Anthony had mounted his tripod on the roof of the AA Land Rover and was busily filming everything, including the groups of men wearing the colourfully plumed bush hats of the Sudanese Army. Five steamers had arrived that morning from the south with soldiers on leave from the war zone.
I heard the roar of the Hawks starting up and left the police chief, who was chatting to various VIPs and army men, and shouldered my way to the Hawks via many a bouncing breast and other such obstacles. Peter gave me a walkie-talkie, slammed his cockpit door shut and powered away down the bank, covering me and many onlookers in mud and slime.
Ecstatic cheering and a much repeated expletive, which sounded like an orgasmic ‘Wau’, greeted each aerobatic manoeuvre of the two Hawks, waltzing between hyacinth rafts and skimming ever closer to the hulls of the paddle steamers at top speed.
Many onlookers sat on overhanging tree branches, which bent ever lower under their weight. Others waded, or were pushed by those behind them, into the shallows.
I joined Anthony up on the cab roof, from where I could see the full size of the crowd. I estimated that some two thousand onlookers were pushing forward to get a better view of the Hawks. Dinka were there in groups, as were Nuer, Shilluk and the lighter-skinned Azande.
I shouted into my walkie-talkie telling Peter to do his first fast landing up the bank into our cordoned-off area. To the crowd it would look like a disaster, since boats don’t normally charge land at speed.
Everything then happened at once. Peter accelerated towards us, the police lost control of the great crowd as it surged forward, and the muddy landing zone was suddenly crawling with naked children more or less the same colour as the mud.
Peter had his windscreen wipers on as usual in order to clear the spray from his front window. Since by now the spray was muddy, he could see very little detail and failed to spot the children dead ahead on the landing beach. He carried on.
Peter’s diary, 21 March: I gave a demonstration of the hovercraft’s abilities to a large crowd at Malakal before we attempted to navigate the Great Sudd. As I was coasting fast into the landing space kept clear by whip-handling police, the crowd broke through and rushed excitedly towards me. It being impossible to stop dead in a hovercraft, I found myself in amongst them, knocking them over like ninepins. I couldn’t turn off my lift engine for fear of squashing someone, but the weight of people on the side pushed me down on top of some little boys flattened in the rush. This rather blackened my day as an eight year old got caught under one skid and was badly hurt.
I caught a glimpse of Peter’s horrified expression pressed close to the windscreen as he swung his steering wheel wildly in a vain attempt to avoid the bodies he now saw immediately ahead.
I heard screams and howls of pain above the clamour of the crowd. I jumped off the Land Rover and fought my way to the waterside and the Hawk. Peter had cut the drive motors but had left the lift motor going so as not to sink down into the mud. He had, by his last-minute manoeuvre, managed to avoid a closely packed group of children, but had scooped up some smaller boys and dragged them into the thick black mud beneath the machine’s skirt.
Nick joined me to scrabble in the slime, as did three policemen. Others tried to keep the crowd and anxious parents from pressing forward.
One policeman felt a small arm and pulled its owner out, still alive but bleeding badly from various cuts. A second boy was found and pulled onto the bank. He was vomiting, badly shocked and missing one ear which had been torn off.
The crowd began to chant in anger and the police, using short rhino whips, tried to disperse them.
With admirable speed, an old Peugeot van with a red cross on its side and with blue light flashing and klaxon clanging arrived on the scene. Three or four children were carried into the vehicle, and as it departed two policemen openly apprehended Peter, presumably to keep angry onlookers from attacking him.
The injured children were inspected at the hospital as we waited, and a new police officer, with impressive rank stripes on his uniformed shoulders, introduced himself as Inspector Achmed. He told us that Peter was under arrest and would be taken at once to the Malakal Police Station, while he, Achmed, would decide what to do with him. We should report to the police compound at once with all our convoy in order to avoid a possible Dinka lynch mob, as most of the injured children were of that tribe.
