1982 - An Ice-Cream War (41 page)

The mess was silent, filled only with the sound of Frearson’s spittly sucking. Felix felt a powerful desire to ram the pipe down Frearson’s throat. His mood of elation hadn’t lasted long.

“I’ll be off,” he said, trying to keep his voice under control.

“Cheer-ho,” Frearson said.

“
A bientót
,” said Loveday.

Felix squelched through the mud towards his tent, suddenly feeling very tired. He smiled cynically to himself thinking about the ‘great quest’ again. He seldom thought of Gabriel; his musings, such as they were, seemed petty and wholly self-centred. He knew nothing of the war in Africa, had forgotten about the war in Europe. Gabriel might even have been released and repatriated by now. What kind of a war was this? he demanded angrily to himself. No enemy in sight, your men slowly being starved to death, guarding a huddle of grass huts in the middle of a sodden jungle?

He was surprised to see Gilzean standing outside his tent. Gilzean reported that Loveday had ordered him to take a burial detail and remove the bodies of the three dead potters. For a moment Felix thought of going back to the mess and making an issue out of it but decided to let it pass.

“Very well, Gilzean,” he said wearily. “Let’s get on with it.”

Gilzean collected half a dozen men from the platoon and they set off to the carrier camp. The three dead men had been dragged from their shelters and left for the burial party. The men were naked, their scraps of clothing and few possessions already appropriated. Their eyes were screwed tightly shut and their huge swollen tongues, strangely white and chalky, protruded inches beyond their lips.

“Poisoned,” Gilzean said flatly.

The dead bodies were carried down a narrow path to the Rufiji. Unceremoniously they were pitched into the turbulent brown water. Felix and Gilzean stood and watched their bodies being swirled away.

“They’re for the kelpies,” Gilzean said. He seemed unusually depressed, Felix thought, far more so than normal.

“What a way to go,” Felix said, wondering if he should ask what kelpies were. Fish? Crocodiles?

“It could be us yet,” Gilzean added, doomily. They walked back up the dripping path. “Aye, and to think I asked to come out here.”

“Did you?” Felix said, keen to capitalize on a moment’s lucidity. “So did I.”

“Twae brothers deed in France. I thought, don’t go there, Angus. Thought it would be easy out here, ye ken? Look at us noo.”

Gilzean had never been so forthcoming. Felix looked at his dark, troubled face with sympathy.

“I came out here to find my brother,” Felix confided. “He’s a prisoner somewhere.”

“We get our lawins, sure enough,” Gilzean said bitterly.

Felix sensed meaning beginning to edge away. He tried one more time.

“If I find him,” he said, feeling a twinge of guilt at his kek of commitment, “I’ll die happy.”

“This cackit place,” Gilzean growled in hate, not listening. “They poor darkies. A greeshie way to go.” He clenched his fists. “I’m a snool, a glaikit sumph. Nocht but rain, howdumdied all day o’boot. I’ve lost my noddle. Camsteerie bloody country.” He gave a harsh laugh. “No strunt. Any haughmagandie? Never. Dunged into the ground…I could greet, I tell you.” He flashed a glance of scowling malevolence at Felix. “Aye, and those primsie Suthrons—you apart, sir—I’d no tarrow to clack their fuds…”

Felix let him ramble on as they plodded through the mud back to Kibongo. Gilzean’s Complaint—it seemed powerful enough to warrant a capital letter—would do for all the men in Twelve company, the dead porters too. He only understood one word in three, but this time he thought he knew how the little man felt.

15 July 1917,
Nanda, German East Africa

“Look what I’ve got for you here,” Liesl said placing a straw basket on the dispensary table. Gabriel looked, wondering if she could hear his heart beating. He hadn’t seen Liesl for three days. She had travelled the seventy miles to Lindi to meet her husband. Gabriel had missed her intolerably. She took off her sun helmet and adjusted the pins and combs in her frizzy ginger hair, stretching the material of her blouse across her breasts. Gabriel swallowed and gripped the edge of the table. A nervous tremor had started in his left hand some weeks ago. It quivered constantly, as if possessed of some ghostly life of its own.

Liesl took out a cloth bundle, a knife and a jar of syrupy fluid. She unwrapped the cloth revealing a dark brown loaf the size of a brick.

“Banana bread,” she told him delightedly. “Made with coconut too. No butter, but,” she held up the jar, “plenty of honey.”

