TELLS YARNS OF THE GREAT WAR.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17780, 25 February 1926, Page 6

TELLS YARNS OF THE GREAT WAR.

FLEET’S HYMN CODE AS AIRSHIP FELL.

LONDON, January 8. Naval yarns of the Great War were told by Captain Edwards, of the Navy League, to juveniles yesterday at the Hotel Victoriai.

He described the “strafing’* of the first Zeppelin over the sea. It appeared “like an enormous silver sausage in the sky. . . .” Then one of our little aeropla nos, tha t was being towed on a barge, flew off. got above the giant, dropped a bomb, and set the Zeppelin afire. And while + he Zeppelin was falling a hymn-book code message was flashed round the Fleet: —

O Happy Band of Pilgrims Lcv>k upward in the sky! “ My mother—who is in the audience —wrote to me and told me about the first Zeppelin that arrived over London,” said Captain Edwards, 14 what an extraordinarily dazzling sight it was. Her cook, however, who had ed out to see this great thing, cried out excitedly: ‘Madam! Madam! It looks like a rissole! ” After a naval engagement a captured German officer was asked by Captain Edwards at dinner?- — 44 Why do you hate us so? ” 44 We don’t.” was the reply. “We hate your politicians.” When on duty in the Dardanelles, naval officers, feeling sorry for the military officers in the trenches, made it a point of honor to invite them to dinner on board. They “ would come aboard looking like mud-pies, but after an hour’s bathing they could easily have been mistaken for pink cherubs. “ When our gramophone got going the trench troops would shout out, 4 Give Us “ Annie Laurie.” Let’s; have “ Home Sweet Home.” ’ 44 One of my junior officers got special leave from the ship after ingeniously boiling his whites in coffee. Coffeedved white twill was the nearest he could get to khaki. . . . Under heavy Turkish fire this youngster came back to the ship with a boatload of souvenirs, because I had jokingly told him I expected some. 44 The master of the ‘Q’ ships was Captain Gordon Campbell. On his first voyage he Wrote up his order book before he started out. And the first order that the officers were required to sign was that the boat was to be kept in the direct line of any torpedo fired at her. And. sure enough, she was holed by a torpedo, and there was a mock panic aboard. . . . And the

U-boat, thus lured on to come closer and closer, was sunk with a depthcharge.’’