by John Harris
‘The Boys,’ Harkaway said proudly. ‘Our Boys.’
Eleven
It seemed to be time to move. In the Western Desert, Bardia was being bombarded and the British were at the gates of Tobruk, while round Eil Dif the Somalis were growing restless and itching to use their new weapons to kill somebody.
Gooch was working over a rifle, cleaning it and wiping it with gun oil so that it had the smell of workshops and lathes. Staring along the sights, he removed the bolt to check the barrel for the patches of rust that showed dark against the shining steel, and put his nose to the barrel and sniffed, like a woman with scent. ‘They smell different after they’ve been fired,’ he said. ‘Sour. But good.’
Tully was bent over the radio. He had been keeping himself to himself for some time, eyeing Danny sullenly, following her everywhere she went with hungry eyes. As he worked, she sat outside with Grobelaar, watching the sun go down, both of them curiously placid and unwilling to move much.
‘BBC,’ Tully said and they all swung round as he turned up the volume.
The news still mostly concerned the great victory in the Western Desert. Since it was the only one the British could so far boast, inevitably they were making a lot of it, and the broadcast included an interview with a British officer who had watched.
‘The whole of the southern defences have been encompassed,’ he said. ‘And we’re now breaking in from the north. Ten thousand prisoners have been taken and God knows how many more are coming in…’ It made them itch to be part of it.
It had always been their intention to attack the first reasonable-sized, under guarded convoy that came their way. Convoys of arms were always heavily protected and, since their blowing of the Wirir Gorge, so were petrol lorries. Maize, skins, fruit and other convoys, however, didn’t merit such close concentration and the seventeen-vehicle convoy leaving Jijiga at the end of December contained maize, dates and coffee for the troops in Bidiyu, Hargeisa and Berbera.
It was Yussuf who brought news of it. Where he got his information no one knew, but Yussuf felt he had as much right to share in the success of the young Habr Odessi as Chief Abduruman or anybody else. He’d travelled towards Jijiga, and talked at the frontier post at Wajale where they had all the information about convoys. Nobody, least of all a none-too-bright corporal of one of Brigadier Ruggiero Ruffo di Peri’s Gruppo Bandas, the locally raised soldiers the Italians used for the dirty little jobs they preferred not to handle themselves, considered Yussuf, with his dusty blanket, limp and greying hair anything but a nosy villager.
‘Maize,’ he announced on his return to Eil Dif. ‘And dates and coffee. Our young men and their families will enjoy the maize. Will there be more rifles?’
‘That’s up to your young men,’ Harkaway said.
Gooch drew a deep breath. ‘Think we’ll pull it off?’ he asked.
Harkaway eyed the excited young Somalis squatting in the dust, holding their ancient rifles between their bent knees. There weren’t many of them but they were the brightest and best and they were eager to prove their skill and courage.
‘It all depends on that article,’ he said.
Danny was talking to them, speaking quietly but forcefully and the Somalis were listening eagerly. They considered her strange because they regarded white women who showed their legs or wore trousers not as women at all, but as miraculous beings who were able to conceive and produce children by some form of magic. Nevertheless, they liked women with shape, especially behind, so that their girls often padded out their clothes like a bustle. Since Danny was well endowed in every department, they were prepared to admire her.
She was lecturing them on the need for absolute obedience.
‘Without obedience,’ she said, ‘many may die. With obedience, you will enrich yourselves, and your wives and children will eat well. We have taken the place of your chiefs. We have not usurped their power. They are still your chiefs but they have given their leadership to us willingly and freely and you must do as we tell you. Your lives depend on it.’
‘Think they’ll do as they’re told?’ Harkaway asked as they made their plans.
Danny eyed him worriedly. ‘They should, I’ve stressed that their chiefs have given their power to us. Otherwise–’
She shrugged.
Harkaway put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed it. She gave a little shudder and looked up at him unhappily.
‘We’ll need you, too,’ he said, giving her behind a little pat. ‘Willing to come?’
‘Yes.’
‘Not afraid?’
‘No.’
