Spit and Polish

by Carl Muller

  ‘Bugger is like a girl,’ Carloboy said, and all agreed.

  They were not to know that this bugger-like-a-girl was the cause of most of their troubles. Someone was snitching on them. Todwell sneaked ashore when on duty watch. No one could have known, but it was known. Bijja Fernando poured red lead into the petty officers’ bath. There were no witnesses. The regulating petty officer vowed to leave no stone unturned . . . and the next day Fernando was hauled up, given twenty-one days number ten.

  And yes, Cowpea would always be detailed to clean staff huts or the bandroom, which was a long way down the hill, past the married quarters. While the others toiled, digging, scraping, planting, repairing fences, painting, Cowpea would be buggered in the staff huts, or on the floor of the bandroom with clockwork regularity. What is more, Cowpea would tell them all ... all the goings-on in the huts, what the recruits did or planned to do. He was a mine of information; a beautiful, clear-eyed spy who would assiduously suck Able Seaman Parippu Silva’s cock, giving that worthy the greatest of pleasure.

  Leading Seaman Jayasooriya was particularly impressed. He had, it was said with some reverence in certain quarters, a penis like a reaper’shook. Even the women of Bandarawela found reason to complain. But this recruit took him in without the bat of an eyelid. Jayasooriya found sex with Cowpea vastly pleasing. He liked the way Cowpea raised his legs, gripped him around the hips, lying the way a woman would. Why, the boy really enjoyed being fucked in the arse! Later, in the canteen, Jayasooriya would tell Petty Officer Karu, ‘There, that’s the bugger. Like a woman, men. Anytime you want, he’s ready. What d’you say? Shall I detail him to the PO’s mess tomorrow?’

  PO Karu frowned. ‘No, that won’t do. Send him to the PO’s heads. You’re sure he’s game?’

  ‘Game? Must hang a To Let sign on his bum. He’s game for anything.’

  ‘By the way, was there a punch-up yesterday behind the heads?’

  ‘Yesterday? No, didn’t hear of anything like that.’

  ‘Try to find out. Four days now and nobody has gone on the deck.’

  ‘You ask Perera. He’s the one who tells us everything.’

  Thanks to Cowpea Perera, ‘going on the deck’ (which was ‘being punished’) was pretty standard procedure. The boys decided that somewhere there was a loose wire that was fouling the circuitry. It was solemnly decreed that sneaks and tattle-tales must be punished for the sanity of all and the moral upliftment of the many. A most effective punishment was to close around a sleeping victim and, at a given signal, urinate. Six jets of urine directed at face, ears, neck and mouth—oh, especially the mouth if the sleeper was wont to keep it open—was sufficient to have the poor man gurgling in anguish, tumble to the bathroom in the chilly air and return shivering, to regard his sodden bunk dismally.

  Another popular practice was to use the victim’s boots (beautifully polished for morning divisions) as a latrine. Chaos and the shit would rise together in the morning. The unsuspecting man would plunge his foot into a boot that made squelching noises as the excreta squished out, clung to his socks and seeped out of the eyelets.

  The case of Cowpea Perera called for sterner measures. It did not take long to find out the true state of things, and for once the boys were aghast. Why, this shy, quiet fellow who didn’t like to join in any of the rough-and-tumble . . . He was . . . what could they call him? He was a bloody prostitute!

  ‘And he’s splitting on us while the staff are splitting his arse!’ Todwell growled.

  ‘That’s why he’s never with us at working party,’ Sims said thoughtfully.

  ‘Damn shame for all of us,’ Carloboy said, ‘and a signalman also. When we go back to Colombo you think they won’t know? By now the news must have gone that there are some pukka arsebirds here.’

  ‘So what are we going to do?’

  ‘Catch the bugger tonight. Teach him a damned good lesson!’

  ‘If he shouts and wakes the camp . . .’

  ‘If the whole staff is screwing him you think they will believe us?’ another objected.

  ‘Can’t be helped. He’s a disgrace to all of us.’

  ‘Shall we go and tell the CO?’ Roy Fernando suggested.

  ‘You’re mad?’

  ‘Then what shall we do?’

  ‘He likes to give his arse, no? Tonight we’ll give him something he won’t forget. You still have those chicken capsules your mummy sent?’

  Roy Fernando nodded, then his eyes opened wide, ‘My God, don’t tell me . . .’

