Valley of Bones

by Michael Gruber

  The next morning dawned red and off to the west we saw that the cloud that had lingered so long on the distant rim of the world had grown and become black and purple and full of lightning and there was a little wind. That was also the day we woke to find the town occupied by Baggara murahileen. They had captured or killed our few soldiers, finding them sleeping in the dawn, and had chased off the rest, and taken the town. Now they were spreading through the settlements and the huts, grabbing children and women and beating or shooting the men that resisted. They were hard-faced black men in turbans and robes and the scraps of uniforms, but they were well armed with assault rifles. Amid the screams and shots and crying we could hear the sound of thunder coming closer. As I ran into the courtyard of Wibok fort the first heavy drops began to fall and the sky lowered and became black.

  There were a couple of dozen of them there, all of them had Kalashnikovs. Several SPLA soldiers lay dead. One was crawling away slowly like a crushed beetle, nobody paying him any attention. The Baggaras were assembling their catch, girls and young boys and tying their hands with commo wire or rope. I saw the whole girls’ choir bound and weeping. There was a battered Toyota pickup parked by the corner of the fort, with a Russian 12.7 machine gun mounted in the bed of the truck, and behind the gunner stood the man in charge, a big confident-looking man in a camo uniform, shouting orders.

  The rain had started in earnest now and the commander told his driver to move the truck under the tin eaves out of the downpour. I climbed up on an oil drum and cried over the sound of the rain and thunder Arabic words I had memorized in Rome: In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate. O believers! Dispute not with the People of the Book save in the fairer manner, except for those of them that do wrong; and say, ‘We believe in what has been sent down to us, and what has been sent down to you; our God and your God is One, and to Him we have surrendered.’ ”

  I spoke the holy words of the sura in the slow chant of tartil so my words would carry better. I saw wet black faces under turbans turn to me, amazed. They were not used to hearing Quran from people who looked like me, and never from a woman. I continued: hasn’t the Prophet, peace be unto him, said, God is gentle and loves gentleness in all things. O believers, is this gentle? Stealing children? Is this what men do? No! Cowards and idolators do this, and assaulting the People of the Book is forbidden. Hear me now, who speaks in God’s name. From this day all the land on this side of the rivers is proscribed you. Go to your own lands in peace and raise your cattle and your sons. Those who do not will meet death and their souls will be ladled with boiling water in Gehenna.

  But the commander called me a whore of an unbeliever and they beat me to the ground with their rifle butts and kicked me into the mud. The rain was now coming in sheets and the thunder was an unremitting roar. I rose to my feet and cried out again, Let fire from God consume you and blacken your bones! Today, this very hour, demons shall eat your flesh in Hell. The curse of God be upon you and upon seven generations of your sons!

  I saw the commander speak to his gunner and the muzzle of the 12.7 swiveled around to point at me and then the lightning struck the fort.

  A great thick white bolt of fire, deafening all who heard it, traveled down from the tin roof through the drainpipe to the tin eaves and struck the roof of the pickup. The driver, the gunner, and the commander were instantly turned into smoking corpses, and all the ammunition in the belt and cartridge box went up at once, tracer rounds flying through the air. The murahileen were yelling and running around and a number were knocked down by the big bullets.

  Nor did the lightning cease. North Florida has plenty of lightning and I’d seen some doozies in my time there, but I never set eyes on the match of this. The whole fort glowed blue from the strikes. Balls of white fire ran along the ground, and the sky was so black and the rain so heavy that everything seemed to be in stop motion like at a rock concert when they do the strobes the air so thick with ozone it hurt to breathe. I kept on yelling out the most bloodthirsty parts I could recall from both the Quran and the Psalms about the wrath of God and the punishment awaiting evildoers although it’s hard to believe anyone heard me. I can’t swear I saw a militiaman point his rifle at me and then explode into a pillar of flame, but it could’ve happened. Nearly everyone who was there saw wonders, one of which at least was real: aside from the SPLA shot in the initial attack, not one of our people was harmed. At last there was a God-almighty crack as a bolt struck the right-hand tower and the gas tank of the pickup went off in a smoky fireball at the same time and the whole tower came crashing down like Jericho.

