Spit and Polish

by Carl Muller

  Carloboy pushed Eardley out of his mind. The leading seaman was looking at the group and he had a most unpleasant expression on his face. Why do they have to be so—so—superior, he thought.

  ‘I’m a leading seaman. See this anchor on my sleeve? That’s what makes me a leading seaman. You know what that means?’ he glared around.

  The group slumped, prepared to be bored.

  ‘Power!’ he shouted, and recruit Winnie started. ‘Yes, you keep that in mind. In the bloody night when someone comes to your bunk and takes your hand so that you can feel this anchor, you will know that he is a leading seaman, right? And you don’t make a sound! Not even if he fucks your arse, right? Because a leading seaman is plugging you and there’s nothing you can do about it, right? In future when you see me you will say killick or hookie, right? Get used to it. You there—’ to Todwell, ‘are you listening?’

  ‘Yes killick,’ Todwell shouted back, and, ‘what sort of bloody thing is that to say?’

  That first briefing ... It was dinned in that training in Diyatalawa would be tough. Very tough. The usual patter: Separating the men from the boys . . . turning civilians into sailors . . . and most unpleasant for any mummy’s darlings. Also, most diverting for nice-looking, smooth-legged lads who would surely be singled out for special attention. First, the promise that boys would become men whether they liked it or not. A painful process according to the Queen’s Regulations and Admiralty Instructions! Then would the men become sailors. They were henceforth to regard Gemunu and Rangalla as real ships. All routine was carried out as on real sea-going ships, so much so that one could not just comb one’s hair and saunter out of the gates. One had to leave ship. To do so, one had to come to the quarter deck to be inspected and then take a liberty boat which, quite invisible to all except a drug addict or two, would be brought alongside the quartermaster’s lobby at a given time.

  Tossing things around and especially on the floor was a punishable offence, because one would be tossing such things—cigarette ends, used condoms, et cetera—on the deck of a ship. And this was Simply Not Done. Whistling was also prohibited. It was fondly imagined that this could be confused with the sound of the bosun’s pipe. Also, smoking was taboo while in training. (This, Carloboy will tell you, was shelved as an enforcement applicable to a more docile bunch of recruits.)

  Securing his kitbag to his bike, Carloboy wheeled out of the gates of the good ship Gemunu. The bosun’s pipe screeched and a nasal squeak demanded that Cook Steward Jamis report to the wardroom.

  Again, it was on the double . . .

  ‘So you signed up,’ Eardley said, ‘Where, put the uniform to see.’

  Carloboy ransacked the long canvas bag. Everything had to be washed, he knew. Shoes needed shining, webbing and cap pipe-clayed. But he kitted up, grimaced at himself in the mirror. Not bad.

  Eardley agreed. ‘Smart,’ he said, poking into the bag. ‘Ah, you got the ceremonial kit also, bell-bottoms, tunic and sailor collar, silk . . . wear this to see.’

  Carloboy shook his head. A wild thought came into his head. I’ll go out and come.’

  ‘Like this?’

  ‘So what’s the harm? I’m in the Navy now.’

  Eardley smiled but couldn’t help firing a shot. ‘With your build you would have looked really smart in Army uniform. Anyway, what to do? You’ll get late?’

  ‘Don’t know. But just put a mat and pillow in the veranda.’

  Carloboy bumped across the rude-planked Vihara Lane bridge, to his home across the canal. Home. To the mother who detested him, to the father who had stood, stony-faced at the door, watching him leave over a year ago.

  2

  History—The Springing Tiger

  None could tell the story of Sri Lanka’s fighting men better than the Indians, for it was the Indian Independence League, the old IIL that organized the first ‘Lanka Unit’ in Singapore during World War II. That was on March 22, 1944, and it was the beginning of Sri Lanka’s involvement in the cause of India’s freedom.

  This ‘Lanka Unit’ had its parallel ‘Ceylon Department’ too, and both units were associated with the IIL and the Indian National Army (INA) of Subhas Chandra Bose.

  Bose was Netaji1 and had no qualms about what he would do or who he would use towards gaining his objectives.

