An Ice-Cream War

by William Boyd

  “By bees?”

  “Yes, millions of them.”

  The man shook his head in admiration. “Squareheads, eh? Amazing. They think of everything.”

  Gabriel looked over the wall again. The afternoon sun was low in the sky and strong shadows were being cast across the road. Then he saw figures slipping in and out of the houses, moving down the street towards them: three Europeans and about thirty askaris with bayonets fixed to their rifles.

  He saw one of the officers—who seemed unaware of their presence—stand for a moment in front of the gable end of a house. Without thinking further, Gabriel levelled his revolver and fired. He saw a big chunk of plaster fall off the wall behind the officer’s head before the man flung himself into a doorway. In immediate response there was a great fusillade of shots and Gabriel ducked down under cover. He cursed his feeble aim: he had had a splendid target. He found himself trembling with excitement, his heart seemed lodged somewhere in his throat. He heard the whup of bullets passing over his head and the charter of a machine gun. Ricochets hummed and pinged off the stonework.

  “We want to get out of here, sir,” one of the North Lancs said. “Don’t want to get caught by them jerry niggers.” All the men kept their heads well down.

  The corporal scuttled out of the house. “It’s clear now, sir. We can go.”

  “Hold on,” Gabriel said. “Where’s Lieutenant Gleeson?”

  “He’s been hit, sir. Got him with that last volley.”

  “Wait here,” Gabriel ordered and darted into the house. He peered into a couple of rooms. He saw a brass bedstead, cheap wooden furniture. In an end room he found Gleeson lying face down beneath the window from where he’d been shouting to the Kashmir Rifles. The wall behind was pitted with bullet holes. Gabriel was suddenly appalled by the thought that he might have been responsible. If he hadn’t shot at that German…Keeping his head down Gabriel carefully turned Gleeson over and almost collapsed in a faint. One or several bullets had removed Gleeson’s lower jawbone in its entirety, but somehow his tongue had been untouched. It now lolled, uncontained, at his throat like a thick fleshy cravat, pink and purple. Gleeson’s upper lip was drawn back revealing his top row of yellow teeth, his fair moustache was spattered with dried mud and blood. What was most horrifying was the way his eyes boggled and rolled, and his tongue twitched feebly at his neck. With a little moan Gabriel realized Gleeson was still alive, blood welling and pumping gently from the back of his throat. It was extraordinary, Gabriel thought in a daze, how large the human tongue actually was, when its entire length was revealed. He crawled out of the room on his hands and knees and was sick in the passageway. Poor Gleeson, he thought, poor old Gleeson.

  After a few moments, Gabriel got to his feet and went back to the side door. There was no sign of the North Lancs. They had all gone without waiting for him. He wondered where the Germans were. He went back inside to the end room, trying not to look at Gleeson. Gabriel lowered himself out of the window. He crossed the back yard and eased himself through the garden hedge. An immense noise of gunfire was coming from the direction of the wharves, but as far as he could see he was alone again. He ran across a dirt road and slid down into the railway cutting. Here and there lay the bodies of sepoys, not all of them dead, as he could hear moans and cries coming from some of them.

  He scrabbled up the opposite side. He saw tree-dotted scrub between him and the safety of the forest and the coconut plantations. Head down, he ran across the two hundred yard stretch of clearer ground at full speed, leaping undulations and bushes and the large numbers of dead and dying scattered about. Almost idly he noted how a dead body seems part of the ground, as if the earth were in a hurry to claim it…He told himself he was in shock, poor Gleeson’s horrible injury had unsettled him. He would calm down in the forest, gather his strength and then go back and try to help him. Try to carry him to a casualty clearing station.

  He fought his way through the first welcoming thickets, broke through into an open space, tripped and went sprawling. He found a depression in the ground and crawled into it. He lay back, an arm over his eyes, his chest heaving as he struggled to get his breath.

  He sat up with a start. He couldn’t believe it, but he seemed to have fallen asleep for a few seconds. He had a pounding vicious headache. His mouth tasted foul with dried saliva. His throat was parched. Still the relentless popping of gunfire came from the direction of the town. He put his head in his hands, suddenly overcome with weariness and the emotions rampaging through his body. He pulled his knees towards him and rested his head on them. He rubbed his forehead on his kneecaps.

