By Peter Douglas - Story writer
EAGLE
It was a weekend, a Saturday I think. After lunch Peter and I thought we’d venture down to the gym for a game of trampoline soccer. We’d invented it some weeks before I recall. There wasn’t much science to it, basically the two of us got on the trampoline with a medicine ball and each defended two of the four square gaps, goals, in the corners of the trampoline. And being soccer you could only use your feet to score.
The great thing about trampoline soccer was that you didn’t care who won or lost, it really was the playing of the game that counted because, invariably, both of us would end up on our backs, laughing that kind of laugh where it’s impossible to make any sound.
I can’t remember how long we’d been at it but we had reached that point of paralysis, like upturned tortoise, limbs flaying, mouths agape, but no sound emitting, tears streaming down our faces. We’d been like that for a while I think, when we both sensed the presence of another. Peter was first to rouse still with tears in his eyes he leaned across and dug me in the ribs with his elbow, which of course only served to send me deeper into catatonia. Then he shook me and said:
‘Peter, I’m not joking.’
We both collapsed in fits again. Gradually he managed to convey to me that this situation was urgent. Not the sharpest knife in the draw, as usual, I clamoured to my feet started bouncing and said:
‘Come on it’s twenty eight to nil my way, next goal wins.’
But Peter didn’t move, instead he was looking past me and doing this thing with his eyes that looked like he’d suddenly developed a tic.
‘What is it?’
This time Peter pointed to something, or someone, behind me.
The penny finally dropped. I stopped bouncing turned around and saw the mother of all Physical Training Instructors, or PTIs. Now these guys are to the navy, roughly speaking, what the Gestapo were to Hitler. And this one, and I can’t for the life of me remember his name – he did have an eagle tattooed on his chest, so that’s what I’ll call him – was the biggest and meanest looking PTI on the base.
‘What are you doing?’ He finally said, expressionlessly.
‘Playing trampoline soccer?’ I offered with an idiotic chortle.
‘The pair of you go and pick up a twenty five pound dumbbell each.’
We complied.
‘Now out on to the oval.’
We went through the double doors that led out to the football oval as he followed.
‘Okay, double round the oval with the dumbbell over your heads.’
Peter and I had by no means recovered from our hilarity malady. And as soon as we raised the weights above our heads and tried to run, we felt so ridiculous, that laughter erupted anew. To put it mildly, Peter wasn’t particularly pre-disposed to the physical fitness regime at Leeuwin, and the ludicrously inventive punishments that were liberally dolled out, not that anyone was, but Peter was a particularly chronic recalcitrant. He dragged the chain in other words, so despite being in the grip of a giggle fit, I quickly moved ahead. But about a quarter of the way round, I realized that the task was beyond me. My arms simply weren’t strong enough to sustain the weight over-head while I ran for more that ten or fifteen yards, so I’d have a bit of a rest, and walk for a while with the weight at my side, then do another ten doubling with it over my head. I looked back to Peter who’d given up doubling and holding it aloft altogether. So for the last thirty or so yards, I did too.
I arrived back at the start finish point and threw the dumbbell down on the grass with a thud at Eagle’s feet. He looked me in the eye, and I returned it defiantly. The next thing I know I’m tumbling back, head over heels. I had seen it coming, and either couldn’t dodge quickly enough, or simply refused to budge, saying, with my eyes, do your worse big boy. Actually, it was definitely the later now I think about it: repeat behaviour. It was a backhand, delivered with his right that had begun its journey from beside his left ankle, finally collecting me under the jaw.
‘I got to my feet, albeit shakily.’
‘WHO THE ##!!!! DO YOU THINK YOU ARE!!!!!!’
‘Junior Recruit Douglas’, came my insolent reply, because, I knew what was coming, regardless.
‘Put the dumbbell back in the rack! Go get into your PT gear! And be back in the Drill Hall within five minutes.
