Harkaway's Sixth Column

by John Harris

  Di Sanctis swallowed and tried again, but the English officer drew his revolver and pointed it at his head.

  ‘You have five minutes to make up your mind,’ he said.

  Di Sanctis was frantic. His instructions covered nothing as barbaric as this. ‘Give me one hour,’ he begged. ‘One hour! That’s all! The Mayor waits. There is a band and a guard of honour. If we go back all together, something may go wrong.’

  Harkaway smiled. A reception committee and a band was a good idea and it had been his intention all along to agree.

  ‘One hour,’ he said. ‘Now get back inside that tin can of yours and get cracking. We shall arrive on the dot. And let’s have no bloody nonsense, because if there’s shooting, I shall turn my Boys on you.’ He gestured at the grinning Somali clutching his Italian rifle. ‘They don’t like you a lot and they won’t hesitate to slit a few throats.’

  Di Sanctis tried to keep his face stiff before the goading. ‘I have given my word,’ he said.

  ‘What’s that worth?’

  ‘I am an Italian officer,’ Di Sanctis snapped. ‘And you had better not set your men loose or they might murder the wrong people. There is a prisoner-of-war camp in the town and I would not like accidents to happen.’

  As he turned away, Harkaway called him back. Red-faced, Di Sanctis stood to attention in front of him.

  ‘One more thing,’ Harkaway said. ‘In future, all vehicles will drive on the left of the road. In the British fashion.’

  ‘It might take time for them to get used to it,’ Di Sanctis suggested.

  ‘It had better not. You’re under British law now. And British laws direct drivers to the left of the road. You will comply. As of now!’

  The Mayor was waiting on the steps of headquarters when the Sixth Column arrived, together with his officials and the remaining officers. They were glad to see the column arrive because it was felt a massacre was imminent. The askaris had been disarmed but some of them had seized an armoury and, as weapons had been handed out, had started intermittently machine-gunning the town for fun.

  In the centre, some of the bolder spirits were pillaging the shops, smashing in the shutters and taking what they wanted. The police were trying ineffectually to keep them at bay with Tommy guns, but already several doors had been blown in with grenades and there had been one or two murders.

  They were still at it as the column arrived, men, women and children hurrying to the native quarters, their loot balanced on their heads; and as Grobelaar led the column in a large circle round the centre of the marketplace where the trembling officials waited, trying not to see the looting Africans to their left, the black figures stopped long enough to join the shrill cries of pleasure from the other Somalis.

  ‘Salaams! Salaams! Three cheer Brititch Empar! Rooly Britannia! Three cheer Kinky George, Lord of the Seas!’

  As the vehicles stopped, Di Sanctis signed to the bandmaster. The native bandsmen were hardly expert at European music, and ‘God Save the King’ sounded weird, melancholy and Arab. Harkaway stepped from the lorry, cocked his head to one side and, recognizing it, came to the salute.

  As the tune finished, without orders the band struck up the old fascist hymn, ‘Giovanezza’. Fortunately, Harkaway didn’t know it, so he waited patiently until it finished, but as they showed signs of starting another tune, he waved his hand irritably and the sound died away. Di Sanctis stepped forward and saluted smartly with his raised arm.

  Harkaway stared back at him. ‘You can cut that out,’ he said. ‘We want no fascist salutes here.’

  Di Sanctis hesitated, bewildered, and Harkaway came to attention and brought his arm up in a shuddering military salute.

  ‘That way,’ he said. ‘That’s what we want. Forget the other one. That’s finished with.’

  ‘Of course, of course! I apologize!’

  As Di Sanctis stepped back, the Mayor approached holding a bunch of wilting flowers. He drew his finger across his throat. ‘If you had not come,’ he said in English, ‘it would have been with us as it was with our army. Pfftt!’

  Italian morale had collapsed completely. White flags were everywhere and no one was making any attempt to stop the pillaging. Shouts could still be heard from the shopping area, and the waiting crowd of robed figures began to slip away with their spoil.

  Harkaway studied them for a moment. ‘Who’re they?’ he demanded.

  ‘Looters,’ Di Sanctis said.

  Harkaway frowned, raised his sub-machine gun and fired a burst over the heads of the stream of figures. There was a yell and the loot was dropped as they bolted down the narrow alleys.

