Spit and Polish Read online

  Carl Muller

  Spit and Polish

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Contents

  About the Author

  Dedication

  Foreword

  1. Of Duck Caps and Number Eights

  2. History—The Springing Tiger

  3. Of Complying and Complaining

  4. History—The Kotelawala Saga

  5. Of Cowboys and Buffaloes

  6. History—The Japanese-INA War Machine

  7. Of Ghosties and Shore Brawls’

  8. History—’Chalo Delhi’

  9. Of Rifle Drill and Sundry Convulsions

  10. History—The Ceylon Naval Volunteer Force

  11. Of Christenings and Essence of Chicken

  12. History—The Ceylon Royal Naval VolunteerReserve

  13. Of Royal Guard and Fancy Queens

  14. The ‘Overdue Tyke’ and the End of the CRNVR

  15. Of Bashed-in Doors

  16. History—the Marshall Plan and Japanese Aggressor

  17. Of Queen’s Cups and Rowing Boats

  18. History—Target Ceylon

  19. Of Dust-ups and Signal Watch

  20. History—Easter Sunday

  21. Of Armchair Voyages and Dust-ups

  22. History—Trincomalee

  23. Of Toddy Trips and Goat Hunts

  24. History—Receding of the Japanese Menace

  25. Of Parties and Roast Chicken

  26. History—Pacific Operations

  27. Of Soaking Mail and Drowning Jeeps

  28. History—Midway

  29. Of Priests on the Prod and Sentimental Journeys

  30. History—Japan’s Dream of Empire

  31. Of Sundry Eruptions, the Language Dilemma

  32. History—Finding a Winning Strategy

  33. Of Seatime and Target Tows and Frying Flying Fish

  34. Guadal and Iron Bay Sound

  35. Of a Wardroom Rear Action and Canteen Carouses

  36. The British Military Occupation of Ceylon

  37. Of Command Changes and Bara Khana

  38. History—End of the Honeymoon

  39. Of Darken Ship and Night Strikes

  40. History—The Taking of Iwo Jima

  41. Of Not Quite Going Home and Fouled Propellers

  42.History—Another Easter, Okinawa and the Divine Word

  43.Of the Unhinging of Bollocks and Converting the Captain

  44. History—The Cocos Islands Mutiny

  45. Of Northern Patrols and Schoolgirls in the After Steering

  46.History—Disloyal Politics and the Anti-British Mood

  47. Of Illegal Boardings and Parading for the Police

  48. Operation Downfall

  49. Of Another Kind of Flag and a Murderous Cook

  50. History—The Testing of ‘Little Boy’

  51. Of Sandalwood Paste and a Convent Bolt Hole

  52. History—Hiroshima and Nagasaki

  53. Of an End to a Beginning and a Sailor’s Diary

  Footnotes

  1. Of Duck Caps and Number Eights

  2. History—The Springing Tiger

  4. History—The Kotelawala Saga

  5. Of Cowboys and Buffaloes

  6. History—The Japanese-INA War Machine

  7. Of Ghosties and Shore Brawls’

  8. History—’Chalo Delhi’

  13. Of Royal Guard and Fancy Queens

  22. History—Trincomalee

  24. History—Receding of the Japanese Menace

  29. Of Priests on the Prod and Sentimental Journeys

  31. Of Sundry Eruptions, the Language Dilemma

  33. Of Seatime and Target Tows and Frying Flying Fish

  Read More in Penguin

  Copyright

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Spit and Polish

  Carl Muller completed his education from the Royal College in Colombo. He served in both the Royal Ceylon Navy and the Ceylon Army before entering the Colombo Port Commission in 1959. He took up journalism and writing in the early sixties, working for leading newspapers in both Sri Lanka and the Middle East. His published works include Sri Lanka—a Lyric, Father Saman and the Devil, Ranjit Discovers Where Kandy Began, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Cemetery and Colombo: A Novel. The Jam Fruit Tree, the first book of his Burgher trilogy, was awarded the Gratiaen Memorial Prize in 1993 for the best work of English literature in Sri Lanka. Its two sequels, Yakada Yaká and Once Upon a Tender Time, were published in 1994 and 1995 respectively. A children’s book, entitled The Python of Pura Malai and Other Stories, was published in early 1995. Children of the Lion, a large historical novel, was published in 1997. Most of his works have been published by Penguin.

