by Carl Muller
‘Y-yer-yes sir.’
‘Good! Now get out! Bum! Should have shoved the belaying pin up your bloody anus!’
It was thus seen that this comply and complain lark was a load of horse manure. Carloboy tried to reason with the AB. ‘Surely you don’t expect me to put my hand in that?’
‘Yes, and hurry up!’
‘But—’
‘Look here. I won’t tell you again. Get that cat out now! That’s an order!’
Put like that, there was no help to it. Carloboy leaned over, held his breath, plunged a hand into the mass of excreta. Once his fingers were immersed in that foul mess, nothing else really mattered. He grasped a stiff, slimy leg and straightened up slowly. The cat dripped, stank dreadfully. Flies rose around him indignantly. His eyes blazed.
‘Here’s your cat,’ he hissed, and swung the corpse.
It struck AB Jayasena on the chest, splattering muck on his face and neck. He howled, and then both men were racing for the taps, Jayasena squeezing the shit out of his eyes, his boots scrunching on the dead animal that had a terrible face, all drawn back, its fangs in a death-snarl.
They soused each other, then skipped to their huts for soap and sped back to strip and lather. Both thrower and throwee had been liberally daubed because the sodden corpse had exploded on Jayasena’s chest to spatter Carloboy, and the wall Jayasena stood against. There was no time to start a war. They smelled. They reeked.
Buck naked, they considered each other through swirls of lather and then looked at their uniforms that lay wet, gunky, at their feet. As on signal, they kicked the clothes into the nearest pit, and Carloboy said, ‘Let some other bugger come and pull them out,’ and they scrubbed and scrubbed and soaped each other’s backs and stood under the showers and laughed like lunatics.
They left the heads, sniffing at each other and the mountain wind raised goose pimples on their bodies.
Jayasena said, ‘Never brought a towel. Now how to go to the hut?’
‘Run like hell,’ Carloboy advised,
‘If somebody sees . . .’
‘Can’t be helped. My hut is nearer. Run!’ and two naked sailors dashed up the concrete steps, didn’t check, even to change gear, flashed past an open-mouthed Shipwright Fonseka, hurled themselves into the hut.
Jayasena clapped Carloboy on the shoulder. ‘I’ll put your towel and go to my hut and change.’
Carloboy was wriggling into his trousers. He grinned. ‘No more dead cats, right?’
Jayasena grinned back. ‘And no more shit in my face.’
It was better than an international summit!
4
History—The Kotelawala Saga
At the start, the Lankan communities in Malaya (both Ceylon Sinhalese and Ceylon Tamils) had stayed aloof from the activities of the IIL. They considered themselves Ceylonese, not Indian. But with the capture of Singapore, the Japanese began to look on the Lankans with increasing hostility.
They, the Japanese, appreciated what Bose and his Indian National Army was doing. But these Lankans? What was their role in war? For one thing, they were British subjects and they were in no way anxious to liberate Ceylon from British occupation.
The Japanese even considered the Ceylonese in the Malay peninsula hostile towards the Indian Independence Movement. They even thought it advisable to round up the Ceylonese and confine them in internment camps.
Ceylon was, to the Japanese, a thorn. Mountbatten’s headquarters of the Allied South East Asia Command was located there, and the Japanese bombing of Ceylon in April 1942 had been a relatively minor, quite half-hearted action.
The Ceylonese in Malaya (the Tamils outnumbering the Sinhalese ten to one) found themselves in deeper waters than they cared to be. They were British subjects in an alien land under Japanese occupation. They had to survive deprivations caused by the war. The Japanese harassed them, sometimes tortured, even killed them.
Into this scenario came a young man who could never sit still. He was restless, full of strange dreams and intents, even as a young student in the Royal College in Colombo. He was Gladwin Kotelawala, son of Sir Henry Kotelawala and the kinsman of an ex-prime minister of Ceylon, Sir John Kotelawala.
