FISHERMEN IN WAR TIME 



" When I was brought in I was too bad for them 

 to shift me except on a stretcher, and so I was put 

 into one and taken in a naval motor car to Yarmouth 

 Hospital. That was at seven o'clock in the evening, 

 nearly twelve hours after I had first seen the two 

 submarines. At nine I was operated on, and then 

 I was in hospital for a month. 



" Little Billy was a splendid chap. He had been 

 badly scared, but he pulled up, and in two or three 

 days went to sea again. 



" I was ashore for twenty weeks, and then I was 

 forced to go to sea again, because I couldn't get 

 anything to do. I didn't want to go — I was tho- 

 roughly shattered, and had pretty well gone to 

 pieces. I had suffered terribly, especially at night, 

 when often enough I would go through the whole of 

 the bombing and firing again — just as real, it 

 seemed, as the actual performance. 



" Being unable to get anything to do ashore, I 

 went to the westward to help to bring a ship home 

 that had been ashore. Then I was in a tosher for 

 three weeks — a tosher is a small three-hand craft, 

 rigged just the same as a big smack — and after that 

 I went fishing in the smack Waverley, and got about 

 sixteen miles off Cromer. 



" By this time I had become known as ' Sub- 

 marine Billy,' owing to my adventures with the 

 Germans at sea, and very soon the nickname fitted 

 me better than ever. 



" I was getting used to German submarines, so I 

 wasn't much surprised, though I wasn't pleased or 



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