  Carl Muller. lives in Kandy, the hill capital of Sri Lanka, with his wife and four children.

  To the officers and men of Sri Lanka’s armed forces and especially to the Navy. This piece of bilge is offered to all who have ever walked a deck in a running sea and in venomous monsoon weather.

  You need a strong stomach for that . . . and a stronger one for this!

  Foreword

  This novel is a spin–off from the Penguin trilogy, The Jam Fruit Tree, Yakada Yaká, and Once Upon a Tender Time.

  In straddling this particular branch, I do not wish to inconvenience readers with allusions to events or episodes in the previous books. I will try hard to make this a self–contained, self–supporting story. A different ball game, so to say.

  I have threaded this story with alternating skeins of history, which are most genuine. Names and places are real, and accounts of combat true. This allows the book to be accepted with some seriousness at least. The Royal Ceylon Navy of the times may have been just a ‘one-ship Navy’, but a Navy all the same. And the boys were men—ready to take on the world, even if they had to paint their boots for the occasion!

  I make no apologies to those who find caps that fit them. They really shouldn’t get their knickers so twisted. It makes for a vile way of walking, whether they have found their sea legs or not!

  Kandy 1997

  Carl Muller

  1

  Of Duck Caps and Number Eights and Sick Bay Shenanigans

  ‘God, he looks like the bloody Blessed Virgin,’ said old Van Dort, and sniggered into his arrack.

  Carloboy von Bloss grinned. He knew he didn’t look so bad. He had looked himself over in the family wardrobe mirror and was pleased at what he saw. His singlet, with blue edged square neck, white shorts, blunt-nosed shoes and dark blue hose. He wore his cap square, decided that it made him look quite medieval, and pushed it back. The gold lettering on the black ribbon was hidden behind his hair. HMCyS Gemunu it said—Her Majesty’s Ceylon Ship ‘Gemunu’. Ship! Hah!

  The flipped-back cap was much better. Not that he would wear it indoors, but it gave him a sense of belonging. Of being different.

  It was the eighteenth of November, 1953, and he was exactly eighteen years and twenty-seven days old. He hadn’t been home for a long time and his mother was not really overjoyed at his coming. He heard her banging in the kitchen and also heard her tell his sister, ‘The damn prodigal has returned!’ He told himself he couldn’t care less.

  His father, Sonnaboy, had slapped him on the back and insisted, ‘Today we will put a drink. Here, have a Three Rose. Smoke, men. Now you’re a mail, no?’

  So, after a lot of hurt and a long separation, father and son sat to drink a solemn arrack each, and Sonnaboy called in the neighbours and everybody trooped in to admire Carloboy in his Navy uniform and ask how he was, and the women simpered and said, ‘Myeee, all this time never came home, no?’

  Carloboy had a little diary. That night he made the first of many entries of his new life:

  Joined the Royal Ceylon
Navy as a Signalman. Official number A-5550.

  Two days later, he noted:

  Drafted to HMCyS Rangalla for initial training.

  To those unfamiliar with the geography of Sri Lanka, let it be known that Diyatalawa is in the central hills in the island’s tea country. Mountains are its main feature, as well as rolling patna and mist that puts clouds to shame. To the uninitiated, the obvious question would be: ‘How the devil does one get drafted to a ship that’s four thousand feet in the mountains?’ But patience ... as we become, like Carloboy, more seamanlike, and begin to think, act and behave (as Carloboy was constantly exhorted to do) in a seamanlike manner, we will understand. We hope . . .

  Rather, let us reverse the tape to that blazing eighteenth of November, with the sun suffering an inflamed liver condition and being most irate. Ninety young men swaggered through the gates of the Ceylon Navy Headquarters, a shore establishment in Colombo. Nautically, this was HMCyS Gemunu, land-based and close enough to the sea that crashed on the shore spiritedly. The ‘ship’ was crewed with hundreds of duck-capped bulletheads who marched, slouched, ran or simply ambled along, performing their several shipboard tasks.