Gladwin could never sit long enough to study, and his father, being most upset at the boy’s contrary nature, took him out of the Royal College and sent him to Trinity College in Kandy, Sri Lanka’s hill capital, where another kinsman, Jack Kotelawala also studied. It was hoped that Jack would ‘keep an eye’ on Gladwin, but when Gladwin ‘disappeared’, none could tell what had possessed the boy to run away as he did.
Gladwin ran far—to India—and it took time for his father to trace him and bring him back. Relief was short-lived. Gladwin disappeared again. This time he went to Singapore and resisted all attempts to be repatriated. He slipped easily into a new life there, met Muriel, the daughter of a Ceylonese in Malaya, Freddie Wettasinghe, and married her. Also, there was the outbreak of war, and Gladwin, even if he had wished it, could not return to Ceylon.
One man in Malaya held a deep fascination for Gladwin: Subhas Chandra Bose. Gladwin was vociferous in his praise and support for Bose and the way he led the INA. It was not long before these two met and a deep relationship grew between the ‘Springing Tiger’ and the young man who could not sit still.
Gladwin was not happy with the Japanese attitude. Also, what was the harm in the Ceylonese in Malaysia supporting the INA? India and Ceylon, he argued, was one theatre. He held frequent discussions with many prominent Sinhalese and Tamil citizens, and warned, quite rightly too, that both communities could suffer. He was spurred on by the great sympathy Bose showed for the Ceylonese. He went to Bose, seeking help, and Bose offered a way out. Form a Ceylon Department within the Indian Independence League—a civilian and administrative unit of the movement.
And so it was . . . and Jhaveri & Bhattiwala1 made mention of the Ceylon Unit when they said that on December 2, 1943, the Ceylon Department of the IIL began work.
Next came the formation of the Lanka Unit (LU) which was the Ceylonese military arm of the INA. Kotelawala was the prime mover. He went among the Ceylonese, called for the young, the intelligent, the self-sacrificing.
‘Are you willing to volunteer for the sake of your country?’ he would ask, and, with other Ceylonese, began a recruitment campaign which was supported by Bose.
One Lanka Unit recruit had recollected how Kotelawala told him: ‘We have formed the Lanka Unit. Do you like to fight for your country?’
‘I do not know how to fight,’ the recruit had replied.
‘You will be trained,’ Kotelawala had assured.
Suddenly, the man who had no military training himself, became a military leader. Yet, Kotelawala was no active radical. He had no political pretensions, left or right, and was no politician. All he knew was that he was deeply attracted to the manner of Bose’s leadership of an Army for Indian independence. Time and again he was reputed to have said that if anyone could save India from the British, it was Bose.
He soon saw the other face of the Japanese. The image was changing. At the start the Japanese had donned the robes of the saviours of the colonially oppressed. But with occupation, the Japanese became the oppressors. This told Gladwin that there was real cause for collaboration with the Japanese Occupation Forces in Malaya. It was either that, or go under.
He had to protect his countrymen. More so, he found that although the Tamils were ten times larger in number than the Sinhalese in Malaya, the majority of the men in the Lanka Unit were Sinhalese. The Tamils showed scant interest in ousting the British from Lanka. Rather, the Tamils looked on the British as their stepping-stone to a better life and living, and kowtowed to their colonial masters most shamelessly.
The Ceylonese in Malaysia had few national political leanings. There were a few bodies like the Malayan Ceylonese Congress and the Malayan Sinhalese Association, but these were more in the nature of societies addressing themselves to parochial social problems. No national issues
relating to their homeland were ever taken up. Now, suddenly, they were being asked to take a firmer view on the freedom and independence of Ceylon and an end to British rule.
Kotelawala appointed a Sinhalese, H.G. Gunapala, to be in charge of the Lanka Unit. Slowly, the unit enlarged, strengthened. Many who joined did so to escape the harassment of the Japanese. Since the Japanese had sponsored the 1IL and the INA, Ceylonese participation would give the Ceylon Unit a pro-Japan pretext which would serve to protect participants as well as their property. Gladwin knew what the alternative could be—forced labour, especially on the Thailand-Burma ‘Death Railway’, and even internment in concentration camps.
