"Bloodsuckers"- an excerpt from A White Knuckle Ride Through Life, by local author Dave Rockley

17 January 2024

Coal miner, soldier, TV engineer, sailor, property developer, boatbuilder, scallop diver, yacht charter skipper, village pantomime star – Dave Rockley has led a full life. He has also lived through some hair-raising episodes, from pitfalls underground to surviving crocodiles and poisonous centipedes while on active service in the Malayan jungle, and nearly drowning in a diving mishap 80 feet under the cold Scottish ocean. In his late seventies, he climbed a hundred-foot pine tree to cut the top part down single-handed. Having heard some of his stories, his friends encouraged him to write them down while he still could. Here is a toe-curling excerpt from his book, "A White Knuckle Ride Through Life".

Bloodsuckers, and I don’t mean the government or the taxman. I’m talking about leeches of the Malayan jungle, lean wiry creatures, about two inches long. Nothing like the leeches on Humphrey Bogart’s back in the film African Queen, they were more like medical leeches. Malayan leeches don’t even need water. They hang off bushes and wait under the leaf litter on the jungle floor, which is always damp and very spongy.

When an animal or a man sat on the ground, the leeches emerged from under the rotting leaf litter and homed in on the heartbeat or, with a lot of bloodsuckers, they could detect the carbon dioxide in the exhaled breath. The heartbeat was transmitted down the body and through the soggy ground – well that’s my theory. They looped their way straight for our bootlace holes. They also got onto us from trees, so they did have lots of opportunities.

How they got inside our pants I had no idea, but I went to great lengths to keep them out. When I saw them probing my bootlace holes, I would quickly flick them away. Burning them with a cigarette didn’t work, especially in the jungle where smoking wasn’t even allowed, and I found insect repellent or lighter fuel dabbed on the mouthparts worked the best. However, they did get inside and when they did, for some reason known only to them, they always went for the warmest part of the body, between our legs. We wouldn’t feel a thing! The bite was shaped like the letter ‘Y’ and they would hang there and suck blood until they were almost spherical before dropping off.

Normally, if leeches were preying on animals, they would just drop to the ground and be ready to breed, having had a blood meal. Now the only way we realised that leeches had been feeding on us was when there was a warm sticky feeling between our toes. It was our own blood! The leeches had dropped down our trouser leg as fat round balls and been squashed by our feet. They don’t have a skeleton, the only bones they have are three teeth that form a triangle, hence the strange bite pattern.

The serious aspect of leech bites was the loss of blood. When a leech bites, it injects an anticoagulant into the bloodstream. This keeps the wound bleeding for hours even after the leech has dropped off. Then there is the problem of the bites becoming infected and turning into ulcers. In such humid conditions the skin never dries and it becomes very soft, white and prune-like. With your skin in this condition it seems every creature is out to bite and suck on you.

After three or four weeks in the jungle, which was about all the body could take, we got the chance to recuperate at the main base camp for about ten days, where we could get rid of all our ticks, lice and sores and harden the skin in the sun.

Don’t forget to check your boots before you put them on and make sure nothing is lurking between your sheets before you get into bed. Night night!

A copy of "A White Knuckle Ride Through Life by D H Rockley" is available from Amazon or a signed copy is available from Dave by emailing daverockley@yahoo.co.uk.