  Carloboy nodded grimly. ‘You give me the capsules.’

  Roy’s mother had felt that her sailor son needed some pepping up. ‘Whole day working with big boots,’ she told her husband, ‘Must be tired, no?’

  Papa Fernando had snorted. ‘What to tired? Must be dancing the devil there.’

  ‘So never mind. Now at least he’s doing something. Otherwise whole day on the road with the bicycle and getting complaints no end.’

  She had sent her pride and joy a box of Brand’s Essence of Chicken capsules. ‘Good for you to take,’ she had written.

  Roy had given them a jaundiced eye. ‘What a bloody thing to send,’ he told the others, ‘not enough the soup we’re getting here? And I hate these things. Have to clip the end of the glass and pour out.’

  The others had looked at the long cocktail-sausage-like capsules and decided that Roy could have them. He had pushed them moodily into his locker. With a chastened Haramanis doing the honours in the mess hall, who needed chicken capsules?

  Carloboy had a demon in him. Everyone thought so and looked at him with some concern. At six-thirty that evening, Cowpea was seized, stripped and made to lie across his bunk. When Carloboy shoved the chicken capsule into his anus the boys all hooted gleefully.

  ‘Now we will get chicken shit,’ Sims carolled.

  Cowpea made no protest. He had taken upright cylindrical objects of far greater girth. But when Carloboy straightened up, the capsule was no more.

  ‘My God,’ Winnie exclaimed, ‘you left it inside? How to take out?’

  ‘That’s his business. Bloody sneak. Giving his arse to the staff and putting us all in trouble.’ He seized Cowpea by the hair, raised the boy’s head. ‘Now go and tell your able seamen to put the hand and take it out!’

  Cowpea struggled, was released. He tried to stand, then bent over, stumbled naked to the door. Tears filled his eyes, and his lips were white. He doubled over to pull up his trousers, straightened himself and gave a thin cry. The trousers clung to his knees as he fell. A thin curl of greenish liquid tinged with red touched the back of his thighs.

  ‘He’s bleeding,’ Nugawira croaked, ‘call the quartermaster!’

  The boys panicked. Cowpea lay on the floor, essence of chicken oozing from his anus, and there was blood. Many ran for help. Roy Fernando, white-faced, said hoarsely, ‘Capsule must have broken. Now we are all in the shit.’

  Carloboy was unrepentant. ‘Serves the bastard right.’

  The OOD rushed Cowpea to the army medical reception station. ‘What happened here?’ he roared.

  ‘Nothing, sir,’ said Carloboy sullenly, ‘he was rubbing something in his arse. Don’t know what. Must have slipped and gone in, sir.’

  ‘Godalmighty!’ the officer gave a horrified squawk and ran out to telephone the MRS.

  Carloboy said, ‘That’s our story, right?’

  The others nodded dumbly.

  ‘Will—will anything happen to him?’ Sims asked faintly, ‘if he dies or something . . .’

  ‘Rubbish!’

  ‘Shouldn’t have used the glass capsule,’ Sims said stoutly.

  ‘So how to know it will break like that? Anyway, whatever he says, we must stick to our story. Otherwise we are all in trouble.’

  They nodded soberly.

  In the MRS, Cowpea went through the most excruciating torment. Slivers of glass had to be carefully extracted from his anal passage and the orderlies didn’t like the smell of essence of chicken.


  The medical officer was pleased. ‘First time in the history of this dump, we took an X-ray of a bugger’s arse,’ he told CO Dharamdass who wanted every detail of the case and marvelled at the answers he received.

  He told Sub-Lieutenant de Mel, ‘Can’t have this bugger in the service. You know what he keeps doing? Pushing anything he gets into his arse. Real basket case.’

  In the MRS Cowpea cried and lay tight-lipped.

  ‘How did it happen?’ he was asked, ‘did anyone catch you and put it in?’

  ‘N-no sir.’

  ‘Then you were pushing it in?’

  No answer.

  When he returned to Rangalla he was asked the same questions. He just looked exceedingly unhappy.

  ‘Fucking pervert!’ the CO stormed, ‘pushing bottles up your backside. Must be getting a hell of a thrill! Collect your gear. You think we want your type in the Navy?’

  Cowpea packed his kitbag. No one spoke to him and he wished to make no conversation. A ten-ton truck was leaving for Colombo. He was put into it. A leading seaman escorted him, carrying a sheaf of official papers, medical reports and a recommendation for immediate discharge, with the Commanding Officer’s comments running to several pages.

