Spit and Polish

by Carl Muller

  It was the engineering officer who said he had a theory. He had given the affair some thought and took his views to Victor the next day.

  Victor listened, sent for Jambong. ‘You bloody little weasel!’ he roared, ‘don’t you dare deny anything! My God, you’re the cause of all this! How many are using your arse for a sock? Come on! I want names. All those you are dropping your pants for! All those you refuse. All the names! And then, by God, I’m going to bump you out of the force, do you hear?’

  Sheet-faced, stuttering, the story was told. Jambong had complained loud and long about the way the master-at-arms was harassing him. Always trying to take him to the after steering compartment. No, Jambong didn’t like the master-at-arms. He was a dirty man. One day he had pressed him against the bulkhead and kissed him. Yes, others did it to him but he liked them. They did it nicely. They were good men and they protected him . . .

  ‘Who are they? I want names!’

  Eventually the sordid story was known. Those who could not bugger Jambong had seized him one night, daubed him with paint. Reprisals followed.

  Victor drummed his fingers on the table, ‘Place this man under close arrest. He will be sent under guard to Gemunu tomorrow!’

  When Jambong was led away to the bridge, Victor asked the engineering officer, ‘Tell me, what made you twig this?’

  The man told the skipper of the complaint made to Captain Shan by the master-at-arms.

  ‘I see. Send the chief to Gemunu too. Can’t have a company of fuck-arses on my ship. Who was the other man? Mendis?’

  ‘Yes, but he was sent here because Gemunu wanted to get rid of him.’

  Sub-Lieutenant Hugo came in. He learned of events and cocked an eyebrow. ‘These men who were screwing Jambong, sir. I think I can bring them to heel.’

  ‘Very well. Give them hell, Hugo.’

  ‘Oh, I will, sir. You’ll have no more trouble from that lot.’

  Hugo was true to his word. All artistic endeavours stopped. Hugo reported that he had made them realize the error of their ways. He was very pleased with himself.

  While Hugo kept order, (he actually had the culprits stand in line in a sort of get-thee-behind-me-Satan formation), Joint Exercise Trincomalee took the Vijaya for long rides where the Bay of Bengal was in its most resentful mood. Dirty weather made everybody snappish and guy lines had to be strung as walking the decks became nigh impossible. The waves seemed to rise out of nowhere and the bows would nosedive into them, taking in tons of water that swept down the fo’c’sle to hiss through the boat deck. Hatches had to be tight shut, clamped down with the big rivet wheels, but the water dripped in annoyingly.

  Astern, in the stokers and seamen’s mess, the intake of water remained an abiding mystery. How it got in was the subject of much debate. Plates were examined, bulkheads tapped, hatches relined with hard rubber, but all to no avail. Arnie left his shoes on the floor (after duty officer’s inspection, of course) and woke up the next morning to find them afloat, in a foot of water. It scared him. He tumbled out of his hammock, stood shin deep and yelled, ‘Get up! We’re sinking!’

  But they weren’t. Pumps inhaled the water, and in port the mess was as dry as it should be. The seamen took to sleeping on the galley tables. ‘You can drown in your sleep there,’ Arnie said sepulchrally.

  Finally the Captain ordered a compartment-by- compartment examination, from galley to heads, to electricians stores, shipwright stores to seamen’s mess and the after steering. The water had to come from somewhere. Decidedly, it was not coming through the sides.

  The two places where water was in constant use were the galley and the heads. The galley was cleared, the tanks examined, all pipes tapped and found functional. And then, the shipwright whizzed down the deck and fell, panting, at the sick bay door. ‘Cobra!’ he yelled, ‘Cobra in the shithouse!’

  There were others who were engaged in their lawful occupation in the heads. Koelmeyer always went there to masturbate. When the shipwright saw a pipe move, he rubbed his eyes, stared, and saw that it was a large snake. He yelled. The pipe began coiling upwards. This was too much. Also, his yell brought Koelmeyer out, cock in hand. Stoker Wickrema, who was discharging cargo heard the cry ‘Snake!’ and leaped off his seat. There was a rush out of the heads while others rushed to it. Very hard to manoeuvre when a narrow gangway is suddenly filled with earnest souls going in opposite directions. And yes, it was a cobra, and it was in an unpleasant mood. It had coiled around a cistern and eyed the men meanly. Then, on the premise that discretion was the better part of being hit on the head with a boat-hook, it slithered warily down and oozed through a flush hole.

