Ready when you are c b, p.1
Ready When You Are, C.B.!, page 1
Carter Brown
Ready When You Are, C.B.!
The Autobiography of Alan Yates
Alias Carter Brown
About Untapped
Most Australian books ever written have fallen out of print and become unavailable for purchase or loan from libraries. This includes important local and national histories, biographies and memoirs, beloved children’s titles, and even winners of glittering literary prizes such as the Miles Franklin Literary Award.
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Contents
Chapter One · A Life on the Ocean Wave
Chapter Two ·Love and Marriage
Chapter Three ·Rejected Writer
Chapter Four ·The One-Job-a-Week Man
Chapter Five · California, Here We Come
Chapter Six · I Nearly Drowned!
Chapter Seven · New York, New York
Chapter Eight · From Russia with Milk
Chapter Nine · The Hong Kong Caper
Chapter Ten · The Ten-Day Train
Chapter Eleven · But What I Meant …
Chapter One · To Be Continued …
Publisher’s Note
Of all the characters Alan Yates, or Carter Brown, has created, none is more popular nor unorthodox than Al Wheeler, that undeniable Lieutenant from the Pine City Sheriff’s Office.
Lieutenant Wheeler has never been one to keep his sleuth’s nose out of things—and this autobiography of his creator is no exception. He certainly denies not being ‘real’.
That is why you will find his interjections throughout the text. They are set in italics and followed by the initials ‘A.W.’ for Al Wheeler.
Not to be outdone, the author replies angrily to these Wheeler interjections with his own initials ‘A.Y.’ for Alan Yates.
When they made their pitch to him about writing his autobiography I didn’t say a word. I’ve been a cop long enough to know when to keep my mouth shut. But, right off, I could see it making a big fun book stretching to around five pages of easy-to-read print and maybe it would include a real cute picture of him surrounded by his glasses. Well, like his father said, we all make mistakes. I figured I would just hang around, preferably with a couple of well-stacked blondes for company, and wait until his sanity returned. Then he could get back to reality, recording the cases and the women in the life and times of Lieutenant Al Wheeler.
The unorthodox cop.
From the sheriff’s office.
Me.
But after a while I started getting this uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. After all, we’ve been together in a real close association over the last twenty years and it’s not my fault I stay an immutable thirty-five while he keeps on getting older every year.
Some have got it, some haven’t.
Still, and all, I didn’t want to see him make another pratfall. Ever since he was a small kid he’s been bouncing along life’s merry highway on his ass. I figured the least I could do was to help him out. Okay, so I don’t have any credits as a writer. Frankly, I have better ways to spend my evenings, like chasing the luscious honey-blonde Annabelle Jackson around my oversized couch, but I know how it’s done. No, not that. I’m talking about writing. I’ve looked over his hunched shoulders long enough to pick it up. You grab hold of a bunch of words and put them into some kind of order. Well, that’s the way he does it. Only it’s not enough for an autobiography.
Selective highlights is the keynote. Who the hell wants to know you spent all day staring hopelessly at the blank page in the typewriter then, come nightfall, you kicked the cat and went to bed. Or the real exciting time when the doctor said he didn’t figure you were pregnant, more like it was a gall bladder attack. And the hell with chronological order. You start off saying. ‘It was raining the day I was born’, and the first thing you know your reader has switched on the television and thrown your book out of the window. On the first page you’ve got to grab your reader by the short hairs and pull them straight into the book. Like I’ve just done to you, right? (You’ll have to speak up, I don’t hear negatives too good.)
The reason I know these things is because I’m just that much smarter than he is. It’s no great trick to be that way. Most of us are. So I’ve written up some of the highlights. He needs all the help he can get. And they are all written at a fast pace with no intellectual crap and are exciting, fascinating, and unputdownable. Confidentially, if you just skip the in-between bits it won’t be any big loss.
(For the last ten years, Lieutenant Al Wheeler has been hoping to make Captain. Fat Chance! A.Y.)
Chapter One
A Life on the Ocean Wave
‘You are appointed to HMS Golden Hind, Sydney, Australia, for onward disposal’, said the formal letter from the Admiralty.
HMS Golden Hind. The name sang. It was pure poetry, evocative of the Spanish Main and derring-do. I found out later that its only claim to fame was its mosquitoes which were compared to Stuka dive-bombers. And as well as being known as HMS Golden Hind, it was also known in its less fancy moments as Warwick Farm Racecourse. But ignorance was still bliss as I re-read the letter. I already had a great deal of affection for Australians because one of them, Lionel Van Praag, had captained West Ham’s speedway team when I was a devoted twelve-year-old supporter and, at the age of fifteen, I had seen Stan McCabe make a magnificent knock of eighty-one against Middlesex in something like forty-one minutes. Even if Sydney was some 10 000 miles away from England, I did know something about it. You would find kangaroos bounding along their main streets and they also had a wonderful beach called Bondi Beach. That was the way it was spelled but it was pronounced, ‘Bondee’. Everybody knew that.