  The militia fled on horse and foot, leaving their dead and wounded. When they were gone and we were picking ourselves up, tending our own wounded and unbinding our captives, the rain lifted and out came the sun sending beams like church-painted heavens down on us, raising steam. It was like the creation of the world. Then I saw that the fall of the tower had ripped a hole in the building’s side clear down to grade, and there was a triangle of black emptiness showing at the corner of the building.

  Now everyone in Wibok believed that the Brits had filled the old dungeon with rubble and poured concrete in to seal it off, but I saw that this was not the case. They had poured concrete yes, but over a steel mesh, making a false floor. Beneath this was a void. I grabbed a boy and sent him to ask at the hospital for a flashlight and when he returned I sent him through the hole to see what was there. He came back out, covered in dust and cobwebs, and when I asked him what was there he said, boxes and things wrapped in cloth and there were guns too.

  I said out loud, although there was no one to understand me, a Depot of the Damned, and I knew that God had sent this to us in our need. After what had just happened, of course, everyone was anxious to do my bidding. I directed men with pick and shovel to widen the gap and then went down into it myself. It was clear to me what this was. All over East Africa in the British days there were army units and army units have quartermaster sergeants and these had matériel in excess of regulation or broken under embarrassing circumstances that could neither be thrown away (for what if an officer should find it in some native souk with the broad arrow of British army bold upon it) nor returned to whence it came, and these quartermaster sergeants had said to their corporals I never want to see that bloody—————again and off it had gone to an obscure place. No place more obscure than Wibok, and when the order came in 1956 to pull out and give the country back to the niggers, and at the same time orders to seal up the old barracoon so the niggers couldn’t use it to enslave other niggers, why there was a gift from God. The crap was shoveled down into the cellars, landing mesh was dumped on top of it and concrete poured in afterward, all done at night surely, without any nosy natives looking. And off they went to Blighty singing a merry tune.

  This is what we found:

  121 tools, entrenching, w/pick

  200 shirts, undress, cotton, khaki, other ranks

  650 sandbags, burlap, in bales

  18,000 rounds .303 ball ammunition, in cans of 500, stamped “expired/for disposal”

  12 Lee-Enfield Mk III rifles, in crates, in Cosmoline, crates stamped 1918 Aldershot

  8 Lee-Enfield Mk V rifles, marked “unserviceable” in yellow paint

  2 Mk III Bren guns, ditto

  31 Bren gun magazines, empty

  4 five-hundred-yard spools of concertina barbed wire

  6 binoculars, Mk II, stamped 1943, all with at least one lens broken

  2 Very pistols in boxes

  6 Very flare sets in sealed boxes

  3 immersion heaters, gasoline burning

  12 whistles, chromed, NCO, for the use of

  16 Wilkinson blade bayonets, 17 inch, w/sheath

  122 helmets, steel, Mk II, 1916 pattern

  10 machetes w/sheath, marked Sam’l. Kitchin & Co., Sheffield, 1917

  214 cloths, ground, rubberized, 6″ by 4″

  plus boxes of metallic junk, webbing gear, bandoliers, rotting rubber products, unit s
houlder flashes, chains, ropes, camouflage netting, tin cans bulging with bacteria, radios dropped off the back of trucks, puttees, various optical equipment of unknown function, holed buckets, left boots, etc.

  We brought it all out of its cave and spread it on the ground cloths and the people gathered around and stared at it amid the rising vapors and the acrid stench from the burnt truck. In the next days I showed the people how to clean off the Cosmoline with gas and how to grease and oil the weapons with the cleaning kits that came with each new one. I loaded and test fired each weapon. One of the Mk V’s really didn’t work, and one of the Brens was missing its bipod, but both of them fired. Not much, but my memory spat out that in 1945 the Viet Cong had owned three rifles and a pistol. I had the matériel taken into the fort with Nyoung and his remaining men to guard it. Then I went to the Dinka to prepare them for war.