  ‘Where’d it go? Where’d it go?’ the shipwright hollered.

  And the mystery of the water in the seamen’s mess was solved. The heads flush flues had remained open when at sea. Water kept washing in, followed the slope of the deck and collected in the mess.

  The skipper was annoyed. Duty officer inspection had been too lax.

  Leading Seaman Welli, a fine boxer, ran to the armoury, then to the boatdeck from where he saw the cobra earnestly making the crossing, twisting its way through the water with ease. He blew the snake’s head off with a single .303 bullet. He was a superb marksman.

  40

  History—The Taking of Iwo Jima

  Even the Americans looked on Iwo Jima as a lousy piece of real estate. But the island was important. The Americans needed a way-base between the Marianas and Tokyo.

  Early 1945. America’s island-hopping campaign had brought Japan close to defeat, her Pacific empire chipped away. Now, from the Marianas, big US B-29 bombers struck at the Japanese mainland. But each bombing run required a round trip of 3000 miles. A long and perilous flight. Also, the Super Fortress bombers had to fly without fighter cover. No fighter had the operational range to make the trip.

  Going it alone, the bomber crews knew that if they were shot down, they hadn’t a prayer. There was no friendly place where they could ditch their planes. There was no friendly naval presence to pick them out of the water.

  Another island, close to Tokyo, had to be taken. The US looked at the Bonin Islands. Among this volcanic cluster was Iwo Jima, occupied by the Japanese and a miserable looking place of volcanic rock ledges and black sand. An extinct volcanic peak rose at one end of the four-and-a-half by two-and-a-half-mile island—Mount Suribachi—and the Japanese had two airfields there as well as the usual shore defences. They had big gun emplacements on the slopes of the mountain, and there was the problem of the beach: black sand, ash and cinders and a terraced shore that ran into the water in long, ten-foot-high steps that would make landing difficult. A real lousy piece of real estate indeed.

  But it had to be Iwo Jima, and the Americans readied the 3rd, 4th, and 5th Marine divisions to lead the assault on February 19, 1945.

  On Iwo Jima, Lieutenant Kuribiyashi in charge of the Japanese garrison, knew of the American intention. It was no secret. The Japanese knew that the Americans needed to base themselves closer to Tokyo.

  Kuribiyashi stuck to a plan of defence that had little bravado. He ordered his men to dig in as deep as they could. Nothing must be exposed to the softening of US air strikes and the bombardment of ships. The Japanese were to remain doggo until the US Marines were on the beach. Then they will fight . . . and fight on to a finish. It was all Kuribiyashi could do. He and his men had to ride out the first storm of air and sea bombardment.

  February 16. The Americans began the softening-up process. A savage air-sea bombardment. They could determine nothing of an enemy presence on the beaches or inland. Were the Japanese so well entrenched that this first attack did nothing, did not even touch them ... or had they been badly flattened, overwhelmed that the landing would be as easy as pie? And what of the beaches? The Americans knew of the ugly, vicious Japanese beach defences. Bamboo spikes just below the low-tide line; steel and concrete tank traps; tangles of barbed wire below the surface; oil drums that could be opened and ignited by an electrical
impulse from ashore; dynamite wrapped in waterproofing material.

  On February 17, underwater demolition experts were sent out on tiny LCPR’s to chart the bottom, check the beaches and destroy obstacles. LCI gunboats also headed for the beach. On Iwo Jima the Japanese watched with concern. The LCI’s were assault craft. They could be full of Marines. The gun crews on the slopes of Mount Suribachi grew nervous. They forgot their orders to lie low. Training the big guns, they opened fire with deadly effect.

  Many of the US gunboats were destroyed in that first salvo, and the US battleships immediately laid a smoke-screen over the area while the destroyers began to blaze away at the muzzle blasts that opened like yellow mouths on the mountain. For the Japanese, the retaliation was disastrous. Many of their big guns were knocked out, cannon muzzles dangling uselessly on the slopes.