‘If it goes wrong, the Italians could get you.’
‘The Italians are noted for their good manners.’
‘But not for their morals. Most of ’em behave like randy ferrets. You might be killed.’
‘I had to learn great chunks of Isaiah as a girl and that’s enough to put strength into anybody. I have faith.’
Harkaway gave a little frown. ‘I sometimes wish I had,’ he said.
‘Let me give you faith.’
He met her eyes. ‘The sort of faith I want,’ he said enigmatically, ‘has nothing to do with God.’
That night the young men who had been selected for the raid performed the fuqera, the bragging battle dance of the Ethiopians that they’d picked up from across the border, stamping, slapping their thighs and clapping their hands, their voices low and menacing as they moved with weird and grotesque contortions of the body. The other young men joined in, separate but part of the pride, and then the women, their voices raised in high-pitched wails.
There was no need for wheeled transport. The young Somalis could travel almost as fast across the hills on their stork-like legs as the British soldiers could travel in their lorry. Harkaway was in a sweat that they wouldn’t turn up. But they did. As the Bedford rolled into a carefully chosen hiding place to the north of Guidotti’s Strada del Duce, among the rocks black faces appeared, split by wide white grins.
‘I just hope,’ Harkaway said quietly, ‘that when we hit those Eyeties, the buggers have something worth taking.’
As it happened they were luckier than they knew, probably even than they deserved.
At the last moment, General Forsci in Jijiga, as concerned as Guidotti with the deteriorating situation in the Western Desert and its effect on Africa Orientale, added a petrol lorry to the convoy. Finally, because Somaliland was not self-supporting and the events in North Africa had caused delays in the movement of food down from Abyssinia, among the maize, dates and skins there was also a box containing one thousand Maria Theresa dollars to pay the merchants in Berbera for sheep and goat meat.
Despite the extra value of the convoy, however, Forsci didn’t consider, with eighteen lorries, each with an armed guard and the whole lot under the command of a lieutenant of the Bersaglieri of the Savoia Grenadiers, that there was any need to increase the escort. Eighteen native askaries, all Eritreans and all well-trained, an armoured car carrying a machine gun and a crew of four Italians at the front and a sergeant and a machine-gun crew in the rear lorry, he felt, ought to be enough to hold off anybody, especially since there had been no further signs of hostility along the Strada del Duce since the blowing of the Wirir Gorge. Since that event, a new post had been built there, consisting of a wired compound, a small brick-built fort containing a nervous Italian sottotenente and twenty Eritrean askaris, connected by telephone to other posts east and west. The idea was for neighbouring posts to send help in the event of attack, while help moved up to them from other posts further along the line, all the way back to Jijiga or Bidiyu in a sort of ‘when-father-turns-we-all-turn’ manoeuvre, each post supporting the next in line in either direction, no matter which way the danger came.
‘Machine guns or anything larger than a rifle need not be feared,’ General Forsci insisted. ‘The convoy will move at speed and will not stop en route, and the only area where we need worry is between Jijiga and Bidiyu. Bidiyu to the coast can be handled easily
by General Barracca. Everything else is well covered.’
While General Forsci was making the final decisions for his convoy, Harkaway had had a good session with a map he’d found in the Lancia they’d captured, and they moved out at dusk and crossed the Jijiga-Bidiyu road to the flatter land beyond, then, swinging in a large arc, they appeared south-east of the road beyond Bidiyu.
‘Remember,’ Harkaway said. ‘We move fast. We don’t waste time. We collect all the arms we can and bolt south, into the flat country. Then, with a bit of luck they’ll think we came from the direction of Odweina or even over the border. We head for Madoba and take cover among the trees there in case they send aircraft out looking for us. As soon as we can, we head back north-west, cross the road and head for Gumra.’
‘Not Eil Dif?’
‘No. Harari country this time. They’re bound to look for us at Eil Dif so we’ll give it a rest for a while. Yussuf can let us know when they’ve gone.’