  He unholstered his revolver. His hands looked like a stranger’s. Black with dirt, scratched, a badly bleeding knuckle (how had that happened?). They felt thick with blisters and callouses. He heard the booming reports of naval guns, and decided to try and make his way in that general direction. Most of the fighting seemed to be coming from the seaward edge of the town. He set off. After some time he came to one of the many rough tracks that lead east to west along the headland from Ras Kasone to Tanga. He debated for an instant whether to return to the beach or go back towards the town. With some reluctance he turned towards Tanga. He hadn’t gone more than twenty yards when he met Bilderbeck running down the path towards him.

  “Cobb!” Bilderbeck shouted, “Just the man!” It was as if he and Bilderbeck had met on the steps of his club. Bilderbeck grabbed him by the arm. “This way,” he said and led him a little distance off the track. There, in the shelter of an earth bank were seven Rajput sepoys cowering together.

  “Tell them to get up,” Bilderbeck said. “Tell them to take up firing positions up the road.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t speak the language,” Gabriel said apologetically.

  “What? Oh never mind.” Bilderbeck strode forward and started roughly pulling the sepoys to their feet, yelling “Get up!” and pushing them in the direction of the town and the firing. Two reluctantly obeyed, picking up their rifles and slouching dispiritedly off. The others crouched where they were, wailing and moaning softly. Bilderbeck drew his revolver and threatened them. Then he fired into the bank and there was a flurry of movement as the men leapt panic-stricken to their feet, milling around confusedly in evident terror at this mad Englishman with a gun.

  But one man had not moved. He sat in a hunched squatting posture, one arm raised vaguely in protection, muttering distractedly to himself.

  “Get up, you filthy coward!” Gabriel heard Bilderbeck roar. But the man wasn’t hearing anything. He was gibbering like a lunatic, high and piping, a loop of saliva hanging from his chin.

  “I warn you,” Bilderbeck said. Gabriel couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Bilderbeck levelled his revolver at the sepoy’s head. The gun was only six inches from his head.

  “I am ordering you,” Bilderbeck said in an eerily reasonable voice, “to get to your feet and take up a firing position at the end of the road.”

  The man stared bleakly at the gun.

  “Right,” Bilderbeck said angrily and fired. Gabriel flinched uncontrollably at the noise.

  The bullet hit the sepoy just in front of his left ear. The man’s head jerked sharply to one side and he slumped back as if in a deep swoon. There was a delicate spattering sound as bits of expressed brain hit the leaves of the bushes behind the man. Immediately the other sepoys rushed up the track with cries of fear, Bilderbeck running behind them waving his revolver and shouting.

  Gabriel looked down. On the toe of his boot was a greyish pink blob, like a wet, peeled shrimp. With a shudder he wiped it off on the earth and ran after Bilderbeck.

  Soon they arrived at a semblance of a front line on the more open ground by the sea. Groups of men crouched behind trees and rocks, two machine guns covering a dirt road.

  Bilderbeck seemed quite unmoved by his summary execution. He told Gabriel it was his third that day. Gabriel felt his body tingling and trembling, as if any moment he might drop from accumulated shock and exha
ustion.

  They took up a position behind a jumble of rocks and watched a company of North Lancs drawing back in reasonable order from the customs house and the sheds around the jetty which were just visible. Peering forward Gabriel could just make out German askaris darting across gaps in the alleyway to re-occupy the abandoned buildings. Ragged covering fire broke out from the British lines and one of the Maxims stuttered into life.

  “Bloody day,” Bilderbeck said gloomily. “Everybody ran for it. You should see the beaches. Mass panic. People swimming out to the lighters. Disgusting!” He gave Gabriel a fierce smile. “Where are your men?”

  Gabriel explained about the bee attack and most of the bizarre and erratic course his day had taken. “What’s going on?” he asked, trying not to think about Gleeson.

