Spit and Polish

by Carl Muller

  ‘Help!’ Bollocks yelled, ‘ungodly men—carrion eaters, skulkers in darkness, woe unto you! Walkers in the crooked way—you are all ungodly men! Where are you taking me?’

  ‘Shut up!’

  ‘You may persecute me . . . the Lord is my buckler . . .’

  ‘Here, grab his ankles!’

  ‘You may do your worst . . . throw me in the sea . . .’

  ‘That’s a bloody good idea!’

  ‘I say the truth! Truth!’ The word stuck as he was borne away. ‘Truth, truth, truth, truth! Help! Saracens! Pagans! Let go! Owww!—’ then blessed silence.

  ‘What did you do?’ Carloboy asked.

  Hughes shrugged. ‘Only a small tap. Sick bay will keep him quiet.’

  Once in sick bay, Bollocks began to pray for the eternal salvation of any who came to mind. As a sacrifice for the sins of the world, he refused to eat, and, fearing he would starve, and because Victor said that a starving prophet was infinitely worse than one with three square meals under his belt, a special ration of biscuits was issued him from the canteen.

  They sailed the next day and Bollocks played no part in the departure. He was vastly entertaining, however, and collected quite an audience. Living on custard creams and crackers, he would stand in his cot and wave his hands, sing hymns, belabour the Lord with chunks of the scriptures and tell his chuckling listeners that the Lord was leading them through the deep as a horse in the wilderness, that they should not stumble.

  But on the first night he broke out. The monsoon had made sleeping on deck uncomfortable, and Carloboy had decided to kip on a galley table. Over his head, he hard the wash of the waves against the porthole. The gentle rocking soon had him dozing.

  He awoke suddenly. The sound of the sea seemed very loud and salt water slapped at his head and face. Above him, on the table, stood a pair of green pajamas. Water kept springing in fitfully through the open scuttle.

  Carloboy rolled off the table with an oath, grabbed at the pajamas. They came with the yank of his hands, to reveal in the dim galley light, a pair of spindly legs and a very hairy backside. And that was all. Bollocks—the upper part of him—was not to be seen.

  With a shout, Carloboy seized the man’s legs, Fernando leaped on the table, grabbed Bollocks around the waist. They heaved, and the water wooshed through the scuttle angrily as they collapsed with a roaring Bollocks demanding to be released.

  ‘Shut the porthole,’ Carloboy yelled. ‘You bloody idiot! Who said you can open scuttles? You want to sink us?’

  Bollocks glared indignantly. He rose stiffly, rubbed at his spine, arched, twisted his shoulders. A spectacular performance, especially because he had on sodden singlet, was dripping sea water and his pajamas were around his ankles.

  Daft was most reverent. ‘First time I saw a holy cock,’ he said.

  ‘What the fuck were you doing? How did you get your whole head out and your shoulders also? Bloody mad bugger! What’s wrong with you?’

  Bollocks sniffed, rubbed his nose, sneezed. ‘I was looking for my star,’ he said.

  ‘Your—my God, can’t keep this bugger below decks. Will have to lock him up!’

  They dragged Bollocks to the sick bay, then informed the duty officer. That worthy wagged an admonishing finger. ‘You mean you pulled him inside? What’s the matter with you? He was half out, no?’

  ‘Yes sir.’

  ‘Then you should have pushed him out! Pulled him inside . . . your fellows never think!’

  It decided Victor. ‘Looking for stars? What stars?’

  ‘Said it’s his star sir.’

  Victor thumped his table. That does it. Send a signal to Gemunu We ship him out at Trincomalee. Have ambulance ready to meet ship. Signal harbour master Trinco. Need temporary berth, where is he now?’

  ‘Sick bay, sir.’

  ‘Not good. Paint store. Put him there. Stars through portholes. Next time he will be looking for comets in our assholes!’

  Bollocks did them proud. In order to get him away, the Vijaya put in at Trincomalee. In Jail Road, Abela took Carloboy’s hand, made soft sounds of welcome. It was all very hurried.

  They sailed for the northern peninsula at 2200 hours.

  44

  History—The Cocos Islands Mutiny

  Going back in time to early 1942, Ceylon became significantly known and made much mention of in British and Australian war records. Japan’s Admiral Nagumo (and indeed, all of the Japanese High Command) were very pleased at the fact that somehow, Britain picked the worst men possible to command the little Indian Ocean atolls. The British deemed it necessary to maintain garrisons and troops on the little islands around Australia. After all, Japan had made it very clear that one of her many targets was Australia. That was the time before America assumed sole responsibility for the Pacific theatre.

