Spit and Polish

by Carl Muller

  ‘So what were the girls like?’ Ryan asked.

  Percy shrugged. ‘Now can’t remember. And the Hikkaduwa police are also coming.’

  ‘And the Galle police also,’ Carloboy grumbled.

  Victor listened impatiently. ‘Coming to identify men? What sort of policemen do they have in these parts? How are they going to identify?’

  ‘They got hammered, sir,’ said Hughes.

  ‘Balls! That’s an occupational hazard. Policemen always get hammered!’

  Charges were framed the next day. Carloboy listened to Wicks rather dazedly. Use of illegal water transport; assaulting police officers whilst in the discharge of their duties; creating a disturbance of the peace; damage to public and private property; assaulting the CO’s official driver; urinating on the CO’s official vehicle—

  ‘What! Who pissed on the car? I didn’t!’

  ‘Well, somebody did!’

  —illegal boarding of vessels in harbour; assault of civilians; boarding ship in a state unbecoming a seaman; battery; attempting to effect entry into Her Majesty’s Army establishment; failure to salute commissioned officers of HM Service; ‘and there’s a huge bill for damages from the Sydney Hotel!’ Wicks blared. ‘Jee-sus! How can you buggers do so much in one night? Now the police are coming. Will have to hold an identification parade on the boat deck.’

  Victor scowled at Carloboy. ‘Now you’ll go to jail and I’ll have to find another secretary.’ He twirled his forelock furiously. ‘Wear your cap well down on your head.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘You heard, didn’t you? Cap square. Clean number tens.’

  ‘Sir, why sir?’

  ‘For police identification, you fool. You had your cap on in the hotel?’

  ‘No sir.’

  ‘Then do as I say. Good God, man, sometimes I think you want to go to jail!’

  The policemen and a sub-inspector who accompanied them waved their hands helplessly. They declared it was easier to identify Chinamen who all looked alike anyway. Size varied, true, but from where they were standing, a sailor was a sailor and no more or less.

  ‘So who split your chin?’ the sub-inspector fumed.

  ‘How to tell who? Mus’ be all.’

  The men of the Vijaya stood, innocence writ large on their faces. Policemen shuffled, paused, spent painful moments thinking, shuffled on. No, they had no idea who had hit them; who had destroyed their tunics; who had deprived them of teeth, breath and dignity. Those were demons. These were lily-white sailors with caps pulled down to their eyebrows and looking as harmless as unused condoms in their shiny film wrappers.

  The post office watcher had also been brought on board. He had the least to say. He reminded the police that he had run. It was the act of a wise man, he said devoutly.

  When the police launch pulled away, everybody cheered. They cheered some more when they upped anchors. They cheered when they steamed into Colombo and surged ashore en masse.

  Victor said, ‘Not a bad trip. See that everything’s ready for docking tomorrow at thirteen hundred.’

  ‘Usual bottom cleaning, sir?’ asked Walid.

  ‘Yes. Will be at NHQ in the morning. We have a good cruise ahead. Get all working parties ready. Painting, scraping, davits to be checked, stays greased, we move to Guide Pier at oh nine. Oh, and arrange for a shore telephone. We can shut down signals watch.’

  ‘Aye aye sir.’

  It was the twenty-first of November. At home, Carloboy rummaged and found his old Crucianelli piano accordion. Long time since he had played on it. With its 120 bass buttons, it was a powerful instrument. He found home agog with his father’s latest venture: a shop!

  ‘What’s this?’ he asked, ‘Beverley Stores?’

  There was the big sign over the front door. The sitting room had disappeared. There were counters and shelves and merchandise of every sort. He stared. His father sat behind a counter. Neighbours flocked in to buy all manner of things. Sonnaboy beamed.

  ‘With my commuted pension, started this,’ he said.

  ‘But a shop? Are customers coming?’

  ‘Everybody is coming. Whole family is coming. Even Wellawatte people are coming.’

  Sonnaboy was happy. He would go to the wholesale merchants in the Pettah and come back laden with goods. He had bought a refrigerator ‘to store butter’ he said and he had arranged to stock sugar and flour and other oilman goods. He was as merry as a sandboy, and he also kept his arrack in the fridge ‘for evening customers who also come to put a drink and chat.’

