The Night of the Rambler Read online

  Table of Contents

  ___________________

  Preface: THE BURNING QUESTION

  PART I

  MAY DE LORD BE WIT' US

  (THE PLAN)

  THE BITTER ARGUMENT

  THE RENDEZVOUS

  PART II

  TINTAMARRE AND THE IMPLAUSIBLE TWIST OF ALWYN'S FATE

  RUDE THOMPSON AND THE ARUBAN CONNECTION

  (A FEW WORDS ON THE TIMES AND THEIR GEIST)

  THE INGREDIENTS OF CHANGE

  THE SPEECH THAT NEVER CAME TO BE

  THE UNDELIVERED MESSAGE

  THE STATEHOOD QUEEN SHOW

  THE RECONCILIATION

  KICK 'EM OUT!

  PART III

  ATTACK!

  RETREAT!

  Epilogue: THE DENOUEMENT

  A Note from the Author

  About Akashic Books

  This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to real events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental

  Published by Akashic Books

  ©2013 by Montague Kobbé

  ISBN-13: 978-1-61775-161-5

  eISBN: 9781617751820

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2013907455

  All Rights Reserved.

  Lesser Antilles map courtesy of the Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection, Universtiy of Texas Libraries

  Akashic Books

  PO Box 1456

  New York, NY 10009

  [email protected]

  www.akashicbooks.com

  to Peter Holleran

  Student today don’t mean na’, but in a Latin America whipped into a frenzy by the Fall of Arbenz, by the Stoning of Nixon, by the Guerrillas of the Sierra Madre, by the endless cynical maneuverings of the Yankee Pig Dogs–in a Latin America already a year and a half into the Decade of the Guerrilla–a student was something else altogether, an agent for change, a vibrating quantum string in the staid Newtonian universe. —Junot Díaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

  PREFACE

  THE BURNING QUESTION

  And then the unthinkable happened: on May 29, 1967, a crowd of Anguillians gathered to protest, not unlike they had done in January of the same year, upon the arrival of the British local government expert who was forced to depart the island before delivering his message—whatever that might have been. They gathered and expressed their discontent at the notion of shared sovereignty within the tripartite state of St. Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla, much like they had done during the Statehood Queen Show of February 1967. It was precisely on that occasion when the image of Alwyn Cooke, hanging precariously from the edge of his truck, holding a wild ball of fire in his right hand, provided the people of the island with the first symbol of a revolution that had not yet started. They gathered to listen to their leaders’ appeals, alternatives, solutions, ideas. They gathered at Burrowes Park, at the heart of The Valley, the “capital,” and then they took matters into their own hands. On May 29, 1967, the people of Anguilla flocked to the streets, en masse in the park, marched toward the police station, and, spontaneously but vehemently, demanded the thirteen-man police task force leave the island, never to come back. Less than twenty-four hours later the last few policemen were boarding the freighter that would take them on their sixty-five-mile journey back to St. Kitts. Just like that, an insignificant speck of coral on the northeastern corner of the Caribbean had revolted.

  At that point the situation was critical: hardly anybody was aware of the existence, let alone the whereabouts, of Anguilla; a fifteen-man peacekeeping committee acting as provisional government fruitlessly sought protection from Great Britain, from Canada, from the USA; the state of affairs on the island was precarious, and an invasion from St. Kitts seemed imminent. Intrepidly, Anguillians took the initiative, devised a shambolic attack on St. Kitts, and on the morning of June 10, 1967 embarked upon what must stand out among the most naive failures in the history of military enterprises.

  When the men within St. Kitts’s Defence Force camp heard the distant drumming of the shots fired outside, they didn’t have the slightest clue of what was happening. Despite the fact that hundreds of Kittitians had been informed of the insurgency in an effort to foster local support for it, not one member of St. Kitts’s police and security forces had been privy to this particular piece of information. Not long afterward, though, once they heard the loud roar of the dynamite setting the world alight, they knew that someone had opened wide the gates of hell. Nobody cared to ask who. The pertinent question at that time was whether to run for their lives or to put in place a plan to stifle the momentum of the rebels.