  It is now known that the INA and its Lanka Unit fought alongside the Japanese against the British in the cause of India’s freedom, and this has been confirmed, albeit obliquely, by Indian historian Ramachandran, who dealt with the Indian Independence Movement in Malaya from 1942 to 1945.

  Ramachandran has said that when the Japanese surrendered in Malaya, Bose ordered League officials to destroy all official papers. It was not advisable that any evidence of the IIL’s collaboration with the Japanese fall into British hands. And Britain in turn, found the activities of Bose’s INA most embarrassing.

  As such, no document of the least importance has survived, and the British, too, erased all information on the INA, its activities and its achievements.

  A case in point is the story of the INA’s action at the Palel airstrip in Manipur, which was the northern front of Indo-Japanese assault on British India. Gordon2 said that the British denied that any such action had taken place and, above all, that no Indian troops ever fought alongside the Japanese.

  But there is no getting away from the fact that Sri Lankans also fought for Azad Hind3 and gave their lives as bravely.

  Singapore was the INA’s wartime rear headquarters in the Malay peninsula, and when the British re-occupied Malaya, one of their first actions was to tear down the memorial to the INA dead.

  Indeed, when Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru visited Singapore in March 1946, Lord Louis Mountbatten made one request: that Nehru lay no wreath at the war memorial for the INA. This is recorded by Ziegler4, who said that Mountbatten had reminded Nehru that the men of the INA had not only fought against the British but also against the local people of Malaya.

  Even the Indian author Nirad Chaudhuri5 suggested that the INA was never near the front.

  But others differ. Durlab Singh6 and A. Ayer7 tell of the INA campaigns and the daring manner in which they were conducted.

  Much has thus been given us of the INA’s wartime activities on the Indo-Bunnese border. Ayer relates how Bose trained and equipped an entire contingent of Ranis of Jhansi, his women’s fighting unit, when he moved his headquarters closer to the front. Ayer was definite that the INA forces covered 150 miles within Indian territory, but, as Toye8 said, the western world knows little of, or wishes to acknowledge any of the story. Even in India, he said, the story has received the most niggardly treatment.

  The Lankans of the Malay Peninsula, who fought alongside the ‘Springing Tiger’ fought magnificently. Two strands of history bring the story together: the Indian struggle for an end to British rule, and Japan’s aims to expand in South-east Asia.

  The world will ever remember Gandhi’s and Nehru’s non-violent struggle, based on negotiation and compromise and non-aggressive opposition. But none can deny the armed struggle of revolutionary groups both in India and outside.

  Bose was not satisfied with passive resistance. He wanted direct action against the British administrators and their institutions. And his views received support. Indians resident in the US and Canada formed the revolutionary Ghadrite movement. In Europe, the Indian Legion was formed. Bose was becoming a thorn in the British side.

  In 1941, with the threat of arrest and incarceration, he made a daring escape to Germany where he organized the Indian Legion of Europe to be the nucleus of his INA. The Indian Legion comprised four battalions in 1942. In Germany, the Legion swore obedience to Hitler, as the leader of the German Armed Forces in the fight for the freedom of India.

  This is probably why both Nehru and Gandhi rejected Bose and his aims, although Bose himself, as early as 1936, rejected Hitler’s anti-Asian racism. And the West held firm to its convictions. Indians were collaborating with the Nazis . . . and more so, w
ith the Japanese. Even the moderates and conservatives in India were appalled. When Bose formed the Provisional Government of Free India in Singapore, he justified the stance he had taken. He also declared that Japan had recognized his provisional government.

  Perhaps Bose used Japan, took the tide at the flood. Hitherto, apart from sporadic acts of violence against British administrators and institutions, he had had no real plans for a military role in the liberation of India. Then, Japan burst upon the Pacific scene and this gave Bose the long-awaited opportunity for action through his INA force in Asia. India was included in Japan’s long-range expansionist plans and Japan was keen to sponsor anti-British activities and all anti-colonial liberation armies.

  As far back as 1912, Rash Behari Bose, who threw a bomb at British Viceroy Hardinge in Delhi, found safe haven in Japan. Indeed, Japan promoted the idea of ‘Asia for the Asiatics’ and assisted the setting up of INA branches in Kuala Lumpur, Malaya and Singapore.

