That's Life - as it was in 1955!

Please note. This article was originally written for a magazine in 1960. By standards of the 21st Century it is not 100% politically correct, but I assure readers that I meant then, and mean now, no disrespect to any ethnic group. I was 19 years old when the incident took place and this is how I saw events of that day then

The effect was astonishing! The boy leapt vertically upwards from his horizontal position on the bed and then collapsed in a fit of uncontrollable giggles

I find it very sad reading about the seemingly never-ending racial strife between the Tamils and the Sinhalese in Sri Lanka. Only the other day I read that Elephant's Pass, a narrow road linking the Jaffna Peninsula in the extreme north of the island with the rest of the country, had been closed as a result of action by one or other of the warring factions.

I served with the RAF in Ceylon, as Sri Lanka was then called, in 1954 and 1955 and I well remember crossing that bumpy, narrow causeway on an ancient ex War Department BSA 500cc side valve motor bike in late 1955. I was on a week's leave with another airman from the RAF signals station at Gangodawila - an idyllic outpost in a small jungle clearing about 10 miles south of Colombo.

There were about 20 of us stationed at Gangodawila - I'll call it Gango from now on because that was what we always called it. A Flight Sergeant radio fitter was in charge, a plump, introspective person who confined himself mainly to his single quarters, which he referred to as the Sergeants' Mess, and from which he often did not emerge for days on end. The nearest officer was the Flight Lieutenant signals officer at RAF Negombo, the main RAF base on the island, about 50 miles and two hours drive away to the north. We saw the officer once a fortnight when he came to hand out our pay.

I was one of the 14 or so wireless technicians. Also amongst our number were a couple of soldiers, Royal Signals men, who looked after our telephones and lines, and a senior aircraftman aerial erector whose job was to maintain the enormous aerial farm that surrounded the station. Oh - and there were three RAF policemen, corporals, to guard us 24 hours a day . In addition we had Ceylonese cooks, batmen, store-keepers and other camp followers, and the aerial erector had a small band of local men who did most of the climbing up the aerial masts.

Our job at Gango was to operate the short wave radio receivers and associated teleprinter equipments that linked RAF Ceylon with UK, Kenya, Singapore and Australia. We had fifty or so receivers operating at any given time, day and night, every day of the year including Christmas Day. We were part of what was then called the CRAFT network - Commonwealth Royal Air Forces Telecommunications Network. In those days, well before the satellite age, long distance communications were much less reliable than they are nowadays but the RAF had its own far-flung empire that relied heavily on short wave radio for passing operations orders, instructions, aircraft flight plans and all kinds of admin bumph to and from the Air Ministry in London.

But I was going to tell you about an incident that happened on that motor bike tour to Jaffna.

The bike at that time belonged to my companion, another wireless fitter called Pete Patrick, although I later bought it from him. I hadn't learned how to ride a motor bike so I spent the entire tour on the pillion seat. Talk about mad dogs and Englishmen going out in the midday sun! Much of the route from Colombo northwards goes across a vast desert - the very desert where the film The Purple Plain starring Gregory Peck was photographed at about that time. Looking back, I think Pete and I must have been just as mad as the squadron leader portrayed by Gregory Peck in the film to set off on such a journey on a motor bike. However, I can't recall being particularly uncomfortable on the pillion and neither of us suffered from sun-stroke or any other affliction. We took about three days to drive up the Great North Road, across the desert to the Jaffna Peninsula. En route we called in to visit the many historic Buddhist tourist attractions and we stayed the nights in excellent, and cheap, government rest houses.

Jaffna in those days was inhabited mainly by Tamils and indeed it still is. I've never involved myself in politics but I do remember a few things about the Tamils. Originally they came from South India and they are easily recognised because they're much darker-skinned than the indigenous Sinhalese. Then there was the language problem. The Tamil language is quite different from Sinhalese. Tamil is composed of rather angular characters that hang downwards from straight line tops while Sinhalese looks rather graceful and curly when written. The two are totally incompatible - few Sinhalese could speak Tamil and vice versa. English was an official government language but it was quite difficult to find English speakers, other than officials, outside the capital, Colombo.

Although Ceylon had gained independence from Britain in 1948, we Brits were still unpopular in the 1950s, especially in the north of the island. I suppose with the enthusiasm of youth, Pete and I didn't consider ourselves in any danger - not, that is, until we came across the “dead” Tamil lying in our path!

We'd spent the previous night in a guest house at Kankesanturai - KKS as it was known - a small village on the extreme northern coast of the Jaffna Peninsula. We'd set off early as we'd done each day to avoid the worst of the midday heat. We were thoroughly enjoying ourselves as we pottered along at a leisurely 30 miles per hour or so down a deserted winding road through semi-jungle when suddenly, as we rounded a corner, Pete saw a body stretched out in the middle of the road. He had no choice but to steer the motor bike into the shallow monsoon drain at the edge of the road. As the front wheel dropped into the drain, I sailed through the air with the greatest of ease and landed, shocked but completely unhurt, in the undergrowth. Pete and the bike ended up actually in the monsoon drain, but fortunately, neither he nor the bike was damaged. Good solid bikes those side valve BSAs!