  As it turned out, hell was not all that adept in running loose. By the time the faux coup had crashed against the walls of its own incompetence, looking for the people responsible for this minor embarrassment was no longer relevant. Instead, the local government jumped at the opportunity to declare a state of emergency, immediately implemented measures to tighten its (already watertight) grip on the country’s structure of power, and wasted one month persecuting its political enemies. The question as to who had let hell loose in the early hours of the morning of June 10, 1967 went down in history begging.

  And yet, fortuitously, the mission achieved its goals. Faced with the threat of an armed uprising—faced, really, with the unthinkable—Premier Bradshaw focused on settling the score at home first, spent the following month turning St. Kitts into a 100 percent safe, absolutely invasion-resistant bunker. Now, in the 350 years of colonial history of Anguilla, its inhabitants have not exactly built a strong reputation for the pace and efficiency of their work. Or, to put it more obliquely, if Costa Rica is the Switzerland of the Americas, Anguilla is unequivocally not the Germany of the Caribbean. However, whether it was due to the urgency of the matter, or to the whimsical turnings of Providence, the peacekeeping committee acted in all haste, with uncharacteristic foresight and prudence, to build the institutional edifice required to rule a country. By July 11, 1967, one month and one day after the attempted attack on St. Kitts, Anguilla already had a small “army” of fifty servicemen, an anthem, a constitution, a revolutionary leader, a patriarch, and a foreign advisor.

  The provisional government had also organized an internal referendum to decide upon the question of secession from the state of St. Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla. The overwhelming result of 1,813 votes in favor to five against, out of 2,554 registered voters, forever changed the course of Anguilla’s destiny. Most importantly, though, Anguilla caught the eye of the world while Bradshaw’s attention had drifted toward internal affairs. By the time St. Kitts looked back in the direction of Anguilla it was too late to use force—and diplomacy was not going to lead anywhere favorable. This was the extraordinary legacy of one of the most ridiculous episodes anyone will ever find in the annals of revolutions. This was the beginning of the first success of a country whose history, up to that point, had been little more than a catalog of hardship and failure.

  The following is a fictionalized and utterly false account of the events that most definitely did not happen on June 9–10, 1967. And yet, while all characters in this story are little green men and women running around inside my head, the events that served as inspiration, the historical facts, as it were, must be considered no less than a sibling of the tale contained in these pages: the story I didn’t write, but could have written—the book this could have been, but isn’t.

  CHAPTER I

  MAY DE LORD BE WIT’ US

  When a new pocket of lights flared farther to the east through the deep blackness of the night, Sol Campbell finally vented the rage that had been eating up his insides, and with an intimidating Yo Rude! issued
the prelude to his duel. He seemed to stand on higher ground as his voice rose above the rest to ask, Wha’ dem lights over dere be? Tell me, nuh—wha’ dat light yonder be, if it ain’ St. Kitts? Instantly, the roar of the engine receded and the surge behind the boat caught up with its hull, softly thrusting the sixteen passengers forward. Awash at sea, The Rambler drifted helplessly in no particular direction. The calm Caribbean waters rocked the boat melodiously, intensely, in the middle of the night, as its 115-horsepower diesel engine gargled on idle. Every now and then a wayward wave or ripple crashed against the underside of the hull, letting out an empty thump that reverberated inside the men aboard. There was no moon. The night, dark and clear all at once, was made thicker by a sinister haze which veiled the stars and the lights in the distance. Behind the wheel, on the bridge of the thirty-five-foot boat, a bitter argument ensued.

  Rude Thompson, captain for a day, had been entrusted to take The Rambler to the northwestern shores of St. Kitts in order to meet local members of the insurrection at the stroke of midnight. But that very stroke had gone at least half an hour earlier, as they’d seemingly found themselves off the coast of, not St. Kitts, but the neighboring St. Eustatius.

