The Beauty and the Sorrow (39 page)

3 Jack Knives

In Kut al-Amara, at three o’clock on the same afternoon, Edward Mousley writes in his journal:

The relieving force did not get through. We have heard this unofficially. We all have the feeling it is “the big effort,” and not a side show. We are disappointed, but having had little else than disappointments we are accustomed to them.

SATURDAY
, 11
MARCH
1916
Angus Buchanan and the mist on Kilimanjaro

They make a road as they march along—not by building it but simply because of their weight. This column consists of 4,000–5,000 soldiers, thousands of mules and horses, numerous cannon, ammunition wagons and various kinds of supply wagons, and even a number of motor vehicles that are skidding around at the back of the queue. Their progress is not rapid.

At the start of the march, when they were still moving across the flat sandy plain, Buchanan looked back through the swirling dust and saw in the distance the tracks they were leaving behind them: they resembled “the fine line of a sinuous thread across the blank space of an incomplete map.” Their advance guard has had the occasional short brush with the enemy, who seems to be pulling back. They have discovered and set fire to a German encampment that had been hastily deserted.

Now they are going to conquer German East Africa.

On paper it undoubtedly looks like a big and impressive operation.
The Germans, just as in Europe, are going to be attacked simultaneously from a number of different directions: a British force will attack from Northern Rhodesia, the Belgians will invade north of Lake Tanganyika and the Portuguese are expected to threaten the south (a state of war between Germany and Portugal has existed for the last two days). The main operation, however, is to take place in the north-east corner of German East Africa, in the areas around Kilimanjaro. The idea is to trap and destroy the main enemy forces in a classic encirclement operation. The column Buchanan and the rest of the 25th Fusiliers are accompanying is supposed to sweep down from the north and act as the anvil to hold the retiring German forces so that the hammer—the main force advancing from the west
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—can pound them to pieces. The destination for both columns is Moshi. (This small town is the final station on the long railway the Germans have built from Tanga on the coast.) It is the logic of a great European war but grafted onto the geography of Africa.

“Sweep down”? Well, what was meant to be a rapid advance on the enemy rear has degenerated into a slow, jerky thrash through unknown terrain. Since the column got into the bush, its speed has diminished significantly. What is more, they have just arrived in tsetse-fly country, and the horses and mules imported for the operation are particularly susceptible to the diseases spread by the insects. The animals are dying at a horrifying speed and in equally horrifying numbers.
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(Whose idea was it to use these horses and mules here? Clearly not someone with any experience of this part of Africa.) All day they have been passing dead and dying draught and riding animals lying beside the track they are trampling out. It takes no more than twenty-four hours from the death
of one of these creatures for the corpse to “become a swarming mass of blowfly larvae—horrible to behold.” (The same thing is true for fallen soldiers, of course.) The stench is overpowering.

Another bit of bad news is that the rainy season is just round the corner. Last night the heavens opened and it poured down. At present they have neither tents nor blankets (they are packed somewhere in the distant baggage train), so Buchanan and his fellow soldiers managed only three hours’ sleep—out in the open, directly on the ground, freezing and soaked. Endurance is far harder than bravery.

They have been marching south all day, the whitewashed peak of Kilimanjaro over on their left, and towards dusk they finally break out of the bush into open country. It is more or less at that point that the column swings east and heads for the great mountain. At last they catch sight of their destination, Moshi, away in the far distance. The name means “smoke” in Swahili, referring to the wreaths of cloud that permanently crown the dome of the 19,340-foot mountain. As the sun sets they hear the sound of gunfire. The march comes to a halt: the advance guard has bumped into some enemy scouts. It does not, however, turn into a serious engagement because, true to their usual pattern, their opponents simply disappear without trace. After waiting for a short while, the winding column lurches into motion again.

They set up camp by the Sanja river at nine o’clock. In the far distance, in the darkness between their own bivouac and Moshi, they can see fires. In the last seven days they have marched less than forty-five miles. During the night they hear occasional shots fired by nervous sentries. Otherwise everything is calm.

The anvil has slowly begun to reach its allotted position—but where is the hammer?

The following day it becomes obvious that the German forces have already slipped out of the trap and disappeared to the south, surprisingly quickly, in good order and without any major losses. Moshi has been taken. The German part of the population has fled, leaving only Africans, Greeks and the ubiquitous merchants from Goa. In other respects the operation is a failure.

It rains almost all day on Monday, on Tuesday likewise.

WEDNESDAY
, 15
MARCH
1916
A letter is written to Vincenzo D’Aquila’s mother

D’Aquila’s family in the United States know that he is in hospital, but little more than that. His mother sends one telegram after another to the Italian military and to the hospital enquiring about her son: she wonders how he is and whether he can perhaps be allowed to come home to the United States to be looked after there. She finally receives the following answer from the director of San Osvaldo:

Udine, 15 March 1916

Dear Madam:

I am sorry to be unable to comply with your request since the military authorities have already arranged for his transfer to the Asylum in Siena, which removal was effected on March tenth.

His physical condition was quite satisfactory; on the other hand, however, his delirious, grandiose and absurd ideas persist. I fear we are faced with a mental affliction of long duration.

(Signed)

THE DIRECTOR

SATURDAY
, 18
MARCH
1916
Paolo Monelli is bombed in Roncegno

All of a sudden—just look at that, shit from the air, two bombs explode only five metres away from you, and you still don’t know whether you are injured or not. (After an eternity of deafness you hear—as if from an infinite distance—the voice of the companion lying hugging the ground alongside you: “Monelli, are you wounded?” “I’m just going to feel to see.”) And then you think
that this sense of grace is deceptive. In a blind rage the field doctor hurls kitchen plates at the airborne intruder.