  ‘You can go and bring a bag of sugar?’ he asked.

  Carloboy nodded and took the bicycle. The stores at Dutugemunu Street had never sold a sack of sugar to a man on a bicycle.

  ‘How taking and going?’ the man had asked in Sinhala.

  ‘On the bar you put, will you.’

  Sixty-five pounds of sugar were heaved onto the bicycle bar, pressed against the fork. ‘Right, now receipt give.’

  The man scratched his head as Carloboy rode away, one hand gripping the fold at the top of the sack, steadying it as he swept down the road by the canal.

  His mother complained that Sonnaboy was giving goods to the family on credit.

  ‘So why are you telling me?’

  ‘So tell your father to be careful. If they don’t pay he’ll go to fight and unnecessary trouble for all.’

  His mother was right, of course, but Carloboy shrugged. He wasn’t going to start advising his father. He bathed and strolled down the garden. Angeline gave him a shy hello. What he gave her was far from shy.

  He was very refreshed when he went on board to find the ship a flurry of activity. The master-at-arms was in his element. He had more work parties than he had ever dreamed of: painting parties, scrubbing gangs, chipping parties, scuttle cleaners, mast and funnel painting parties, brasswork gangs, squads to holystone the decks . . .

  Carloboy was summoned to the Captain’s office where Victor handed him a sheaf of reports. ‘Everything must be ready before we leave,’ he said. Outside, the QM was hailing for the captain’s launch.

  ‘Leave, sir?’

  Victor ignored that. ‘Get busy, signalman.’

  ‘Yes sir.’

  They tied up at the Guide Pier under half port engine and waited for the dock boom to be raised. Slowly, with the wheelhouse keeping 30 port to 30 starboard, they inched into the basin while divers checked the lie of the hull and the chocks. Everything needed to be perfectly aligned before the boom was lowered, the sea pumped out. Gently, the minesweeper lowered, then came to rest on the broad angled chocks that embraced her hull. The water began to lose itself and from over the side came the musty odour of stale sea and dead crustaceans. Soon, the Vijaya was high and dry, gangplanks slung to port. Sentries stood at the open rails. The quartermaster moved to portside and servicemen brought in cables and a telephone to the quarterdeck. Below, gangs of dockers waited to move in with their ropes and donkey platforms and big scrapers and chipping hammers.

  Carloboy had little time to watch the Vijaya being decrusted. The hull was heavy with limpets and barnacles and so many other molluscs that had made their home there. Even goose barnacles, hanging grimly on by their stalks. They would all be scraped away and the docks would begin to smell as the creatures inside them died and rotted in the sun.

  That day Carloboy put up a piece on barnacles on the notice board. The more barnacles, the slower the ship. With a clean bottom, the ship goes faster, he said, and reminded all and sundry that that went for them too. Make sure you wash your bums well, he advised, and Lieutenant Walid was not amused.

  That evening Victor announced that they would not be returning to Kochchikade. The men listened eagerly. Leading Seaman Weli was sure they were going somewhere. Daft was morose. ‘Must be bloody Talaimannar again,’ he sniffed, ‘where else to go?’

  Dock cleaning took time. Also, as Victor insisted, ‘I want this ship to come out of here like a new pin. Why are the foredeck guard rails not painte
d? See to it!’

  On the third of December they were ready to leave dry docks. Lieutenant Wicks introduced the signalmen to a new arrival, Yeoman Rana, who had been drafted from the Gemunu. He told Carloboy, ‘von Bloss, hoist the ensign on the starboard yardarm and stand by the flagdeck.’

  They watched the boom rise, the sea swirl in. Carloboy was careless. He did not check the butterfly clips when he transferred the ensign. The flag rose, and even as he cleared the halyard he felt the line go slack. The flag, free of one clip dashed against the halyard and fouled. The breeze whipped it around the yardarm guys and an end of rope hung, beating back and forth with the weight of the clip.

  ‘Von Bloss, you bloody idiot! What have you done? Clear that flag!’

  The Vijaya was ready to move. On either side of the dock, men were slipping lines, the boys at the sides tending the big fenders. The engine room stood on orders. Outside the dock, the tug Samson awaited. She would give the necessary nudge and help in 360 degree swing as the Vijaya came out stern first.

