Knight errant

The recent saga of the 15 British sailors seized by Iran in the Persian Gulf reminded me of Simon and Bono.

Simon was decorated for his morale-boosting role in the Amethyst affair.
Bono was made up into a Knight of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.
Simon isn’t as well-known as Bono. I put this down to speciest bigotry. Simon was ship’s cat on HMS Amethyst when it sailed up the Yangtse in 1949, guns trained on each bank to discourage the People’s Liberation Army from interfering with British commercial interests. Able Seaman George Hickenbottom described the events which followed.
“Amethyst did not get much further than 100 miles upriver before being shelled by Communist shore batteries, causing the ship to run aground on a mud-bank. 25 of the crew were dead or dying, including the captain and the MO, many others were injured. Simon suffered leg, neck and tail injuries and facial burns, and was rendered unconscious. He was not expected to last the night. However, Simon had other ideas!
“...Negotiations with the Communists for the ship’s release dragged on unprofitably, because the Chinese wanted an admission that the Amethyst had fired first. Life on board became hot, humid and boring...
“Simon was soon back on rat-catching duties. There was a particularly large, bold and vicious rat causing havoc with the supplies; the crew had named him ‘Mao Tse-tung’. One day he and Simon came face to face: Simon sprang first and killed Mao Tse-tung outright. He was promoted to Able Seacat Simon...
“The days dragged on with no relief in sight. Simon, through it all, continued cheerfully with his duties and his rounds, helping to keep up flagging spirits.”
On the night of July 30th 1949, after 101 days, the Amethyst made a dash down the Yangtse and made it to the open sea. The news sparked scenes of wild excitement in England. King George VI ordered that the mainbrace be spliced. Back on board, a special presentation was made: all hands stood at attention on deck while a citation was read out and Able Seacat Simon was formally awarded the Amethyst Campaign Ribbon.
(This fascinating scene was inexplicably omitted from the 1956 movie, Yangtse Incident, starring Richard Todd, William Hartnell, Bernard Miles and Akim Tamiroff.)
News of the heroic feline’s patriotic fortitude sent a fever of excitement through that section of British society prone to this sort of thing. An Early Day Motion in the Commons hailed Simon as “an example to all”. The Armed Forces Mascot Club radioed the Amethyst in Hong Kong that, subject to the captain’s recommendation, Simon should be awarded the Dickin Medal – the “Animals’ VC”. He was to be presented with the decoration upon his return to home shores.
Pathe News footage of Simon sniffing the air as the Amethyst passed through the Suez Canal drew spontaneous applause in cinemas. Hickenbottom recalled: “Letters, poems, gifts of food and cat toys arrived by every post. A special ‘cat officer’ had to be appointed.”
The Amethyst reached Plymouth on November 10, 1949. The medal ceremony was scheduled for December 11. The Lord Mayor of London was set to travel in full regalia to make the presentation. Five (!) armed service bands stood by. But, alas! “Simon became listless, and a vet was urgently sent for,” recounts Hickenbottom. “He was given an injection and tablets, and then seemed to sleep. His carer sat with him all night; but by the morning of 28 November he had died. The vet felt that he would have recovered from the virus he had suffered had his heart not been weakened by his war wounds. Maybe the fact that he was in a strange place, rather than at sea on his ship with his friends, did not help.”
Obituaries to Simon were published in all national newspapers. Time magazine carried a photograph and a tribute. Simon was buried in the animal cemetery at Ilford, east of London. A specially-made casket, draped with the Union flag, was lowered into the ground. Father Henry Ross, rector of St Augustine’s, conducted the funeral rites. A wooden marker was placed on the hallowed spot, with the legend:
In honoured memory of Simon, DM/HMS Amethyst
Died November 28, 1949.
Now here’s a thing: nowhere in the coverage of Simon’s life and death which I have read on behalf of hotpress readers is the question raised of what HMS Amethyst was doing sailing 100 miles up a Chinese river bristling with guns port and starboard. If a ship of the People’s Liberation Navy had sailed 100 miles up the Thames, Red Star fluttering, guns trained on Kingston, Henley, Teddington, Newberry, etc., and Wang, the ship’s cat, stalking indigenous rodents with murder in mind, would not the patriotic anger of the Daily Express have been roused to such a pitch of incandescence as to put the entire print-run of the paper at risk of self-immolation? Would not the plain people of England have been mobilised to mass along the banks of the river armed with any implements that came to hand to slice and dice the intruders to death?
Let us, in light of this consideration, ponder the view of the commander of HMS Cornwall that his 15 sailors had not been captured in Iranian territory but in “our waters”. By which he meant Iraqi waters.
Let us contemplate the achievement of the Daily Express, in managing to present the decision of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to release the sailors as confirmation that he is a hate-fuelled fanatic whose country may have to be bombed back to the stone age before Britons can sleep easy in their beds: “Iran’s evil president has made Britain look weak and foolish.”
Let us weigh up whether the Express was not bested for imagination by the Sun, which raged that the shiny suits the sailors sported at their release were a glaring “insult,” designed by politically-motivated tailors in the back streets of Teheran to make Our Boys look naff.
Worse, added theMail, in the demented mind of fanatical Iranians, shiny suits symbolise “western decadence”.
Let us consider the judgment that the behaviour of the Iranians in parading the sailors on television had been “cruel, callous, unacceptable, inhuman” (Gordon Brown) and “contrary to international law” (Tony Blair.) Unlike, presumably, parading them in jump-suits and shackles, attaching electrodes to their genitals, urinating on texts they regard as sacred, sodomising them with implements and beating them to death.
Let us ruminate on the moral vacuity of a pop singer who so assiduously promotes liars and war-mongers as cool idealists (“Blair and Brown – the Lennon and McCartney of British politics!”) that they reward him with a bauble signifying association with the rape of continents.
Let us reflect on the fact that, as conveyed in the last issue of Hot Press, not one of a large and representative sample of Dublin writers, film-makers, business executives and freelance celebrities who assembled in the Clarence Hotel to mark the pop-singer’s acceptance of this token of imperial approval managed to summon the half-ounce of self-respect it would have taken to stand up and shout, “Shame!”
Ah, but that would have been to stray outside the bourgeois consensus...