  The men had gathered at Island Harbour, on the northeastern end of Anguilla, that very day to pack the boat with guns, ammo, and a few provisions for the journey. The mission had been kept secret and the men involved had camped near the training site at Junks Hole Beach for the past three days, away from their families for added security. The Rambler was loaded for the sixty-five-mile journey southward on Friday, June 9, shortly after lunch. Alwyn Cooke, the mastermind behind the plan, showed up uncharacteristically late. He wore his usual gray pressed trousers and white cotton shirt buttoned up to the top. Yet there was something ragged about his looks—something that went beyond the three-day beard and the sunken rings around his eyes. He brought with him the dark green canvas bag in which, ten days earlier, the police task force had intended to take their guns, before they were expelled from the island.

  At that time, Inspector Edmonton, head of the police task force, had carried the bag to the Piper Aztec that was supposed to take him and the remaining four members of the force back to St. Kitts. On his way from the small wooden building that was Wallblake Airport to the equally small propeller aircraft sitting on the dust strip, he was met by Rude Thompson, Gaynor Henderson, and the collective indignation against the man whose ill judgment had led to widespread violence months before, during the Statehood Queen Show. Rude’s first request for Inspector Edmonton to drop de bag an’ go on was more of an order. The inspector’s reluctance to obey gave Gaynor the opportunity he craved to restore the pride that had been taken from him three months earlier, on the evening when he was thrown in the dungeon. So, emboldened by the circumstances, Gaynor took a .32 pistol from behind his back and shoved it right inside Inspector Edmonton’s mouth, until it polished his uvula. You ever taste de taste of lead in you mout’? Inspector Edmonton had no chance to reply. You better drop de bag unless dis is de last t’ing you ever wan’ taste.

  Alwyn Cooke had thought the gesture excessively violent, but ten days had shaken Anguilla’s world, and he presently approached with the same bag, except that it now looked heavier, bulkier. Come to de back of de truck. Is t’ree more of dem back dere. His shrill voice cut through the air and opened up the silence. By three in the afternoon, The Rambler was loaded with most of the equipment the police force had left behind: six Lee-Enfield Mk III* .303 rifles, such as the ones used during World War I; five Winchester Model 54 .30-06 rifles, the predecessor to the famous Model 70, launched in 1936; four M1 Garand .30-06 semiautomatic rifles; four M1 .30 semiautomatic carbines; eight hundred rounds of ammunition; two boxes of dynamite; four detonators; and four cans of tear gas. In addition to the material confiscated from the task force was a supply of more modern equipment from the USA, including five automatic .25 handguns, three .32-caliber pistols, and, crucially, two M16 automatic rifles and two Browning M1919 .30-caliber machine guns, both of which were popular at the time with the American army, particularly in Vietnam.

  However antiquated, The Rambler was equipped with an arsenal big enough to arm a small militia. Which is precisely what Alwyn Cooke, Rude Thompson, and the rest of the organizers of the operation expected to find in St. Kitts that night awaiting their aid. They would be in for a surprise—but not yet. Right now, burdened with the weight of sixteen passengers plus five hundred pounds of guns and ammo, the main concern was how much the boat could carry without sinking. Therefore, provisions for a trip that was to last at least nine hours were kept to a bare minimum: a demijohn of water, some dry crisps, and homemade johnnycakes—a local delicacy made of cornmeal and traditionally baked by women for their men to eat on the journey (later transfigured into johnny)—freshly prepared by some of the more diligent wives.

  The Rambler was loaded and ready to go by about three in the afternoon, but the sun wouldn’t set until some four hours later. The island, in complete control of the rebel government for the previous ten days, had been inaccessible to foreign traffic for forty-eight hours. Oil drums were carried in pickup trucks and lined up on the dirt strip of the airport to prevent any aircraft from landing, and all beaching points (there were no ports in Anguilla) had been guarded and officially closed to the outside world in an effort to keep any news of a plan which was largely unknown to the population in the first place from leaking to the enemy.

