuse me,’ he says, ‘but do you happen to think I’m a station master? ‘Fond of sweets, too. he is. Keeps a bottle of sweets on the bridge. Well, we're fond of sweets ourselves and every now and then we manage to pinch one or two. It’s a matter of keepin’ one eye on the bottle and one on the Admiral like. There’d been some complaints about it, and I heard the flag officer say: ‘Shall I take your bottle of sweets down to the cabin sir, and put 'em away?’ And old Splash Guts answers back very weary: ‘Oh, what does it matter where you put ’em? Them scroungers 'll find 'em anyway.’ ” —(‘Time”).