WAR-LORD WHOM LANKA LOVED

by ECB Wijeyesinghe

Everybody who writes about Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten must feel like Virgil, the Latin poet, who began his immortal epic. the Aeneid, with the words “Arena virumque cano” (I sing of arms and a hero).

After the death of Winston Churchill, the shining mantle of the world’s greatest living Englishman fell on Mountbatten’s broad shoulders and illumined the personality of a man whose winning ways were responsible for capturing not only the minds of men, but the hearts of women. A few days before he was felled in the Irish Waters near his holiday home in County Sligo, he appeared to have a presentiment of the fate that was to befall him.

Interviewed by a London journalist at Broadlands, his stately home in Hampshire. which has been thrown open to the public for obvious reasons, he said: “Dying does not worry me. I am looking forward to my own funeral. It should be a good do and great fun. I do hope you will come.” When the Sunday “Observer” published this interview readers who have a streak of clairvoyance in their constitution must have shuddered and joined the journalist in exclaiming “God forbid!”, forgetting the fact that there is no armour against Fate.

Mountbatten had perhaps the kind of funeral he predicted he would have, but it was far from fun, because millions of aching hearts in this part of the world had not yet got over the initial shock of the dastardly act that destroyed the man, whom the British reporter so aptly described as his country’s hero and heritage, a walking statue, a talking gold medal and a breathing bronze bust.

I saw him only once and that was 35 years ago when I watched him driving his jeep like Jehu along the road leading from Kandy to Katugastota. He was alone, and as he hugged the curves, the people in the Kandy streets, to whom he was a familiar figure stood by, and looked on with awe at the master strategist who had a genius for getting things done. Teenage school girls in the hill capital, they say, seemed to have prior information of his movements, in and out of his headquarters in the Peradeniya Gardens, and assembled at strategic points to catch a glimpse of their handsome hero.

At a Charity Ball in Queen’s Hotel in 1944 the very fact that Lord Mountbatten was going to be the Chief Guest attracted such a crowd that the old hostelry nearly burst at its seams. The majority of those present were white women. The peria dorais and sinna dorais from the plantations brought along their wives, sisters, daughters, mothers and other female relatives who probably presumed they had an off chance of having a dance with the Supreme Commander of the Southeast Asian forces.

To them five minutes in the arms of this Apollo who was related to every crowned head in Europe was something to write home about and make their friends west of Suez green with envy. At the appointed time 9.30 p.m. sharp the hum of conversation in the glittering but starchy crowd at the Queen’s ceased and out of a utility vehicle there stepped out the debonair admiral in crumpled workaday clothes.

Among the Staff of the Commander who clicked their heels as their chief entered the hotel were several Ceylonese officers, including my learned friend S. J. Kadirgamar, long before he rose to eminence as a Queen’s Counsel. Sam Kadirgamar, incidentally, is also a brilliant rifle shot and has scored more bull’s eyes in Bisley than anybody I know. With his sharp eye and witty tongue he must have felt quite at home in Mountbatten’s entourage.

The dancing began and the planters’ wives, some of them beautiful women arrayed in their silken gowns and sparkling jewels waited eagerly looking forward to a waltz with the warrior. But alas! Protocol is a cruel mistress and has a way of dashing to the ground the hopes of even the most formidable females. Mountbatten walked up to Lady Monck-Mason Moore who was then well past her prime, took her in his arms and gingerly led her on in a slow fox-trot on the highly polished floor. The music stopped and the noble Lord bowed graciously to Lady Moore clicked his heels and made a sign to his staff officers to follow him.

As he was walking out a British planter, bolder than the rest, whose young wife was waiting in the wings, had the temerity to say: “Surely you are not going, Sir?” Mountbatten merely answered: “Why not? Remember there is a war on” and strode out, forcing Kadirgamar and the other youthful colonels and majors to gallop behind their leader in order to catch him up and do their bit in the war about which they had read so much.

Lord Louis was always unobtrusive in what he did in contrast with the flamboyant Douglas MacArthur who was in charge of the operations in the Pacific Ocean. Richard Weerasooriya, who was once described as “the mighty atom” of the old Broadcasting Station, told me this story. He had information from Felix Goonewardene of The Times of Ceylon that Mountbatten who was then Chairman of the Brains Trust in England was somewhere in Colombo.

Weerasooriya was running the Brains Trust here and was eager to get the famous man on his programme. But where was he? He seemed to be as elusive as the Scarlet Pimpernel. Felix sent his sleuths out, but could not track him down. Weerasooriya took up the chase independently and visited every Service Club in search of him but drew a blank. Ultimately he made a final try at the Galle Face Hotel and was about to depart dejected and disappointed when he saw a striking figure in informal attire seated in the foyer immersed in a newspaper.

Weerasooriya had found his man. But it was nearly midnight and his Army plane was due to leave with him in two hours. But in deference to Richard’s earnest entreaties Mountbatten kindly postponed his departure and went to Radio Ceylon early in the morning where he gave a long talk and his voice was recorded for posterity.

Lord Louis Mountbatten’s monumental triumph in SEAC was that he welded the most heterogeneous crowd of soldiers, sailors and airmen into a homogeneous unit. Under his baton were men and women speaking at least 12 different languages, eating different kinds of food and used to different ways of life. There were Gurkhas, Goans, Punjabis, Sikhs, Madrassis, Malayalees, East Africans, Dutchmen, Frenchmen, Burmese, Chinese, Sinhalese, Tamils, Burghers and Malays, to say nothing of the Australians, Americans and Englishmen.

He thoroughly understood the East especially India and knew the travails she had gone through during centuries of colonialism and high-powered Imperialism. Described as a king without a Crown, he was Queen Victoria’s most illustrious great grandson and his cousin the Duke of Windsor was the best man at his wedding. In spite of being related to the arrogant Hohenzollems, Romanoffs, Hesses and Saxe-Coburgs, not to mention the distant connection with the Bourbons he was a Liberal at heart and an eloquent advocate of freedom for India.

To the Indian under-dog he was exceedingly sympathetic and he probably endorsed Kipling’s humble admission:-

Though I’ve belted you and flayed you,

By the living God that made you,

You’re a better man than I am.

Gunga Din.

Jawaharlal and the entire Nehru family, loved him and it is not surprising that perhaps the most touching tribute after his death should have been paid on All-India Radio by Nehru’s sister, Mrs. Vijayalakshmi Pandit.

(Excerpted from the Good At Their Best first published in 1979)