Gabriel smiled, his heart cartwheeling. “How amazing. Where did you get it?”

“Erich has friends. He is an important man now. Staff officer with von Lettow himself.”

“Any news?” he said as casually as possible. He needn’t have worried, he knew: Liesl told him everything.

“Bad news,” she said unconcernedly. “The English have landed at Kilwa. Everywhere we are retreating.” She frowned. “There has been a lot of fighting.”

“So we are winning.”

“Oh yes. Some of the wounded are coming here. They’ve evacuated the hospital at Lukuledi. So,” she shrugged. “We shall be busy again.”

Gabriel shifted uneasily in his seat. For the last six months Nanda had been almost deserted, the ward never more than half full, the town populated by the remains of its native population and about thirty German women and children. Deppe had gone—for good they were promised—to establish a new base hospital at Chitawa some fifty miles to the south-west. Nanda hospital had belonged to Liesl again. They sat out the rainy season with little to disturb their routine. This now consisted mainly of distilling the quinine substitute that the German forces used, a vile-tasting potion made from Peruvian chinchona bark of which, surprisingly, there were considerable supplies, stockpiled before the war began. Every fortnight freshly filled bottles and containers were sent out to the
Schutztruppe
companies. Liesl handed over the administration of this to two other women, Frau Ledebur and Frau Muller. Gabriel was employed in the actual distilling process, a simple but delicate job relying on perfect timing in order for the quinine distillate to be potable. Gabriel spent most of the time supervising the process out at the back of the hospital where the two huge boiling vats were set over open fires. He filled the bottles and passed them over to Frau Ledebur who organized their despatch to the varying
Schutztruppe
bases. It hadn’t been difficult to ascertain the positions of these, and he now had a good idea of the state of the fighting. Hidden in a niche in the wall of his hut he kept a tattered dossier which he annotated and altered as fresh information came in. The news of the landings at Kilwa would have to be added tonight. By his calculations that meant the British army was now only a hundred and fifty miles or so away from Nanda. It was true that the Portuguese had occupied Lindi some months previously but they didn’t count.

This new awareness of the proximity of the British forces brought with it a succession of conflicting emotions. His leg wound had been healed for many weeks now. Deppe’s posting had made the need to be regarded as injured no longer necessary. Liesl was quite unworried by his presence and their friendship made it unlikely that she would ever insist on his being transferred to another POW camp. Indeed, she had saved him from being re-incarcerated in the Nanda camp just three weeks previously. The stockade had been re-opened for captured European NCO’s. There were now ten British, four Rhodesians and two Portuguese behind the barbed wire, supervised by a grotesquely fat Dutchman called Deeg and a gang of fierce looking native auxiliaries known as ruga-ruga. These men were armed with old rifles but wore no uniforms apart from the odd scavenged pair of trousers or forage cap. It was rumoured among the prisoners that the ruga-ruga were recruited from a tribe of cannibals. Certainly some of the men had filed teeth and this was taken to be sufficient proof of their taste for human flesh.

One of Deeg’s first moves had been to imprison Gabriel but Liesl had refused him permission, saying that not only was Gabriel an officer and couldn’t be billeted with NCOs but also that he was still under medical observation and, besides, had given his parole. Deeg had been forced to accept her instructions, but he insisted that Gabriel be confined to the hospital and its grounds and that he was not allowed to wander freely around Nanda. This restriction had to be accepted but Deeg let it be known that he was lodging an official protest. Nothing further, however, was heard of this. Presumably the military authorities had more pressing matters on their hands.

Liesl sat down opposite Gabriel, her eyes bright with pleasure as she prepared to cut the banana bread. Gabriel released his grip on the table and rested his trembling hand on his knee. He looked at Liesl’s plump freckly face, her curious upper lip, the way she seemed constantly to be either on the point of speaking or biting back words. She had three distinct horizontal creases in her soft neck. AU her clothes seemed several sizes too small for her and were consequently always patched by sweat stains. She tucked a wisp of her hair behind an ear. Gabriel felt the blood pulse in his head. He felt dull and thick-tongued with hopeless love. Since Deeg’s arrival and the restrictions on his movement he had not dared to creep round to her bungalow at nights. But somehow feeding on his memories made the experience almost more intense. He knew every inch of that beautiful large body. The long hanging breasts, the almost invisible salmon-pink nipples, the creamy freckled belly, the ginger-gold hair in her groin and armpits…

“Gabriel,” she said. “Is this enough for you?”