They spent the night not far from Hargeisa south of the Strada del Duce on the edge of the desert, silent and unmoving during the heat of the day among the few gum trees and acacias that grew round the waterhole at Duduba. The water was bitter and the heavy smell of the camels and their trodden dung filled their nostrils. Around them was nothing but sand and rock for miles. The wells were being used by a few nomads with their goats and sheep and the camels carrying the frames and mats of their homes. As they stood in a silent half-circle with their wives and children, the Habr Odessi and Harari men eyed them contemptuously, warriors watched by farmers.
A tent was set up for the Europeans among the scrub. Insects clogged the lamp after dark and the stew they cooked was full of tiny corpses and detached pieces of wing.
‘You can’t tell ’em from the bits of onion,’ Grobelaar observed.
The wind that had filled the day with blown sand filled the night with moaning, coating the tea in their mugs with grit. The long shadows of hyenas prowled from bush to bush, with massive shoulders and jaws, their pale-furred throats giving out an eerie groan as their wide nostrils caught the scent of meat. Gooch rose to pelt them with stones.
‘They’ve gone,’ Danny said.
‘Probably joined the Eyeties,’ Grobelaar suggested.
The following morning before daylight they moved quietly up to the road, Harkaway moving ahead in the Lancia to choose a point roughly between Bidiyu and Hargeisa, where there was a gap in the hills. Leaving the lorry and the Lancia hidden, they moved through the gap to the tarmacadamed surface of the road and waited there, surrounded by armed Somalis, some with rifles, some carrying the Brens and the Vickers, one or two gingerly carrying land mines.
As they stood in the silence with only the wind sighing through the gap, there was no sign of Italians and Harkaway looked at Abdillahi, their first recruit.
‘Can we do it, Abdillahi?’ he asked.
Abdillahi gestured with a thin black hand. ‘In sh’Allah, effendi. If God wills it.’
Harkaway drew a deep breath then gestured to the men carrying the land mines. Digging them into the road in a zigzag pattern so they couldn’t be avoided, he scattered sand and gritty earth to hide where he had worked.
With a team of Habr Odessi, Tully set up one of the Brens to cover the road at the point where the halted vehicles would stop. Gooch, with four of the Harari, had placed one of the Vickers further down the road. The rest of the tribesmen, in two groups, were hidden among the rocks at the south side of the road under the command of Harkaway and Grobelaar. They had no idea how long they might have to wait and as they sat in the sun the young men softly started singing a song called ‘Mohammed Salih’, which Yussuf said was the war song of the Mad Mullah, a hangover from twenty years before. Chief Abduruman had fought with the Mullah and his young men had picked up the song from him.
They seemed to be there for hours before one of the Somalis, posted high on the slopes, waved his rifle and began to slither down the rocky scree to the road. The song stopped abruptly at a sign from Harkaway and the silence that followed seemed immense. A hot wind was blowing from the Haud, the desert area to the east, bringing with it gritty clouds of dust and lifting little whorls like sand-devils from the scree slopes. Harkaway could just see Tully and Gooch and he signed to them to get their heads down. Turning, he saw a dozen pairs of fierce black eyes on him, a dozen sombre expressions. Then one of the young men whispered something to his neighbour and immediately the whole lot of them were grinning in anticipation.
He gestured to Grobelaar further along the road, then turned to Danny who was squatting among the rocks with the Somalis.
‘Tell them,’ Harkaway said, ‘that they must not move until I tell them.’
The young men lifted their hands, pale palm outwards, to acknowledge what she said, and she looked anxiously at Harkaway.
‘Be careful, George,’ she said, and he flicked her an arrogant glance, sure of her, aware of her growing feelings for him but in no hurry to take advantage of it.
‘Now, if you feel like it,’ was all he said, ‘you can send up one of your prayers. And I hope to Christ He hears you.’
The convoy came into view from the direction of Bidiyu a quarter of an hour later, moving slowly because they had chosen a spot where the road wound round the side of the hill in a series of curves.
