Page 67 - Demo

63around the propeller. A lad had to jump over the side to try to free it. After a lot of effort, he presumably asked for a knife and went out again. This time when he came out it was obvious that he thought the knife was blunt and to demonstrate this he held out his hand and cut into it. The knife was not that blunt after all and he cut deeply into himself. Blood everywhere. A crew member went down to the engine room and brought back a filthy oily rag which they used to bind up his hand and I think another crew member went over the side to free the rope from the propeller before we made our way very sunburnt back to the little harbour. On days off we also used to go to a beach and have a swim. There was always someone sitting up on a platform looking out for sharks but actually the biggest danger was sea snakes that were very venomous we were told. One day we were out swimming, and 2 fins were seen, there was lots of shouting but Frank Taylor was a bit further out snorkelling I think. I swam out to him, which I thought rather brave of me, and thenwe both hightailed it to shore. However, on one of our fishing trips he dropped the winder of his hand line over the side, gave me his line and dived over the side to get it. He later said that he knew that he had a fish on the line and I was just to wait till he came back. I didn%u2019t hear that bit but realised there was a fish and so pulled it in. Once Frank got to his winder he looked around and realised I was pulling the fish in and it was getting close to him. It was only a small shark but even so Frank would have beaten any sprint record to get back to the boat. He was not well pleased.Our detachment came to an end in November and we flew our Shackleton home. The aircraft stayed out for 4 months and so you normally either flew one out or one back. Because serviceability was a problem at one point one of the aircraft had not flown for a couple of months and had been used for spares. Coastal Command decided it had to come