An Ice-Cream War

by William Boyd

  “Right, Cobb,” Santoras said. “Get ‘A’ company ashore. Report to the beach officer for our assembly point.”

  “Who’s the beach officer, sir?” Gabriel asked.

  “Um, some major in the 51st Pioneers, I think,” Santoras said.

  Gabriel and Gleeson, followed by their men, struggled to the bow of the lighter. Gleeson led the way. He jumped into the water and disappeared completely from view. He emerged, spluttering, a few seconds later. The water came up to his neck.

  “Bloody deep,” he said cheerily. “Better warn the men.”

  Gabriel jumped in. The water was deliciously warm. He was furious, though, to be completely soaked. He told Gleeson to see the rest of the company off and splashed his way slowly through the moderate surf on to the beach. With a pang of melancholy he recalled that the last time he’d been in the sea was at Trouville. Telling himself to concentrate he looked back and saw a line of his men, rifles held above their heads, following him ashore. He felt his sodden uniform cool in the breeze coming off the sea. The beach was crowded with disembarked men, some of whom were being marched up a gully that led up to the red house on the cliffs. Crowds of native porters and coolies shouted and milled aimlessly in large packs, waiting for the stores and ordnance to arrive.

  When most of ‘A’ company was ashore a man with a torch stumped over and shone the beam in Gabriel’s face.

  “And who in God’s name are you?” he was asked.

  “‘A’ company, 69th Palamcottah Light Infantry,” Gabriel said.

  “God Almighty!” the man swore. “You’re not meant to be landing until tomorrow morning.” He consulted the clip board he held. “Beach ‘C’. There’s no room here for another battalion. Stop! Stop!” he shouted as the remnants of ‘A’ company emerged dripping from the waves. Gleeson went splashing back to the lighters to pass on the beach officer’s instructions. A signalling lamp was set up and messages were exchanged with the Homayun. After an hour’s wait a tug appeared and towed the rest of the battalion away from the beach and back to the ship.

  “What about us?” Gabriel said.

  “Attach yourself to the Rajputs for the night. We’ll sort you out in the morning. See Lt Col. Codrington. He’s in the red house.”

  Gabriel formed up his muttering and perplexed troop. Two men were missing, leaving seventy-six in all. They had either drowned or else had never left the lighter. ‘A’ company moved off the beach and up the gully to the cliff top. Here in the moonlight, Gabriel could see a great mass of men, many of them engaged in digging trenches. He stationed his men by a clump of palm trees, told Gleeson not to move, and went in search of Colonel Codrington. As he strode across to the red house he realized he was walking on dry land for the first time in a month. Other impressions added themselves to this: it was enemy soil too; out there were men he regarded as foe. And he was in Africa. The African night was cool, though that may have been due to his damp uniform, and he could hear all about him the strange persistent noise of the crickets and cicadas. He shivered with a kind of exhilaration, and stamped his feet as he walked, happy not to hear the hollow sound of wooden decks returned to him. The land around the red house seemed to have been cleared for cultivation, but beyond that was a darker, higher mass of what looked like thick forest. Everywhere he could see columns of men being marched to and fro, and others settling down as best as they could for the night. There were a great deal of shouted orders being exchanged and somewhere someone was blowing furiously on a whistle. It certainly didn’t look like an invasion force, and there was a complete absence of danger.

  Gabriel passed unchallenged into the red house. Staff officers hurried to and fro with papers in their hands. Engineers were installing a telephone line which had been run up from the beach. Gabriel asked for Lt Col. Codrington and was directed upstairs. There he found a room filled with officers, most pressed around a table covered in maps. He saw Brigadier-General Pughe, a small man with a doleful, flushed expression. The force attacking Tanga had been divided into two brigades: on the left was Pughe’s, on the right was the one the Palamcottahs were attached to, commanded by Brigadier-General Wapshore.

  Gabriel paused, suddenly feeling a bit foolish. What should he do? Inform Pughe that he was reporting for duty to the wrong brigade? In the meantime he saluted the row of backs that was presented to him. In one corner of the room a major was energetically cranking the handle of a field telephone and shouting ‘hello hello hello hello’ endlessly into the mouth-piece. Gabriel looked about him: there appeared to be half a dozen lieutenant-colonels in the room, all identically dressed in topees, khaki jackets, jodhpurs and knee-length brown leather boots. Then he saw the tall figure of Bilderbeck.