  The Dinka are great warriors, which means that they know nothing of war, although they are brave as saints in battle. Through yet another miracle, Dol Biong got it, my mélange of Clausewitz and The Combat Leader’s Field Guide, eleventh edition, me pumping the germs of both volumes into his head as we sat together night after night after the militia raid. Then we went to the Peng elders, and he spoke and I sat and radiated spiritual energy, which is the only authority the Dinka recognize. The typical Dinka war starts with an affront; the tribe gathers, organized in age-set platoons. They beat drums and dance and make up dor, their war songs insulting the enemy and praising themselves. Then they run singing at the enemy tribesmen, with the women alongside them carrying food and extra weapons and they fight hand to hand. Wounded enemy are always killed. It is considered shameful to ambush and fight from cover. If they prevail they carry off the enemy’s cattle. It is very plains-of-Troy, magnifique mais ce n’est pas la guerre against troops armed with Kalashnikovs.

  The elders conversed and argued and at last they said we could have an age-set, the one called the Lion-men, aged seventeen, to train in the new way. Dol told them this would not compromise their dheeng, that ever-present consideration among Dinka men, this too a part of the new dispensation. Then I said I wanted a girl age-set too. More arguing, but I was after all now the voice of Nhialic, and they agreed and said the Tawny Lion Cubs could join our war. Dol picked the twenty most likely of each sex and we went into basic training.

  They were good kids and easy to train, in perfect physical shape to begin with, agile and tireless, and they took to marks-manship with delight and impressive skill. They were naturals with the machete and the bayonet. The hardest thing to teach them was silence and patience. Dinkas love to sing and make noise; they were not born ambushers. But the most remarkable thing about them was their ability to run. Any of them could’ve wiped the floor with a top-ranked AAU college track team, and that with a full combat load. I gave them two months. When they could maneuver and dig in and establish a perimeter and fire twelve shots into a number ten can at three hundred yards in less than a minute, and I had picked out the best of them as squad leaders, we took up our pathetic arms and went after the murahileen.

  It is very demoralizing even for trained soldiers to be sniped at long-distance by an enemy you can’t see, and the tribal militias were mere bandits. They fired lots of bullets at random from their AKs and some of them charged us and we cut them down with the Brens. In a month we had cleared the whole country to the east of the rivers and took over two thousand head of cattle, as the Lord had promised, me riding ahead of the great herds on a black Baggara stallion, spoils of war, to the cheers and singing of all the tribe. And I divided the cattle among the fighters without regard to sex or clan and the people were angry because women had never owned wealth before, but I told them this is the new cieng given you by God who gave you the victory, and they listened, for my word was law.

  Yes my word was law among the Peng and my word was dig dig with our Brit shovels, air raid shelters at Wibok and at every village, because I knew the militia would tell the GOS that there was a powerful SPLA force in the area, because how else could the mighty murahileen be defeated? Not by slaves.

  One morning I awoke to the sound of gunfire and saw that some of my kids were shooting at a plane, which fortunately they didn’t hit because it was the Society Fokker from Pibor and things were falling out of it on chutes, including a man, who turned out to be Peter Mulvaney.

  He had come to collect Nora’s ashes, and when he heard what I was doing here he insisted on coming. He said let the dead bury their dead, which was something Nora would have said if the situation was reversed and he asked what can I do for you and I said, I have warriors but I need infantry I need a battalion of infantry for I wish to hold this country. And he looked around at my people for a day or two and said it can be done, warriors can be turned into soldiers, it worked with the Irish and the Scots after all. So I taught him enough Dinka to give orders and insults and compliments, it was nearly like having Nora again, I was so happy, but then I asked Peter how come they let him use their plane to deliver supplies to us and he said you have friends in high places, by which I knew that the prioress general had heard about what I was doing and approved, and I thought another betrayal, Nora would have hated all this, I think, and I prayed for her forgiveness.

  He was much better than I was, being a pro and all and he dressed the best of them in shirts from the Depot of the Damned and found packages of shoulder flashes and made half of them the Somerset Light Infantry and half the Royal Inniskilling Fusileers, which were the badges we had, divided them without regard to sex, age-set, or clan and he made them mock fight one another and compete in various ways, you have to break down any identity they have except the regimental he said and it was true, but painful all the same for them, church and regiment were the loyalties we wanted and also of course to Dol Biong, who understood the need for it, God bless him. And of course there were more recruits than we could handle now, and our original forty became the officers of them.