  When Singapore surrendered to the Japanese in 1942, thousands of Indians of the British Indian Army were recruited into the INA. Many Sri Lankans in the Malay peninsula also joined. Many question the role these Sri Lankan fighters played, but the fact of their being part of the INA is undeniable. It was time for Bose to return from Germany, take command.

  The story of his journey embellished his legend. He was ready to enter into the real war against the British and he fearlessly made passage by submarine, through waters which were controlled by the Allies. Round the Cape of Good Hope, past the south of Sri Lanka, across the Bay of Bengal to Sabang, then Penang. His arrival in Singapore in July 1943 was hailed as near-miraculous.

  He revitalized the IIL and the INA. He declared he Provisional Government of Free India and earned for the INA the status of an Army of a sovereign government under the Geneva Convention.

  He did more. He declared war against Britain and America in October 1943!

  3

  Of Complying and Complaining and Dead Cats in Lavatories

  The chronicler has no wish to dwell on the journey to Diyatalawa. Ninety 18-year-olds on an overnight train to the hills becomes the stuff of nightmares. Despite all strictures and the agonized yelps of petty officers at the Colombo Fort station, much good liquor was taken aboard, while Carloboy reminded all and sundry that they were now on a train, and when it came to trains he knew more than any pseudo-sailor could know about non-existent ships or ships perched upon mountains . . . ‘So let’s have a drink and a bloody good time!’

  ‘Drink and be merry’ is a matter of interpretation. For the boys being propelled into a life of naval discipline, into an existence quite alien, this had to be the now time. Nothing would matter but now. It was the time, then, to let it all hang out—the smuttiest language, the ripest songs, the vilest jokes, the most outrageous stories, the coarsest of laughter and, as other sleepless passengers swore, the bluest night of the calendar.

  ‘Nobody sleeps!’ Carlo Nugawira roared.

  ‘My God,’ muttered the Rodrigos in the adjoining compartment, ‘what are they singing now?’ while the fleeting country echoed to the rollicking strains of:

  If I were a single girl, and if I were to marry,

  I would marry a carpenter than any other laddie;

  For he can screw and I can screw, and we can screw together,

  And we’ll get up in the middle of the night and screw one another.

  It was only in the early hours that sleep took its toll of some and booze levelled many others, and the hills ceased to echo the ghastly uproar that had begun when the night mail groaned out of Colombo.

  Arrival was as much of a shambles. They tottered out, cursing everything that moved, the short sleep, the icy chill of a new day four thousand feet over sea level, and most of all, a leading seaman who was grimly hanging on to his sanity, trying to bring some order into the whole boiling.

  After much griping and sitting on or tripping over kit-bags, and after recruit Aloysius had told everyone, even the porters, that he wanted to go home, they were bundled into two trucks and taken most wheezily into Rangalla.

  The Commanding Officer—henceforth the CO—was Lieutenant Dharamdass, the sort of name that was a cross between a grunt and a sneeze. He maintained, pleasantly enough, that sailors were made, not born.

  ‘You’re here to be trained,’ he said in his deceptively musical voice, ‘and this is something we are good at. Very good at. There will be parade each morning and you will learn to love your boots and your brass and look after them at all times. You may swear at anything and everything. The master-at-arms, the watch bell, the guards instructor, me, the cooks, the staff . . . ’ he beamed, ‘and that’s all right. Everybody must swear. Gets rid of the bad feelings, I always say. And then . . . and then I will punish you until you fall in a fucking heap and never open your dirty mouths again! Do you hear!’

  Carloboy stared. He had never seen someone so affable one minute, then go off half-cocked the next. No, Lieutenant Dharamdass’ smile was a gale warning of sorts.

  Led to the huts, each claimed bunk and locker. ‘Get your bloody fingers out,’ an able seaman said, ‘collect your sheets, blankets, get shipshape!’

  Sims told Aloysius, ‘Once more you say you want to go home, I’ll brain you!’

  But the recriminations had to come. ‘All this damn polishing, polishing, polishing. What the hell is this, men? Just look at that parade ground. All red dust. Polish and go and in two minutes the boots are covered in dust.’

