by Carl Muller
The others were executing similar procedure. Daft stood by sheepishly until Sonnadara said, ‘At the North Pier you will pass the grassline to the float, raise canvas, secure guy ropes and check that all lines are running free. You know your running hitches, no?’
Daft opened his mouth. What was this horrible man talking about? How does a hitch run? He gulped and nodded.
The flat bottoms had no oarlocks. Carloboy scratched his head. At the Rock House battery, the Army scratched theirs. Where was the Navy?
‘How do I row this thing to the pier?’ Carloboy asked.
Sonnadara came over, also scratched his head.
‘Now we’ll have to commence towing from here.’
Sonnadara glared. That he hated this assignment fiercely was very evident. He was already on mulct of pay for damaging a pilot boat. He regarded the float with loathing. Then he brightened. ‘There, at the stern. There’s an oarlock. Bloody fools we are. These barges have to be sculled. Go and get long oars.’
The bosun at the Kochchikade stores scratched his head. ‘Sculling oars? Wait, I’ll see if have. All nonsense this is. Just tie the floats and take and go, will you?’
Carloboy gritted his teeth. ‘You think this is a bloody picnic? I don’t know how to scull a boat.’
‘Simple, men,’ said the bosun, brightening up, ‘just poke the oar in and wag it side to side. You’ll get the hang of it. Ah, here have some. Help me move this junk.’
Carloboy looked at the long oars with distaste. ‘Better if had some long poles,’ he said, ‘could have just pushed the bloody floats.’
‘Poling in this harbour? You’ll be stuck in ten feet of bottom silt.’
Ships in port did not know whether to laugh or to cry as the strange procession meandered by. Carloboy’s shoulders certainly wept buckets. The morning sun roasted the back of his neck. He simply couldn’t make the float behave. It went in every direction but the one it was supposed to take. It crept between mooring ropes, nudged mooring buoys, scraped against anchor chains and banged its sides against gangways and wallowed alarmingly in the bow waves of hooting launches. Carloboy sweated. Suddenly, this harbour seemed to be a vast unending repository of the grimiest ships in the world and he was on a crooked course that was definitely going nowhere.
At the end of the North Pier, Sonnadara fumed. So did the other seamen.
‘Where’s that bloody von Bloss? Can you see if he’s coming?’
Daft shook his head.
On other floats, Sims and Perera laboured just as much. Sims tried to follow Carloboy, found that the effort made him dizzy and simply sculled recklessly on, ignoring direction. He bumped into all manner of things: shipsides, marker buoys, got entangled in a cat’s cradle of ropes and was almost run into by a snorting ash barge upon which grimy men sat and said rude things to him.
But they made it, and Perera pleaded sick and Carloboy flopped on the pier and asked whether this was anybody’s idea of fun. Sims looked at his hands, studied his forearms and the sides of his upper arms. ‘My muscles have got muscles,’ he said.
A berthing master waddled up. ‘No boats allowed here. What is all this?’
The men looked at each other, then in one voice yelled, ‘Fuck off!’
The berthing master was gone before the breeze drowned the sound.
Beyond, the white caps tousled the sea. The target canvasses were raised on their makeshift masts. Each canvas had been liberally smeared with Black Japan. Big, black inverted triangles, twenty feet tall, the grasslines were secured.
Sonnadara was unhappy. ‘You think there’s eighty feet here to pay out?’ he asked Able Seaman Mendoga.
Mendosa, who was also ‘Cupper’ Mendosa and the most noted and colourful homosexual in the service, nodded. ‘Pay out to full and let the bloody things go anywhere.’
Able Seaman Foenander shouted from the helm of his boat, ‘So come go! It’s rough out there. Keep the floats at thirty feet until we pass the breakwater.’
When the first running sea hit them, they bucked in a mass of spray and jolted over the crests. The grassline sang. Sonnadara was a fine seaman. He pushed out alongside the big troughs, nosed through the whitecaps, and Carloboy suddenly felt that the world would never stand still again. He had imagined that this would be the same millpond he had known in Talaimannar. Oh no! And why was it that the sky and the sea kept switching places? The small launch rolled, dipped, burst through the rollers and rose sickeningly to poise like some proud horse until someone shot its legs away. There was a numbing sensation in his ears; and what was all the salt doing in his mouth? He spat, then leaned over the side to spit and spit again.
