Note 34 — XIX PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS Officers.
Reading edition
The following I can vouch for, as I heard it myself:—A certain warrant man in one of our destroyers came off leave one morning a little late, and thus explained himself to his skipper: “I was waiting for the train all right, sir, when some silly fool walking across the line got run over by a train coming the other way. It took both his legs off, and there was he and the legs lying on the line. I stood there laughing so that I clean forgot my train.” This is not exactly typical, but we have a good many such Mark Tapleys in the R.N.