  Carloboy jiggled the halyard desperately. The flag was too enwrapped to be jerked free and the end of rope and clip were beating at the stays. From the boiler came a whiff of white smoke.

  ‘It won’t give, sir.’

  ‘Well get up there and clear it. Hurry up! We have way on!’

  There was no other choice. Swarming up the Jacob’s ladder, Carloboy reached the struts of the yardarm. He knew the frill. Twenty-six feet to the yardarm, eight feet more to the crow’s nest, six feet higher to masthead. Well, he wasn’t going all the way. He had hoped to hold on to the cross stays, walk the yardarm, free the flag and pop the clip back, male to female. That was the way to do it. But the stays had been newly greased. He checked.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Wicks yelled.

  ‘Grease,’ Carloboy shouted. ‘Can’t hold onto anything. I’m going on the yardarm.’

  ‘Be careful’ Wicks called to Daft for a rope net which was strung over the flagdeck.

  Carloboy inched his way along the yardarm on his belly. The halyard had twisted round the flag. He reached down for the loose rope end. From the stays and brace wires, grease had dripped on the end of the spar. His hands slipped even as he strived to bring the clips together, the male into the female. He was sweating and his knees began to tremble. With the clips mated, he was able to ease the halyard. The wind made the trapped ensign balloon, struggle to be free and it cracked like cardboard in his face. He kept nudging the halyard while below, Daft eased one end of the rope to give slack. Soon the ropes moved easily on the runner. The flag was free.

  ‘Secure,’ Wicks said.

  Carloboy began to bellycrawl backwards until his feet touched the main. Slowly easing himself upwards, he reached for the stay. Grease or no grease, he had to cling to it to get to the wire ladder, and then, with a deep exhalation of relief, he was on the Jacob coming down. The sweat stung his eyes. His hands suddenly refused to function. They were daubed with grease. He slipped, tried to cling on but found no hold. He was twenty feet over the deck when he fell.

  48

  Operation Downfall—the Olympic and the Coronet

  The Americans wanted, above all, to break the will of the Japanese. General MacArthur looked eagerly to this downfall. He planned and shaped it, poured every ounce of his tactical expertise into it. In fact, there could only be one code name for an exercise that would be mounted for the large-scale invasion of Japan—Operation Downfall.

  For the Americans, the very planning of such a massive amphibious operation was sweet revenge. They had come to hate the Japanese fiercely. They also knew Japan would never surrender. It had to be a fight to the death. Downfall was a good name for so massive an onslaught. It must hit hard and the death blow must follow. Downfall and Destruction, Disaster and Death.

  All this was long before the atom bomb. The first fierce face of Downfall would be Operation Olympic. It would be launched under the joint command of MacArthur and Admiral Chester Nimitz. It would involve 650,000 troops, 2,500 ships and 5,000 planes. The troops would constitute 13 divisions of the US sixth Army. The assault would open three fronts on the southern coast of Kyushu island and from here, the US would push northwards to seize a third of the island, forming a line from Sendai in the west to Tsuno in the east. The operation was scheduled for November 1, 1945. It would be X Day.

  The attack would be supported by an air and naval blitz, with Nimitz storming in east of Kyushu to what was called Town Car Beach. The veterans of Iwo Jima, the fifth marine amphibian corps would concentrate on Taxicab Beach on the west coast. It was surely slated to be the largest amphibian effort of the war and its sole purpose was to force Japan to cave in.

  As a plan, it was worked out to frightening precision, Kyushu held Japanese infantry divisions almost equal in number to Tokyo. The Japanese sixteenth area Army was based at Fukuoka with four divisions. Nagasaki had a single division. Four divisions surrounded Sendai and the western littoral. Five divisions were spread across the east coast at Tsuno and the Bungo Strait. There were no armoured divisions, and the Japanese knew that the taking of Kyushu, even the southern sector, would put the Americans too close to the Japanese Army headquarters at Hiroshima.

  The Americans sectored the beaches of the southern part of Kyushu with specific assault orders for each. Town Car Beach was the eastern stretch from Tsuno to a point over Kanoya Bay. The sharp-toed boot of land below the bay was Station Wagon Beach; the big inlet with Kagoshima on its west bank was Convertible Beach and the other southern head was Limousine Beach. Roadster Beach would lead to the assault on Kushikino, while Taxicab Beach would give access to Sendai, looking out on the East China Sea. Delivery Wagon Beach was the toughest, being at the top of the big Kagoshima inlet where two Japanese divisions were known to be.