  Slowly, things returned to normal at Rangalla. The next week saw yet another discharge. Stoker Mechanic Felix was blood-tested positive for gonorrhoea. He spoke vaguely of a woman he had savoured in a small house below the Bandarawela railway station. The Navy did not want him either.

  ‘If you had passed out and then got the clap we would have given you ten thousand units of penicillin and kept you,’ Dharamdass said. ‘But you’re still a recruit. Remember that all of you!’ he roared, ‘as long as you are recruits you are nothing! We don’t give a fuck for any of you! You become our responsibility only when you pass out. Do you understand?’

  The boys said they did. They were just an ‘intake’. They realized that the Navy could stomach them thus far and no farther. If they hoped for any future they would have to clear this first hurdle. They had to pass out to become sailors. They simply had to watch their steps. And it really wasn’t so hard. The tree had shed its bad apples. Now, they all decided, was the time to meet that passing-out parade in fine fettle. They became, to everyone’s relief, a well-knit body of recruits that, come hell or high water, stood together, ready to face anything.

  The usual little things served to make the uneven tenor of their ways even more uneven. Things like firing on the range, which was always of a particularly hair-tearing quality. The butts would echo to the dull crumps of falling plaster. Sick Bay Attendant Siri and Ordinary Seaman Deen did their best to blast the protective bund to smithereens.

  ‘Don’t press the trigger. Squeeze it gently. Treat it like a woman!’

  ‘I can’t. I got no imagination.’

  ‘Good God, von Bloss! What range have you set! Are you trying to kill your mother-in-law in Colombo?’

  ‘Fire!’

  ‘Hey, PO, my gun won’t fire.’

  ‘Let’s see . . . don’t muck about with it. For God’s sake stop waving it around! Don’t you know there’s a bullet in the breech? Why, you bloody idiot, your safety catch is down . . . wait till I get out of the way!’

  ‘Todwell, what are you doing, rubbing your cock into the ground?’

  ‘Something bit me . . .’ Todwell abandons his rifle to probe up his trouser leg. ‘It’s a bloody big ant!’

  ‘Winnie, the target is in front of you. What are you waiting for?’

  ‘I know, PO, but every time I take aim some bastard is pulling it down.’

  ‘So why are you taking so long? You think the enemy is going to wait until you take aim? Fire, load, fire, load, keep that bolt moving! Christ! What a nut!’

  ‘Koelmeyer! Three maggies. Can’t you get on sight?’

  ‘I’m trying, I’m trying.’

  ‘Then try harder, you cock-eyed cunt!’

  ‘Now this is the Lancaster Carbine. It’s an automatic weapon, understand? See the perforated outer barrel? That’s the chamber cooler. Fire in short bursts, do you hear?’

  Taka-taka-taka-tak-tak-tak-taka-taka-tak-taka-tak-tak . . .

  ‘Enough! Enough! Take your finger off the trigger! Bloody idiot! Let go!’

  Udurawana jerks his hand away. The carbine teeters on its tripod.

  ‘Short bursts, I said, no? Don’t you understand anything? Ran through half the ammo belt!’

  So did range mornings pass. By noon, the gunnery petty officer looked like a fairground Aunt Sally.

  ‘Cease firing! Cease firing! My God, fall in three deep. Let’s go before someone gets killed!’

  12

  History—The Ceylon Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve

  When the government of Ceylon offered its naval volunteers to be a part of His Majesty’s Navy, the offer, as Governor Sir Andrew Caldecott had predicted, was accepted. Britain needed all the men and resources of her colonies, and so, on October 1, 1943, the Ceylon Navy Volunteer Force was absorbed into the Royal Navy. It was now the CRNVR—the Ceylon Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve.

  Kochchikade remained the headquarters for the duration of the war; and let it be said, it was a real Navy in every sense of the word. The men were afloat and performing magnificently in waters that were constantly churned by monsoon weather.

  During the war, all Ceylon naval sea operations included the coast watch and patrol of the ports and approaches of Colombo and Trincomalee (where the British East Indies Fleet was in station). The men constituted a strong, well-knit seaward-defence force. Shore duties were minimal. They had the craft, and the sea was their home.