  “Hello Bilderbeck,” Gabriel said, tapping him on the shoulder.

  “Cobb!” Bilderbeck said loudly. A few people looked round. “What are you doing here? You should be on Beach ‘C’.”

  Gabriel explained about the wrong landing and his lost company of troops.

  “God,” Bilderbeck said, dropping his voice. “Between you and me this is what I call a fiasco. I should sit tight till tomorrow, get some sleep and then wander over in the morning. Beach ‘C’ is only about a mile away.”

  He walked back down the stairs with Gabriel. The scène of noisy disorder outside prompted a bark of ironic laughter. “Think the Huns know we’re here?” he asked rhetorically. He glanced up at the sky which was lightening perceptibly in the east, out over the ocean. He looked at his watch. “The Rajputs are advancing on the town in half an hour,” he said. “I’d better get back.” He grinned, his teeth gleaming in the strong moonlight. Gabriel smiled back uneasily.

  “I’ll look by to see how you’re getting on later,” Bilderbeck said. “See if I can get a call through to Santoras. Let him know the score.”

  “I say, thanks, Bilderbeck,” Gabriel said sincerely, but Bilderbeck was already striding back to the red house, which now had lights blazing from all its windows.

  Gabriel wandered back through the columns of grunting coolies bringing up ammunition and supplies from the beach. He felt strangely depressed, not having had any instructions, and curiously impotent. ‘A’ company was not meant to be where it was, therefore the purposes of strategy and logistics declared it to be non-existent.

  He found Gleeson leaning up against a palm tree looking out at the anchored convoy. The men were lying beneath their unrolled turbans and looked ominously like rows of sheeted dead. No rifles had been stacked, packs and provisions had been dropped anywhere.

  “Any luck?” Gleeson asked.

  Gabriel told him they’d have to wait until the morning.

  “What’s going on?” Gleeson asked incuriously. “I saw machine guns being taken up to the perimeter.”

  “The Rajputs are attacking Tanga,” Gabriel said listlessly.

  “Rather them than me,” Gleeson said. “I’m shattered. Fancy some tea? I’ve got a flask here.”

  Gabriel accepted. “How are the men?” he said, knowing he ought to be passing among them, issuing words of calm and comfort. But they weren’t like his company in the West Kents. They seemed total strangers. Gleeson seemed to have some sort of peculiar rapport with them, but that was because he spoke the language. Gabriel supposed he should at least let the Indian officers know what the latest news was, but they all seemed asleep. It wasn’t surprising, he reflected, after five hours in a tilting, swaying lighter.

  He heard the whine of a mosquito in his ear. His uniform was nearly dry now. He strolled to the edge of a knoll and looked down on the landing beach. The coolies and native bearers were still hard at work; they formed straggling lines, moving stores up from the beach to the cliff top. Further out the convoy of ships was silhouetted against the gash of grey and citron yellow that was the dawn sky. Gleeson’s tea had left a metallic taste in his mouth: cheap flask, he thought. He turned round and looked in the direction of Tanga. He heard a cock crow. Out there in the bush, he thought, there are columns of men ‘mar
ching unto war’. He hummed a few bars of the hymn tune, trying to take his mind off the sudden pressures and cramps he was feeling in his bowels. He tapped the rhythm on his holster. “Onward Christian so-oh-oh-oldiers…” General Aitken expected no resistance…He laughed at himself. What was so wrong with needing to perform a natural function? He walked over to a clump of bushes, lowered his trousers and squatted down.

  Gleeson woke him up at six. He’d managed only to get a couple of hours sleep.

  “The show seems to be on,” Gleeson said airily.

