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With that sort of detachment, we watch through our glasses, calling the fall of shot as an announcer calls the strokes of a cricket match.

But all the time there was running through my mind a vivid picture of the people in that ship.

It made the sunlight and colour unearthly and nightmarish.

I could see men dazed with lack of sleep, rolling out of their hammocks, running along the decks to action stations, or had the grey dawn and the early rain found them, as it had us, sleepless and cold

at their guns and ammunition hoists. For days they had been driven and harried by ships and aircraft.

The respite of 30 hours would give them little peace of mind or confidence.

An afternoon of aerial torpedoing, and then, when the darkness came, it brought with it,

throughout the night, the wolfish attacks of destroyers that had brought her speed down,

smashed her rudder, and for a time made her unmanageable. After what a men had come through, these intermittent attacks must have left them with raw

nerves. But they did their best to beat off each attack. If they were lucky, they did not know

how close we were to her that night, that we were only waiting for the light, that there

was no possible escape.

When they saw Rodney and King George V that morning, they must have known.

That was soon enough.

I don't know what men think or do or look like when they know what those men knew,

but I fancy they open fire as one sees our chaps in action.

They look the same men.

They do their jobs automatically.

...