We hurriedly picked ourselves up and dashed over to the body. It belonged to a young Tamil lad, probably in his mid-teens. He was completely naked apart from a minuscule loincloth. There was no visible sign of injury but at least he was breathing. I remember pulling back one of his eyelids - I was sure that was the thing to do but I couldn't deduce anything from my findings.

As we were wondering what to do next, a grossly-overloaded bus rattled round the corner, pulled up within inches of us with a screeching of brakes, and rapidly disgorged fifty or so passengers. They quickly surrounded us and jabbered away in Tamil - we recognised the language but understood not a single word.

In no time at all another bus, from the opposite direction, pulled up and the two lots of passengers started exchanging views about what had happened with much finger-pointing in our direction. To them it was, presumably, only too obvious what had happened. Here was one of their own lying apparently mortally injured in the middle of the road: we had clearly knocked him down with our motor bike which was still lying in the monsoon drain making hissing noises. The situation was beginning to look ugly. No-one would admit to speaking English so we were unable to explain what had happened.

It was amazing how, what had been an empty jungle road just a few minutes earlier, had become a seething mass of angry people. Then a lorry pulled up - one of those wheezing, garishly-painted lorries that one finds in all parts of Asia. The driver, a Sinhalese, jumped down and came across. Instantly he assumed command of the situation - that was the way things were between the Tamils and Sinhalese. In any case, he could speak all three languages so that made him a very important person.

"Hello", he said to Pete and me in excellent Peter Seller's English. "You two seem to have got yourselves into a jolly fine pickle, isn't it?"

Gratefully we explained what had happened and he then translated for the benefit of the ever-growing crowd of Tamils.

The lorry driver knew of a doctor's surgery a few miles down the road. He offered to take the unconscious man to the surgery as long as we accompanied him in case of trouble with the authorities. And so, I climbed into the lorry's front seat alongside the driver while willing hands passed the still unconscious boy up into the cab and draped him across me. It was all rather undignified. Others helped Pete recover the BSA from the monsoon drain. It started with the first kick and soon we were all on our way, one of the buses leading the eastbound convoy.

The surgery turned out to be a cottage hospital in a cool, shady, jungle clearing. A couple of porters quickly transferred the still unconscious Tamil from my lap to a hospital bed on the front veranda while other patients, apparently making remarkable recoveries from whatever afflictions had been confining them to their beds, crowded round to get a good view.

The doctor was summoned, he was Sinhalese inevitably, and he expertly examined his latest patient - he even did the pulling-back-the-eyelids procedure. Then, obviously enjoying playing to an audience, out came his stethoscope and, with much appreciative muttering from the crowd, he examined the boy's chest. Finally he stood up, carefully folded the stethoscope into the pocket of his immaculate white coat, stroked his chin thoughtfully and nodded wisely. Suddenly, he leaned forward over the body again and ticked the boy in the ribs.

The effect was astonishing! The boy leapt vertically upwards from his horizontal position on the bed and then collapsed in a fit of uncontrollable giggles.

Over a refreshing cup of tea, Ceylon tea of course, the doctor explained. The Tamil boy had run away from home some weeks earlier. He had no money and no prospects. That particular morning, being by now half-starved and thoroughly depressed, he'd decided to place his life in the hands of his god. He had lain himself down in the middle of the road on a blind bend knowing that there was a fair chance of being run over and killed. That would have ended all his troubles in this life. On the other hand, if his god wanted him to survive, then he would be picked up and taken to hospital where he knew the recently created National Health Service would look after him free of charge for a day or so.

"So what will happen to him now?" I asked the doctor. Pete and I felt rather stupid at being so easily duped but I also felt immensely sorry for the boy. "Oh, we'll keep him under . . . well, under observation for a few days to feed him up", replied the doctor with a smile. "But then I'll have to discharge him. We need the beds for real patients."

As Pete and I left the hospital a few minutes later to resume our holiday, I saw the Tamil boy on his bed smiling sheepishly in my direction. I went over and slipped a 10 rupee note into his outstretched hand - that was sufficient to feed him for two or three weeks. Of course, I never saw him again but I'll never forget him.

Postscript That was the end of my story as I wrote it in 1960. I left Ceylon a few weeks after the events I described. In 2001, quite out of the blue, I got an email from Peter Patrick, our first contact in more than 40 years. This is what he wrote:

"Was that tour of Ceylon really so long ago?. After the incident with the 'body' the bike broke down and we had to get the bus back to camp. I came across your web site when I was trying to find mine using 'Copernic' search engine. What a surprise!!
Regards, Peter (4128717 sir!)

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