by Carl Muller
Victor yelled from the bridge: ‘What’s going on? Where’s von Bloss? Throw out a lifebelt.’
‘He’s here, sir. Somewhere.’
‘Well find him. And stand by with berthing crews. Get a signalman up here.’ ‘Yes sir.’
The sick bay attendant popped up. ‘What happened? Found von Bloss outside the door.’
‘Where is he?’
‘In the sick bay. Big swelling round the back of the neck. Will have to X-ray.’
‘How’s he feeling?’
‘Don’ know. Almost unconscious when I pulled him in.’
Victor signalled Gemunu for a surgeon lieutenant.
‘Send sick man to base hospital,’ came the crisp reply.
Victor swore. He didn’t like it one bit.
They tied up alongside the Queen Elizabeth Quay where a special pavilion had been erected and decorated with tender coconut fronds. Navy vehicles crowded the jetty and all sort of bumptious types with two and three bars swaggered around. There were trails of bunting and flags and railed enclosures.
‘How are you?’ the SBA asked Carloboy.
‘OK I think. What the hell happened?’
‘You fell from the mast. Can you walk? Feeling giddy or anything? Head is hurting?’
Carloboy stood up. ‘Back of my neck. Hell of a pain.’ He moved his shoulders back, hunched them gingerly, ‘Mmmff! Shoulders also.’
‘You’re lucky. No bones broken but have contusions. Try to walk slowly. Any spine pain? Can you climb the steps? Must take you to hospital.’
The fresher air of the upper deck cleared his head which was throbbing dully. Carloboy looked around. Guard rails on the port side had been removed, the canvas stripped. He noted the almost festive air on the quay and all around him. ‘What’s going on?’
‘You don’t know? We’re going to Burma.’
He was still too dazed to take it all in. At the Gemunu sick bay doctors shone lights in his eyes, prodded his back, made him raise his arms, cross them, walk, bend, try to touch his toes. ‘You’re OK,’ said Leading SBA Senavi, ‘God knows why. Should have broken your spine. Here, take these pills and drink this. Light duty for a week. If you feel any giddiness or get even a headache, you report to the sick bay.’
On board, Sims was worried. ‘Bad sign,’ he told the back of Hugo’s neck, ‘even before we sail accidents are happening.’
‘Push harder, men,’ Hugo said, ‘aaah, that’s better.’
Victor did not show that he was pleased. ‘So you are alright? What is this? Light duty? In the Bay of Bengal with a north-east monsoon? Oh, very well. No morning muster. Report to the bridge.’
It was all a part of the Buddha Jayanti celebrations, signalling two thousand years of Buddhism. The government had decided that the Navy should also do its bit. The nearest Buddhist country was Burma, and to Burma would the Vijaya go, bearing gifts. Not just the Navy, but the Army and the Air Force as well. Marching snappily came a contingent of the Ceylon Army under Colonel Sepala. Also, an equally smart cohort of fly boys of the Ceylon Air Force. Two journalists of the local press were also on board.
Carloboy stood at the guard rails, looking down on the quay where a large number of Buddhist monks had assembled. There were gung-ho military and naval types. There were citizens of many stripes. Some waltzed around as much as to say, ‘See how important I am’, while others wore that cosmetic confidence that said, ‘I am also here,’ and sidled this way and that to get into the frames of the cameras. Far east, the north-east monsoon was howling its head off in the Bay of Bengal and forty-foot waves were the order of the day. It was a greyish morning with a bad weather smell and a whippy wind that seemed to threaten, ‘Just you come out of harbour and see what I’ll do.’
Sri Lanka’s only warship was ready to make its first voyage to Burma. Victor addressed the crew and quite fiercely too, saying that they were henceforth ambassadors of their country and would behave themselves as such. A pugnacious little squirt of a man, Cook Steward James, was drafted on board. He went berserk somewhere between the Andamans and the Nicobars and had to be locked up in the shipwright’s stores.
Behind the wardroom curtain, Sims was washing a blob of shit off his penis. ‘If you’re gong to do this I won’t come again,’ he grumbled. Hugo said he was sorry.