  The British High Command wanted men from Ceylon and India to police the atolls, and, naturally, they liked to have Britishers in charge—men who the High Command had little use for, actually. Men who had bought their commissions or wrangled their way to wardroom status and who suffered from a lopsided sense of their own superiority. These were the men who could also be relied on to keep the Asians in line.

  Indeed, a few months before the outbreak of World War II, the Australian Department of Defence actually sent a team of selected officers to the Cocos-Keeling islands. The atoll was surveyed. The team sailed to the islands on HMS Perth, and expressed their concern for the security of the cable and wireless station on Cocos. They informed the British High Command of the necessity to place two six-inch guns on Cocos and to post a garrison there.

  The British picked men from Ceylon. Lieutenant Koch of the Ceylon Light Infantry, a Burgher, was sent out to supervise the installation of the guns. The Cocos islands garrison was picked from India and Ceylon. The British found, among the Ceylon volunteers, some pretty hot stuff— men who could be relied on to fight like ‘Ellen B. Merry’. Was there any need to post a Britisher to any of these lumps of coral in the Indian Ocean?

  Captain Lyn Wickramasuriya, a Sinhalese, was made Commander, Garrison Artillery. The British High Command were impressed by Wickramasuriya’s brilliance as an officer and a leader. As Area Commander, Cocos, it would be his responsibility to organize the defence of the atoll.

  Wickramasuriya’s first act was to dismantle the cable and wireless tower. ‘It is a clear landmark for bombers and naval boats,’ he informed Australia and the British in Ceylon.

  On Christmas Island, a British officer, Lieutenant Senior, was making life very hard for the men under him. Senior had his worries. The Japanese were closing in, and as the danger thickened, he grew more dense-headed. He turned on his own men with unbelievable savagery. He treated them with scorn, derision, heaped insults on their heads and belittled them to breaking point. Wickramasuriya didn’t like it. He was in contact with Senior and knew that on Christmas Island there were all the makings of a mutiny.

  The Japanese were increasingly active in the region, but Admiral Nagumo held back. Intelligence had reported the state of readiness on the Cocos atoll. With Wickramasuriya in the saddle, it would not be safe to send landing parties ashore to capture Horsborough and Direction Island.

  But the British felt it was time to send in a man of their own stripe. Now that the Japanese were showing decided interest it would never do to have a Ceylonese in charge. This was a British war to be fought the British way. They scraped the bottom of the barrel in sending in Captain George Gardiner. He was to replace Wickramasuriya. He would be the great white hope of the coral isles.

  Gardiner took over the Cocos command, inspected his men and disliked them immensely. A most bigoted man, he hated to be among the ‘blacks’—and all he had to command were the blacks. Long years later, a prominent Lankan author and journalist, Noel Crusz, interviewed Wickramasuriya, sought his comments on the Cocos affair. No, Wickramasuriya did not, could not, approve of ‘mutiny’. As an officer—and one of the finest, too—he could not condone mut
iny. But he said that the men ‘were badly handled’ and remarked that no commander could persistently insult the men under his command and get away with it.

  Gardiner, apparently, was the very worst type of British officer, filled with a super-fatted sense of his own ‘whiteness’ and with a deep suspicion of the ‘native’. Perhaps he had reason to look on all Ceylonese as traitors. He had doubtless been briefed on the general atmosphere in Ceylon and India. There was a general uneasiness among many in Ceylon and India about supporting the war.

  In Colombo, it was known that two prominent local politicians, Dudley Senanayake and J.R. Jayewardene (later to become prime minister and first executive president respectively) had actually approached the Japanese ambassador in Ceylon and promised co-operation in the event Japan invaded the island. They had asked that Japan help gain Ceylon’s independence from the British. This was confirmed by J.R. Jayewardene himself at a Tokyo banquet after the war, where he told his Japanese hosts that at that time Ceylon would have done anything to throw off the British yoke.

  So many Ceylonese in Cocos—and one of them, Lieutenant Henry de Sylva of the Ceylon Light Infantry became a King Wenceslas page to Commander Gardiner. Perhaps he thought it was good for his own career to remain true-blue to the white boss man. Some people get that way when the crunch comes. Lieutenant de Sylva took orders from Gardiner. He had to report that all discipline had broken down; that what they had on their hands was a mutiny.