  Harkaway gestured at the flag that floated at the top of the flagpole. ‘Have it down,’ he said to Gooch. ‘Shove our own up.’

  Danny produced the flag Tully had had made and, as the Italian flag was hauled down, up the pole went the crooked Union Jack, crescent, scimitar and all.

  Harkaway studied the fluttering red, white and blue for a moment then, stuffing the Italian tricolour under his arm, he looked round calmly.

  ‘Now,’ he said, ‘we’ll get on with organizing this place.’

  Eight

  As the old Gladiator circled above them, the column of vehicles waited, as dust-covered as their crews. They were South Africans for the most part, clad in shirts with the distinctive red flash at the shoulder and the brief shorts they loved so much. In one of the vehicles a man was singing the song someone had made up to show their contempt for their Italian enemies, an Italian wail of sorrow for the fortunes of their North African armies.

  Where do we go from here,

  Now that we’ve lost Bardia?

  Standing by his car, his hand over his eyes, the general squinted as the Gladiator swung against the sun, then he turned to Colonel Charlton just behind him, his shirt black with sweat.

  ‘Seems to be trying to draw our attention to something, sir,’ Charlton said. ‘He’s doing a lot of waving.’

  ‘Why doesn’t he use his radio?’

  ‘Perhaps it doesn’t work, sir. Some of these Gladiators are getting on a bit in years. Like me.’

  The general smiled. ‘They’ve also got your figure, Charlie,’ he said. ‘Broad across the middle. I think he’s trying to drop a message.’

  As the Gladiator roared along the column of vehicles, a small object was seen to fall from it. It hit the ground with a puff of dust and an NCO of the King’s African Rifles ran to pick it up. He took it to his officer who directed it towards the general. Charlton accepted it. It was a white handkerchief in which several copper coins were knotted to give it weight. Wrapped round them was a signal flimsy.

  ‘New form of instant communication,’ Charlton said dryly.

  ‘Stop being cynical, Charlie,’ the general said. ‘What’s it say?’

  Charlton peered at the message. ‘Not much, sir. Just “White flags flying in Bidiyu.”’

  ‘What!’ The general stared at Charlton. ‘Then we’d better get up there and take the place over.’ He turned to his Chief of Staff. ‘Who can we detach?’

  Charlton moved forward. ‘Might I suggest, sir, since we have our hands pretty full already, that we direct our friends, the Sixth Column, there.’

  ‘Are we in touch?’

  ‘At last, sir. Somebody among them seems to have fixed up a transmitter and we’re receiving messages.’

  ‘Thank God for that! Now we might find out who the hell they are. Ask ’em if they can get Bidiyu.’

  Italian troops were still wandering aimlessly about the town, their rifles still on their shoulders, and uniformed and beribboned men were everywhere.

  Di Sanctis’ prisoner-of-war camp had turned out to be merely the exercise yard of the prison and the prisoners were few in number. But they were nearly all soldiers who, like Harkaway, Gooch and Tully, had been cut off and left behind the previous year, and were willing enough to rejoin under Harkaway. He was careful not to let them know his true rank because there were several corporals and a sergeant
among them, and when they appeared he returned their salutes punctiliously. Then, finding them quarters in the Italian barracks, he allowed them a day to enjoy their freedom before ordering them to parade.

  They were a mixed bunch, and he stalked up and down in front of them, a walking stick under his arm, Lieutenant Watson’s pips and the crowns Danny had made on his shoulders. The stick was a trick he’d learned as a boy, the accent he used was one he’d employed all his life, and its tone was that of his forefathers.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said briskly, ‘that I can’t yet send you down to Kenya or Rhodesia to enjoy the leave you properly deserve. But the war’s still going on here and I need you. The Italians are almost finished, and when they are the whole of East Africa will be open to us so that we can send troops and munitions direct to the men in Egypt where, it might interest you to know, we are no longer facing just the Italians. German troops have appeared.’

  It was an item Tully had picked up on the radio and he made the most of it.

  ‘I don’t have to tell you that they’ll be different from Mussolini’s ice-cream vendors’ – there was a polite laugh – ‘and to help the chaps up there we’ve got to clean up the mess the Italians have made here so that the war can go on in safety and I can send you on leave.’

