After the month long training at the Diyatalawa combat
training unit, I was assigned to the Regiment of the Air Force Base at
Katunayake, Sri Lanka’s largest air base. The Regiment is the ground combat
unit of the Air Force. In addition to flying squadrons, the base also had
administrative, engineering, logistical, supply, and other units, along with a
hospital.
The base is on a large coconut plantation, and sat next
to Sri Lanka’s international airport, which was built long after the base was
established. The two runways – of the air force and the international airport’s
- ran parallel. The sound of jetliners landing and taking off was noisy and was
a nuisance at night. I was given a room at the officers’ mess and meals were
served at the dining room, which also had a bar.
I reported to the Regiment every morning and hung around
with little to do. Most afternoons, I took a nap after lunch. Because home,
where my wife and son lived, was only about an hour by train, I only stayed at
the base overnight when I was the duty officer. (More about that later.) After
a tough, month long training, and fighting fit, the routine was an anti-climax.
Perhaps I expected too much; the fact is, peacetime armed forces have little to
do on a day-to-day basis.
Katunayake had been a Royal Air Force base till 1957.
Well laid out, solidly built, it still retained signs of the impeccable British
touch even twenty years later. During RAF days, even the non-commissioned
officers’ family quarters had carpeted floors, I heard, and during my time the
quarters of senior officers were well equipped and comfortable. But, the
tropical weather and poor maintenance had caused a visible deterioration.
As I came to know the base culture, I saw a clear
hierarchy, which cut through the officer ranks. The flyers – those who piloted
fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters – were the elite, and only a flyer could
become the Commander. Everyone else - engineers, logisticians, regimental
types, and others – were considered a slot below. Last came volunteer officers whose
primary allegiance was to our civilian employers (our paymasters), and for whom
the air force attachment was only temporary.
Among officers, the most detested were those who strutted
around with puffed chests, thinking highly of themselves. The Sinhala language
has an apt term for such behavior: “pakum” (swollen with self-importance is the
nearest equivalent I can come up with). Of course, this term was never uttered
to the officers’ face.
My neighbors at the mess were a mixed bag. The regular
officers, except for those in engineering and medical units, had joined
directly from secondary schools and undergone two years of intensive training
as officer cadets. Some cadets had been recruited because they were outstanding
sportsmen, in cricket and rugby, during their schooldays. During my time, the
air force had a champion cricket team, Adastrians, and a renowned rugby team.
Unfortunately, despite their training, not all of the
young officers fitted in. Petty jealousies and personal disputes were not
uncommon. One problem was the easy access to alcohol from the officers’ mess
bar. A few became heavy drinkers, leading to other problems such as fights with
fellow officers and bullying of batmen - the young men who were assigned to
clean our rooms, iron our clothes, polish our shoes, carry messages, etc. A
young fixed-wing pilot, whose room was near mine, had run-up high debts at the
officers’ mess bar and was denied any more liquor. So, he would disappear for
days, going on drinking binges, with rumors floating back that he was seen
lying drunk at railway station. We did not expect him to live long, but, in
fact, he did, after coming off the alcohol, I assume.
Eksith
Among the regular officers, I made two friends. The first
was Eksith Peiris, who towered above everyone else at 6’6”. He had been an
outstanding officer cadet, was dedicated to the air force, and was a rising
star in the Regiment. He was also the leader of the air force’s newly formed commando
unit. We hit it off, and he helped me adjust to life at the base and also at
the Regiment. Easy going with fellow officers and enlisted men, which hid his
steely resolve, Eksith was indeed a gentle giant.
 |
Sunil |
The second friend was Sunil Cabraal, a helicopter pilot,
who lived across the courtyard from me. One day, I told him that I had never
ridden in a helicopter. From then onwards, when I was around and a seat was
available in the Bell Ranger he flew, Sunil invited me to come along. So, I saw
a good part of Sri Lanka from the sky with a pilot who occasionally went out of
the way to show me a familiar sight, such as Kandy in the central hills where
we had both gone to school.
Numerous stories, some humorous, circulated at the base.
One was about a helicopter pilot, not Sunil, who got entirely lost while
returning to base as darkness was falling. (I think the helicopters flew
without sophisticated navigational aids at that time.) The only open patch of
land the pilot spotted turned out to be a cemetery when he touched down. The
bewildered locals who rushed up must have been dumbstruck when the pilot asked in
which part of the country he had landed!
My routine at the air force was broken only on a few
occasions. One was an all-day motor tracing event, for which the air force
runway was used. Massive crowds turned up to watch and I had my first and only
experience of crowd control. Another was a failed attempt to provide flood
relief in the Chilaw area. In addition, because the air force was in charge of
security at the international airport, I had to make occasional visits there.