Sonnadara howled, ‘What the hell is wrong? We are getting close to range area!’
Daft folded up. He flopped on the heaving deck, holding his stomach. He was pea-green and glaze-eyed.
Carloboy couldn’t care less. He was consigning his breakfast to the waves. He didn’t hear the sound of the guns from the Mutwal battery or see the fountains of whatever as shells fell around the floats. He was spilling his stomach and his throat burned and his face was the colour of khaki. Would this never end? He tried to beg Sonnadara to turn back. Blearily he looked around. Nothing but an enormous basin of leaping water ... or was it a leaping boat ... he vomited, again and again.
When the boats turned, he was stretched on deck, eyes closed, retching to the pulse of the launch and heedless of all around him. His face was bloodless and then, with a groan, he brought out a large dollop of white mucus that looked like some bullet-ridden mushroom. It was his stomach, he thought. He had thrown up his stomach. There was a greenish spittle on his chin.
Sonnadara cursed mightily, stepped over his crew to slip the float line. ‘To hell with it,’ he shouted.
The line whined as it shot outwards and the float curtseyed its thanks and allowed the waves to sweep it shorewards. The other boats also freed their floats. The Army had proved once again that it was a waste of time to shoot at targets. It would have been better (and more entertaining) if the Navy had fired the targets at them!
‘Your first time, no?’ Sonnadara said, ‘So good. Got all the bile out. Go and eat something. You’ll see, you’ll be OK now.’
‘If I keep getting seasick like this—’ Carloboy croaked.
‘Nonsense. Barnett sent you, no? That bugger! But he did you a favour. Must be sending you for JET exercises. On the Vijaya. That’s why he sent signalmen for this. You wait and see, you won’t get seasick again.’
Talk of fiery (or watery) baptism. Sonnadara said he had got so sick his first time out that he had split the lining of his throat. ‘Even now I can’t drink hot tea. It burns inside. You think this JET will be a picnic? Bay of Bengal. Terrible sea. Run all the way up to Singapore lighthouse sometimes. And war exercises, putha1, no seasickness allowed. You think you can fall down and die like today?’
It was a very sober bunch of signalmen who reported back to the MSO. Barnett eyed them appreciatively. ‘Very good, my lads. You come back well laundered. Dry cleaned, I should say. Do you not feel all goodness and light within you? All your sins have been taken away. The evil of your dirty tum-tums. Mucky things, these guts that coil within us. Like the serpent of Eden, I warrant. You know, dear hearts, it was such a wrench, sending you out this way. Hurt me more than it hurts you, I assure you. Daft, what do you think of the sea?’
Daft scowled.
‘Do I see bitterness? A life of pitch and toss, eh? You, Sims?’
‘Don’t rub it in Yeo,’ Carloboy muttered. ‘We were sick as dogs.’
‘Strange, these expressions. Patrick, have you ever been sick as a dog?’
‘No Yeo. Three dogs, I think.’
‘Curioser and curioser. But now, me hearties, you are ready. Right as rain. That’s another one I can’t fathom. Is rain always right?’ He rummaged at his desk. ‘Here you are. That which you have panted after like the hart seeking the stream. Here, read and raise thanks to the Lord.’
C
arloboy frowned. What sort of a bombshell would this be?
‘Draft orders, poppets. Six signalmen, six telegraphists. Let me see . . . Leading Signalman Alfie, Signalmen von Bloss, Daft Fernando, Sims, Perera, Saw Silva and Leading Sparks Gibs and Telegraphists Bijja and Yusuf, Nugawira and Roberts. Now isn’t that nice? The eyes and ears of the service. Trincomalee awaits, and you go on board in three days. Do I hear wild cheers?’
They gaped. Drafted on board the Vijaya. Something they had so earnestly prayed for.
‘Yeoman of signals will be Louis. PO Tel will be Weerasinghe. Signals officer—let me see—yes, Lieutenant Wicks. Watch out for him. He smiles. Always watch it when an officer smiles.’
Sims asked, ‘Do we get pre-draft leave?’
