Harkaway's Sixth Column

by John Harris

  It was time to get on the march and the huge, straggling caravan shuffled, gathered its muscles and heaved into movement.

  Sitting on a rock at the side of the road by the Lancia, Harkaway watched them go, the camels lurching along under their loads behind the lorries, the stink of their dung heavy in the air.

  ‘They’re overloaded, man,’ Grobelaar protested. ‘You’ve got around two hundred and fifty pounds on them.’

  ‘Camels can carry two hundred and fifty pounds,’ Harkaway said.

  ‘Under ideal conditions. They won’t be ideal the way you’re going. They need barley to keep their strength up. They’ll die.’

  ‘Let ’em,’ Harkaway said. ‘So long as we get there.’

  He turned to Commandante di Peri, who was sitting alongside him, his hands clasped between his knees, a picture of dejection.

  ‘We have to take you with us, Commandante,’ he explained. ‘You realize that? It’s for your own safety. There’s no one we can leave to guard you. And I wouldn’t advise you to bolt. You wouldn’t want the Abyssinians coming to fetch you back.’

  Di Peri lifted his head. ‘As a prisoner of war under the Geneva conventions–’

  ‘Don’t bother me with that, Commandante!’ Harkaway barked. ‘We’re not fighting the war here under Geneva conventions. In any case, the Geneva conventions state that you should share the conditions of the people who capture you. That’s what you’re going to do.’

  The dusty straggling column began to turn into the hills – lorries, horses, mules, asses and camels, and a long string of lean black men in tobes and turbans carrying rifles. They were unaccustomed to order and had been bored by parades, drilling and instruction, but now, under the harsh glare of the sun, they were facing the real thing and their eyes were hard and excited.

  Taking the opportunity to water before they started to climb, men jostled for the greenish bitter stagnant liquid already fouled by the mass of animals. Nobody objected. They were all of them more thirsty than fastidious. As they went higher, they seemed to draw nearer the sun and the fierce white light grew more clinical and sterile. But as the sun disappeared and night came, the winds which had been warm at lower levels suddenly seemed cold and blew through thin robes.

  Sitting alone, Grobelaar started to play his mouth organ. In addition to his responsibility for the vehicles, he seemed to have been saddled with the role of camel-master for the simple reason that, with his years in Somaliland, he was the only one apart from the Somali herdsmen who knew much about them. It was a role he disliked because it involved moving up and down the column, first with the lorries, then with the failing animals, yelling them on with Afrikaans cries of ‘Voetsek’ and ‘Trek ons!’

  It made him lethargic with weariness in the evenings and the tune was slow and nostalgic.

  ‘What’s that, Kom-Kom?’ Danny asked.

  ‘Old Afrikaner tune,’ he said. ‘About a Transvaaler a long way from home wanting to get back to his girl.’

  ‘It sounds sad.’

  ‘It is sad.’ He gave her his vague smile and changed the tune. ‘This is ‘Brandewyn, Laat My Staan’. Brandy, Leave Me Alone. South Africans sing that one a lot. Brandy’s too cheap in the Union.’ He rolled his good eye while the glass one remained still and it made him look drunk.

  She laughed. ‘Do you drink much of it?’

  ‘Used to,’ he said. ‘That’s why I look like this. Once saw pink snakes all over the bedroom. Gave it up. Only beer now.’

  ‘Have you got a wife, Kom-Kom?’

  He shook his head.

  She was silent for a moment. He had always been kind to her, always helpful, and it puzzled her that he seemed so alone.

  ‘Why not, Kom-Kom?’

  ‘Because I’m only a one-eyed motor mechanic.’

  She touched his cheek gently beneath the glass eye with the tips of her fingers. ‘What happened?’

  He shrugged. ‘I shot a duiker when I was a kid. That’s a small buck the size of a goat. It went into a monkey thorn bush and I went in to get it out. But I was in too big a hurry and I spiked my eye. They rushed me to a doctor but it was no good.’ He smiled his shadowy smile. ‘That’s why nobody ever wanted to marry me. I’m not a good catch and now I’m getting to middle age. Even my name’s ugly, and I’ll never make any money.’