As I picked up the weight I looked across and saw that Peter was still only a little more than half way round. I wondered if he’d seen Eagle hit me. I didn’t have time to think any more on it, and only hoped the same fate wasn’t about to befall him, I didn’t know that he’d cope. Although I abhorred fighting, strangely, I couldn’t just survive bashings, I’d come out the other side the stronger for it, or at least that’s how it felt. I’d been bullied at school, and that’s how I got through it. Probably because, I’d been dealt thrashings as a small boy by my father that, at the time, I felt certain I wouldn’t survive. After that nothing can break you. So the swipe I’d just taken from Eagle, barely rated a mention. That’s not to say I hadn’t felt humiliated, doubling across the Parade Ground and up the stairs of C Block to my donga, very different tears were welling in my eyes.
I opened my locker and quickly got changed: pressed, spotless white singlet and shorts, immaculate white socks and sand shoes, all navy issue. I looked in the mirror and was greeted by drizzling eyes and blood under my nose and lip. My donga neighbour and friend Dick Evans joined me.
‘What’s going on?’
‘Eagle caught Holly Holstein and me skylarking in the gym, we’re in for a shake up.’
Dick looked in the mirror and saw the blood and tears.
‘Did he clock you one?’
‘Yeah, I’ve got to go Dick, wish me luck, I’ll do his ##!!ing shake-up, arsehole, I don’t know how Pete’ll hold up.’
‘Good luck mate, I’ll give him a gee up when he gets here.’
‘Good on you Dick.’
‘I scooted down the corridor, my fellow JRs were lounging and horsing around. They gave me bewildered looks as I passed in my PT whites. I went into the bathroom, wiped the blood from my face, dried my eyes with a paper towel, and went out. I met Peter on the stairs.
‘You okay?’ I said.
‘Yes’, he was softer on me.
‘Good’ I said.
‘Probably realized he could be in the shit for whacking you.’
‘See you down there’ I said bouncing down the stairs.
The Drill Hall is a foreboding building. It’s facade looks out past the flagged masts, over Leeuwin’s ceremonial gates and across the Swan River. It is red brick with steep gables. It has an administration block adjoining the northern wall, which contains the Commodore’s rooms and offices. All in all it looks like some of the architecture described within the pages of Tom Brown’s School Days. The Drill Hall backs onto the parade ground, across which I was now, not just doubling, but running.
I arrived inside, came to a halt, and stood to attention in the middle of the vast space. Wooden floor boards beneath, angular wooden supports holding the roof aloft above. Closed doors to dingy offices dotted about the walls. Eagle was there, waiting, at ease, legs apart, hands clasped behind his back. He brought them round to his front, clicked a stopwatch and looked at it.
‘Less than five minutes I told you,’ he paused, much as a hanging judge might, before pronouncing the death sentence.
‘You’ve been nearly seven.’
He marched across and began circling: inspection, of your person – a JR, for example, had to shave every day whether they were removing whiskers of bum fluff, mine was the later and I hadn’t shaved for a week, but look as he might, Eagle couldn’t tell – and your uniform, if it wasn’t up to standard, read immaculate, you’d be given a kit muster, suffice to say I’d discovered the hard way that it easier and more efficient to keep all my uniforms immaculate. Eagle couldn’t find fault, even though he dearly wanted too.
‘GIVE ME FIFTY!!!’
We’d begun. ‘Fifty incidentally, is fifty push ups, the first of many sets I will have to do before we’re finished this shake-up. This is by no means the first I’ve had, but it most certainly will be the hardest I’ve ever done, or indeed, may ever do.
A shake-up is legalized bastardisation, or simply, physical bullying. It can last anywhere between thirty minutes and an hour. Usually not more, because past a certain point, there’s a risk that some JRs, just won’t cope, they just don’t have the strength, endurance, stamina etc, and will either collapse, and or faint. They then may require medical attention. And as with abused children who are taken to hospital, questions may be asked, and certain abuses revealed. I’d joined the navy in January 1972. The previous year, I remember, Leeuwin had been in the press for those very reasons.