  “Well, we’ve been well and truly cut to pieces on the left. Fifty per cent casualties in the 101st Grenadiers. The line’s in tatters, thanks to all the bloody cowards who ran away.” He went on. The town had been far more heavily fortified and defended than anyone had expected. Every building was like a blockhouse. With no organization, with huge gaps in the attack, with the left wing being pushed further and further back, the few gains made in the town had to be yielded.

  “It’s all gone wrong,” Bilderbeck said, as if it were a personal insult. “Even our general’s got no spunk for a fight.”

  Gabriel felt suddenly overwhelmed by a desire to sleep. “I suppose I should try and get back to my men,” he said vaguely.

  “They’ll be on the beach by now,” Bilderbeck sneered. He took out his map from his pocket and smoothed it on the ground. Gabriel thought maps should be banned. They gave the world an order and reasonableness which it didn’t possess. “Coconut groves,” it said in large letters. The phrase sounded pleasant, restful. It gave no indication of the tangled choking undergrowth they had clawed their way through at noon.

  Bilderbeck’s finger traced a crescent on the map from the native graveyard up to the ditch then back to the coast. “We’re here now.” Bilderbeck tapped a point ahead of a building marked hospital. “The hospital’s just back there, overlooking the sea. You might find some of your men on the left of the line by the cemetery. There’s a mixed lot of North Lancs and Grenadiers around there. Go back down the road and take the first track on the right that’s marked with a red and white s take. It’ll take you along to the cemetery.”

  He and Gabriel crawled away from the front line until they had lost sight of the town. Then they stood up.

  “I’d better get back to headquarters,” Bilderbeck said looking glum. “See you later, Cobb.” He went behind a large tree and emerged with a bicycle, which he mounted and rode off down the track.

  Gabriel walked slowly down the road behind him, which was now filled with troops making their unauthorized way back to the beach and the morning’s assembly point. As he cycled past each group Bilderbeck delivered a volley of insults and abuse but the dishevelled and exhausted men ignored him completely.

  Presently Gabriel came to a track branching off to the right which was marked by a red and white striped pole. The staff officers at least were doing their job. He walked along a narrowing path, half-heartedly brushing creepers from his face. The sun was sinking lower in the sky and there was an orange-ish light hitting the top of the trees. The incessant noise of firing grew louder as he approached the left wing of the British lines but he scarcely gave it any thought. It seemed as much part of the natural landscape now as the chirping of crickets or the calls of the birds.

  Soon he came to the graveyard, no more than a large part of cleared ground with a few graves dotted about it, most of them plain cement plinths or crosses, but with the occasional more elaborate Moorish headstone.

  He saw an outpost of the British line in the far corner and began to pick his way towards it. Nothing today had been remotely how he had imagined it would be; nothing in his education or training had prepared him for the utter randomness and total contingency of events. Here he was, strolling about the battlefield looking for his missing company like a mother searching for lost children in the park.

  He looked up. The outpost was composed of native troops in khaki uniforms and tarbooshes. They seemed to be bent over some wounded men. King’s African Rifles, Gabriel thought; they were the only African troops in the British army. Then he realized there had been no KAR in the expeditionary force.

  At once, instinctively, he turned on his heel and started to run, a ghastly leaping fear in his heart. He heard shouts come from behind. He started to run like a sprinter, as he’d been taught at school, arms pounding and pulling at the air, lifting the knees high. He thumped heavily across the uneven ground, throwing his sun helmet off his head. Faster, he told himself, faster, get to the forest, just get back to the forest. He shut his ears to the pursuit, the drumming of feet behind him. “Don’t want to get caught by those jerry niggers,” the North Lancs soldier had said. So: faster, faster.

  They caught up with him about twenty yards from the shelter of the trees. They even ran alongside him for a pace or two, far speedier than him in their bare feet, even when encumbered by their rifles and bayonets.