It was led by an armoured car. It wasn’t a proper armoured car because it had been home-made in Jijiga by attaching sheet steel to the sides, front and rear of a Lancia truck and mounting a machine gun – sufficient, General Forsci thought, to withstand anything the natives could throw at it. Unfortunately, it wasn’t constructed to withstand explosives and the land mines blew off the two front wheels, killed the lieutenant in command, together with his corporal, and wounded both the other two members of the crew before they even knew who was their enemy.
The vehicle behind, its driver somnolent and unalert in the heat, ran into the back of the wrecked armoured car, buckling its wing, and the whole convoy concertinaed to a stop. At the rear, the Italian sergeant in command of the machine gun put his head out to find out what had happened just as Gooch opened up with the Vickers. The first burst hit him in the chest, flinging him back into the lorry, and the next, ripping through the canvas cover, killed one of the askari loaders and wounded another. The third decided it was wiser to fling himself flat on the floor, where the maize from the punctured sacks dribbled slowly down on him. The crews of the other lorries jumped out and bolted away from the firing, only to run into a burst from Tully’s Bren. Three men fell, one of them dead.
It had been found in the past that, on the whole, the Italian officers were well trained and courageous, but that when they were killed their forces quickly went to pieces. Now somebody waved a white towel and almost at once more appeared. Gooch gave them an extra burst with the Vickers to convince them and Tully peppered the armoured car with the Bren so that it should give no trouble, then, as an Italian corporal and two Italian privates appeared, their arms in the air, the Eritrean askaris threw down their rifles and lined themselves neatly alongside the road to await events.
Black figures in coloured loincloths began to appear from the rocks on either side of the road. This, Harkaway felt, was the crucial moment. If the Somalis did what their fathers had done under the Mad Mullah in the twenties, they would have a massacre on their hands.
Their new-found obedience almost slipped. One of the young Hararis, overcome with impatience and excitement, stood up, uttered a piercing yell and began to scramble over the rocks alongside Harkaway. Harkaway saw him just in time, stuck out a foot and tripped him up. As he clambered to his feet, indignantly reaching for his weapon, Harkaway swung a big fist and he went down like a log.
‘Tell them!’ he yelled at Danny. ‘Tell them again! If any of them disobeys, he’ll be shot.’
The Somalis studied each other with rolling eyes but the prostrate figure of the boy Harkaway had brought down was sufficient example. While keeping their rifles pointed at the new
enemies they had found, they kept their eyes on Harkaway for information on how to act.
‘Tell ’em not to move,’ Harkaway yelled and the information was passed on in a high-pitched soprano voice normally more used to uttering prayer than military commands that made the Italians look round quickly, wondering what they had come up against.
Moving along the line of prisoners, Harkaway checked that they were unarmed, then he gestured to Abdillahi to collect all the weapons he could find and put them in the rear lorry.
What they were doing required quick work and he moved along the trucks, checking their contents.
‘Maize,’ he announced. ‘And dates and coffee. The Boys’ll like that. And skins. They can use those. How many rifles?’
Gooch gestured. ‘Sixteen,’ he said. ‘With ammunition. Most of them single-shot that we took off the askaris, but there are several good Italian guns and a Biretta automatic. There are also two machine guns, one off the armoured car. It’s a bit messy because somebody’s been bleeding all over it but it’ll clean up.’
There was also a box of light percussion grenades of Japanese manufacture. They looked like toys but nobody was anxious to try them. Harkaway took one and tossed it in his hand. ‘We’ll have these, too,’ he said. ‘See they’re not forgotten.’
‘What about the lorries?’
‘We take ’em.’
Gooch grinned. ‘All of ’em?’
‘As many as we can drive. Tell the prisoners to strip. We want their uniforms. We promised the Boys loot. So, okay, they get loot. Gold braid. Pretty hats. They did all right.’
He was still poking about in the lorry as the scared Italians stripped off their clothes.
‘What do we do with ’em?’ Gooch said.
Harkaway was in the back of the lorry that had run into the armoured car. ‘Let ’em go,’ he said. ‘Without boots, it’ll take ’em a while to get to Hargeisa. That’ll give us plenty of time. Hello–’ he stopped dead ‘–what’s this?’