But on this occasion, I don’t think Eagle was overly burdened with these types of concerns. He wanted to break me, see me humiliated, in tears, unable to go on. And I was determined that was not going to happen. He’d go softer on Peter, it wasn’t Peter he wanted, it was me. But what he didn’t know, is that I was fit. Before the navy I’d been a competitive swimmer, and won gold at state level. Although I hadn’t found Leeuwin easy at first, one thing that I’d cake walked was PT, it was nothing compared to the kind of training I’d endured for years as an underage swimmer. And I’d retained my fitness, doing laps in the pool most days after classes, and I’d walked into the navy swim team, and distinguished myself. So I was confident of surviving Eagle’s shake-up, whatever he threw at me.
So fifty done, then another fifty just to be getting along with. I had barely raised a sweat, which clearly didn’t please Eagle.
‘Up the cordage!’ Came the order.
This was one exercise I wasn’t so good at: scaling the lengths of cordage that hung from the rafters. It was a marvel to see with some JRs, the weeners, one in particular, a four foot ten ninety pound rodent: midge(t), scampering aloft like a rat up a rope. But not me, nonetheless, if I took it steadily, I’d usually make it. And today, I was definitely going to make it. Making it meant touching the cross beam that the rope hung from five or six meters above the floor, then sliding back down.
Whence came the cry that sent a shiver down the spine of every JR:
‘WALLBARS!!!!’
As you might expect wall-bars were bars attached to the walls of the drill hall. And for JRs they represented something akin to a medieval torture devise. First you launched yourself at them, did chin-ups, until ordered to hang there, for minutes at a time. Which had the effect of being a bit like the rack, as you were stretched. And as I hung, the pain in my shoulders burning to excruciating levels, I took the opportunity to regain my breath. And saw Peter, who’d arrived, was into his push-ups, and struggling, Eagle was calling out the count:
‘Eight…nine…ten…elev…Come on…elev…start again you worthless streak of pelican shit.’
Peter really was the smart one, whether or not he was struggling, he was going to struggle, and get away with the bear minimum.
Eagle turned his attention back to me:
‘Douglas, twenty laps!’
That meant twenty laps of the Drill Hall at the sprint.
And so on it went. We were nearly half an hour in. Still to come, for me at least, were sets of push ups and sits ups, laps around the, much more expansive, parade ground, several times more up the cordage, which I couldn’t make, so was ordered up again, and although I wasn’t making it, I never gave up, I would only slide down when my strength gave out, and if ordered up again, off I would go. Finally, it was one last set of fifty, push ups, and sit ups, then four laps of the footy oval, about a mile and a half, at pace. As I was starting the last lap Eagle called out:
‘Douglas, come to the PT office in the drill hall when you’re finished.’ Then walked off.
Peter was by the gym, fighting his way through fifty. As soon as Eagle disappeared he stopped, off course. As I crossed the finish line Peter called out:
‘What do you think he wants with you?’ I crossed over to him, regaining my breath before answering:
‘Don’t know, don’t care, what goes around comes around, and one day that ##!!ing arsehole is going to get what’s coming to him. Why don’t you just walk the laps, shit for brains’ll never know.’
Peter laughed and sauntered off.
‘See you back in the block’ he said.
I headed for the drill hall. Pleased with my self, I hadn’t just survived over an hour and a half’s shake-up, I’d done it easy in the end. Eagle wouldn’t be a happy camper, I’d won, and all he could do was write it up in the stiff shit book.
Facing the PT office door in the drill hall, I knocked on it.
‘Come in.’ Called Eagle.
So I turned the handle, walked in, closed the door and turned to face him. Then there was a kind of jump cut. Because the next thing I knew I was on the floor, looking at a pair of feet, and when my eyes panned up to see who they belonged to, sure enough, there was Eagle’s face, his crazed eyes beaming down at me. He looked across to the desk and said:
‘Put em on.’
I couldn’t see what was on the desk so started getting up. But my legs turned to soup and I fell across the room, back to the floor.