During a long wait for Achmed’s decision, we debated what we should do if Peter was sentenced to a jail term. Should we stay in Malakal to ensure that every effort was made to have him released and at least make sure that he was looked after and fed until he was released? That course would almost certainly condemn our already slim chances of following the Nile to its source because of the necessity of getting to the south of the swamp zone before the imminent rains submerged the river tracks.
I am ashamed to relate that the unofficial vote was that we would do our utmost to use our Khartoum contacts in the Sudanese government to have Peter repatriated to England, while the rest of us carried on south to complete the expedition.
Late that night Achmed appeared looking stressed. He had, it transpired, consulted long and hard with the local public prosecutor and a prominent Malakal Justice of the Peace. Together they had searched the relevant law books (still those of the previous British Administration) and had been unable to locate any law which dealt with hovercraft.
‘The accident,’ Achmed summarized, ‘was caused neither by a boat nor by a road vehicle, and since the British neglected to establish any legislation against hovering vehicles, we have telegraphed Khartoum to make a decision.’
Achmed explained that the law has to be seen to be especially fair in the south because the majority of the barristers are from the north and are therefore suspected of being government stooges. The law, due to an alarmingly high death rate from traffic accidents on the narrow muddy tracks in and around Malakal, was habitually strict with offenders and was wont to hand out stiff sentences.
Achmed had, however, now been advised by Khartoum that he had done well to publicize the arrest of the British pilot, which should satisfy any potential objectors. To our great relief he then announced that, since no existing law had been transgressed, Peter would be quietly and immediately released from jail and, with our armed escort, we must leave Malakal at once. Under no circumstances would it be safe for us to hover between Malakal and the Ugandan border, and there was every possibility that we would have to abandon all our vehicles over the next fortnight, depending on the timing of the rains and enemy activity. If that happened, our escort commander would decide what to do with us. Vehicles bogged in the Sudd would be un-boggable for at least seven months. Within a fortnight at most, the whole area would be a vast lake bigger than England.
Our escort lorries would be the very last government convoy to head south that year. We left Malakal that night with a highly relieved Peter, who would long remember his memories of his ‘time in a Sudanese prison’.
Steamers could reach Juba, the military headquarters of the Sudanese Army on the southern edge of the Sudd, in less than a week from Malakal once a navigable post-rains route through the Sudd swamp zone was established. A century before, Nile explorers had been considered extremely lucky to do the same journey in a month.
The river between Fenikang and Bor Forest is up to 21 miles wide in places, even during the dry season, and even when nobody tries to kill you en route it is one of the most inhospitable, hostile places on Earth.
Not even the very best river pilots who have traversed the length of the river many times after a long apprenticeship would be entirely confident of the best route, since the main watercourse is forever changing. A single storm can, in a few hours, alter the geography of the river by sundering great islands of rotting vegetation and forming new obstacles by submerging reeds, ambatch and cabbage under others during the passing of mini bore waves, crushing animals in the process.
Dead hippos, elephants and even crocodiles float by the steamers, their
bodies bloated in the suffocating heat, and herds of deer starve to death on floating islands that were previously joined to the mainland.
Hour after hour the potholed tracks that our Land Rovers followed led through bush country where no animal, bird or human was to be seen although, in a clearing, Achmed pointed out an overgrown Dinka rain shrine.
Most of the southern tribes are pagan, he explained, despite ongoing attempts by Khartoum to Islamize them. They believe in the power of appointed rainmakers to bring the rains whenever they are needed, so they treat them almost like gods except when they fail in their job and then the Dinka and Shilluk murder them, usually during an unusually long drought when they bury them alive or strangle them very slowly with ropes of plaited reed.
The Madi tribe roast bad rainmakers over embers and collect their body fat for use as a medicine, while the Bari lash their unsuccessful rainmakers to tree roots, cut open their bellies and allow birds to peck out their entrails.