  He hadn’t the slightest right to send anybody on leave, he knew, but he felt that this too was something he could take care of later.

  ‘Any NCOs?’ he asked, and the sergeant and the corporals stepped forward.

  ‘Good, good.’ He was laying on the accent a little now, hoping against hope that none of them had ever met him. ‘I suppose you have a list of names, Sergeant.’

  The sergeant handed over a sheet of paper.

  ‘And your own?’

  ‘Catchpole, sir. There are also three in hospital, sir, and a few cases of the squits. The Italians didn’t treat us badly.’

  ‘Any artillerymen?’

  ‘One or two, sir.’

  ‘What are the numbers?’

  ‘Seven Royal Artillerymen, sir, including me. Six Black Watch, and thirty NCOs and men of the King’s African Rifles. All trained soldiers. There are also five civilians formerly employed in government departments or in business.’

  Harkaway almost smiled. Forty-three men, several of them artillerymen. It was more than his cheek deserved.

  ‘Could you work Italian guns, Sergeant? We’ve got a few.’

  The sergeant grinned. ‘Just let me get at ’em, sir!’

  Harkaway smiled back. ‘Splendid. I’ll introduce you to them. I want you to get your men to work in teams. We have two guns with us and I think we shall find a few more here.’

  They not only found nine Breda machine guns and one old 75mm field gun of doubtful ancestry, but also an M11/39 tank which was immobilized because of engine trouble which the Italians had not had time to cure, and three home-made armoured cars, all mounting 20mm guns. In addition, there were three scout cars and numerous other vehicles and when they came to disarm the Italians they acquired Biretta pistols and dozens of Breda rifles, even a few Biretta semi-automatics and sub-machine guns.

  Harkaway handed them out to anyone he thought capable of handling them and spread his new recruits among the Somalis with instructions to weld them into teams. On Catchpole’s advice, he even created a few new NCOs, and informed them that he expected them to drill his Boys. Four of the civilians who’d accompanied the soldiers to prison also volunteered to join as drivers and, since two of them were ex-soldiers from the other war, one of them an ex-quartermaster-sergeant, he swept them up joyfully, giving the ex-quartermaster three stripes and informing him that it was his job to supply and feed his column.

  ‘Christ,’ Tully said, faintly awed. ‘You’ve got a bloody nerve! Talking to a sergeant like that. He thought you were a real bloody colonel.’

  Harkaway smiled his cool smile. ‘I shall be before long,’ he said.

  As the British prisoners had been released, their gaolers had taken their places and that had seemed to be the end of the prisoner problem. Unfortunately, it turned out there were more in the area than had been apparent and, cut off both from escape and food, these now had no alternative but to give themselves up.

  ‘Look,’ Grobelaar complained, bursting into Guidotti’s former office, ‘I’ve got two hundred Eyeties outside, crowding round my lorry trying to surrender. I don’t know what to do with them.’

  ‘Tell ’em to wait,’ Harkaway said calmly. ‘Get ’em to come back tomorrow.’

  The walls of the city were plastered with maps of security zones and areas forbidden to the Somalis, and Harkaway sent men round with black paint daubing big crosses over them. Inevitably a few of the brighter spirits among the Somalis added their own slogans. ‘Fuk Musiloni’ appeared almost immediately and the locals seemed to like the sound of it because it soon began to appear everywhere with assorted spellings, and was even chanted by the Somalis as they passed in the street – ‘Fuck Mussolini! Three Cheer for Kinky George and Six Column. Brititch army more nice than Italian army. We join Brititch army.’ A lot of them did, and before long the marketplace was full of marching squads of men holding Italian rifles and drilled by NCOs of the King’s African Rifles.

  The strange habits of the Italian army also began to appear as a red lorry was stopped, containing women from a brothel the Italians had set up. They also discovered General Barracca’s private caravan parked behind Guidotti’s headquarters, the whole ten tons of it, camouflaged and complete with bath and lavatory, together with large stocks of tinned fruit, tomatoes, brandy, wine, pasta, pâté de foie gras, sandbags, batteries, shells and mortar bombs, while in the courtyard of the Bank of Italy it was discovered that two hundred thousand paper lire had been burned.