Yeoman of Signals Rana trotted between boat deck and signals deck in shiny white. He was quite taken up with the whole ceremony. He was also an ardent Buddhist and knew how to swear in Sanskrit.
‘We are taking a statue to Burma,’ he said with great awe.
‘A statue?’
‘Yes. Lord Buddha. A gift to the people of Burma.’
So that’s why the port side guard rails had been removed.
On the quay, oil lamps were lit and the covey of monks began a sonorous chant. On deck, the men of the Vijaya adopted demeanours of rapt attention. They, the sea, the captain, the ship, even the barnacles no longer on their bottom, were subject to a carpet blessing of sorts. A crane trundled up on parallel rails and readied itself to swing on board a most important passenger. Lord Buddha himself. Bronze, heavy, lotus-positioned.
Nineteen fifty-four was special. It was the year to knit some good wool between neighbouring Buddhist lands. The Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs came up with the idea. Carry across the Indian Ocean a special gift to the people of Burma. Let’s make it big. After all, we are a small country.
The statue was, indeed, huge, must have weighed a ton. The heavy bronze was swung aboard amid rising chants of praise from the quay. Over the deck . . . between the lifeboat davits . . . Victor supervised the soft, precise landing. The statue was steadied, then carefully lowered, inch by inch to the deck, slap against the vegetable locker which was the only large structure in sight. It looked secure enough.
Able Seaman Jackson creased his brow. ‘So where do we show the films?’ he asked.
A chief petty officer sniffed. ‘No films on this trip.’
‘Why?’
‘Why, can’t you see the locker can’t be used?’
Painfully true. The canvas screen used to be slung on the locker. Now the statue was in the way.
‘So no films?’
‘How many times have I to tell you, you idiot!’
Exit Jackson, swearing foully.
No one knew that the devout Yeoman of signals had brought a Buddhist flag on board. He had tucked it into the flag locker and breathlessly bided his time. No sooner had the statue touched down than the harbour sucked back in wonderment. From the flag deck, rising on the main mast halyard, tautening on its butterfly clips, was a strange flag. A flag that no naval or international signal book had any answer for.
Oh, everyone’s proud of a flag. Hoist the colours and it does something to one. It gives one a sort of lift; puts one’s soul on an escalator, makes one’s mind swell. In Sri Lanka, many flags are honoured. Colours, too, are of significance and of all the flags, nothing is more striking than the Buddhist flag with its many stripes and patches of colour. All these colours must mean something, but when this flag was jacked up on the main mast of the Vijaya the skipper of HMCS Okapi, a Royal Canadian destroyer, blinked and blinked again. True, he was in the exotic east where strange things usually happen, but never had he seen such a peculiar signal.
Yeoman Rana was well pleased. He had honoured the arrival of the statue of the Buddha. The flag slapped cheerfully in the morning wind.
From its berth, the Okapi sprang to action. A ten-inch visual signalling lantern was turned on the Vijaya’s bridge and began to flash its concern. ‘What is the trouble? We are ready to slip moorings and come alongside. Do you need assistance?’
Victor tore at the forelock he liked to twirl with his finger. The Yeoman blanched as the skipper’s roar knifed the air. Without waiting for more he ducked out of sight, then bent in two, crept down the gangway.
‘Von Bloss! What the fuck is that!’
‘Sir, what sir?’
‘That,
you fool! Up there! What’s that flag up there? Who hoisted that? Get it down at once! Is this a fucking warship or what? Who hoisted that? Who? I want to know who? And here—come here! I haven’t finished. Where the fuck are you going?’
To take the flag down, sir.’
‘Signal the Okapi and say no trouble.’
‘Yes sir.’
‘Pull that flag down!’
‘Yes sir.’
‘So go!’
Carloboy went. Of Rana there was no sign. But he didn’t get into any really hot water. It was dismissed as a serious bout of Buddhistic fervour.
Despite the assuring signal, the Okapi had put out a boat and a Lieutenant and a leading seaman came abroad, quite anxious. They were also most intrigued.
‘So what is that flag?’ the hookie asked.
Carloboy explained.
‘Never saw one like that before.’
Few naval vessels in the world have. Navy signals are mysterious. Anything that cannot be read, identified or interpreted is considered a distress signal. This includes any flag hoisted upside down or the raising of a bucket and a blanket or, as in this case, a totally unidentifiable flag.