Rain arrived at first in showers and then as a steady downpour. The track followed by our convoy quickly became as slippery as though it had been coated in grease. The lorry drivers were experienced and the large wheels on most of their vehicles were designed to cope with mud. Nonetheless, our convoy leader looked highly stressed and allowed no stops or any overnight rest. The soldiers, high on the lorry loads and huddled miserably together over dripping sub-machine guns, glared at us understandably each time we were the cause of a new delay.
One of the trailer suspensions snapped, so we abandoned it and helped twenty of the soldiers heave Baker high up on to the top of a load of petrol cans.
Progress was often only possible in first gear and four-wheel-drive through the quagmire of orange mud.
At four a.m. one night our convoy commander halted on a rare bit of high ground. This was Mogoch, and its five occupants assured us that the track would rapidly deteriorate to the south. We were still in Dinka territory, but near Mogoch, a sub-tribe of theirs, the Than, lived in the Sudd all year round on elevated patches of reed with fish and hippo meat for food.
Nine miles short of Bor we entered a dark forest, a notorious centre of activities by the Anya Nya rebel army who demanded independence from the Khartoum government. They were well armed by many countries and by their Christian neighbours in Uganda, as well as by various worldwide Roman Catholic movements.
In a clearing just before entering the forest, the convoy stopped, everyone jumped to the ground and the commander ordered all weapons to be loaded and cocked.
Achmed prepared his Sten gun and Nick made my 7.62 rifle ready with six full magazines to hand.
We were deep inside the forest when a huge storm broke overhead. The thick jungle foliage took the brunt of the lightning, the wind and the rain, but the noise was deafening. Each deepening pool that we ploughed through sent cascades of mud onto the windscreens but, even driving semi-blind, it was necessary to keep at maximum revs in second gear to avoid bogging in.
The forest suddenly cleared and a raised track announced Bor village, where Achmed guided our two Land Rovers and remaining trailer with Burton, all entirely mud-coloured, to the police compound.
Going through the forest on top of his host-lorry, Burton had been hit by an overhanging branch of a tree and damaged beyond repair. Sadly we left him with the District Commissioner, a well-educated northerner to whom Bor was the last of a long succession of outposts. He wrote to me a year later saying that Burton was performing a valuable job in his two-acre vegetable garden as a hippopotamus scarer.
Sadly, as I write this, many thousands of civilians are killing one another in Bor and in the surrounding villages as a result of the civil war which followed close on the heels of South Sudan’s hard-fought independence.
The history of the fighting goes back to Sudan’s independence from both Egyptian and British rule. Soon afterwards black Africans in the south, who were either Christians or followers of traditional beliefs, feared domination by the Muslim northerners. For example, they objected to the government declaring that Arabic was the only official language. In 1964 civil war broke out and continued until 1972, when the south was given regional self-government, though executive power was still vested in the military government in Khartoum.
In 1983 the government established Islamic law throughout the country. This sparked off further conflict when the Sudan People’s Liberation Army in the south launched attacks on government installations. Despite attempts to restore order, the fighting continued into the 1990s.
Eventually in 2011 South Sudan became a sovereign state which officially ended the conflict we had witnessed in the 1960s. Unfortunately the new country, inhabited by many distinct tribes, soon boiled over with ethnic jealousies, mainly between the Dinka and the Nuer. The troubles began in 2012 in the capital of Juba and soon spread north into the Sudd where for decades Dinka and Nuer had lived side by side in harmony.
My memories of 1969 Bor are of an oasis of well-ordered life on an island bounded by swamps to the north and west with, to the south, vast forests of game, home to the little-known Lotuko-speaking tribes. Bor means ‘ditch’ in Dinka, but the village is on ground high enough to avoid flooding, even at the highest water levels. Avenues of shady sycamores and squat bungalows surround a playground where townsfolk gossip, and this is overlooked by the police and the district commissioner who use the same offices and rules as their British predecessors did.
We had beaten the rains of the north Sudd and were nonplussed, or, in modern parlance, gobsmacked, to be told by the commissioner that we would, under no circumstances, be allowed to continue along the riverside tracks to Juba.