‘C’mon get up short shit I only tapped you.’
That’s when I felt the rather odd sensation in my jaw, as if it had been knocked round to the back of my head, a bit like in a Daffy Duck cartoon I’d seen once.
And he was right about short shit, at five foot four and maybe and a hundred and twenty pounds, I was not far off the bottom rung of JRs in the size stakes. He was well over six foot and probably seventy pounds heavier. That was when I saw he was wearing boxing gloves. I got to my knees and looked on the desk, and saw there, another pair. Then I noticed everything in the room had been cleared to the side, to make room, room for what, surely not?
By this time Eagle was practicing, prancing, dancing around the room, giving his impression of Mohamed Ali, poking and prodding with his gloved mitts at some phantom foe or other. I tried to get up again and went down for a third time.
‘Any idea what I dick head you look’ I said.
‘##!!ing get up, put the gloves on and we’ll sort this out man to man!!! He screamed.
‘You don’t just look a dick head, you are a dick head’ I said.
Then he came at me fists pummelling. But he couldn’t do any damage because I just pulled my knees up, tucked my head in and wrapped my arms around my legs.
‘Get up, get up!!’ He shouted. ‘I’m gonna knock you into Kingdome ##!!ing come!!!’
‘Alright’ I said. He stopped and stepped back, bouncing from foot to foot, banging his gloves together and making snorting noises through his nose.
With the help of a chair and a table I managed to slide up the wall. When I was steady I said:
‘I’d rather fight with the gloves off, and with no rules.’
‘What’ he said.
‘That’s what I’m used to,’ I said, I can’t box, never learned. I stand more of a chance as a street-fighter.’
‘We’re going to do this my way!’
‘Okay’ I said picking up the gloves, ‘but how do you think it will go for you when you’re mate’s, your fellow PTIs find out?’
He gave me an ugly look.
‘Oh I wouldn’t have to say anything’ I said. ‘My mate Holly Holstein saw you king hit me, my donga neighbour Dick Evens saw the blood on my face and put two and two together, and now you want to go fourteen rounds, and do me some real damage, to make yourself feel better, like a man again. Okay, but people are going to see. People are going to ask questions. I don’t give a ##!!, go your hardest, I’ve had worse beatings than you can ever hand me. I just thought you might want to think about it first.’
I saw my words landing. Strange as it may seem, I had a bit of sympathy for this muscle boatswain. He’d taken me on by the rules, well not entirely, but lost nonetheless, and his pride was injured, he was blinded by rage. So he didn’t see himself as a bastardising arsehole. He’d forgotten that he’d king hit me twice, and knocked me unconscious, and even though he’d called me short shit, merely a term of derision, for which duellists slap each other about the chaps, he hadn’t really clocked the difference in size between us. He wanted satisfaction, and to his warped way of thinking, had planned to get it by some bizarre credo that was the modus operandi, or secret men’s business, for males from time immemorial.
‘So what are your fellow PTIs going to think when they hear you king hit me twice, knocked me out cold, then use me as a punching bag, put me in the sick bay, because of a fight where I’m an non starter, a foot shorter, and ten weight divisions lighter, all because I skated through your best shake-up. How do you think it’ll go for you when it gets to the CO’s desk? It might even make the papers. I don’t reckon there’ll be much of a future for you in pusses.’
He was unlacing his gloves.
‘Look’ he said, then continued in a faltering voice, ‘I haven’t behaved like a sailor here today. Please take my apology. Yes you did my shake-up. And it would have been better that I shake your hand than this. I’ve done the wrong thing, and you would be entirely within your rights to report me. So you can go now.’
‘I will’ I said, but I won’t be reporting you. I can be a cheeky little ##!!er.’
He smiled, almost. Then an idea popped into my head.
‘Maybe you could teach me how to box, I couldn’t make it onto the divisional team for the last tournament. Maybe with your help I could at the next?
‘I’d like that very much’ he said.
‘Okay, I’ll be speaking to you then.