  Carloboy had a point, but there was no help to it. Boots had to be disguised as mirrors. Caps had to be Meltonian-cleaned to put Snow White’s knickers to shame.

  Vanlangenburg gave a superior sniff. ‘One thing, I know how to do this. My uncle was in the Army and he told me how. See here, first take a little polish on the finger and rub into the leather. Then spit—’ pthoo!—’and rub. All the polish gets nice and smooth . . .’

  The rest watched interestedly, then put their heads together.

  ‘Adai, Vanlangenburg, you like this polishing business?’

  ‘I like. At home also, anyone going anywhere, asking for me to polish and give. There. How the toe cap now? Like silk, no?’

  Boots sailed in from all directions. Vanlangenburg leaped off his bunk.

  ‘You say you like,’ Carloboy sang, ‘then you polish.’

  ‘What? What? You’re mad! Look at the amount of boots. How to polish all this?’

  ‘What, men, only thirty pairs.’

  ‘You’re mad. Thirty pairs! Whole day will go. You’re joking or what?’

  ‘So just do one by one. Nicely, like you did yours.’

  ‘No! Polish your own boots!’

  ‘Oh, all right. One thing, can’t depend on anyone these days.’ Carloboy picked up his boots, told Vanlangenburg, ‘Anyway don’t sleep in the night, you heard.’

  ‘Huh? Why—why can’t I sleep in the night?’

  ‘Nothing. Sleep if you want, but I’m thinking, better for you if you don’t.’

  ‘You’re trying to do something when I’m sleeping? You try to see. I’ll make a complaint. This is a hell of a joke. I must polish everybody’s boots?’

  ‘So don’t. We will polish. But we know what to do.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘That’s not your business.’

  Vanlangenburg became quite nervous. ‘But—but—this is not fair . . .’

  ‘Fair? You’re the one who started boasting. Like to polish. For the whole family, you said. But now what are you worried about? We said we’ll polish—’

  ‘But why did you say not to sleep?’

  ‘Just.’

  ‘Just why?’

  ‘Why not? If we are all up, only you can sleep?’

  Vanlangenburg’s head swam. ‘You’re mad,’ he repeated. It was assuring to say it. It seemed to explain all the lunacy his world was heir to. ‘See, will you, even my boots, it takes about fifteen minutes to polish.’

  ‘We know that. But if
you take fifteen minutes, your boots are shining. Like straight from the shop. Look at my boots. About one hour I’m rubbing the effing things. Can you see? Like as if they have come from a monkey’s arse! That’s what I’m telling, you’re the best man for the job.’

  ‘But how? Thirty pairs,’ Vanlangenburg wailed, ‘how to do so many?’

  ‘Why can’t you? We are all in the same hut. Little co-operation, that’s all we’re asking. Otherwise why don’t you go to the next hut? Go and tell that leading seaman fellow. I saw the way he was looking at you. You can have a good time there. Might even take you to his bunk in the night.’

  Vanlangenburg looked bleakly at the pile of boots, at his tormentors. He took up a boot. ‘And what about all the other work?’

  ‘What work?’

  ‘The webbing and the brass and all.’

  ‘You give all that to us. We can do that. You just sit and polish. You want anything just shout. Your tea also we’ll bring.’

  So Vanlangenburg polished and was thanked prettily for his pains and Hut Three marched with twinkling toes until everything came apart at colour guard one morning.

  Each morning, in rain or shine, the white naval ensign was hoisted and a band of recruits made up the colour guard. Colours were hoisted at eight ack emma and struck at sunset. The guard had to salute the ensign which was slowly raised by a signalman who then secured it to the butterfly clips on the mast. At sunset, usually at six pip emma, or nautically, eighteen hundred hours, the colours were brought down, just as slowly and with due solemnity. This was a daily ritual. A ship that did not fly its colours was either (a) not a ship but a sea-going washing machine, (b) under the command of a skipper who had escaped from the booby hatch or (c) had not as yet been commissioned and no one had fervently asked that God bless her and all who sail in her.

  ‘God help us all!’ screamed the Platoon Commander, ‘You! Ordinary Seaman Vanlangenburg! Fall out!’