About once a week, I was the base duty officer for a
24-hour period. The duty officer was in charge of the guards on duty, and could
conduct inspections at any time of day or night. At the end of the duty
period, I would write a report for the CO of the Regiment about the previous
day's happenings. Often, there was little to report. My last tour was around
11pm, and I liked to do it with a foot patrol consisting of enlisted men - they
were called aircraftman (AC) and leading aircraftman (LAC) in the air force – along
with a corporal and a sergeant. The walk, in the cool of the night, was
enjoyable because I got to chat informally with the men. Most of them were
village lads, away from home for the first time, and I was curious about how
and where they had grown up. Late at night, the base had a quiet feel of a
coconut plantation, which in reality it was.
All
that routine came to a shattering end on November 15, 1978. That night, in the
midst of the mother of all thunderstorms, I had taken a Land Rover to do the
rounds. As I was returning to the officers’ mess, around 11.45pm, I saw a huge
aircraft aborting its landing on the airport runway. Then, as I sat down for a
cup of tea, I was told about the crash of a passenger airliner not far from the
base, and I quickly caught a ride to the crash site and saw a sight that will
stay in memory all my life. The aircraft had crashed into a coconut grove and
the fuselage was on fire, with charred bodies still strapped to the seats and
beyond help. The tail section had split from the fuselage and was standing at a
450 angle. On seeing me, a sergeant came running saying “Sir koheda
hitiye, api call karanawa, call karanawa” (Sir, where were you, we have been
calling and calling). I didn’t know what he meant.
Eksith
was already there, and told me that he had rescued a number of passengers from
the tail section. Google tells me that the DC 8 aircraft, chartered from
Icelandic Airlines, had been taking returning Haj pilgrims from Saudi Arabia to
Indonesia. Of the 262 passengers and crew, 183 died and 79 survived, some with severe
injuries.
No
civilians were killed, but I knew the locality and realized that a worse
disaster could have occurred. Not far from the crash site is the village of
Kimbulapitiya, where the making of firecrackers was a cottage industry. Every
home had a stock of explosive gunpowder.
I
later learned why I had been repeatedly called after the crash. The Regiment
had a jungle rescue unit, set-up after a previous air crash, with equipment
such as axes, ropes, ladders, and the key to the supplies depot was with the
duty officer. But, I had not been given a key, did not even know about the
jungle rescue unit. When they couldn’t contact me - I was in the Land Rover in
the midst of a thunderstorm, and this was long before cell phones – they had
broken in and taken the equipment.
Barely
a week later, disaster struck again, when a powerful cyclone hit the eastern
coast of Sri Lanka, devastating the area and taking more than one thousand
lives. Sunil was to go on a reconnaissance flight and invited me to join. As we
flew over the Mahaweli, Sri Lanka’s largest river, what I saw below was a
strange sight: what appeared to be matchsticks lying along both banks of the
river, all facing downstream. They were not matchsticks but teak trees, stripped
of their leaves, which had been uprooted and swept down when the massive rains following
the cyclone caused a raging flood.
As
we flew low towards a major town, Batticaloa, we saw the staggering devastation.
About 10 years earlier, I had experienced a cyclone on the western coast where
I lived, but that was from the ground level. From the air, the destruction was
absolute: thousands of coconut palms lay flat, or broken in two; tanks
(man-made lakes) had overflowed and the rice fields were flooded; power and
telephone lines were down; roofs blown off churches and homes, and hardly any
structures still upright. Clusters of terrified people, perhaps without a meal
or even drinking water for two days, huddled under whatever shade was available
to escape the blistering sun. They watched the helicopter, in vain, hoping for
a food drop, but we had none.
We
landed near the Batticaloa cathedral, where more people sheltered under plastic
sheeting amidst wrecked homes and public buildings. I had never seen such
misery. When Sunil asked what he could do, he was told about a leprosy hospital
on a nearby island, from which all communication had been cut off. So we took
off and flew over the hospital and found that the buildings were intact.
On
returning to Batticaloa town, way past lunchtime, I saw that Catholic nuns had
set up a large field kitchen and were serving canned fish, parippu (lentils)
and rice to everyone. I am amazed by the resilience of nuns, who always rise to
the occasion, whether running an orphanage, an elders home, or providing social
services. That simple meal they cooked and served, in the midst of a major
catastrophe, was delicious.
After
doing a few more trips around Batticaloa, we flew north to another air force
base at China Bay, near Trincomalee town. It was late, and Sunil decided to
stay overnight, so I caught a flight back to Katunayake on an Indian Air Force
plane. The IAF had rushed in after the cyclone, bringing food and fuel. They
had better, larger, and more sophisticated aircraft for the job.
In
1995, seventeen years after the training, I stopped by the Diyatalawa unit
while on a road trip. On the way out, I stopped at the officers’ mess for a
minute, and as I was walking to the car, heard someone coming running behind
me. It was Cpl. Gamini, our drill instructor, now a commissioned officer. He
had recognized me, and took me back to the mess to show our group photograph
which was hanging there. I was delighted to see him; no one deserved the
promotion more.
I
still have one item left over from those air force days: my peaked cap.
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