‘Why not?’ I asked him. ‘The President in Khartoum led us to believe that all would be well if we reached Bor before the rains came. And, by the skin of our teeth, we have.’
‘The government choose to believe what the army tell them and what is good propaganda. But I assure you, the very last road convoy for the year to or from Juba was last week, since when all the bridges have been blown or washed away by floods. This has happened by mid-March each year since 1965. But no trouble, my British friends, no worry, you are safe here and can go by river to Juba.’
‘But our vehicles and our remaining Hawk?’
‘Again, no problem. We will put them on board too. Meanwhile you are my guests in Bor, thanks be to God.’
‘Thanks be to God,’ I repeated, being well drilled from Oman. But my mind was racing. We had expected to reach the Ugandan border and fast roads within a week of making it to Bor, and thence to Nairobi by 30 March, the date when the RAF had agreed to fly Peter and Nick back to rejoin their regiments on time. Meantime, the rest of us would provide a hover demonstration on Lake Victoria in early April, as agreed with the British embassy in Nairobi.
The commissioner hoped that a suitable steamer heading south would call at Bor within a week. If it did, we could still make Nairobi and Lake Victoria on time. Resigned to unalterable circumstances, we stayed on in the commissioner’s bachelor home.
He played backgammon with Peter, discussed world politics with Charles and Nick, had his broken camera repaired by Anthony, and spent long hours telling me of the hot, humid and back-of-beyond postings that he had suffered.
The worst troublemakers and killers of all had been the Galla of Ethiopia, who castrate victims of feudal or tribal murder and tie their mummified parts to their war-belts. They kill women on the slightest suspicion of sorcery by tearing out their kidneys. If a person shows early signs of a contagious disease, they are burnt to death in their home with their entire family.
He showed me round ‘his village’, as he called it, and in the main communal cattle kraal, where the native hump-backed cows had curving horns some two feet long, he pointed at the deep gaping scars where large chunks of flesh had been torn from their flanks.
He put this down to wolves and hyenas, but stressed that anthrax was responsible for more cattle deaths than were marauders. And many cattle herders die of anthr
ax, an agonizing way to go. They love their cattle to the extent that, even though a wealthy tribesman may own two thousand head of cattle, he will seldom kill a cow for meat, preferring to eat his beef only when a cow dies – often of anthrax. Yet a few hundred miles to the south, their Masai cousins casually slice tasty chunks of raw meat from living oxen, avoiding only the vital arteries of the poor beasts.
Most of the Dinka we met looked content and healthy – a tall, handsome tribe. The men, on reaching puberty, have their lower incisors knocked out and their tribal markings cut into their cheeks and foreheads. Their traditional enemy were the Moralay cattle raiders, who also kidnapped women and children, sometimes from villages over a hundred miles from their own. The Moralay are notorious for a high incidence of syphilis.
The commissioner reserved top marks for the Shilluk, the finest craftsmen in the south. Their paramount chief is traditionally ‘retired’ when old age renders him impotent or generally ineffective, and his wives then throttle him in his sleep. That way a younger ruler will take over, to the benefit of all.
At dawn on 27 March, with Nick and Peter getting decidedly nervous about becoming ‘absent without leave’ from their regiments, we woke to hear the welcome sound of a ship’s siren from the direction of the river.
Struggling into shorts, for we slept naked under nets, we ran down to the Nile to find a small tugboat towing two fat barges laden with Bor’s last shipment of dourra flour prior to the flood season. As soon as it was unloaded, the skipper told the commissioner that he must take us to Juba without delay.
This was our last chance to avoid a very long stint in Bor, but the skipper refused to take our two Land Rovers on his barges. He seemed to think that the Anya Nya might believe that they were bound for the government troops and would shoot up his ship.
The commissioner saved our bacon by various (to us unintelligible) arguments which eventually changed the skipper’s mind. So long as we provided the labour without involving his crew, we could lash a vehicle to each barge once all the dourra was unloaded.
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