  Gardiner was furious. All he wished to do was to show the world that he could do better than the celebrated Captain Bligh of the Bounty. He would courtmartial the men. He swore that he would see them hang!

  Who were these ‘mutineers’? There was Gunner Fernando, a Sinhalese. A few months before the troubles on Cocos came to a head, Fernando wrote to his father in Ceylon, actually apologizing for having volunteered for overseas service. He was concerned about his mother and said that he was hoping, above all, to come back home soon. But, he added, ‘everything is a matter of fate’.

  There was Carlo Gauder, a Burgher. There was G.B. de Silva and Samuel Jayasekera, both Sinhalese. There was Anandappa and Joe Pieris and Kingsley Dias, also Sinhalese. When mutiny broke out, it was not meant to be anything pro-Japanese, treasonous, cowardly or impelled by greed. Rather, it was a forthright showing by men who had been pushed to the brink—even beyond the brink. There was great hatred for the pompous white man who treated them like the dirt on the soles of his boots. Also, there was a boiling in the ranks as the ‘loyals’ and the ‘disloyals’ took sides. Peter Jayawardena, a Sinhalese, actually declared that the Bren guns on Cocos had been loaded with dud rounds. Duty Officer Stephens refused to believe this and adroitly passed the buck. After all, he said later, it was Gardiner who was sole Area Commander. Also, he reminded, de Sylva was Gardiner’s aide and under Gardiner’s jurisdiction. Everywhere that Gardiner went, de Sylva was sure to go! It was hard to later persuade Stephens to give inquirers the full story. He preferred to remain non-committal, on the fence. Also, in his view, Henry de Sylva was a boss man too, having been given the defence of Direction Island with his own force of men of the Ceylon Light Infantry.

  Henry de Sylva in later years actually tried to cash in. He contacted the editor of the Star, an evening newspaper of the Independent Newspapers of Ceylon group. Noel Crusz was editor. De Sylva was disturbed at Noel Crusz’s serialization of ‘The Cocos Mutiny’ in that paper. De Sylva even threatened to get ‘His Majesty’s government’ to sue both Crusz and the newspaper.

  The head of the newspaper organization, the very famous D.B. Dhanapala, formerly of the Indian Express, laughed. ‘Let them sue,’ he said, ‘we will then have a bigger story to print!’

  What blossomed on Cocos was raw hatred. It had been made very clear from all evidence and interviews, that Captain George Gardiner was a martinet. He handled his men on the islands with a cruelty that was blatant aberration of British military power. Many believed that Gardiner should have been hung. He was the sole cause of the mutiny—no other.

  Gardiner wanted heads. Outraged at the manner of the uprising, he summoned de Sylva and said he wanted the ‘criminals’ arrested and a field general court martial held.

  ‘I will tell you who the men are,’ he said, and arbitrarily named eleven soldiers. Some of them had no part in the mutiny . . . but they were Ceylonese, and that, to Gardiner, was reason enough.

  When Colombo heard of the strange turn of events on Cocos, Lieutenant Ivor Van Twest, a Burgher, was sent to the Cocos. He sailed on the Sutlej. He was told to investigate and bring back the mutineers. On no account was he to leave them to Gardiner to try them and, as commanding officer, execute them.

  But Gardiner was not interested in what the British East India Military Command thought. He had the ‘mutineers’ arrested. He would try them. Then he would execute them. He had a right to do so. Mutiny deserved death.

  Neither he nor his aide, de Sylva, had the slightest idea how to form a valid field general court martial. At the ‘trial’ the accused had no defence counsel. The malice that marked the proceedings was very obvious. Even before the trial, de Sylva had told Sergeant Ratnam to dig eleven graves.

  Ratnam spat and refused. ‘I’m a soldier,’ he said, ‘Not a bloody gravedigger.’

  It was Gratien Fernando who determinedly stuck to his guns. He knew his legal rights and even when under arrest, contrived to send a telegram to Colombo, addressed to Bombardier Ossman, a Malay, who could be relied on to alert Colombo to the situation. Ossman rushed the cable to his CO, Colonel Mervyn Joseph, a Burgher, who immediately informed the British Military Command that something was painfully amiss.

