How I was offered the Order of the Bath

This one I am going to keep short, for I blush even now at the memory.

COMDT MIKE MALONE

Meintjeskop Courier No date provided

On arriving in Hong Kong as our first Consul-General in 1967, I found the Mainland Chinese and the British rulers - of that mini-Colony at loggerheads. 

The Chinese were in the throes of what they humorously referred to as the "Cultural Revolution" (which,as far as I could make out, consisted mainly in cutting off the heads of their opponents in a cultivated manner) and were not too happy at seeing "white-skinned pigs" - their respectful term for the British - in control of Hong Kong. Well, that was their concern and not mine.

However. it became my concern in an intimate fashion when, in pursuance of their anti-British policy, they craftily threatened to cut off the water supplies from the Chinese Mainland to the Colony. 

Sensibly deciding to nation supplies of that precious fluid, the authorities in Hong Kong turned off the water-mains for 23-1/2 hours of every 24. This meant that everyone had to rush home during the half-hour in question and fill every available container - bath (if any), basins and saucepans - with water. The result was that there wasn't enough water to have a proper bath - and this, I may say, was in the middle of the Hong Kong summer. Things did not look, nor smell, too good.

But  there was a silver lining to this cloud. A few British senior officials, whose duties required them to smell clean and sweet around the place, were granted unlimited water supplies. Among them was one whose name and title it would be tactless to mention. He was a good and kind-hearted man. 

Now, under these circumstances, the kindest gesture that he and the equally privileged ,few could make was invite friends to enjoy the luxury of a bath at his residence. And thereby hangs this tale

About a week after my arrival I happened to be in the spacious lift of the Hong Kong Hilton Hotel, which also happened to be be packed with American Naval personnel on leave from Vietnam. On the far side was my British official acquaintance, who recognised me.

 "Ah, Malone", cried this well-meaning personage, whose voice boomed across the lift, "how nice to see you. Why don't you drop in at my place and let me give you a bath?"

The thought was a kind one, but its verbal expression not quite as well-chosen as one might perhaps have wished. I still recall the look in some twenty pairs of Yankee naval eyes which plainly said, "Doggone it, a pair of genuine Limey queers - and so goddamned open about it, too. Jeez, I just can’t wait to tell the guys back on the ship about this. They'll split a.gut!"

Some of them, I suspect, are dining out on that story to this day.