  They would sweep the approaches to the ports, provide guard-ship duties even as far away as Diego Garcia and the Addu Attol, provide escort to unarmed merchantmen and were constantly out on search and rescue missions, or towing target floats for gunnery exercises and pushing out on patrols up to Barberyn Light and Hendala Light, checking marker buoys and light buoys and keeping a watching brief for any activity of a suspicious nature.

  In Flagstaff Street, Colombo, the signals tower monitored the CRNVR operations on radar and with coded harbour intercom, and HMS Highflyer had its top communications men in the main signals office, on the tall bridge and in the wireless rooms below.

  The CRNVR became the guardians of the shores. Besides the two HM tugs, Samson and Goliath (which, incidentally, still serve as tugs in the port of Colombo), there was HMS Overdale Wyke, HMS Okapi, HMS Sernia, HMS Sambhur, HMS Hoxa, HMS Balta, HM Trawler Barnet, HM Tug C45, HM MFV 17, HM MFV 186 and HM MFV 187.

  The latter, MFV’s 186 and 187 were later despatched to Akyab in Burma where they performed magnificently in mine clearing in the Rangoon river.

  Kochchikade became the special training ground for the signalmen/gunners who were considered the eyes and ears of the force and of special importance. Many educated young men were gathered in, mobilized to man the armament and communication systems. They became a vital part of the CRNVR and earned quick promotions. But the force also relied, just as heavily, on its Lascar seamen, seasoned old salts who worked on deck and kept the ships in fighting trim.

  But oh, the signalmen/gunners had to perform on the parade ground too, and the parade ground at Kochchikade was small enough to make a column dizzy if it marched with the necessary right turns to stay in tight formation. Everyone longed for ‘sea time’, for to be drafted on board was to be free of the chores of the shore base, especially being drilled out of one’s mind.

  One of these signalmen/gunners was a young, fair-haired Burgher lad. He was Victor Hunter. He rose to become a naval commander and also serve as the Captain of the Navy many years later. He and Carloboy had to come together ... as we will read of later.

  HMS Overdale Wyke was promptly dubbed the ‘overdue tyke’. And she was always OW to the men who liked her trim, deadly lines and the main armament—a 12-pounder—which was later mounted at Kochchikade at the parade ground. This gun replaced an older 12-pounder which
had stood there for many years with its brass plate on which was inscribed the year, 1896.

  Indeed, old OW was the first ship purchased by the Ceylon government from the Royal Navy. She was a converted trawler that had been fitted out by the Admiralty for minesweeping duties in the English Channel. She was not young, having been completed in 1924 at Selby by Cochrane & Sons Ltd. But she packed quite a wallop. Besides the 12-pounder, she was fitted with an Oerlikon (single mounting) and two 20 mm Lewis guns (twin mounting), anti-submarine equipment which included sixteen depth charges, two throwers and rails; a Marconi echometer and minesweeping equipment which was a single sweep orapesa.

  It could make maximum speed at 8.6 knots with its steam reciprocating engines and could steam ten days at maximum without her boilers blowing.

  She was small, trim and with plenty of bite. Overall she was 147 feet and at beam, 23 to 24 feet. Light, too, and this gave her the penchant to toss airily in a running sea.

  The Royal Navy armed her and commissioned her in December 1940, and the Ceylon government bought her as is, offering to take delivery midway. So it was that an RN runner crew sailed OW to Port Said where Lieutenant P.J.B. Oakley of the Royal Navy Reserve awaited with a CRNVR crew of forty.

  They sailed the overdue tyke proudly back to Ceylon, quite heedless of reports of enemy activity in the Indian Ocean.

  Ceylon had her first fighting ship.

  13

  Of Royal Guards and Fancy Queens and Days of Soap and Glory

  Diyatalawa’s bracing weather made everything quite nip and tuck. The sort of coldroom atmosphere when even sagging matrons are assessed for whatever tattered potential remained.

  All around were the mountains. The sea had to be imagined. A nice way, indeed, to begin life as a sailor.

  It was believed by bow-legged naval types who strutted decks, that it takes about three months of torrid dams and blasts and what-the-fucks to make the average civilian into a slightly-below-par sailor. That’s how it’s done, it is said, in Portsmouth and Plymouth and other places of nautical suffering. Also, the Royal Ceylon Navy was modelled, and moved quite clodhopperly, on Royal Navy lines. This, too, was inevitable. There was no other way.