‘Go away you horrible man! The nerve! Leave! Is that all you think of? Of course you get leave. A hideous naval mistake but there’s nothing we can do about it. But better, it is thought, to fuck your fill and go to sea than go on board and bugger the shipwright. Oh, and speaking about buggering, watch your afterworks. Able Seaman Mendis is also drafted. Compulsory draft. He had apparently been very active in camp. Can’t have our sentries sodomized at night in Flagstaff Street. Shocking things go on in the small hours, I tell you.’
Barbara Heinz squealed when Carloboy ran his hand up her skirt. And she couldn’t give her mother a satisfactory answer either. Just crimsoned and lowered her eyes. Mrs Heinz was upset. She told Carloboy not to darken her doorstep again. He swaggered home, then made a quick sally to the outhouse in the neighbouring garden.
Strange girl, he thought, as he positioned her against the wall. She had few words, never wore anything under her dress, and never touched him. Perhaps she was too shy. This time he massaged her clitoris as he worked gently in and out. Suddenly she gave a gasp and he felt a tightening at the pit of her stomach. She grasped his hand, thrust it hard against her. Her eyes were shining when he turned her around to face him.
‘What?’ he whispered.
She made no reply. Only clung to him tightly, then broke away to peer through the crack in the wall. Without a word, she slipped out.
The customary diary entry was made: August 1, 1955. Drafted on board HMCyS Vijaya. Yes, he was going to sea.
At first glance, the Vijaya looked pretty imposing. Small, true, but then, she was just a minesweeper. Painted a wicked grey with her pennant numbers large and black on her sides, she toted a big four-inch gun for’ard, four Bofors and depth charge racks. Mushroom ventilators sprouted all over her upper deck, and her bridge was airy and quite spacious although her signals office was an armour-plated doll’s house. She displaced only 1,040 tons and broke the hearts of a like number of seamen in her first years of commission at HMCS Flying Fish of the Algerine class of Canadian minesweepers.
All the gear that advertised her peculiar sea duty was stacked aft of the quarterdeck—immense coils of grassline, sweeps and paravanes and other paraphernalia. Her boat deck was cluttered with the engine room hatch from which the most lurid oaths and curses wafted ever upwards. This hatch was smack in the middle of the deck. There was also the officers’ galley hatch, well protected with a thick mesh and lying to one side of the smokestack.
This deck swept up to the fo’c’sle, the breakwater and the welter of anchor chains and lead cables as well as the cylindrical hoisting gear.
Between decks, she was a fine example of naval architecture. The wireless cabin was roomy albeit gloomy, the wardroom and officers’ mess designed to hold as much liquor as considered necessary, the galley like a smaller version of Dante’s inferno and the mess for the miscellaneous types (electricians, signalmen, cooks, supply assistants, telegraphists, shipwrights) the cruddiest of all, being situated ahead of the foregun above and in the bows. It took the biggest beating of all each time the ship put to sea.
‘Just think,’ said Aloysius, tapping the bulkhead, ‘the bows. Like a damn arrowhead, the shape of this place. And outside this plate, nothing but sea.’
Koelmeyer shuddered. It was not a pleasant thought.
As sailing date approached, the complement began to bulge. The normal ship’s crew was 90. Now it was 120, which was considered essential for JET. There would be many detailed exercises in navigation, anti-aircraft and anti-submarine manoeuvre’s. Suddenly, as Louis told his charges, the ANSB would come alive.
‘Von Bloss,’ he said, ‘you remember the manoeuvres for Operation Cabbage One?’
That was a typical anti-sub hunt. There would be a convoy of destroyers and anti-submarine cruisers, screening aircraft carriers or tankers. But an enemy submarine creeps through, blasts the leading escortee. Signals are vital as the escort vessels wheel and begin their line hunts. The submarine hasn’t a prayer unless the captain blows all tubes and sinks to lie doggo at the bottom.
‘Everything depends on the right signal, the correct flaghoist,’ Louis said, ‘don’t forget, ships maintain radio silence at war. You will now see how important your exam was. Here, all you have learnt is brought to life.’
Daft gave his gods a beseeching look.
Sleeping in the mess was rarely done. Some took to the mess tables below, but many preferred the boat deck or curled up under the big gun. In harbour, everyone spread canvas on the fo’c’sle but at sea, making the customary ten knots and often a sluggish eight, it was only the man who was prepared to sleep through anything who defied the sea and kipped on deck.