In April 1942, even as the Japanese bombed Colombo and Trincomalee, they had also started concentration camps where men were taken for ‘re-education’. In Serembam, where some prisoners of war had refused to take up arms for the Japanese, machine-gun emplacements were mounted all around the camp. There was no doubt that the Japanese would cut down every man who refused to toe the line.
Also, as Kotelawala told the Ceylonese of Malaya, they would be sure of adequate food and supplies, clothing and all other things which the people of Singapore were finding very scarce. Further, there would be travel passes, freedom of movement as well as the opportunity to return as liberating heroes to Ceylon, being part of the force that would drive out the British and take power.
This last was reason enough for many young Sinhalese to join. Adventure beckoned, and soon, with the Indians, they took part in many hazardous missions including sabotage and espionage.
The Indian fighters of the INA had a bellyful of the discriminations exercised against them by many Britishers. They had smarted under many humiliations and much discourteous and contemptuous treatment. The Ceylon Unit tried to understand this. They had not been so treated, but as they were told, what was true of India was also surely true of Ceylon.
All Gladwin could infuse in them was that idealistic dream of an independent homeland. Too long had Ceylon been under foreign yoke. First the Portuguese, then the Dutch, then the British. Enlistment in the INA was to demonstrate nationalistic fervour. They had but one aim—liberate Ceylon from British rule!
But there were more telling factors, the main being the predicament of a people caught in a war. The Japanese were conscripting people to be as slaves. There was no food, no work, no schools, no correspondence from home. Many may have joined the Lanka Unit without clearly knowing what it was for. They were all educated young men and they had to undergo a two-year training. But often were they told that soon, some day, they would be marching to the front, and also that some day they would enter Ceylon as part of the force that would oust the British.
The officers of the INA maintained that there was no compulsion to join the force, and even Bose is said to have confirmed this when he wrote to Kotelawala in June 1944, stating that no Ceylonese should be compelled to join the Ceylon Unit.
But there was coercion just the same, and Bose himself insisted many a time that if any person refused to join or help the INA cause, such person was an enemy. He kept drilling it in that the INA was engaged in a life-and-death struggle for freedom, the freedom of India, and now Ceylon. He even extracted huge donations from the citizens of Malaya, hinting that they could either give to the INA or have the Japanese confiscate everything. And how would the Japanese know? Why, the INA would furnish the information.
Gladwin Kotelawala may have wished to pre-empt Japanese harassment of the Ceylonese in Malaya, but it seemed that he also had his own personal vision and ambitions. His regimental clerk in the Ceylon department, Lionel Dodampe, had said that Gladwin actually hoped to lead Ceylon after the ‘liberation’. Even his wife had hinted that Bose had assured her husband of a ‘much better position’ in order that he could serve his country.
Who knows what dreams these men harboured? Bose and Kotelawala. And would Bose, even if he had brought about the ‘liberation’ of Ceylon, have planted Gladwin as the country’s leader? This was most unlikely. Even if Bose had led his fighting Ceylonese into Lanka and booted out the British, it would have been a most bloody battle. And then there was every likelihood that he would have sat to discuss the future leadership of the island with those who were locally involved in the independence struggle.
It is hard to tell today, but certainly Bose was not the man to plant puppets, even though he was most attached to Gladwin. ’
He gave Gladwin every encouragement, and yes, he liked him. But the man remained the same dreaming spirit, the romanticist, full of smoky-eyed fervour. How could he ever be the leader of a country when he could never sit still?
5
Of Cowboys and Buffaloes and a Little Bit of England
Ordinary Stoker Mechanic Ronald Todwell was soon to turn the camp into shambles. There were two contributory factors: a Wild West paperback he had been reading, and buffalo.
Todwell revelled in Westerns. This book told him of how a wild and particularly woolly cowboy, who rejoiced in the name of Montana Mike, had ridden a steer bareback in a rodeo after he had gunned down three owlhoots and the town marshall (who had apparently been in his way) before breakfast.
Outside the camp, at a point where rusted barbed wire had thrown in the towel, a buffalo had decided that the clumps of watergrass within the perimeter made an excellent salad. Recruit ‘Longprick’ Perera was on perimeter guard duty when the buffalo had pushed its head through and sneered at him. Perera froze. Then the buffalo barged through. Talk about animal impulse. The animal broke through like a tank, and Perera shed his rifle and shot off, crying for mummy.