‘Yeah, whenever you like.’ I left.
Eagle took my class for PT several times in the two weeks following, and he always favoured me. But the boxing lessons never eventuated. Shortly after the PTIs were giving a gymnastic demonstration, and Eagle broke his neck. I never heard what became of him.
TWO BOB WATCH
Pete Holly Holstein was a prankster. And one Sunday after Church Parade, he pulled some stunt or other on me. It might’ve been the one where he said:
‘Come on Douglas let’s test your strength. Put your arm up like this.’
He held his arm up as if he was about to arm wrestle some one, only with his hand facing his face, then he made a fist, and I copied, keen to comply and hopefully demonstrate my superior strength, as fifteen year old boys are want to do. Then Pete took hold of my fist with both hands.
‘C’mon’ he said, ‘when I pull, you pull, I get to use two hands, so if you can stop me straightening your arm, you’re twice as strong as me.
‘Okay’ I said, gritting my teeth, ‘you’re piss weak Holstein, I’ll beat you easy.’
‘Are you ready?
I nodded.
‘On the count of three: one…two…three.
We both pulled as hard as we could. Pete got an early gain of about a foot.
‘C’mon’ he urged, pull…harder…
I did, with all my might, but couldn’t make any gain then…I got the surprise of my life, well maybe not quite, but someone or something had hit me fair in the face and I was seeing stars. Then I heard the crazy honking that was Pete’s laugh, and I came to the dim realization that it was me who hit me, why? Coz Pete had let go of my fist, BANG!!!
He took off like a turpsed cat honking all the way. And, with a shake of my head I was hard on his hammer. I chased him from the front of the chapel hut, around the side of the armoury and along the parade ground, down the outside of the dining hall. Then he pulled a sharp left, pushed the door to the foyer open, waited for me to appear then slammed it in my face. But I was too quick for him, as my arms pushed out and I bounced the door open with my hands.
‘You’re dead meat Holstein’ I vowed at the top of my voice.
He was off again with a shriek and a ‘honk, honk, honk’. Pete loved little better than a red-hot pursuit. The foyer separated the dining hall from the canteen, we sped across it and when Pete arrived at those doors on the other side, I saw he was going to pull the same stunt, so I was ready for him, and as he went to slam the door in my face, my arms were already out, ready to bounce it open. Which would’ve been fine, if the door hadn’t been made of glass. And of course, I went straight through it.
The first thing I clocked was the ear-splitting noise, and big lumps of glass showering down on my head. I must have looked a right dick, standing there in the doorway, amid a pile of broken glass arms still outstretched. Then, more by instinctual damage control than good judgement, my hands went to my head, to see if it was still there I suppose. I felt moisture in my hair, but there was none on my face. I checked the back of my hands and arms, a few cuts and abrasions, nothing serious. If that’s the worst of it, I thought, I’ve got off pretty lightly. I might have actually smiled at Pete, as if to say:
‘Suck shit Holstein’ – a popular JRism – ‘you missed me.’
Then I turned my hands around, and screamed. My wrist was slashed to the bone. I was vaguely aware of plaintive bellowing emanating from the dining hall, the likes of:
‘What the ##!! was that? Hey, you two, get your arses here etc…’
I paid them no heed having other more pressing matters to hand, so I turned to Pete brandishing the life threatening wound and screamed something really intelligent like:
‘PETE WHAT AM I GOING TO ##!!ING DO!!!!!!!’
And ever the smart one he said:
‘Sickbay!’
We didn’t hang around. And the speed with which we departed the crime scene was roughly parallel with the increase in volume off plaintiff cries from the dining hall left in our wake:
‘Where the ##!! do you think you’re going you little bastards. Get back here. Are you two gonna go a row and a half of shithouses.’