  Some were flushing drains, others spreading manure on beds of doubtful-looking cannas. Some were even painting smooth round rocks. White paint. The rocks would be arranged around the flower beds. Nice touch, a chief petty officer told the duty officer. Others were sweeping dormitories and morose types carried kettles of tea to God knew where.

  These were sailors? Carloboy had wondered. He watched the ‘drill’. Occasionally they would transfer buckets, mops, spades, rakes or whatever they carried from right hand to left in order to salute a natty specimen who hove into view. These types walked around with the sole intent of collecting salutes. They wore peaked caps pulled down to almost cover their eyes and sported gold-banded epaulettes. They would waggle a hand in response and trot on, only to return later for another hand-wag.

  Now and again, a piercing whistle would tatter eardrums and put the galley cat’s fur on end. Carloboy told George Vanlangenburg, ‘God, my aunty Anna screams like that. One day she saw a garandiya1 in the firewood pile and put a yell. Whole neighbourhood came running.’

  The unholy screech was followed by an amplified voice, quite hollow, demanding that Able Seaman Andare report to the quartermaster’s lobby ... at the double! This, Carloboy was told, was the wail of a bosun’s pipe. It’s really a sort of stubby, electroplated penis with one testicle. The bosun (who should not be confused with the bison although it has long been thought that the rudiments of the buffalo lurk in both species) is an apostrophied boatswain. It is supposed also that only a bosun of whatever stripe be allowed to use this pipe. Give it to a quartermaster and expect the worst. Later, as quartermaster (which is nothing of distinction, we assure) Carloboy tootled on it to deadly effect, making every bosun cower in his watery grave!

  A burly fellow with a blue anchor patched to his sleeve, took note of Carloboy, Ronald Todwell and Ivan Sirns. Three Burgher buggers, he thought, and already grouped together. He turned to a dark, barrel-chested sailor who had, Carloboy was sure, the yellowest teeth in South-east Asia. ‘I say, AB, those buggers, those three there, look like troublemakers, no?’

  AB Grero smirked. An AB, he told the newcomers, is an Able Seaman. ‘I’m an able seaman, you understand? You are just fuckup ordinary ratings. Going to be a long time, oh yes, a fucking long time before you can become like me.’ He glared at the Burgher trinity. ‘You three, yes, you! I don’t like the looks of you. Bloody Burgher buggers come here to give the arse! Think I don’t know your type? You better watch it, you hear? I’m passing the word round. I can smell trouble with you three.’

  This, the three mentally shrugged, was only to be expected. They had all spent their young lives to the utter distraction of parents, the despair of teachers, the destruction of the social order around them. The Navy, it seemed, was taking note and was convinced that there were always such pains in the butt that wouldn’t take kindly to the rigours of naval discipline.

  ‘Don’t go to say anything,’ Sims hissed.

  ‘Able!’ Todwell snorted, ‘Not able even to brush his bloody teeth!’

  ‘Don’t worry, we’ll get him later,’ Carloboy soothed, ‘first must sign up, no?’

  The medical examination had been detailed. Quite detailed. In a tiny room, an SBA—Sick Bay Attendant— gave them a dispassionate once-over and barked, ‘Strip!’

  The recruits raised eyebrows.

  ‘Oh come on, come on,’ the SB A snapped, ‘What’s wrong? There are no women here. I’m the bloody nurse.’

  ‘You mean all our clothes?’ someone asked weakly.

  ‘Then what? Take off, take off,’ the man was rubbing his hands and growing quite excitable.

  ‘Nothing doing,’ Todwell growled, ‘you’re going to examine us here?”

  ’You’ll be called, so strip.’

  ‘So when I’m called I’ll strip.’

  ‘Strip! Strip!’

  ‘Whose bloody orders? All of us to stand here, cocks hanging?’

  ‘Surgeon Lieutenant’s orders!’

  ‘So where is he? He’s going to come here and look?’

  ‘Strip! Strip!’

  There was a bellow from an inner room. ‘What the fuck’s going on there! Strip that lot and send them in one by one!’

  It was the voice of authority. Clothes were peeled away and ninety young men stood in a ragged queue, inviting the purpling SBA to squat and give them the kiss of life.

  ‘You wait,’ he gritted, ‘wait till the blood test.’