  ‘That’s because you’ve never had anyone to work for. You could if you wanted to.’

  ‘Ja,’ he agreed. ‘Mebbe.’

  ‘Have you ever had a girlfriend?’

  He looked at her and grinned, his lined battered face twisted. ‘Only you,’ he smiled.

  The following morning, Harkaway had them moving again as soon as it was light, driving them on at a murderous pace. The first of the camels to fall, a sick mare, came down on the slippery shale on the second day.

  ‘She’s had it,’ Grobelaar said. ‘She’s damaged her knees.’

  Harkaway was unmoved. ‘Light a fire under her,’ he said. ‘She’ll soon realize there’s no future in staying down.’

  Grobelaar gave Harkaway an angry look but he did as he was told and their nostrils were assailed by the smell of burning hair which eventually changed to burning flesh. The camel stayed put. Harkaway heard what Grobelaar had to say without batting an eyelid.

  ‘Get the load on to the donkeys,’ he said.

  ‘Have you seen the size of those bleddy donkeys?’ Grobelaar yelled indignantly, even his glass eye looking angry. ‘They can carry only a fifth of what a camel can carry.’

  Harkaway barely seemed to hear. ‘All we want is food, water, petrol and ammunition,’ he said. ‘Leave what we don’t need.’

  The road through the hills was steep and treacherous. In some places it looked like a path through the mountains of the moon, the ground bare and smooth like cooled lava, in others it was covered with deceptive cotton grass which the hungry camels tried to eat and just as quickly vomited up. The slopes were smooth chocolate-coloured rock covered with a dust like talcum powder on which the animals slipped and crashed down, bawling in fright and pain.

  Riding in one of the lorries, as tired, dust-covered and exhausted as the rest of them, Di Peri objected. ‘What in the name of God are you trying to do?’ he asked.

  Harkaway glared at him, his face black with a muddy paste of dust and sweat. ‘That’s nothing to do with you,’ he snapped. ‘You’re a prisoner and nothing else. You’re here only because of my kindness of heart. I could throw you to the wolves, if I wanted to.’

  The problems began to multiply quickly. One of the camels carrying the pack guns began to fall behind.

  ‘It mustn’t fall behind,’ Harkaway insisted.

  ‘The bleddy thing’s sick,’ Grobelaar said.

  ‘Then shove the gun on another.’

  Grobelaar protested fiercely. ‘They weren’t built for this sort of territory,’ he said. ‘We had three go down this morning. Legs broken. Shuffled along on their bleddy knee pads. Ag, Magtig! What a sight! And I let ’em, man,’ he went on in furious self-disgust. ‘Because of what they were carrying.’

  ‘We’re not here to be sorry for camels,’ Harkaway said coldly.

  ‘I notice you keep well away from the bastards,’ Grobelaar snarled. ‘Have you heard ’em bawling in agony, man?’

  ‘I’ve got ears.’

  ‘They settle down under a cloud of flies that gets thicker by the minute and wait to die.’ Grobelaar looked at Danny, as if he hoped she might support him. ‘I never thought much of camels. They’re ugly, bad-tempered buggers, but, Jesus, man, they know how to die with dignity. I hope we do, too, when the time comes.’

  Harkaway said nothing, watching Grobelaar hurry away along the column, his whole shabby figure angry.

  ‘Do we have to push them so hard, George?’ Danny asked.

  ‘Yes we do,’ he said. ‘It’s a military maxim that you can’t have an omelette without breaking eggs and anybody running a war has to have enough nerve to accept losses. So far we’ve only lost camels.
We have to be across that road by the time the main bulk of the Italians starts moving back.’

  ‘But why? If they’re going, why worry?’

  ‘It’s another military maxim that when your enemy’s retreating, you hit him twice as hard. That way his retreat becomes a rout.’

  ‘You’re full of military maxims,’ she snapped. ‘Where did you pick them up?’

  ‘I’ve learned a lot in my time.’