  A month went by and then they came just after dawn rumbling up to Wibok: a truck full of infantry with a 12.7 mounted on the cab, then the command car, a Humber Pig 4×4, then the gun and the other three-tonners. They stopped about five hundred yards from the fort and began blasting away, and for the first time I heard the terrible sound of what was to be my gun shooting at me for the first and last time. Well this is no fun, Peter said, that’s an L70, it’ll take down this fort in about ten minutes and I said let’s get it, then. He took a squad of our best shots and I took the rest of our army and went out the back of the town and we made wide circles in both directions and of course they had no perimeter security at all. Peter’s group sniped all the gunners off the gun before they knew what was happening and then shot down all the officers. Most third world armies are specialized for shooting helpless civilians and this one was no exception. Leaderless, they ran around and fired in all directions, showing that automatic firepower is of no use if you aren’t hitting anything. It was over in forty minutes. The bearers came up, hacked the wounded to death with their machetes and stripped the corpses of boots, ammo, and weapons. We had two dead and ten wounded. In exchange we had the equipment of an infantry company and my gun. God forgive me I thought it was a good deal at the time.

  Shortly after this, late in the day, we heard what sounded like artillery fire away to the east. Ride to the sounds of the guns is good doctrine, so we got into our new trucks and headed in that direction. There, about forty-five miles from the Akobo River and the Ethiopian border, we found an oil exploration team. The explosions we’d heard had been from seismic probes. The team had hired guards, but these all ran away when they saw who we were. The head of the team, Dr. Terry Richardson, a Canadian, invited me into the big RV he used as an office. It was air-conditioned, although it was the rainy season and cool for Sudan. He said they had not found anything significant as yet, and we talked a little about the exploration business, a civilized conversation until I told him that he was a prisoner of war and that I was confiscating all his gear. He
said I couldn’t do that, as he had permits from the government of Sudan, and I had to tell him that he was no longer in Sudan. I believe that was the first time I declared the independence of my people.

  By the spring of 1937, Mother General Roland, now aged eighty-five, understood that she was gravely ill and might not survive the year. She consequently did two things: first she went to Rome and met with Cardinal Ratti to seek his advice. At that period, most politically aware people understood that another European war was drawing near. Roland feared that, unlike the last one, it would be largely unsympathetic to nuns roaming the battlefields and caring for civilians, while it was likely, on the evidence of the Spanish Civil War then in progress, that there would be far more civilian casualties than ever before. The cardinal promised to consult his brother Pope Pius XI on the diplomatic aspects of this problem. Privately, he began to make available to the Society’s leadership relevant pieces of intelligence gathered from the excellent Vatican diplomatic service.

  Her second action was to call a convocation of all the Sisterhood. On May 17, 1938, over seven hundred sisters—all who could be spared from the work—gathered at the Mother House in Nemours outside of Paris. Most of them were young women to whom Marie-Ange de Berville was a legend, and the ancient woman, their general, who now addressed them, was hardly less so. The speech she gave was never published, but so impressive was her delivery and so prescient were her remarks that many there would be able to reconstruct it later on. The present writer had the privilege of attending and recalls it well, although in the interests of perfect honesty, it must be said that a speech that purports to foretell the future is subject to modification in accordance with how events actually turn out. She predicted the European war, and the war came. She predicted that the women there assembled would find themselves belonging to nations at war with one another, and so it turned out. She predicted that civilians would bear the brunt of the fighting at a level not seen in Europe since the Thirty Years War, and this happened, too, although to an extent not even the pessimistic Mother General could have imagined. She spoke of the propensity of modern states to make war on civilians as a matter of policy, nor did she blanch at naming the culprits. She said that the Spanish and Italian and German Sisters might have to defy their governments in order to fulfill their vows of protection, and might have to discard their habits and work in secret. She closed the speech with an admission that she was dying and that it fell to them to elect her successor.