The sickbay was the second road on the left heading from C Block, where we in Marks Division lived, to the main gate. It sat atop a mighty hill, and as I gazed to the summit, I recalled how useful it had been for divisional staffers, on overnight duty when, after lights out, and we had descended into a rabble, they would order us to muster in front of C Block at two in the morning or thereabouts, replete in oversized pyjamas and bedding on our backs. They would then double us up and down that incline, for an hour or more, before leading us back to the block and to bed, whereby we quickly became JRs tucked up tight sleeping the dreamless sleep of babies, as a consequence of that ordeal. Suffice to say the day was hot, and as Pete and I began the ascent, now as then, I felt suddenly over come by the urge to sleep, to lay me down, only this time on a bed of asphalt. Then it dawned on me that probably wasn’t such a good idea because I might not wake up. Panic provided an excess of strength that sprinted me to the top with the greatest of ease, where on arrival, my life’s blood was squishing out at such a frenetic rate, I calculated there couldn’t have been more than a pint or two left in me.
Now I really was going to swoon, so Pete’s huffing and puffing arrival was timely, I fell on him.
‘Carry me in’ I moaned.
Which, to Pete’s credit, he did, valiantly, well almost, and with our entrance, both breathless, and by this time covered in my blood, like two gladiators who’d fought to a standstill, we were greeted with:
‘Stop squirting that redders over my clean deck’: the duty sickbay attendant, Bluey somebody or other.
Sickbay attendants are not generally noted for their compassion. In fact anything less than the kind of life threatening injury or ailment that I was currently brandishing, would not warrant a decision to join sick parade, in the full knowledge that the cure, or treatment, would most definitely be, worse than the malady.
‘Don’t know if I can’ I panted.
Blue was out from behind his desk grabbing a towel on the way and wrapping it round my arm in one motion, as he raising it above my head.
‘Get the duty sister’ he ordered Pete, ‘down the main corridor there, second on the left.’ Peter was gone. Blue then whisked me up in his arms, walked us into the surgery and laid me on a barouche.
‘Am I going to die?’ I uttered, as the tears started streaming.
‘You’d better not. You’ve already ruined my smoko, so you’d better not ##!! up the rest of what’s meant to be the slackest watch of the week.
‘I’ll try not to, but my wrist is slashed, you die from that don’t you? I must’ve pumped out nearly all me blood!’
‘What do you expect when you come belting up sickbay hill like a two bob watch in this heat.’
I’m not going to die, I thought.
And that was the last thing I remember.
JR Heaven
But I was wrong. And the reason I knew is because when next I opened my eyes, they were greeted by a vision of the most divine creature I’d ever seen: crimson lips, blemish-less silken white skin, a breathtakingly beautiful face, bottomless Mediterranean pools of blue that were her eyes, and the blond glow of her hair and halo, all combined, to simply create, perfection. Then to dispel any lingering doubts that I might not have died and gone to heaven, I looked to her bosom, and there emblazoned on it, saw the word: Angel. ‘Interesting’, I thought, ‘that here in heaven they also have to wear nametags.’
‘Peter…wake up Peter…’ she sang, with a voice that was the sweetest sound I’d ever heard. She took her hands from my bandaged wrist, and stroked my cheek.
‘Hello’, I uttered.
She smiled, and I died again.
‘It is Peter?’ She asked, now stroking my brow.
I nodded.
She then conjured a miracle by making appear a multitude of deliciously slender white marionettes that danced and bedazzled.
‘How many fingers am I holding up?
‘A dozen?’ I mused.
‘We just need to pop this in your arm,’ she whispered, ‘you might feel a slight jab.’
She was looking into my eyes and smiling again.
‘There, did that hurt.’
‘Did what hurt?’
It was then I noticed the gold on her shoulders. This Angel was a two ringer. And I saw the initials on her nametag:
‘LT, Lou Tenant perhaps? Was I in pussers’ heaven, my final posting, that great man-o- war aloft?’ I mumbled incomprehensively.
‘Don’t try to talk Peter, plenty of time for that when you’re rested.’
‘Alright,’ I thought, ‘thinking has never been my strong point, so why change the habit of a lifetime?’ Then with a:
‘We’ll just pop these off shall we?’