  The column limped on, a lurching, winding, bawling string of weary animals and men. On the hills, the mules and horses hauled the lorries upwards and human muscle hauled the staggering camels. The number dwindled all the time. Those which survived, however, still carried ammunition, food and water, but none of the barley they needed and, stubborn to the last, they would eat nothing else. Gawping, creaking and groaning, they struggled on, persisting in dying despite all the exhausted Grobelaar’s efforts. From time to time the whole column came to a thankful stop and rested, panting in the heat, while Harkaway and Grobelaar went ahead and removed rocks with crowbars, by blasting, even by the sheer muscle power of their black helps, to widen the path enough for the vehicles to pass along it. The great square ugly vehicles lurched, groaned and protested, jolting and clattering, but still they went on.

  Occasionally the baboons came down and watched them, barking like dogs and drilled like armies, the females with the young, the old males long-fanged and wary, watching the outskirts of the tribe, their bare blue backsides catching the sunshine as they hopped and skipped among the rocks. For the most part they left them alone, though they tried raids in the dusk round the cooking fires, and once when they were chased by one of the dozens of half-starved pi-dogs that had attached themselves to the column, they turned round and tore it to pieces.

  The baboons were the least of their worries, however. They had a few sick and injured men now who could not be left to fend for themselves, and the radiators of the overworked, over-driven lorries began to leak. Grobelaar cured them by plugging them with handfuls of dates, but by now the camels were dying like flies and with every foot they climbed the difficulties increased.

  ‘My dove, my rose, my moon, my sweetness without compare!’ Abdillahi was coaxing on the donkey that carried Harkaway’s personal possessions, determined not to leave them behind. As the animal laid its ears back and started to kick, his tone changed. ‘Misbegotten son of a whore! Faithless one! Son of a camel crossed with a djinn!’

  As the donkey swung about on the end of the rope, it set one of the camels buck-jumping. The man who held the head-rope dangled, his feet off the floor, yelling his head off as the load was shed.

  Di Peri, noticeably leaner and more tired, protested again. ‘You’re mad,’ he said.

  Harkaway gave him a cold smile. ‘It’s the sort of madness,’ he said, ‘none of your generals ever seem to suffer from.’

  Four

  The raggle-taggle force was averaging no more than five or six miles a day from sunup to sundown. Larded with sweat and dust, his beard unshaven, Harkaway’s lean figure made him look like an Old Testament prophet.

  ‘Are you trying to kill us all?’ Gooch demanded.

  ‘No.’

  ‘How do you know what’s on the other side?’

  ‘Maps. I’ve read ’em.’

  ‘I haven’t.’

  ‘It’s well-known you’ve never read anything more intelligent than Sporting Life or Comic Cuts.’

  They were all tired now, Grobelaar’s face grey with exhaustion beneath the sunburn. Under the hard glare of the great brass gong above them that never let up for a minute, they struggled on, their ankles turned by the stones, their faces black with dust so that they looked like nigger minstrels. All the way behind them were dead or dying horses, mules, donkeys and camels. You could hear them dying and smell them dead.

  ‘George,’ Danny asked as they shivered round the fire in the cold of the darkness, ‘what are we trying to do?’

  Harkaway’s voice was angry as he replied. ‘If Napoleon had had to explain everything he did to his bloody generals,’ he snapped, ‘there’d have been no Wagram, no Jena, no Austerlitz.’

  ‘There’d probably have been no 1812 either,’ she retorted sharply. ‘Besides, you’re not Napoleon. You’re not even a general. Not even an officer.’

  He gave her such a bitter look she became silent.

  They reached the summit at last and the grumbling stopped as they halted among the bare bituminous boulders. Fires were lit and meals were cooked. Grobelaar was the last to sit down, grey-faced and staggering. His shirt was plastered to his body, his lined face was masked with a paste of dust and sweat, and the prickly heat on his body had turned to sores.

  As he flung himself down alongside Danny, his jaw hanging, she reached for a mug of tea.

  ‘Here, Kom-Kom,’ she said. ‘That’ll help.’

  He fell asleep before he’d finished it, leaning heavily against her. She hadn’t the heart to disturb him and left him where he was.

