a very considerable gathering of gold braid. The British ships, of course, were very popular because they were wet and the Americans' were dry, and so they were all having a marvellous time when the captain grabbed hold of me. I had one talent in those days, in the amusement line, and that was to give a convincing imitation of the Führer and of Winston Churchill. And the captain grabbed me and said he wanted me to address them as Hitler. And so somebody got a burnt cork and produced the moustache and a comb on the hair, and there they were assembled before me, all this mass of gold braid. And I gave them several minutes of harangue in mock-German, and eventually I finished and a great roar went up with a mass of hands going up at forty-five degrees baying "Sieg, heil!, Sieg, heil!" over and over again, and it's the mass of gold braid on these arms that lives in my memory.