  The Americans were more or less satisfied. They had planned their landing on the eastern beach from where it would be a quick advance to the airfields. This flank was dominated by the mountain. They now knew how much firepower the Japanese had casemated around the slopes.

  Also, the demolition experts reported no obstacles to landing other than the volcanic terrain that would be a problem for amtracs. The only worry was that there seemed to be much Japanese firepower around the mountain. Well, there was no help to it. The landing had to be made.

  The Pacific islands still talk of that pre-landing bombardment of February 19. It was the heaviest of World War II. The island became invisible in the clouds of volcanic dust that rose hundreds of feet in the air with each explosion. As the Marines landed, the ships’ batteries increased range, streamed their shells inland. Over the terraces, the Marines moved inward. They had met with no resistance. They were all out of the water now, ready to fight.

  This was what General Kuribiyashi was waiting for: the time when the Marines would be most vulnerable. The first unit was already gathering to storm inland. It was the 1st Battalion, 27th Regiment, 5th Marines. Kuribiyashi gave the order to fire.

  Mortar and machine-gun fire sliced in. The platoons were tossed apart, men died, but none stopped to count. They had to get off the beach. Beach Red Two, they called it, on Iwo Jima’s east coast. They had to get to Airfield No.1 and then to the other side of the island.

  Even as night fell, the Marines were digging in at the end of the beach, pinned down by Japanese fire. The ships fired star shells to light up the grim scene, give their men the chance to pick off the Japanese machine-gun nests.

  The morning of February 20 saw the Marines on the beach in full force. Now they would fight every inch of the way. A fight to the finish. The Japanese also knew that they would never leave Iwo Jima. They would simply have to kill every American they could.

  The big problem for the Americans was Mount Suribachi. As they moved inland, they found that the Japanese had dug in around the slopes and held an excellent advantage. Somehow, it was necessary to take that peak. Above all, they had to fly the US flag from that summit, show the ships’ spotters that the peak was taken.

  The fighting was frenzied as they climbed, died, rolled grotesquely downslope in their death struggles. But they climbed, ever up. The Japanese had occupied every hole, every fissure of that extinct volcano. It took two days for the Marines to blast them out. Finally, on February 23, a band of young Marines reached the top. They were led by Lieutenant Harold G. Schrier. In the crater, they found a length of pipe. They had a small US flag. They lashed it to the pipe, raised it. Down slope, the Marines who were mopping up decided that the flag was too small. A larger Stars and Stripes was taken from a landing craft—56 by 96 inches. When it was raised, a photographer who was with the landing party took what was perhaps the greatest war photograph of the time. So heroic, so statuesque was the attitude, the pose of the men, planting that second flag on Iwo Jima, that statues were later made from that astounding photograph. These statues have always been symbols of victory to the American people.

  But the fight was not over. The Japanese kept up their defence. They fought from trenches, from caves, from holes in the ground. Long, bitter, unrelenting. It was on March 26 that organized Japanese resistance ended, but for months thereafter diehard stragglers continued to emerge from caves and holes in the mountainside and continued to fight till they died.

  There were, before February 19, 22,000 Japanese on Iwo Jima. The Americans could eventually take no more than a thousand prisoners.

  The Marines lost 6,000 men. Over 18,000 were wounded. But Iwo Jima was theirs. When, on March 4, the first B-29 bomber landed at Airfield No. 1, they all knew that they were now within range to knock Japan for six!

  41

  Of Not Quite Going Home and Fouled Propellers and a Corpse to Watch Over

  Suddenly, it was all over. Binkie walked the deck looking quite devastated. He was going to marry Annette. The man was stupefied that it had all panned out so simply. Old Plinkett had merely nodded. ‘After JET, you take leave and come back. Can get married here.’

  Carloboy pitied his friend. Annette had had more sailors than there were fleas on the proverbial dog. He thought he would appeal to the man’s sailor-sense. ‘So how many times have you fucked her?’

  ‘Oh, three-four times,’ said Binkie airily.

  ‘Then why do you want to go and marry her?’

  Binkie was nonplussed. Didn’t Carloboy understand that three-four times was a mere nothing? He just couldn’t get enough of the girl who didn’t seem to mind if he mounted her five times a day.