  Consequently, at three in the afternoon of Friday, June 9, 1967, The Rambler became the first boat to leave Anguilla’s territorial waters in two days. It sailed eastward from Island Harbour, and faced the tough Atlantic tides off the northeastern part of the island, before making the choppy journey past the cliffs of Harbour Ridge. Then it reached the treacherous seas off Captain’s Bay, only to drift into the narrow passage between Windward Point, the easternmost part of the island, and Scrub Island, a midsized cay to the east that still housed a dirt strip built as part of that obscure episode of World War II—the Destroyers-for-Bases Agreement.

  By four in the afternoon, The Rambler was cutting across the strait between Anguilla and Scrub, steering away from the waves that rolled in all the way from Africa, and heading in the general direction of St. Kitts and the rest of the Caribbean atoll. The first three miles of the passage were expected to be among the roughest of the day, but the sun still burned ferociously in the sky and the men aboard The Rambler still itched with desire to reach St. Kitts and get to the task at hand as the boat left Scrub Island behind on its port side and stopped challenging the high crests of the vigorous sea in order to roll with them toward Tintamarre, a.k.a. Flat Island, about ten nautical miles away.

  Like Scrub, Tintamarre is a midsized cay just off the (northwestern) coast of its bigger sister island, St. Martin, which had little of interest for honest citizens outside one or two unspoiled beaches of white sand and turquoise water. Like Scrub, the island is flat enough to home a dirt strip, but with facilities in Dutch Sint Maarten to the south, Scrub Island to the east, and Dog Island to the north, the American army felt adequately prepared to monitor the traffic and disrupt the passage of German U-boats through the Anguilla channel. Perhaps understandably, their plans did not foresee the apparition of Jan van Hoeppel, a mercenary adventurer—half Quixote, half Saint Exupéry—who, in collaboration with the Vichy government across the French Caribbean, would foil the American initiative and develop a sophisticated replenishing station in Tintamarre for the Nazi navy to enjoy fresh fruit and water from Martinique, from Guadeloupe, from Dominica, while their submarines were refueled and replenished.

  Alas, German interest in the Caribbean was short-lived, so when the traffic diminished and, indeed, the bad guys were defeated, van Hoeppel turned to aviation for inspiration: he already owned a four-seat, high-wing, single-engine Stinson Reliant, which he dubbed La Cucaracha, so he flattened the ground in Tintamarre, invested the money he had made collaborating with the Vichy in two ten-seat Stinson Model A t
rimotors and a six-seat Stinson Detroiter, and, just like that, established the first operational airline in the northeastern Caribbean: Air Atlantique.

  Van Hoeppel had long shifted his focus from airplanes to real estate, and the role he plays in this tale hangs in the balance of untyped words, but as sixteen restless men approached the western shores of Tintamarre on the first stage in their voyage, the remnants of a fleet that had been reduced by frequent accidents and decimated by a severe hurricane more than fifteen years back glowed with a rare air of grandeur, of relevance, as if, somehow, one impossible dream could be mirrored in another. Then Alwyn Cooke intervened. Cut de engine. Rude Thompson looked at his comrade with a trace of disbelief, but did not venture as far as to question the order. A few seconds elapsed before Wha’ we do now?—a voice so anonymous echoed that it seemed to each of the passengers in the boat as if they had all asked the question at the same time. We wait for night to fall, and the ensuing silence filled the air separating the flat soil of Tintamarre to the starboard and the angled hills of St. Barths in the distance, shadowed in the center by a thick pocket of rain that poured down somewhere at sea, between The Rambler and the island.

  It had just gone five when the diesel engine of The Rambler fell silent. The first ten miles of the journey had taken a good two hours, but the sun still hung high in the sky, far above the horizon line. Alwyn Cooke intended to minimize the chances of being caught crossing the St. Barths channel by lingering near Tintamarre until night had fallen. On Friday, June 9, 1967, the sun set at 6:46 p.m. The tropical crepuscule, short-lived and dramatic, shed daylight for another half hour. Hence, The Rambler and its crew had to sit tight and wait out at sea, off the eastern end of Tintamarre, for two full hours. Of which, the first thirty, forty minutes were spent in utter silence, as if Alwyn Cooke’s instruction had dropped a tacit curfew on words.