  Gabriel looked around him at the unfamiliar scène. The early morning sun bounced off the red tiles on the roof of the red house. The terrain looked quite different in daylight. The patch of cleared ground was dusty and covered by straggling clumps of sun-bleached knee-high grass and low thorn bushes. Waist-deep trenches had been dug around the perimeter and from them Indian troops looked out into the comparative lushness of coconut groves and rubber plantations that lay between Ras Kasone and Tanga. By the red house three reserve companies of Pioneers were drawn up. Scattered everywhere were great mounds of boxes, crates and sacks. Gabriel saw brand new signalling equipment, bundies of stretchers and, to his alarm, ranks of coffins. There were also a dozen motorbikes.

  From the direction of Tanga came the cracking and popping of rifles and machine guns. It sounded like a fire blazing in distant undergrowth.

  “Good grief,” Gabriel said. “That’s damned heavy. I thought this landing was meant to be unopposed.” Everybody around the house had stopped what they were doing and were looking in the direction of Tanga.

  “The Rajputs set off about an hour and a half ago,” Gleeson said. “They must be at the town by now. Probably a rearguard.”

  But the noise of firing didn’t stop. Soon everyone went nervously back about their business, as if evidence of lack of concern might work some magic. Gleeson took some men down to the beach and came back with a box of ship’s biscuits and fresh water. Gabriel didn’t feel like eating but happily accepted a mug of warm water and rum. The alcohol made him relax.

  From time to time, runners would appear from the forest of coconut trees and sprint into the red house. The noise of firing continued and Gabriel reflected that the ‘rearguard’ were certainly putting up something of a fight. He saw General Pughe himself come out of the house and order three reserve companies to march off in support of the Rajputs.

  Gleeson went back to sleep, but Gabriel felt agitated. He wandered over to one of the perimeter trenches. The sepoys guarding it looked edgy and fearful. He noticed that there were no English officers. Suddenly about a dozen African potters bolted out of the trees and raced past the outpost guards, whimpering and gibbering with fear. Gabriel turned and watched them disappear over the rise and down on to the beach. Everyone looked at each other in astonishment, then a murmur of alarm spread through the men in the trenches. Some loud arguments ensued and Gabriel saw some native officers raising their swagger sticks to restore order.

  “Who were those men running away?” Gabriel asked a jemadar with a fierce moustache.

  “Machine-gun bearers, sir. From the Rajputs.”

  Gabriel swallowed. Where were the machine guns in that case? A commotion further up the line attracted his attention. It was the first of the stretcher parties returning from the fighting. He ran over. There were four stretcher cases, all white men. Orderlies and doctors fussed over their bodies. Three of the men were very still, their mouths open and their eyes starting. The man on the fourth stretcher was groaning and trying to say something.

  “My God,” Gabriel said to no one in particular. “They’re all officers.” He noticed that the groaning man was a Lt Colonel.

  “Who’s that?” Gabriel asked one of the doctors leaning over him.

  “Lieutenant-Colonel Codrington, 13th Rajputs.”

  Gabriel turned away and walked back towards the red house. He felt alarmed and confused at the sight of the wounded men. What was going on? If Bilderbeck were here, he thought, he’d be able to tell me. He took away with him a jumbled hazy impression of the men on the stretchers: he hadn’t noticed any blood, he’d been looking at their faces, their bare heads with once neatly brushed hair now mussed and tousled.

  Gabriel rejoined Gleeson and they watched another half battalion, fresh from the beach, march off at once into the coconut groves. Runners arrived at and departed from the red house in ever increasing numbers. A heliograph was set up and soon messages were being flashed from shore to ship.

  It grew hotter. By nine a.m. the sun was sufficiently powerful to force Gabriel into the shade. He looked at his company of men, all of whom had now claimed their rifles and packs and were sitting in small silent groups in whatever patch of shade they could find. Gabriel wondered if he should have reported to Brigade HQ in the red house but decided that the last thing they’d want to deal with now was his errant company.

  At about half past nine the report of heavy guns could be heard from somewhere in the bay. About six salvos were fired.

  “Probably the Fox,” Gleeson said, exposing his yellow teeth in a wide grin. “Shelling Tanga,” he said. “That’ll show ‘em.”

  Shortly after, they heard bugle calls and a distant yelling. The sound of firing, which hadn’t stopped since Gleeson had woken him at six, seemed to be drawing closer.

  “Are those our bugles?” Gabriel asked.

