A reunion wiith bedbugs, a useless Spaniard and a fire
In our new quarters we appeared to be overrun by bed bugs. Having never encountered them since that fateful night in Malta, they were flat circular insects that lived in dark places and came out to suck your blood and returned to their hiding places in the form of a small ⅜” long sausage filled with your blood. They seemed to survive a dormant stage for a long period, but our double bunk beds were the ideal breeding place. The top and bottom bed end frames were hollow tubing and the bed itself had a frame with coiled springs connected by wires. They lived in the springs and the best method of eradicating them was to heat up the springs and any hollow section with a plumber’s lamp. An added precaution was to get four tins filled with two inches of paraffin to stand each leg in. It was best to lamp the bed every two months. They affected some people quite badly, I being one. They did not always return to their original hiding place either. One generally laid the exterior hammock cover over the springs then a thin palliasse¹ type of mattress but this never appeared to foil the bedbugs. In fact it gave them somewhere to hide during the day. Some fellows used to heat up the springs until they were red hot, which took all the nature out of the metal and in some instances the springs would collapse in a domino fashion that was quite a laugh providing it wasn’t yours and a bit rough on the bottom bloke if it happened during the night.
One of the Spanish cooks saw me doing this and suggested his 16-year-old son could do it and when he got the job he was a dead loss. I noticed the teenagers were very slow on the uptake and did not seem to be able to concentrate. The result here was collapsing beds, lots of vermin and finally a bloody fire putting 12 sailors out of two bedrooms and all personal gear lost. On top of this all sorts of inquisitive POs, officers and officials got involved and lots of new regulations followed so the teenager got the order of the boot, followed swiftly by the Spanish cooks.
One of the Spanish cooks saw me doing this and suggested his 16-year-old son could do it and when he got the job he was a dead loss. I noticed the teenagers were very slow on the uptake and did not seem to be able to concentrate. The result here was collapsing beds, lots of vermin and finally a bloody fire putting 12 sailors out of two bedrooms and all personal gear lost. On top of this all sorts of inquisitive POs, officers and officials got involved and lots of new regulations followed so the teenager got the order of the boot, followed swiftly by the Spanish cooks.
¹ Hard straw mattress.