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Thursday, October 21, 2021

Hosing off


Hosing off one's shipmates was quite common in the Navy,
and I'm sure there was no lack of volunteers to wield the hose.

 

5 comments:

  1. Nice butts, nice tan lines. If you weren't chosen to wield The Hose, did you have to wield your own hose? I'd bet there was a huge amount of hose wielding went on aboard ship.

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  2. Nudity amongst a ship's company was so unavoidable as to be virtually normal. My father was in the Royal Navy - the war over, remaining in Intelligence in the Reserve - and, a specialist in tides, worked on the top-secret design and manufacture of the Mulberry Harbours - prefabricated jetties used for the unloading of materiel and non-amphibious transports. By D-Day, he had already been designated to go to India to do the same job planning the invasion of the Bay of Tokyo. After observing the Mulberrys' performance, his frigate retreated into the Solent to become a hospital ship as the injured were brought back from the Normandy beachhead. In part because his work was so secret - he was one of the few men in the country to know the date of D-Day - he spoke little about the war. But in one story of on board nudity which still haunts me, at one point he stripped completely naked in order to hose down an impromptu operating theatre. Blood was soaking the deck, running down the bulkheads, and dripping off the deckhead. Heaven knows what had been going on in there but what we must never forget is the sacrifice these young men made against the worst tyranny the world has ever known.

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    Replies
    1. Interesting story. Thanks for sharing. I had an uncle who operated at top secret teletype system in the basement of Selfridges Department Store on Oxford Street in London the last two years of the war. It remained classified until 1976, and he wouldn't talk about it specifically even after that. He did tell of the horrific V-1 and V-2 attacks on London, though.

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    2. The London clay made reinforced foundations very difficult, which is why the London skyline was devoid of skyscrapers until only relatively recently. The sub-basements of Selfridges in Oxford Street, just to the east of Marble Arch, were somehow strong enough to take the very heavy equipment and the Bell Telephone Company installed a relay station there, through which the announcement of the commencement of D-Day hostilities was braodcasted to the USA. I believe another relay station to Bletchley Park - where the Enigma Code was broken - and where my French teacher at school worked under Alan Turing, was also installed.

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