  ‘Christ,’ Gooch mourned, ‘what couldn’t I have done with that lot!’

  Then it was discovered that three trucks which had been standing in the yard since they arrived were carrying twenty thousand Maria Theresa dollars nobody had known anything about, so Harkaway used them to hold a pay parade and solemnly handed one each to his delighted native soldiers.

  By this time, the Italians were no longer trying to be military. There was no longer any drama, no strutting with medals, ribbons and boots. Morale had gone completely with defeat and they were utterly devoid of spirit, still streaming in from the outposts round the town, some brought in by Somalis armed with ancient weapons, some entirely on their own. Harkaway disarmed them all, his Somalis behaving impeccably. They called him Odei-gi-Rer-ki – the Old Man of the Tribe – and couldn’t do enough for him. Under their supervision, an extra barbed wire cage was hurriedly constructed by the Italians themselves, who then solemnly marched inside and took themselves prisoner.

  Harkaway stared at them with contempt. ‘If I could only have had a week to train ’em,’ he said. ‘I could have held this bloody place for a year with sixty baboons!’

  The Somalis were no longer using the fascist salute that had been ordered and instead gave the graceful and courteous traditional greeting that was half a bow and half a wave. Harkaway’s Boys had long since learned to stick their thumbs up when they were pleased, in the manner of a good old-fashioned British swaddy, and Tully had taught his squads to shout ‘Balls to Mussolini!’ as they passed each other on the market square, something they did with great glee, wide grins splitting their black faces.

  ‘If you’re not careful,’ Harkaway said coldly, ‘you’ll have ’em singing “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary”.’

  It was a challenge, Tully had to admit, and within a few days they were. It was barely recognizable but it was ‘Tipperary’ – just!

  Every day now outside headquarters, there were zither-like instruments to greet the Europeans as they arrived, and single-string violins and bamboo flutes moaning out discordant music. The Italian insignia which had graced the town had all gone, all the Roman eagles, all the fasces, all the muscular slogans, all except the broken column Guidotti had set up opposite the flagp
ole, because in a way that was a trophy of war and an indication of the Italian defeat.

  ‘Pity we can’t wear the bloody thing on our drum cloths,’ Harkaway said.

  It was while he was studying it that Gooch arrived with a message from Tully.

  ‘He’s managed to contact Jijiga,’ he said. ‘He’s in touch with the South Africans. They’re asking when you can get Bidiyu. He wants to know what to reply.’

  Harkaway smiled. ‘Tell ’em,’ he said, ‘that we’ve already got it.’

  Nine

  ‘For God’s sake,’ the general growled, ‘who is this bloody Sixth Column?’

  His staff looked at each other, none of them able to offer anything that was in the slightest bit helpful, and the general threw up his hands in frustration. ‘And who’s this damn Colonel Harkaway? I’ve never heard of him. Any of you?’

  Nobody had.

  ‘And who are the Free British? Good God! Free British! It sounds a bit spurious to me.’

  ‘There’s nothing spurious, sir,’ Charlton pointed out, ‘about the way he got his men over the mountains to hit Barracca’s column.’

  The general had to admit the fact. ‘Could he be one of these white hunter types?’ he asked. ‘Some chap who’s been put in charge from Aden? There are a few with the South Africans. There’s even that renegade Austrian, with the name that sounds like Cami-knickers.’ The general smiled. ‘When he found a waterhole, the Springboks promptly christened it the Camisole.’

  There were still no answers and he went on, bewildered. ‘The bloody man only seems to obey orders when it suits him,’ he said. ‘Are you sure he couldn’t have come down from Abyssinia, Charlie? One of Wingate’s men. He’s an odd character, if ever there was one. Is this chap one of his lieutenants? Harkaway sounds the phoney sort of name they like to give themselves.’ The general paused, then made up his mind. ‘Charlie, get over to Bidiyu and make contact. For God’s sake, let’s find out once and for all who they are and what they’re up to. And if this chap Harkaway’s not an officer, for God’s sake let’s make him one before anyone finds out. It looks so damn bad to have civilians doing the army’s job as well as we can do it ourselves.’