  The US leaders knew that they would be sacrificing many, but they also knew that the American public was war-weary and demanding an end to it all. They wouldn’t mind a final thrust, wouldn’t really mind the loss of life, provided the agony wasn’t prolonged. The harsher realities had to be faced. There would be a fierce engagement, no doubt about that. The Japanese would defend fanatically. At best, Operation Olympic would take ninety days and casualties would be high. Washington was told to expect up to 20,000 dead and 75,000 wounded.

  And that was one end of the Japanese islands. What about Honshu where Tokyo was, and what about Shikoku where the Japanese Army headquarters at Hiroshima was? This would be the second face of Downfall—Operation Coronet. A drive towards Tokyo.

  Washington was still not satisfied. Victory had to be assured. Japan had to surrender. Professor J.R. Skates, in a book on Operation Downfall said that even poison gas was considered a necessary weapon. It had to be the final death blow.

  Meticulously planned, Operation Olympic would see the US first corps under Major-General Swift and comprising three infantry divisions, storm Town Car Beach, driving inland into Tsuno, Miyakonojo and Kobayashi. The US eleventh corps with two infantry divisions and an armoured division would enter through Station Wagon Beach, run down the end of Kagoshima inlet, take Kanoya and establish a support line for the blitz on Delivery Wagon Beach. They would also link with the First Corps at Miyakonojo to secure the line from Tsuno to Sendai.

  The fortieth infantry division would fan out between Sendai, Kushikino and lend beach support at Taxicab, Roadster, Convertible and Limousine, moving in four waves. Three marine divisions under Major-General Schmidt, comprising the fifth amphibian corps would hit Roadster and Limousine, driving to Delivery Wagon. The infantry would mop up on the island of Tanegashima and the smaller islands off Sendai.

  But the second stage of Downfall was also considered necessary in case Japan stubbornly fought on. This second phase—Operation Coronet—was to be the knockout blow. Honshu’s Kanto Plain would be the main target, a 120-mile stretch of Japan’s industrial heartland with Tokyo in its clasp. This blow, it was certain, would bring Japan to her knees.

  Operation Coronet was
scheduled for March 1, 1946. Three marine and three infantry divisions of the US First Army would advance on Tokyo. They would be under the command of General Hodges. Also, the US Eighth Army under General Eichelberger would unleash six infantry and two armoured divisions to sweep up from the south-east. Target: the Japanese Twelfth Area Army. Fierce fighting, much loss of life was expected. It would be, Washington said, a much larger operation than Olympic.

  Such a lot of planning—and all to appease a war-weary, disgruntled American public. And then, Harry Truman succeeded President Franklin Roosevelt and learnt with some consternation that there was a Manhattan Project and that he had to decide.

  He had to give the order ... to drop the atom bomb! There would be no need for Operation Downfall. There would be no need to sacrifice so many American lives. One man and a bomb could end it all.

  49

  Of Another Kind of Flag and a Murderous Cook and Rowdy Nights in the Lap of the Buddha

  Carloboy fell twenty feet. Not much. Also, he had the sense to throw himself outwards even as he lost foot-and handhold, and he fell on the back of his shoulders, missing the deck mount by inches. As shipwright Silva swore, he actually bounced.

  Silva had only the one cry for such ungodly situations. Sailors falling out of the sky were not everyday occurrences. ‘Man overboard!’ he yelled, and pointed at the hatchway leading to the sick bay. ‘There! There!’ At least he knew where to point, for Carloboy had bounced off the deck boards and rolled down the gangway, coming to rest at the sick bay door.

  Wicks rushed down from the flagdeck. ‘Did he fall in the sea? Where? Where?’

  Silva stared wildly around. A man had dropped out of the blue, bounced at his feet, then bundled into a ball, had rolled below deck. ‘There!’ he said, a shaking finger pointing to the dark throat of the stairs.

  ‘Bloody fool! He went below? That’s overboard?’

  ‘Anything like that is overboard,’ Silva maintained, recovering quickly. Nothing like being called a bloody fool to pull a man together.