I had joined the Royal Navy in September 1942 and became a member of the crew of a Landing Craft Infantry (Small) some six months later. They were the elite of landing craft, designed as Commando raiding craft, and not dissimilar to motor torpedo boats in appearance. I stayed with her through the invasion of Europe then in October 1944 some eager beaver in Admiralty discovered the letter recommending me for a commission that my skipper had sent some fifteen months before. So when I received the magic letter in January 1945, I had risen from the rank of Able Seaman to the heady heights of an acting temporary Sub-lieutenant of the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve.
The voyage to Australia in a troopship took nineteen days with the ship making one stop of six hours’ duration at Colon, on the mouth of the Panama Canal, but nobody was allowed ashore. The only things of interest I remember seeing were my first flying fish and the Southern Cross. The ship arrived in Sydney around seven in the morning and I stood on deck with my mouth wide open just not believing it as vista after vista of the harbour unrolled in front of my enchanted eyes.
After we docked, the bad news was that HMS Golden Hind was full, so I and another junior officer would have to stay in a private hotel on Bondi Beach—with an extra living allowance provided, of course.
It looked like things were tough all over.
My last memory of the troopship was seeing the disconsolate-looking group of Wrens standing huddled together close to the gangway. During the voyage they had turned up their noses at us British lads and fallen for the sophisticated blandishments of the returning Australian airmen who all seemed to have at least one DFC to go with their wings. But now all the Australian flyers were busy on the dockside being reunited with their wives, sweethearts, and any etcetera they felt in need of. And it served the Wrens right, we losers generously thought as we walked down the gangway to set foot on Australian soil for the first time.
We had lunch at the Tarleton Hotel then went for a walk in the afternoon and, oh, my God!, there was a shop actually selling fruit. We bought enough to make ourselves sick a couple of hours later, then discovered a milk bar further down the street. The whole street was probably a mirage but we determined to make the most of it while it lasted. The girl who served us asked if we were from London. My friend was a Scot and while he was still sneering I told the girl I was a Londoner.
‘Gee!’ She looked suitably impressed, ‘Were you there in the Blitz?’ I said I was and modestly prepared to tell her about the night the East End was hit and the Thames was at its lowest ebb and … but I was wasting my time.
‘I bet it was almost as bad as it was here’, the girl interrupted me. ‘You must have heard about the Japanese submarine that got into our harbour. It was terrible!’
Night came and brought no blackout with it. Australia was obviously a fantasy land and I intended to make the most of it. And I did for the next six days until the
‘Major’, the Captain said politely. ‘This limey is Alan Yates.’
‘Hi’, the Major said, then looked at the blonde. ‘Say hello to the Lootenant, honey.’
‘Hello’, the blonde said dutifully.
‘Okay’, the Major said briskly, ‘that’s enough socialising. Now let’s get down to the fornicating’.
It wasn’t so much that the Americans had style, I thought wistfully, as I watched them disappear into the nearest vacant bedroom, but far more importantly they had girls, too.
Our only duty was to ring the Captain’s secretary (a prematurely-balding Lieutenant) once a day to find out if he had any news for us. On the seventh day, he did. We had been appointed to the Fourth Cruiser Squadron for still more onward disposal and we were to be on board a destroyer, HMS Quilliam, by five that afternoon. The British Pacific Fleet was in Leyte. Quilliam was joining it and so were we.
Being a passenger in a naval ship is really boring. All day to do and nothing to do, except try and stay out of other people’s way. The only thing that broke the monotony was when Quilliam hit the centre of a typhoon and had to heave-to for twelve hours. The Captain used his sea cabin on the bridge while the ship was at sea so I, as a passenger, had the use of his day cabin. The bed was so narrow that I spent a wonderful night while the ship was hoved-to, lying on the bed with both arms fully outstretched and my hands desperately clutching the sides of the bed as it tilted from side to side at impossible angles. Sleep was completely impossible so I had plenty of time to reflect on some of the more memorable times I had spent during the two previous years in landing craft.
(It’s real pathetic. Only a few goddamned pages into the book and he’s starting to twitch already. What kind of a transition is that? If it was a movie, they’d have to have a sub-title that said FLASHBACK in big letters and went on and off like a neon sign the whole time. A.W.)
After four months of basic training I was sent to Troon, the Combined Operations base on the west coast of Scotland for further training and to be ultimately drafted to a landing craft. One Friday afternoon I was given a draft-chit to LCI(S) 504 and a single ticket to Glasgow. So off I went, complete with kitbag, hammock and suitcase, and arrived in Glasgow around five in the afternoon. It was early 1943 and Combined Operations was still regarded with deep suspicion by the regular naval personnel, especially the Chief Petty Officer at the naval transport office, who had been called out of retirement at the beginning of the war.