“Oh. Yes. thanks.”

And yet she knew nothing of his feelings. She had left to see her husband without a word of goodbye. It had been Frau Ledebur who had told him of her departure. His clenched fist drummed gently on his knee. As Liesl grew plumper and sleeker, he seemed to be falling apart. He was thinner than ever, his leg wound was healed but it still ached, he walked with a limp and now there was this nervous tremor in his hand.

He watched her spoon some honey onto the two slices of bread she had cut and spread it thickly over the surfaces. She handed his piece over and, not waiting for him to begin, took a huge bite out of her own. Honey spilled off the crust and ran slowly down her chin.

“
Verdammt
,” she swore, collecting the dribble with a fore-finger and licking it clean. She shut her eyes, chewing slowly, a dreamy look crossing her face as she savoured the taste.

Unaccountably, Gabriel felt tears brim in his eyes and a sob form in his throat. He was literally helpless, he knew. The tears flowed silently down his cheeks and his features trembled in a crying grimace.

Liesl opened her eyes. “Gabriel,” she exclaimed in alarm. “You haven’t eaten. What’s wrong?”

Gabriel hung his head. “I’m sorry,” he tried to explain. “It sounds stupid, I know, but it’s just that—suddenly I felt very happy. I have been very happy here. It’s ridiculous, I know, but I have.”

Liesl tried to stop herself smiling. “Gabriel, you fool.” She laughed, throwing back her head. “You can’t be happy
here
.” Her breasts shook as she gave a great hooting laugh. “You stupid!” Her eyes were shut, the room was filled with the unrestrained noise of her mirth.

Gabriel didn’t care. He had declared himself.

She was calming down. “Oh. Oh that’s sore.
Oh grosser Gott
. Oh Gabriel, don’t do that to me. Did you say something?”

“Me?” Gabriel said. “No, nothing.” He took a mouthful of banana bread. “Mmm,” he mumbled. “This is superb.”

As Liesl predicted the hospital at Nanda soon filled up with wounded men from the fighting around Kilwa. One of the wounded was a Captain von Steinkeller who appeared to be an officer of some importance, judging from the high-ranking visitors he received. He had been very badly injured in the hip. Liesl patched it up as best she could, but it was agreed that he would have to be moved to Chitawa where Deppe could examine it. Shortly before he was transferred he was visited by von Lettow’s adjutant himself, another captain called Rutke.

Gabriel was standing in the dispensary when two askaris carried von Steinkeller out to a waiting waggon.

“Don’t worry,” Rutke shouted. Then he spoke some phrases too quickly for Gabriel to translate. “November,” Rutke then said. “Wait until November. We have
das chinesische Geschaft
.” A ragged cheer went up from the men in the ward. After Rutke left, Gabriel heard the phrase being used again as the men referred to it.
Das chinesische Geschaft
. He asked Liesl for a translation.

“What would you say? ‘The Chinese Exhibition’? Perhaps. ‘The China Show’? It’s curious. What is it?”

“I don’t know,” Gabriel said. “I heard the men saying it in the ward.”

Liesl shrugged. They left it at that. Gabriel wondered if it was important.

19 October 1917,
Lindi, German East Africa

In October 1917 the third battle of Ypres—Passchendaele—was well on its way to its half-million casualties. Between the fourteenth and sixteenth of October the most savagely fought battle on African soil took place at Mahiwa. British columns, advancing south from the Rufiji and inland from the ports of Kilwa and Lindi, were fiercely attacked by the supposedly retreating Germans at some innocuous hills near a bend in the Mahiwa river. Out of five thousand African, Indian, British and South African troops, two thousand seven hundred were killed or wounded.

Fifty per cent casualties in a single battle. Three battalions of the Nigerian Brigade were at the forefront of the fighting and suffered heavy losses. Among those not taking part, though, was Twelve company of the 5
th
Battalion. On the days of the battle of Mahiwa Felix’s platoon was digging latrine trenches at the brigade’s headquarters at Redhill Camp, Lindi. Gent’s and Loveday’s platoons were escorting supply wagons up to the front line.

After their privations at Kibongo it was recognized that Frearson’s company had endured more than most, and as a reward they received three weeks’ leave in Zanzibar. Fully recovered, Twelve company rejoined the battalion at Moro-goro where they spent the next few months training new recruits, making roads and strengthening culverts and embankments.