Rana was unrepentant. He declared it his Buddhist duty to signal to the world the importance of this Buddhist cruise. ‘This is a religious mission,’ he said grandly.
‘And this is the Navy,’ Carloboy said.
‘You wait and see,’ said Rana darkly, ‘we will have trouble on this trip.’
The Vijaya was grossly overcrowded. The wardroom with its additional Army and Air Force officers was ready to burst and the mess system was shaken out and stood on its ear. The seamen’s mess was turned over to the Air Force and communication mess to the Army. This latter was a grave mistake. The mess, slap against the bows, was the worst place to be in if one were a landlubber. It’s the bows that take the pitch and toss. The Army, let it be said, groaned and vomited and wept and those who could talk declared that they were dead.
The seamen’s mess had its own comforts. The Air Force men were convinced they would never see Burma.
The men of the Vijaya decided to spread canvas on the boatdeck but wet weather put paid to that and there was a rush for the galley tables.
The Vijaya sailed past the pilot station proudly enough, then took the first big sea like an overfed duck. They were in for a terrific beating. The December gales had their own mixer-blender operation going, whipping the sea into a rare tizzy. The Vijaya also had this disconcerting habit of poking her nose under like an inquisitive puppy. The sea would swirl over her breakwater and dash angrily on the holystoned decks. Then, well satisfied that all aboard were convinced that she wasn’t coming up, she would do just that, rising clean out of the water like a grey ghost, sending thousands of tons of Indian Ocean to sweep clean her boat deck, wash the feet of the Buddha and gurgle down to the quarter deck. Guy ropes had to be slung. The lines holding the statue creaked alarmingly and the mast shook as the ship tried for a ten-knot average in the face of forty-foot waves that kept rising up and acting like wayward battering rams.
The Army died several times. Face and uniforms were of the same khaki hue. Carloboy took to going on duty with a bucket. Even the duty officer of the watch vomited. And then, in a fury that could only be attributed to the foul weather, Cook-steward James wrenched off the head of a brass tap in the galley and with it, split Percy Nathali’s head. He had no real reason. There was the tap, there was Nathali. It seemed like a good thing to do.
Yeoman Rana muttered a Buddhist prayer and rocked on his heels. ‘Nothing but trouble; you wait and see.’
With James locked in the shipwright’s store and declaring his determination to fuck everyone’s mother no matter how old she be, Victor was told that the man had to be insane.
‘Good. A mad cook is just what we need. Hold that course! Zero one seven it is. Where the hell do you think you’re going?’
And then the sea seemed to whoop and hurl the ship any which way with much malice and on the boat deck, Able Seaman Rodney, making slow progress with decks awash, heard a crack and a thud and saw Lord Buddha advance on him, he later swore, at fifty miles per hour. The statue had snapped its ropes. The pitch of the ship hurled it across the boat deck.
Rodney screamed, let off the guy rope, slipped and was flipped towards the guard rails. He hung on, and inches from his shoulder the huge bronze slammed the rails like a runaway train. It took three men to pull Rodney to safety and up to fifty swearing sea drenched men with winches and ropes and blocks and pulleys to secure the statue first, using the mushroom ventilators to take the strain.
The guard rails had cracked outwards and it was a period of savage desperation, fighting every sickening lurch and toss, keeping the statue from plunging into the sea. Forty searing minutes, and then, satisfied that the guard rails would not collapse, the frenzied haul-in began. Every man was rushed to the deck and the waves rushed in to welcome them. Muscles bulged, neck veins swelled as the bronze was manually dragged back and lashed down. A Buddha in chains. It looked on the men, the fury of the sea with softly smiling eyes and a look of great tenderness. The only island of serenity in a millrace of grunting, griping men who blasted the black air with their oaths.
And then, as if acknowledging that it had done its worst, the sea settled. Victor clamped his cap on his head, inspected the damage on the boat deck. The statue seemed none the worse. ‘Will it hold?’ he asked.
Walid nodded. ‘Some slight scratching, but it’s OK.’
‘Good. There’ll be better weather now. We are off the Andamans. I’m going to take a nap.’