  ‘So you’re going to marry her? And then what?’

  ‘As if you don’t know,’ Binkie grinned, ‘fuck, fuck, fuck, and no damn hula music’

  Carloboy sighed. He firmly upheld that there was no sense buying a cow when milk was cheap. ‘So it’s all set, then?’

  ‘All set. Old man said can’t afford a big wedding and all. Who wants all that? Anything I don’t mind. Once I take her to Hendala where I live . . .’he paused to consider the delicious possibilities, ‘whole day she won’t need clothes. What for wearing anything when I’m at home?’

  They were to sail back September 10. The C-in-CEI decided to call it a day. The Vijaya was highly commended and the fleet canteen exploded in more ways than one. Nugawira created a sensation, more so since he was such a little fellow and liked, as far as possible, to keep out of trouble. The fleet canteen was very much alive—the usual festivity but, being the last evening ashore for many of the crews, this spirit was multiplied to the power of eight. And liquor, one has to admit, does bring out the worst in some.

  Nugawira found the attention of a big British Marine most trying. The man’s face was draped in an oversized ginger moustache and he had the complexion of a well- slapped rump of pig. He kept leaning forward and leering.

  Nugawira frowned. ‘What the hell do you want?’ he asked.

  ‘Small Ceylon boy. I like you.’

  Nugawira rose, came to the piano. Quite the biggest of the boys was Yusuf, but he knew that Yusuf never mixed in. The Royal Marine followed, put a big hand on Nugawira’s shoulder. ‘I said, I like you.’

  Carloboy stopped playing, swung round. ‘Hey you! Leave him alone!’

  A few in the vicinity smelt trouble. Nugawira struck at the man’s hand. ‘Take your bloody hand away!’

  Carloboy rose, pushed his stool away. The Marine towered, an ox of a man. He was also drunk in a dangerous way. Carloboy closed, but Nugawira, eyes flashing, put out a hand and pushed hard into the Marine’s mid-section.

  ‘So you like me? So what do you want?’

  The Marine was, if nothing, an honest man. ‘Want? Yes, want. I want to split your backside.’

  Nugawira pulled up the piano stool, climbed on it. ‘You wait there,’ he gritted, ‘can’t reach you from the floor.’

  The Marine swayed. Then he swayed more as Nugawira swung a bunched fist which smashed into his Adam’s apple. He said something like ‘Wowk’. A second blow completed the decline and, like Humpty Dumpty, there was a great fall. Th
e man took a table with him as he crashed, poleaxed. Even a glass of gin, dashed in his face with a barman’s dexterity, did not revive him. A couple of RN sailors came up. ‘Hey, it’s Fogarthy. Sleeping again. Now we’ll have to carry him to the boat.’

  Nugawira climbed down, wringing his hand and sucking at his knuckles.

  Carloboy stared. ‘Where did you learn to hit like that?’

  Nugawira blew on his knuckles. The joint of his thumb had begun to swell. ‘Must have sprained it,’ he said, ‘play something, men.’

  The hiccup was over. Now would joy be unconfined.

  They sailed for Colombo on the morning of the eleventh. Carloboy sat on deck, admiring his tattoos. Somehow, they had staggered out of the bar, gone gallivanting, bumping into each other and swaying from side to side of the roads they explored. And there was a tattoo artist with his charts and his small curtained sanctum and his gold teeth and his promise to do them proud.

  ‘Anything you want,’ he said, ‘see the designs. Dragons, eagles, naked girls, hearts, crosses, snakes. Or you show me any picture I do. Colours also. Red, green, black, blue. If black you want only I not charging much.’

  Carloboy grinned. ‘You put a heart on my arm? With leaves and flowers. Can do?’

  ‘With colours also?’

  ‘Why not? Red heart, green leaves. And put a scroll across the heart and Barbara. Can you do?’

  ‘Easily I can. So come and sit. No pain. Four needles I use. One to do the outline then each colour another needle.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Twenty.’

  ‘So do it.’

  The man was quick. He placed a tissue over the tattoo to soak up the welling pinpricks of blood. Carloboy liked it. ‘Say, you do another one on my forearm?’