We were in this same beam sea for days. Though the shooting was all over, and the submarines long since sunk, the Captain of the precious J. W. McAndrews was taking no chances so he sailed a zigzag course for France - it taking us nearly two weeks to get there I guess and we probably covered 25,000 linear miles! LOL

Anyhow - recall how the eggs all pitched from side to side in the Messhall below .... Now let us say it is time to head for the latrine to heed nature's call: this facility was designed thusly: atwartships again (from side to side) ran a soil pipe - maybe 6 or 8 inches in diameter and 25 or 30 feet long. This was raised above the deck (latrine floor) maybe a few inches, and at intervals along it - about every three feet, say - was erected a porcelain throne. (No wooden seat - pshaw! - we were in-training to develop the enervated butts of Europeans who eschew so many "luxury aspects" of we pampered Americans...). Anyhow, an icy porcelain rim upon which to sit was not really the problem here, believe me.

Here is how it all worked and what the problem really was:

Giant pumps whining away below kept a constant flow of ice cold, North-Atlantic-in-Winter (than which there is no colder) water coursing through this pipe - in one end and out the other. If you were "in the know" when you entered the latrine - and if it was open - you dropped trou, and sat on the midship throne - or throne set in the middle of the soil pipe length. This would be like the fulcrum point you see in a see-saw... Things being as how they were and all - the pipe usually had a full complement at all hours. So here is the scenario: about 12 or 15 guys are sitting on a row of porcelain toilet bowls balanced along a soil pipe of rushing water in the middle of a North Atlantic Gale. Slowly, ever so slowly, the vessel rolls - ever lower and lower - topside perhaps her lee rail now seemingly mere feet above the roiling, hissing salt spray alongside....

But what is this? From the latrine deep below decks comes a collective shout of anguish and dismay... As the ship rolled you see, the water in the soilpipe ran "downhill" too - building up a considerable head by the way - and entraining with it anything consigned to it, too (that's the indelicate part, gals!) - to erupt like a veritable miniature Old Faithful geyser through the end thrones at the end of the roll! Often clearing their rims with a fountain a foot or more high - not to mention sending the late hapless sit-ee hopping, with soaking wet pants down around his ankles, vainly seeking "high ground" (the nearest such being several thousand miles distant in each direction!).

Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.

Joke's on the Dogfaces, 's'all...

Then - just as for the eggbanks in the messhall - the slow roll would start back the other way. The midthrone occupee (usually a wily old sergeant - 30 year man maybe) likely puffing his pipe and reading Stars and Stripes with disdain for all these irregulars and draftees swarming about him with their continual complaints and alarums...indifferent to it all. This provided a nice comic relief for those who were shaving on the bulkhead opposite, where the rolling often resulted in harrowing nicks on juglars and other exposed parts of the anatomy. But of course one was always free to resort to the showers at any time, too - but they tended to be rather underused since the same pumps that fed cold brine to the heads, also fed cold water to the showers - and a promised "bypass" to "hot spent water" from the engine room never materialized...

Scrape Here for more 'Barrel...'