  Somewhere in the darkness she heard the low moan of a hyena, then the coughing roar of a leopard. The Somalis laughed. Some of them were high on kât, the stimulant drug they used. They acquired it as raw leaves from a shrub that grew on the high plateau which, when chewed, reduced them to a state of indifference or excitement. One of them started singing a song. They were great poets, talkers and romancers and always enjoyed verses as they halted at the end of the day.

  Allah made earth

  Allah made water

  Deep in the earth

  Far down is the water

  All the Somali songs were about water, Danny thought. It was inevitable, she supposed, in a land so devoid of it.

  Allah made cattle

  Grazing he gave them.

  Deep in the earth,

  Far down is the water.

  The chant came over the low murmur of voices, flat, toneless and somehow always missing the notes it seemed to aim at.

  They were all suffering from the struggle into the hills now. A few had even slipped away, but none of the men they trusted, though Danny suspected that if the struggle went on much longer they’d soon begin to notice the desertions. Harkaway seemed unmoved, as if he were confident he could hold his men’s loyalty.

  As the rest of them prepared for sleep, he was still on his feet, prowling nervously round the camp, and as he reached the spot where Danny sat, he stopped and looked down at her supporting the weight of Grobelaar.

  ‘You’ll end up with cramp,’ he pointed out, not an atom of sympathy in his voice. ‘Put him down!’

  She stared at him angrily. ‘He’s worn out,’ she accused. ‘You’ve worn him out.’

  She remained where she was as the night grew colder. She was using a blanket but Grobelaar, who had flung himself down straight from working on one of the lorry engines, was wearing only a thin shirt. Moving cautiously, she moved the blanket round them both then, putting her arms round him, letting him sleep against her. When she woke the following morning, as Harkaway had promised, her body was numb and aching. Grobelaar opened his eyes, saw what she had done and moved away quickly.

  ‘You shouldn’t have done that, man,’ he said.

  From now on they began to descend. What Harkaway’s herdsmen had told him was correct. The route was growing easier and even Gooch and Tully stopped complaining. But they were all hungry, all tired, and all coated with sweat-caked dust.

  ‘It’s a sort of inexpensive mud pack,’ Grobelaar said as he watched Danny rubbing it from her cheeks.

  As they moved down the twisting goat tracks, any who were sick or injured – and twisted ankles were far from uncommon – were left behind to limp back to their villages as best they could. They had no medical supplies or cigarettes, and no one possessed more than he carried about his person. On one occasion, an unexpected downpour caught them on the face of the slopes, the rain coming down in sheets so that they tramped the next morning through chocolate-coloured mud, the Somalis soaked and shivering under their bl
ankets, Danny in the cab of one of the lorries, flung from side to side as the vehicle lurched and slithered.

  No one had ever suggested turning back and now that they were to the east of the hills, spirits began to pick up. They saw the main road at last, a black asphalt ribbon running north-east to south-west. It seemed to represent safety and a degree of comfort they’d almost forgotten, and the column streamed down in a long, winding, straggling line.

  By the time Harkaway reached the road, the land on either side was swarming with animals and men, the Somalis yelling and dancing exultantly and jabbing with their spears at the earth in the stance of warriors.

  ‘Shut those bloody idiots up,’ he snapped at Danny. ‘We don’t start celebrating yet! Tully, get this bloody road clear! It only wants one armoured car to appear and the whole bloody operation’s sunk!’

  To the Somalis, for whom reaching the road had been the limit of their ambition, to have to disperse seemed madness, and they were unwilling and sullen.

  ‘Get ’em into the gullies,’ Harkaway stormed. ‘I want ’em out of sight! Every bloody one of them. Camels, horses, mules, everything! And make sure they stay out of sight!’

  It took time to get the swarm of animals and humans dispersed among the folds of the hills but the Somalis finally accepted Harkaway’s word as law. He had given them victory more than once already and they now obediently squatted down in the valleys between the knuckly hills, holding their rifles and spears, wrapped in their robes, waiting for the word what to do next.

  Fresh from Bidiyu, Yussuf appeared as order was restored, trotting along on a minute donkey, a bent, shrivelled black figure in an orange robe, his lame foot dangling.

  ‘Salaams, effendi,’ he said. ‘Big convoy comes. General Barracca is withdrawing from the coast to Jijiga.’