‘Combined Operations’, he said, and sniffed loudly. ‘That’s that little Sub-lieutenant with an office on the other side of the street. But there’s no use you trying to see him now because he always pisses off real sharpish around three on a Friday afternoon.’
So he finally decided I should spend the weekend at a leave centre, and gave me a chit to make it possible, and also stern instructions to report to the little Sub-lieutenant in the Combined Operations office on the following Monday morning.
Halfway up one of the side streets leading away from the station, I realised I had forgotten to ask the whereabouts of Sauchiehall Street where the leave centre was situated. Fortunately for me help was close at hand. Leaning against the wall on the opposite side of the street was a lady wearing a tightly-belted raincoat, a jaunty beret, and smoking a cigarette. As she was obviously either taking a rest or waiting for somebody, I thought she was the ideal person to give me directions. So I crossed the street still carrying kitbag, hammock and suitcase, gave her a sunny smile and said, in my best English accent, ‘Excuse me, Madame, but can you tell me the way to Sauchiehall Street?’
‘Fuck off, you stupid Sassenach bastard’, she said, with great contempt, and flicked ash all over the shiny toecaps of my naval issue boots.
The daily issue of the rum ration was an important event in our lives. Especially because in landing craft, as other small ships, it was issued neat. With a crew of fourteen entitled to draw their tot of rum, the coxswain would look the other way while you carefully bottled your tot for future use. The rum itself was something like 125 proof. You couldn’t pour it into a glass because it was too thick and would only trickle.
When someone had a birthday they would be offered ‘sippers’ all round by the rest of the crew. On the lower deck dinner was at twelve noon and the rum was issued just before. So the happy birthday boy, having consumed some thirteen ‘sippers’ as well as his own tot would sit down to dinner at the messdeck table but rarely finish it. He would start a singsong all by himself, or loudly announce his intention of going up on deck to murder the skipper or, one time I especially remember, push the contents of his dinner plate into his neighbour’s face because his neighbour hadn’t passed the salt quickly enough. I happened to be his neighbour at the time. Whatever the reaction, the birthday boy would pass out cold and be laid to rest on the nearest seat. Around six in the evening you would hear loud groans and piteous whimperings about the state of his head, then he would sit up, the fumes would rise to his head, and he would be a cheap drunk for another fifteen minutes.
On board 504 were two close friends. Jock Allard was the dour, canny Glaswegian while Ginger McFee was the redheaded cyclone from Edinburgh. One summer evening, when we were moored in the middle of the Hamble River, Ginger decided he would have a run ashore. Jock decided he would remain on board. A passionate argument developed with Ginger McFee resorting to large swigs from his bottle of illegally-hoarded rum whenever he ran out of persuasive talk. Finally a compromise was reached. Ginger would have his run ashore and Jock would generously row him to the wharf in the craft’s dinghy as it was now far too late to catch the official liberty boat.
So Jock rowed the dinghy around to the rope ladder that hung down one side of the craft and waited. Ginger emerged briskly from the messdeck hatchway, ran across the deck and descended the rope ladder even more briskly. The heel of his boot hit the bow of the dinghy and pushed it away. Undaunted, Ginger continued his rapid descent and disappeared into the river. He surfaced a few seconds later, his cap still firmly fixed on his head, and climbed the rope ladder back up onto the deck. From the moment he had first appeared from the messdeck hatchway, the whole scene had been conducted at silent film speed. Now, with water forming a large puddle around his feet, Ginger leaned over the guardrail and courteously thanked the bemused Jock for having brought him back from his run ashore. Then he returned to the messdeck, slung his hammock, stripped off his wet clothes, and was fast asleep five minutes later. From the next morning on, nobody could ever convince him that he hadn’t spent the evening ashore drinking at the local pub.
There was an art to drinking naval rum neat. You had to ease it down your tongue then swallow slowly and carefully. If you allowed the rum to hit the back of your throat you would cough and choke helplessly until the fumes subsided. Of course, if you were already drunk you wouldn’t care. To prove it, there were three deaths from asphyxiation in the LCI(S) flotilla over a period of eighteen months.
Came the invasion of Europe and 504 carried about a hundred of Lord Lovat’s No. 1 Commando Brigade, landing them on the beach at Ouistreham. The Channel crossing was very rough and just about everybody on board was seasick. Afterwards, the only thing we could do was hose down the messdecks which meant everything ran down into the bilges and stayed there for the next month until the craft could be dry-docked and the bilges emptied and cleaned. But during that month the smell from the bilges permeated the whole craft below decks. The cook never cooked a hot meal during that period. We existed on cans of self-heating soup, cold provisions, and bars of chocolate. And everything eaten on the upper deck.