The Nicobars lay like bright jewels in the morning light and the sea was an incredible blue turning green and cream. Nathali, with a bandage round his head, emerged asking after James and expressing a wish to do murder. He was persuaded that there were, after all, more days than years and that James was crazy and had taken to throwing his food into the big barrel of nails. The ship, too, settled. Even the Army emerged and began to muster on deck and show some interest in the things of the living. Carloboy found that he could handle his accordion. His shoulders and back had completely healed. With no films, evenings were spent merrily enough on the boat deck. The familiar sea shanties ripened the air, and as for comfortable playing, the statue was an ideal support.
Yeoman Rana panted up to the bridge. ‘Playing and singing all the filth in the world,’ he said brokenly. ‘And the Army and Air Force men also listening. Disgrace, sir, disgrace, that’s what it is.’
Walid calmed the man. down. ‘So they’re singing. What’s the matter with you, Yeoman, don’t you like singing?’
‘But sir, round the Buddha, no?’
‘So? Where else can they be? No harm in a little singing, Yeoman.’
‘But sir, that von Bloss is too much. With that music thing . . . sitting on the statue, sir. Not good to do like that.’
Walid sighed. ‘Yeoman, when that statue almost went into the sea these men hauled it to safety. Don’t come to me with your head full of shit, do you hear? I didn’t see you doing anything that night.’
‘I-I was also there, sir.’
‘Bullshit! Can you hear them? Muslims, Sinhalese, Hindus, Burghers, Malays—all nearly killed themselves dragging the statue. Did Yusuf say I’m a Muslim I won’t pull? You are becoming a bloody pain in the arse! Keep your bloody beliefs to yourself. Hoisting Buddhist flags! Should have court-martialled you! Where is von Bloss sitting? On the statue—what do you mean on the statue? Is he sitting on the shoulders?’
‘Sitting in the lap, sir,’ Rana muttered.
‘And what is the statue doing?’
‘Sir?’
‘What is the statue doing?’
Rana gulped. ‘N-nothing, sir.’
‘Then fuck off! If the statue doesn’t like it, it will tell von Bloss to get off!’
‘Y-yes sir.’
‘Don’t want to hear another word out of you, do you hear?’
‘Yes sir.’<
br />
On the ninth of December they picked up the pilot at the mouth of the Rangoon River and dropped anchor six miles out of Rangoon. At 0715 on the tenth they tied up to a pontoon in Rangoon harbour.
The voyage was over.
50
History—The Testing of ‘Little Boy’
‘My God,’ wrote Lieutenant Colonel Paul Tibbets in his journal, ‘What have we done?’
This may be a question still asked, still not fully answered fifty years later. It is a question of morality, of politics, of America’s domestic and geostrategic policy, of anxiety, of haste, of an utter weariness of war. All these could have been part of the answer: why America chose to drop that first atom bomb on Hiroshima in the summer of 1945?
There is much uncertainty and regret today and many Americans seem to think it was a wrong act, even a totally unnecessary act. An act of sheer mass murder even. Japan, they still argue, was collapsing anyway. In ten days in March 1945, General Curtis LeMay had led the 20th Air Force to methodically destroy the major cities of Japan with concerted firebombing raids. There had been 11,600 sorties by B-29s that had erased 32 square miles of Japan’s four largest cities. Over 150,000 people had been killed. On May 25, 1945, an air raid on Tokyo had raised a firestorm so fierce that bomber crews later said how they had smelt burning humans from over a thousand feet up.
There had always been this thing about bombing civilian centres, but the Allies no more had such scruples. Not after Hitler’s blitz on London. There had to be retaliation. Thus came the day and night-raids against Germany, the terrible firestorm of Essen and the huge loss of civilian life. In its issue of March 19, 1945, Newsweek proclaimed that LeMay’s firebombing of Tokyo had made about one million persons homeless.
Still, the Japanese made no indication of surrender. At best, they were looking for a negotiated settlement. They had to save face. It was what they were best at doing. Indeed, upon learning of the US plans for Operation Downfall, the Japanese marshalled 540,000 men to defend Kyushu and made provision to send out 5,000 kamikaze planes against the gathering US forces. They were determined to force Washington to accept a negotiated settlement.