  “Think so,” Gleeson said.

  “They don’t sound like them, though.”

  Gleeson cocked his head. “No they don’t, do they?”

  A staff captain came out of the red house, looking around, and loped over.

  “Are you ‘A’ company, 69th Palamcottahs?” he said languidly to Gabriel. Gabriel said they were. “Good. We’ve had a message about you. Seems you’re to stay put for the time being.”

  “Stay put? What? Here?”

  “That seems to be the idea.” The staff captain removed his sun helmet to reveal a bald and shiny pate which he mopped with a handkerchief. “Filthy hot,” he said.

  “How are things?” Gabriel asked. “I mean, what’s the picture?” There were more bugle calls as he spoke.

  “Stiffish resistance at the railway cutting,” the staff captain said. “We’re retiring. In good order,” he added hastily. “We’ll wait for the main landing today…Look, I must dash.”

  Gabriel watched him bound back to the red house. He went back to Gleeson.

  “They’ve had a message about us,” he said authoritatively. “Seems we’re to stay put.”

  Gabriel and Gleeson kept their distance as the Rajputs and Pioneers straggled back into camp. The men were either talking with hysterical excitement or else were cowed and dejected. They watched dozens of wounded being carried and helped down to the beach. Soon the area around the red house was thick with exhausted troops.

  “Doesn’t look so good,” Gleeson said. “Does it?” At lunch time Gabriel went up to the red house to see if he could get any more information. It seemed that the landing of the main force on beaches ‘B’ and ‘C’ round the headland was proceeding as normal, but the beaches were so congested with men and equipment that the Palamcottahs were still on the Homayun and probably wouldn’t be disembarked until the next day.

  “Seems we’re still to stay put,” Gabriel reported back to Gleeson.

  In the afternoon it rained for two hours and everyone was soaked again. Normally the men of the Palamcottahs had regimental bearers and servants to cook and care for them, but as these hadn’t been landed with them they had to fend for themselves. Gabriel found that he still wasn’t hungry though he drank some fresh coconut milk—of which there was a plentiful supply—with some relish. Unfortunately, an hour later, this brought on a severe attack of diarrhoea. As a result, as evening approached at the end of his first day on enemy soil, Gabriel was feeling weak and rather seedy as well as damp and dirty. He did, however, manage to have a shave before he went back to the red house to inquire if there had been any further news
for ‘A’ company.

  “My Christ! Are you all right?” Bilderbeck asked him. “You look dreadful.”

  “Tummy upset,” Gabriel confessed. “But listen, what happened today?”

  “A bloody shambles, that’s what,” Bilderbeck said fiercely. “A bloody shambles.”

  “What have you got there? If you don’t mind my asking,” Gabriel said. Bilderbeck was standing halfway down the stairs that led to the upper floor of the red house. His arms were full of what looked, to Gabriel, like ladies’ underclothes.

  “Ladies’ underclothes,” Bilderbeck said. “Courtesy of our absent hostess. They’re going to provide me with a soft bed tonight. You won’t believe this,” he glanced right and left to make sure he wasn’t overheard, “but I’ve lost my pillow.” He gave a great shout of laughter. Gabriel responded nervously. “Help yourself,” Bilderbeck offered, unloading half his bundle. “No sense in sleeping on the ground.”

  Gabriel followed him out to the patch of piebald lawn that was on the landward side of the house and watched him construct a bed of palm fronds and petticoats.

  “What happened today?” Gabriel asked again. “It didn’t look as if things went as planned.”

  “To put it mildly,” Bilderbeck said, adjusting his makeshift couch with the toe of his boot. “Bloody damn fool Navy, that’s what,” he said. “This idiotic truce business. When the Fox sailed into Tanga harbour yesterday morning to abrogate the thing they gave the Germans twenty-four hours warning of our attack. Just enough time for von Lettow-Vorbeck to get his troops down from Moshi by rail.”

  “So Tanga was deserted.”

  “It was.”

  “And now it’s well defended.”

  “Getting stronger by the hour.” Bilderbeck’s face was lit up for an instant by a seraphic smile. He dug his tobacco pouch out of his pocket and offered it to Gabriel.