  The Surgeon Lieutenant gave each a through going-over, sweetbreads and all. Sundry characters breezed in and out, remarking interestedly on the line of naked recruits. Cheerful snatches of this and that wafted around.

  ‘Sha! Like the hanging gardens of Babylon . . . ’

  ‘Here, sonny, what’s your name?’

  George Vanlangenburg looked up. ‘Me? Vanlangenburg.’ Very good-looking he was, fair, fat-thighed, smooth as a Chinaman’s bum.

  ‘Vanlangenburg, eh? Nice. Buggers in Rangalla will have a good time.’

  Vanlangenburg frowned. He thought that far too many had had far too good a time with him for far too long. When would it end?

  Soon, they were dressed again and dismissed to Pathology where test tubes were distributed. ‘Don’t go to fill them,’ a likeable fellow grinned, ‘just a little will do.’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘Urine. What else? Just pump a little and give.’

  ‘How to piss like that just because you tell,’ Carloboy protested, ‘Have to wait till I feel like, no?’

  ‘What, men, only a few drops I’m asking, no?’

  ‘Few drops even, I can’t now.’

  ‘Von Bloss!’ another bellow, ‘you’re von Bloss, no? You’re trying to be funny?’

  ‘But I can’t piss now.’

  ‘Is that so? And when can we have the pleasure?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ll drink some water and see.’

  ‘Balls!’

  ‘Open a tap,’ someone said, ‘if he hears water going he also might feel like going.’

  The suggestion was welcomed. Several sick bay taps were soon in spate.

  ‘Now how about it? See how the water is coming. You also open your tap.’

  Carloboy tried and said he couldn’t, to everybody’s disgust. He was given more water and after a while his bladder stirred indignantly. What was deemed necessary was gratefully received.

  They were then marched to the mess where oaths had to be sworn. Among other things, each had to solemnly intone his allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and assure her that he was prepared to serve in any outlandish corner of the British Commonwealth, and, of course, accept that at a pinch, he could be called upon to clean sewers, unload ships in port, police the streets, fight fires, perform strike-breaking duties and provide essential services in times of national emergency including riot contro
l, rodent extermination, house clearing, the guarding of the national transport system and shielding politicians who other political lowlife wished to get rid of.

  Twelve years it was. They swore and signed away twelve years of their young lives and were then herded into a kit store where a monstrous petty officer doled out square rigs, duck caps that looked like inverted, urinals, number six and number eight uniforms, bell-bottoms, silks and lanyards, boots, shoes, deck shoes, web belts and puttees and a host of odds and ends. The store became quite festive as the day progressed.

  ‘What’s your cap size?’

  ‘I’ve never worn a thing like this in my bloody life. Do they come in sizes?’

  ‘Okay, okay, try this. Find something that fits, will you . . .’

  ‘Here, these trousers . . . nothing’s fitting. All tight one place or another.’

  ‘Bum like a bloody Parsee woman! How can anything fit? Here, you, what’s your chest?’

  ‘Forty-one.’

  ‘What, you’re a bloody weightlifter? Never mind, find an outsize. When you come from Rangalla you’ll be thirty-one.’

  And that, too, was over and outside the kit stores stood a leading seaman who said he was going to talk to them.

  ‘For what?’ Carloboy asked.

  ‘Quiet! Who said that? You’re in the Navy now. Get in three ranks! Dammit, don’t know what three ranks is? Three lines! Look lively. Sling your kitbags on your shoulders. Right, now proceed to the canteen. Right turn! Right turn, I said! Quick march!’

  They straggled into the canteen and took chairs.

  Carloboy sat, thoughtful. What had he let himself in for? What had Eardley said . . . Eardley, his friend, had seen service in the Army. ‘The senior service. That’s where the real action is. If I were you, I’ll go to the Army.’

  ‘Army!’ Carloboy had scoffed, ‘all the bloody coconut pluckers are there. And look at the uniforms.’ (Carloboy had this thing about uniforms.)

  Eardley had shaken his head. ‘That’s what everyone says, but the Army is real, son. Not like this Mickey Mouse Navy. And what Navy? A one-ship Navy? You think you’ll ever get a chance to be a real sailor?’