sadly. Here they'd fitted out the survivors of the Langley two days ago, and now here were a lot of those, plus what were left of the crew of the Pecos, landed naked on their hands again. But they dug deep into their lockers and found garments of some description for all of us.
"When I got aboard the destroyer, there being no medical officer aboard [now there is a medical officer aboard every destroyer], the chief pharmacist's mate had all his medical gear laid out in the officers' wardroom; and on the wardroom table we went to work. It was about one o'clock the next morning when all of the injured were taken care of and placed in the bunks, readily given up by members of the destroyer's crew.
"The destroyer had been making top speed away from the area in which the Pecos had gone down, and those who have been at sea can visualize how one of these small, slim ships, doing better than thirty knots in heavy swells, will roll and pitch. But as I made my last round to see that all the injured were asleep, not a man murmured. A destroyer with three hundred and fifty passengers aboard in heavy weather is not the most comfortable ship in the Navy, but as I curled up alongside the other sailors on the deck, around one of the warm stacks, it was the closest to heaven I had ever been.
"And that was how we ultimately came to Perth. . . ."
Hero tales? Not a bit of it. Glimpses of the day's work. The kind of thing that may happen to any Navy doctor during a naval battle. The kind of thing that is happening.