  Gabriel ran on regardless, it was all he could do. Then he felt the first bayonet slice into his leg, a slashing, tearing stroke that severed the big rectus femoris muscle in the middle of his thigh. He crashed to the ground, squirming and rolling over and over to avoid the pronging, skewering blades. They missed once or twice but they eventually got him. He saw the bayonet coming as he spun round. Watched it spear through his tunic. Felt an icy coldness which wasn’t really painful travel the length of his coiled intestines. He saw the blade withdraw, with a squirt of his own dark blood, looked up in horrified disbelief as another man stepped into place for his turn, felt his mouth full with hot, salty blood. He wriggled desperately in an attempt to get out of the way, saw the second blade slice in just above his hip bone, glancing inward off the pelvis, feeling the rasp and judder of the point on the bone. He thought he heard faint cries of ‘Halt’ And that was all.

  Chapter 7

  6 November 1914,

  Tanga, German East Africa

  “The North Lancs put up a good fight. So did some of the Kashmir Rifles,” von Bishop heard Hammerstein say to the English officer Bilderbeck. Hammerstein was von Lettow’s chief of staff. They were all riding on mules towards Ras Kasone, two days after the battle. Hammerstein spoke just as they were passing a burial party heaving British corpses onto a wagon. It seemed, von Bishop thought, a tactless thing to say. But Bilderbeck appeared not in the least put out.

  “Thank goodness,” he said. “At least someone did.” He gave a cackle of laughter. Hammerstein exchanged a covert glance with von Bishop.

  It was half past nine in the morning. The day was growing hot and humid. Bilderbeck was the officer sent by the British to supervise the removal of the wounded and to hand over the large quantities of abandoned stores. Von Bishop rode a few paces behind him and Hammerstein who were chatting away about the war like old friends. Hammerstein’s English, he had to admit, was really of quite a high Standard.

  Von Bishop took off his peaked cap and shook his head. On the afternoon of the fourth, shortly after the Schutztruppe had driven the British out of Tanga, the battleship Fox had bombarded the town for half an hour, doing great damage. Von Bishop had been knocked senseless for a few minutes when a six-inch shell exploded nearby. He had suffered only mild concussion but it had left him with a high-pitched singing sound in his ears, soft but persistent, and it refused to go away. This morning he had bent down, placed his hands on his knees and had shaken his head to and fro so severely that he had fallen over from the effort. But still it remained: a quiet eeeeeeeee going on in the background.

  He looked at the thick undergrowth in the coconut groves on either side of the road and thought it little wonder that the British had taken so long to attack. He himself had arrived by rail from Moshi shortly after noon on the fourth and had ordered his comp
any of askaris into the attack on the British left flank against the Indian troops of the 101st Grenadiers. It had been exhilarating to see the machine guns cut down the advancing troops and then to follow in with the charge. That exhilaration had been sustained throughout the day as the British had been routed, until the unfortunate incident with the exploding shell. Now all he could think about was this noise in his ear. Eeeeeeeee. It was driving him mad.

  Soon they emerged from the coconut groves and into the trampled open spaces above the beaches. The British fleet lay at anchor about a quarter of a mile offshore, tugboats, launches and lighters plying to and fro between the transports. The red house had been converted into a hospital and was full of British wounded. They were to be evacuated to the fleet under conditions of parole, namely that none of them would serve again for the duration of the war.

  Von Bishop let Hammerstein and Bilderbeck go into the red house to administer the parole. He left the mules with the askari guard and walked over to the headland to get a better view of the English ships. There was a pleasant breeze blowing off the sea and he allowed himself to experience the complacent satisfactions of a victor as he surveyed the vast piles of abandoned stores stacked among the mangroves on the beach. Sixteen machine guns, someone had said, half a million rounds of ammunition—even new motorbikes—all left behind by the British when they hastily re-embarked yesterday morning.

  However, von Bishop was extremely surprised to see a British officer—clipboard in hand—emerge from behind a pile of packing cases. Hurriedly von Bishop ran down to the beach. The man, who was a major, looked up casually as he approached.

  “Hello there,” the major said.

  “Who the hell are you?” von Bishop said excitedly. “And what the hell do you think you’re doing here?”

  The major, an elderly man, was very neatly dressed in gleaming Sam Browne and riding boots. He had curious sagging, fleshy cheeks which trembled when he spoke.