The confusion galvanized the camp. The buffalo, a domesticated one with a length of rope trailing at its neck, considered the fleeing recruit wonderingly and then bumbled over to taste the grass. When it looked up, there was a knot of sailors around it, all gaping, and if it were called to the stand it would have said under oath that recruit Yusuf had roared, ‘Stand by to repel boarders!’
The animal bent to its breakfast. Choice stuff. Worth busting in for.
The sailors closed around. The buffalo tossed its head and showed them the whites of its eyes. Todwell inched closer. He was no longer a recruit of Her Majesty’s Navy. He was Montana Mike.
Later, Carloboy said it was certainly not the buffalo’s fault. ‘If I were a buffalo you think I’ll allow that mad bugger to jump on my back?’
Todwell did not stop to consider the buffalo-eye view. He wanted to ride this ‘steer’ in the best traditions of the old West. He charged, yelled, and leaped, drumming upon the animal’s back. Ride ‘em cowboy!
Cheers, whistles, roars of encouragement rose, bounced against the hills and rallied the men of the Army training camp hard by. Todd hung onto the beast’s neck-rope and away they went, thundering across the parade ground in a smoke-scroll of red dust.
The regulating petty officer gasped and sat down heavily in a firebucket. Later he said he was sure it was the end of the world. When he was lifted up and taken into the office he kept muttering, ‘The beast from the East.’
As they drummed between the cookhouse and the bosun’s store, Cook-steward Haramanis, who kept complaining that life was very boring, changed his mind very suddenly and ran, screaming, to the heads. Bells were rung. Bosun’s pipes were blown and two leading seamen began unrolling the big fire hose.
The buffalo pounded to the perimeter, skidded at the wire and bucked furiously. That was, for Montana Mike, the eject button. He sailed off, fell in deep, water-logged grass, rolled and rose gasping. The buffalo checked and tossed its head, saw Todwell rise and decided to put distance between them. This, thought Todwell, wasn’t fair. He leaped, seized the dragging rope, hung on and began to take in the slack by looping it around his forearm.
‘Let go!’ Carloboy yelled, ‘let go the rope!’
In Diyatalawa, buffaloes are large, well-fed, and make up their own minds. This specimen was not impressed by Todwell. It simply shifted into second gear and dragged the impudent
recruit along, full forty yards, to the top of a rise. Todwell should have known better. On the rise, he grabbed at the trunk of a pine tree and hung on.
The rope snagged, then sliced into his forearm, cutting along the bone like a rotary saw. Montana Mike bit the dust. When the harassed buffalo found the break in the fence and bellowed through, nobody cheered its going. Not even ‘Longprick’ Perera.
They carried Todd to the regulating office. There was blood everywhere and he had passed out. Rushed to the Army hospital on the Bandarawela road, the sawbones shook his head, stanched the wounds as best he could and said that surgery was indicated. With his temporary patches, Todwell was then sent to the government hospital in Badulla, the half truck that bore him flying down the mountain roads at breakneck, speed.
He wasn’t very happy, even after his three-week stay. He carried back a beautiful circular pattern of stitches around his arm and a lot of fleshy discolouration where skin had been grafted, and plasters on his thighs where skin had been taken.
‘So cheer up. You’re okay, no?’
‘Yes men, but the hospital . . .’
‘Why? Public hospital, no? Saw any nice girls?’
Todwell snorted. ‘Girls! Every bloody nurse was about sixty, I think,’ and added that each looked like a national disaster.
He had more to sadden him, and didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when he was charged with several breaches of discipline which ended with the stirring, ‘whereas Ordinary Stoker Mechanic Todwell rode a dangerous animal on the deck of a ship without concern or regard for the safety of the vessel.’ This, even to the Lord High Admiral, would have sounded pretty far-fetched.
CO Dharamdass reminded Todwell that he had lost valuable training time. ‘If you don’t pass out, you will be discharged, do you realize that?’
