Only two chairs were provided, one for Commander S/M and the other for Lieutenant-Commander Barney Lightfoot, resident staff officer; submarine captains, visitors and onlookers all stood. On one wall were bunches of signals and a map of the English Channel; on another, a large board on which were chalked the dates individual submarines were due for various commitments. Above Commander S/M’s desk were the two mandatory staff notices “Next Week, We Must Get Organized” and “Haven’t You Heard? It’s All Been Changed”. Above the desk of Barney Lightfoot, an erudite man, was a typewritten notice: “If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, it means you haven’t the vaguest idea what’s happening.”Nevertheless, the Staff Office was, if the term could be used in its loosest sense, the nerve centre of the squadron. It was simultaneously an operations room, a club-house, and a coffee-bar. There Captain S/M kept his finger on the squadron pulse. There Commander S/M grappled with insoluble logistical problems, and there the squadron technical officers explained to sceptical audiences that their men were only possessed of two arms each and each day contained a maximum of twenty-four hours.
