Word: perth
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...survivors of Author McKie's title are ten men who went down with the Australian light cruiser Perth in Sunda Strait at 12:25 a.m. on March 1, 1942 and came up again to tell the tale. They told it after the war to Author McKie, an Australian newsman, who writes in a brisk style that makes for good reading, if for something less than the national epic he frankly says he intended...
Elegance on a Plank. Perhaps the most intrepid of the Perth survivors was Engineer Lieut. Frank Gillan. When the second torpedo hit and Perth keeled over, he was trapped far below decks. Only perfect presence of mind and the lucky chance that his Mae West was only half-inflated saved him. As the water rose in the sinking hull. Gillan calmly let himself float upward with it through the pitch-dark passages of the ship, the air in his life jacket buoying him gently, but not so much as to force him against the overhead, where he could not maneuver...
Humor was much, but what was the most help to the men of the Perth was the sense of tradition and group solidarity. The Survivors is thick with recollections of men in shark-infested waters who supported men they had never known, or gave their places on rafts to the wounded, or kept their mates awake and alive by jabbing planks in their faces. Morale of this sort held out for several days, until all the men McKie writes about had managed to get ashore on Java...
...Perth, Australia, Miler John Landy fell far short in his bid for the four-minute mile. His winning time (4:04.2), posted on a grass track, was well behind his best effort (4:02.1), set last month over a hard-packed, windy course...
...Highland neighbors, who ran some 200 bootleg stills in the glen, and smuggled their spirits to the Lowlands rather than pay duty to His Majesty's revenue officers. Highland hijackers waylaid Glenlivet's pony trains as they packed legal whisky over the craggy hills to Perth and Edinburgh. George Smith, a brace of loaded pistols strapped to his waist, protected the trains in person. By 1871, Glenlivet was the only still in the glen...