TUESDAY
, 28
MARCH
1916
Kresten Andresen encounters spring and discontent in Billy-Montigny

Spring but still not spring. Bushes and beech trees are showing little mouse-ears of green, the apple trees are in bud and anemones and other flowers have opened in the woods. But it is still cold and the wind is bitter.

Andresen is having some bad days: “I’m sick and tired of the whole business and finding it difficult to keep my spirits up.” This is in spite of—or perhaps because of—the fact that he has recently been home for ten days’ leave, the first leave he has had since the war began. He had only just returned when he was admitted to hospital yet again, this time with a severe throat infection and fever. He has still not taken part in any really fierce fighting: in a letter to a relative he almost seems to be apologising for this, apologising that he does not have any particularly dramatic experiences to pass on. (He has, however, sent souvenirs home; mainly shell fragments.) For him it is not so much a matter of the awful reality of war as its awful tedium. His service consists largely of working behind the lines or digging at night.

This is his twentieth month in uniform and he has started to lose any hopes he had for an early end to the war. He remembers, not without some bitterness, how almost exactly a year ago he believed the war would soon be over. Those frustrated hopes are undoubtedly part of the reason for his depression.

He is not alone in feeling frustrated about the way this war just grinds on and on at an ever higher cost. Inflation and food shortages are afflicting all of the warring countries and, apart from Russia, it is Germany and Austria that are suffering most. It is not just that the Allied naval blockade is proving to be deadly effective.
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Food production has
also been hit by administrative carelessness, by lack of transport and by the fact that so many farmers and farm workers have been called up to serve under the flag. And those who have remained in agriculture often cannot resist the temptation to sell their products through the black market, where prices can be up to ten times higher. (It has, for instance, been estimated that roughly half of all the eggs and pork produced in Germany and Austria go straight into the black economy.) Add to that the rapidly rising prices of everyday items and the result is an equation impossible for most families to solve, particularly those in the towns. Every single graph has begun to point in the wrong direction: ill health, undernourishment, child mortality, discontent and criminality among the young are all on the increase.

Andresen has met other soldiers returning from leave and they have had some astonishing stories to relate:

One of them told us of something approaching a riot in Bremen where large crowds of women smashed shop-windows and stormed the shops. Mortensen from Skibelund met a man from Hamburg who left Hamburg four days before his leave was up because his wife no longer had any food to give him.

For some inexplicable reason a couple of the malcontents have taken to directing their outpourings of rage at Andresen—one of them, for instance, accused him of extreme patriotism. A soldier from Hamburg came up to him today and, with the Social-Democrat party paper
Vorwärts
in one hand, began to question him about the attitudes of the South Schleswig Reichstag representatives to the war. Andresen responded: “There are many people there who think for themselves.” The men at the front, too, have begun to feel the impact of the food shortages: they rarely get butter to put on their coarse army bread—it has been replaced by an unappetising variety of jam that the soldiers lampoon with abusive ditties. (Military humour has also coined a string of alternative names for this jam, such as “Hindenburg Cream” or “Kaiser Wilhelm’s Memorial Butter.”)

The front is calm:

I’ve hardly heard the sound of gunfire in the week I’ve been back here. All the forces are gathering down at Verdun. There is talk
here that a fort has fallen, but there are so many rumours flying around. What’s the situation with Romania? Everything seems calm to me, but it is no doubt the calm before the storm.

MONDAY
, 10
APRIL
1916
Edward Mousley sees the slaughter of the last horses in Kut al-Amara

They have been slaughtering the draught animals and the mules for some time but they have consciously been sparing the riding animals. That is no longer possible. Another attempt to relieve them has run into the sand and orders have now been given that the last horses will have to be slaughtered in order to feed the besieged garrison, which will soon be starving.

Mousley tears up some fresh grass and goes to where the horses are lined up. His own horse, Don Juan, obviously recognises his owner and welcomes him eagerly in the way he has taught the horse to do. Mousley feeds him the grass.

Then the slaughter begins.

A non-commissioned officer shoots the horses. There is the crack of a gunshot and one by one the big, heavy animals crumple to the ground. The blood flows. At first Mousley watches, noting that the horses follow the proceedings, trembling as they wait their turn. Like the other horses Don Juan stamps uneasily but otherwise remains quite still. When it is almost Don Juan’s turn Mousley can watch no longer; he asks the man with the gun to take careful aim and to tell him when it is all over. Then he kisses the horse’s cheek and walks away. He can see how the horse turns and watches him go.

Then there is another crack from the gun.

His dinner that evening is Don Juan’s heart and kidneys. (These parts of the horse are always reserved for the owner—Mousley has also kept Don Juan’s black tail.) Admittedly it feels strange, but he does not think there is anything wrong about it. He writes in his diary: “I am sure he would have preferred that I, rather than another, should do so.”

• • •

Sarah Macnaughtan is now in Teheran. Ill and exhausted, she has decided to cut short her service in Persia and travel home. She has had so little to do that her time here can, in reality, hardly be called service. She writes in her diary:

It is such an odd jump I have taken. At home I drifted on, never feeling older, hardly counting birthdays—always brisk, and getting through a heap of work—beginning my day early and ending it late. And now there is a great gulf dividing me from youth and old times, and it is filled with dead people whom I can’t forget. In the matter of dying one doesn’t interfere with Providence, but it seems to me that now would be rather an appropriate time to depart.