  Gardiner was determined to execute seven of the eleven ‘mutineers’ at dawn—the morning after the trial—but when he learnt of the cable sent through the wireless facility on Cocos and under his very nose, he wavered. The situation was tricky. And then came Lieutenant Van Twest who expressed much distaste at the sorry condition of the men.

  Van Twest wrote a scathing report on conditions on the atoll and denounced Gardiner and the manner of his command. The report condemned the manner and formation of the court martial and the brutal manner of the arrest of the ‘mutineers’. He made it clear that it was Gardiner who deserved to be put on trial. The report worried the British in Colombo. More so, Colonel Joseph had consulted with two prominent lawyers, Dr N.M. Perera and Dr Colvin R. de Silva. Clearly, the ‘mutineers’ would have to be brought to Colombo. The charge of mutiny would be upheld and they would be tried in Colombo at the Supreme Court in Hulftsdorp.

  This became a most debatable issue among legal men and military historians—whether a Ceylon Supreme Court trial was valid in law. Both Dr N.M. Perera and Dr Colvin R. de Silva sensed a complete military bungling of wartime jurisdiction. They prepared a strong and spirited defence. In Colombo as well as in New Delhi, many thought it necessary to summon the previous CGA Commander, Captain Lyn Wickramasuriya. His help and advice was considered vita! at that juncture.

  In July 1942, Lieutenant Van Twest returned with the ‘mutineers’. They would be charged and subjected to a fresh trial. It did not seem to matter much to the British that there were many flaws in jurisdiction and in the conducting of a fair trial. Whatever sort of creature Gardiner was, he was the Area Commander and these Ceylonese had ‘mutinied’. They had to be tried.

  General Wavell and Admiral Sir Geoffrey Layton were worried. They wanted the British High Command to act quietly. They wanted to save face, and also wanted to placate the mounting reluctance both in India and in Ceylon to support the war. They felt that to make a strong show about the Cocos Islands mutiny was to widen the chasm between the British as colonial masters and the people they ruled. But it was also seen that Captain Gardiner and the East Asia Command had taken up indefensible positions. Mutiny was mutiny . . . and mutiny merited death.

  The trial was indeed a mockery. It did not matter to the British that they were compelled to relieve Gardiner of his command. What seemed
to matter was that mutiny had to be vigorously punished. Of the accused, Gratien Fernando, Carlo Gauder and G.B. de Silva were sentenced to death. The rest received long prison terms. The three men certainly did not deserve to die and, to this day, no one in Sri Lanka believes that they got a fair trial.

  The deputy commissioner of prisons at the time was a Burgher, R.J.N. Jordan. He declared that there was clearly a lack of proper relations between superior and subordinate. ‘All the upheavals in this country could be traced to unfair or indifferent attitudes to one section or another,’ he said.

  The prisoners were held, after sentencing, in the Hulftsdorp prison which was then a military detention barracks. Major Whitelow, the Provost-Marshal, was to supervise the hangings.

  The trial caused a huge stir. For one thing, there was growing concern in Wavell’s New Delhi office that Gardiner’s ‘court martial’ was poorly constituted. At that trial it was revealed how Gratien Fernando had accepted all the guilt, claiming that the ‘mutiny’ was his only and no other’s. But, as Dr N.M. Perera pointed out at the Colombo trial, Gardiner had made up his mind to execute eleven men even before he had found them guilty. It was sheer premeditated murder.

  An Australian legal and military writer, Peter Hastings, was certain that there was a conflicting array of events at the court martial on Cocos. He was of the opinion that this was a kangaroo trial and that there was no elementary natural justice. This was upheld by many of the legal luminaries of the Australian Military Academy. It was also seen how wartime cables to Horsborough on Cocos were contradictory in nature. Lieutenant Van Twest said that there was confusion over reports and eyewitness accounts.

  Colonel Mervyn Joseph and Dr N.M. Perera fought hard to upset the Crown case. Dr Perera said that the Supreme Court had no jurisdiction to try the ‘mutineers’ and that Admiral Layton’s and Wavell’s decision to bring them to trial in Ceylon was bad in military law.

  Also, Lieutenant Van Twest’s report on the actions of Gardiner and his command was not presented at the trial. It seemed that the British military apparatus was moving inexorably, sticking grimly to its sense of military discipline and ignoring the extenuating circumstances. Also, it was wartime. Quick decisions had to be made. Some observers felt that the British had to have a few heads. It would be a signal to all other colonies and to the locals who served in the ranks.