It was a shock to see Nathali’s impudent face. That worthy seemed to dog Carloboy wherever he went. He came on board with little yelps of agony. Seasoned old reprobate that he was, he knew that life on board, and particularly on the Vijaya was no picnic. From Elara to the Vijaya must have seemed to him like a descent from paradise to limbo.
‘Percy, what the hell did you do? They chased you out?’
‘Story of my bloody life? All I did was kill the rats in the victualling store.’
‘So that’s OK. The rats are eating everything there.’
It seemed that Percy and Maddo had decided to spend a night in the victualling store. The rats came down the light flex, then leaped to the floor.
‘From the roof, down the light wire. That’s the way they come. You should have seen them. Families coming down. Uncles, aunties, grandchildren. Like a fucking circus. We took sticks. If the light is on they won’t come, so we lit a kerosene lamp and kept it near the door. Had to lock the bloody door, otherwise they will run out that way.’
‘So what happened?’
‘Nothing. We killed about thirty buggers. Only that Maddo forgot to take out the bulb and the shade. First clout he smashed both. But that’s never mind. Plenty of bulbs in the stores. But some rats must have been watching from the roof. Everytime they come down they get whacked. One thing, smart buggers, these rats. They started to come halfway down, then jumped. Then we had to chase them and clout them. Then about two-three jumped on Maddo . . .’
It must have been, for the rats, a sort of kamikaze affair. We, who are about to die, will bite your ears. Maddo had gone crazy. A flying stick had broken the kerosene lamp. They had both tried to push at the door although it opened inward. The kerosene caught fire and then the bags of rice and flour and lentils had begun to burn.
‘My God, you set the place on fire?’
‘Not me. That bloody Maddo! He ran to the heads. Any trouble, he goes to the heads. One small lamp. Should have seen the mess. And all the firebuckets full of sand. Who wants sand, men? Not enough the bloody sand in Elara? Mountains of sand.’
Percy shook his head. He had lost all faith in naval efficiency. ‘By the time they put out the fire, half the victualling stores roof also came down.’
Carloboy chuckled. ‘So they sent you here. And Maddo?’
‘I think he’s being sent to Karainagar. Damn good for him. There are leopards there.’
Karainagar was another naval outpost in the north. There, the sea was bordered by heavy jungle and life was a bed of cactus. And yes, there were leopards. These creatures
thanked their gods for the sailors provided until the sub-lieutenant armed his men. The leopards were displeased. Legitimate meals were not supposed to shoot at them. The Captain of the Navy was most displeased. He found, on a tour of inspection, a hut full of leopard skins. He thought earnestly about closing the base.
They upped anchor on the morning of August 6. Percy-took to sleeping on deck in a big way. The Vijaya swept out of port. Everybody was on their toes.
‘Stations for leaving harbour!’
‘Close all X and Y doors and shipside scuttles!’
The engineroom indicators clanged. Mooring crews clambered up the ropes and the tiny gangway was raised, secured. On the bridge stood Lieutenant-Commander Shan, who was broad-faced, hawk-nosed and with a dusting of grey in his hair. This was his first sea-going command but Yeoman Louis cautioned his men, ‘Don’t you forget it. The captain knows his stuff. Trained in Dartmouth. Got his gold sword for navigation. A fine seaman he is.’
They hugged the coast and the Vijaya bobbed and bounced, like the customs officer’s daughter on the back of the priest’s motorcycle.
It was when they were at the headland of the Great and Little Basses lights and steaming past Hambantota, that the ship was rent by a flurry of curses. Percy, sleeping on deck, had been hit in the face by a flying fish.
There’s something undignified about being slapped on the kisser with a wet fish. It’s a sort of ultimate insult. Nathali grabbed the offender that was squirming into his sheet and marched to the mess where a sleeping cook was rudely awakened and coaxed to the galley. The fish was cleaned, fried and devoured at three o’clock in the morning. Thereafter, he took to sleeping below and the whole mess would reek of beer until wakey wakey.
34
Guadalcanal and Iron Bay Sound
The Marines were making their landing. Landing craft, leaving their ships far behind; heavy steel helmets, criss-crossed bandoliers of ammunition, light trench mortars in their arms, guns . . . they each carried up to forty pounds of equipment.
