The Birmingham age-herald., 1916-11-07
STORM REACHES HEIGHT

it's height; volcano-lile squalls sWep around us; the air is filled with the spray of the waves which the storm is driving before it. At the same time. we get cloudburst, which painfully lashes our hands and faces. The rain is so thick that you cannot see. One has to keep piece of glass in front of his eyes in order to keep any watch The boat is laboring heavily in this fierce sea. The waves are throwing it all about so that it creaks and groans in every joint. Often it makes such a rolling and jumping that it is hard to hang to the "bathtub."
 It is a real inferno.
 But up in the coming tower 1t is nothing as compared to the conditions below deck, especially down in the machine room.
 must be battened down. Even the coming tower hatch can only be open once in a while. The two large ven- tilating machines are working continu- ously sucking down fresh air from the sea through the carefully protected shaft which is devoured imln nediately by the stingy Diesel motors. And in their ungratefulness these wild ani- mals breathe out only a heavy, suffo- eating heat filled with the sickening oil fumes which now is driven through all our quarters
 The air below deck is heavy with dampness. One can hardly understand it is possible to breathe. All sweat terribly. In the heat the vapors go through everything and soak the ship. Then the men on watch come down from the coming tower with their wet clothes, and these make it still more disagreeable as the moisture and steam and sweat come off them in the heat.
 It is impossible to comprehend this atmosphere: to understand this he'll like heat which is boiling up inside the boat.
 In the gulf stream the temperature of the water was 2S degrees eentigrade the air about the same There is no fresh air coming in and, in the ma chine room, there is the tremendous beating of the explosions of the six cylinder motors The burned gas rushes with it's hot breath out through the ventilator but the heat remains in the cylinders and imparts itself to the oil dripping surroundings. choking heat cloud and the steam heavy with oil spreads out from the motors into the room. The temperature rises in these days to 53 degrees centrigrade.
 IMPOSSIBLE TO SLEEP
 In such a hell lived and worked hu- man beings. Grooming were those off watch lying in their hunks. It was i'm possible to sleep, and 1T some one Tor u moment was about to sleep he at once awoke because of the dripping sweat to more suffering.
 It felt almost like a relief when the eight hours of rest was over and the new watch was called to the ''central, trale" or the machine room.
 or the machine room.
 standing on duty with rag around their foreheads to keep the streaming sweat from their eyes. Their blood is boiling in their veins just as If they had a high fever. Only by tremendous will power is it possible to make the body perform mechanically it's duty and keep itself upright during four hours.
 How long will it be possible to stand this? I did not keep a diary on those days and I find only these entries: "Temperature cannot go higher if it is to be possible for the men in the machine room to survive"
 But they did get through it. They stood there as heroes: they did their duty. Weakened, sweat dripping, until the storm center was behind us. they worked on. Until it began to clear out side and the sun broke through the cloud, and the abating sea permitted Us to open the hatches again, they fought 1t out.
 Then they came out from their hell, pale as corpses, dripping with oil and reaking with sweat, covered with dirt and grime, up into the bright day lipht and joyf,illy sought the sun as happy as if for the first time it was sh.nins for them