More magic, as I vaguely noticed my bloodied uniform disappearing: shirt, boots, socks, shorts and:
‘Lucky last, we’ll just pop your knickers off’ she cooed.
I can’t say which was the more excruciating, feeling LT Angel’s eyes upon me, in the full glory of having my pussers issue bombay bloomers on, or off.
‘Definitely the later’ I reflected, lying there, in my ceremonial sickbay whites, as seconds ticked by, and I died another thousand deaths, until LT Angel, the merciful, took pity on this adolescent wretch in her charge, and covered his bits with a blanket. Then I thought:
‘Of course, that’s why this is happening. I’ve got to be re-kitted out, with all my heavenly uniforms and gear. I wonder if I’ll get a lire, and wings?’
‘Peter, I’m going to move you onto your side.’ She said, and did.
‘I’m just going to pop this into your bottom, you’ll feel a prick…
I began chortling idiotically.
‘But in a little while you’ll start to feel nice and pop off to sleep and have the sweetest dreams.’
I was now conscious of movement, as she set the cloud – nine – upon which I was lounging, and or floating, in motion. I looked up into LT Angel’s glorious upside down face.
‘When do I get my wings’ I babbled, ‘and will I get a lire, Chief Jones gave me one when I auditioned for the drum and bugle band, well not a real one, a flash on my uniform, I’d love a real one?’
She just smiled that smile, and I melted.
We’d travelled some distance when my cloud came to a sudden halt. Then LT Angel supervised the levitation of my being to another, even softer fragment of cumulus, and when I looked again, she’d vanished, poof. But I somehow new she’d be back and thought:
‘I wonder if she’ll stick her prick in my bottom again, if I ask her nicely, and squirt some more of that heavenly manna in me when this dose starts running low, because it seems to be kicking in, and I have never in my life felt so wonderful. I now became aware that a grin had spread across my face, stretching from ear to ear.
Then as quick as she’d disappeared, LT Angel rematerialized, now in a white gown, and circled, cocooning us alone together in a matching fluffy hollow.
‘Now we’ll wash all that nasty blood off you’ she purred, ‘then pop you into a gown. Let’s get you onto your front.’
She whisked off the blanket and carefully rolled me over and thoroughly washed every square inch of my back half, from top to toe, with a sponge and warm soapy water, as I wallowed in ecstasy, like that hippopotamus I used to watch for hours at the zoo.
‘All done this side, let’s just pop you back onto your back.’
And she did, then began on my front. It was like she had octopus hands, they were everywhere. Then, it seemed, that the blood must’ve been particularly concentrated and congealed in and around the vicinity of my block and tackle, because it was coming in for special attention, with the result, of course, that the more redders LT Angel washed away, the more was being pumped strait back in, at a rate commensurate with my mortification.
‘That’s alright’ came her melodious reassurance, ‘it’s perfectly natural, and actually makes the job a bit easier.’
‘Yes but…but…’
‘But what…?’ She whispered, locking my eyes to hers.
But there were no more buts because that did it: thar she blows, and semen were abandoning ship by the billion, as I squeezed my eyes shut and pressed my lips hard together, grimly determined to retain some semblance of continence, however token and feeble.
Perhaps a minute after the last sailors had been laid to rest in Davey Jones’ Locker, I dared to sneak a peak, and to my astonishment was greeted by darkness. And as my eyes adjusted I looked to the right, then left, and saw a drip stand, in it was an upside down red bottle, with a tube coming out of the top, at the bottom, leading down and into my arm courtesy of a needle, dug in deep, on the inside of my forearm at the elbow. I looked at my wrist; it was a gash no more, freshly stitched. I lifted the blankets and saw I had on a sickbay gown and, became immediately conscious that it was excessively damp about the nether region, well actually, wet…dream?! I’m still in the sickbay, I thought, to my great relief, and it’s JR Heaven.
HMAS Leeuwin 1972
Marks and Morrow 38th
