A Funny Place to Hold a War

by John Harris

Molyneux headed for his office. ‘Get me Cazalet,’ he said to the clerk.

  Kitchen stared after him. ‘What’s got into the old man?’ he asked. ‘He sounds as though he’s got something on his mind.’

  The station intelligence officer, busy with Kitchen’s report, looked up. ‘So he has. And so will you have before long. You’d better nip off and get some grub. You might be flying again in an hour or two’s time.’

  Three

  Lorenz was still cursing the rain and the onset of darkness when he became aware of the approach of soldiers from the south. He was wet through after the downpour and wondering if they dared light a fire to dry themselves when one of his men brushed through the dripping foliage.

  ‘Herr Leutnant! There are troops moving through the bush towards us.’

  For a moment Lorenz wondered if it were Heidegger joining him, then he realized it couldn’t be, because his informant was pointing to the south. He remembered then that he’d seen a lot of activity among the flying boats across the lagoon and realized that somehow someone had guessed Heidegger’s plan and had landed troops at Mamo. Any moment now, they could expect them where he’d set up the machine guns – perhaps even at the mine at Yima!

  He glanced at his watch, suddenly nervous. It was dark now, humid shadows filled with the musky smell of crocodiles and the steady drip of rainwater from the trees. There would be no more firing until daylight, he realized, and obviously the most sensible thing was to return to the mine and warn Heidegger.

  He arrived in a hurry. Carrying the heavy Spandaus, he and his men were sweating profusely and covered with mud.

  ‘Troops,’ he panted. ‘Moving up from Mamo! We had to pull back!’

  He caught Magda Fallada’s eyes on him and put on a little act of courageous desperation, the look of a man facing terrible odds.

  ‘Does that mean we’re no longer within range of the flying boats?’ Heidegger asked.

  ‘It means just that,’ Lorenz said. ‘We ought to be heading for French Guinea, not hanging about here.’

  Heidegger gave him a cold look. ‘We haven’t finished our job yet,’ he said. ‘We’d be failing in our duty if we gave up now.’

  ‘Are you hoping for a Knight’s Cross, Herr Kapitänleutnant? We can’t hope to hold this place.’

  ‘We can do quite a lot,’ Heidegger snapped. ‘We have the men. We also have diggers, lorries and tractors. Have them parked about the buildings. They’re heavy and will give us armour-plate shelter. And be quick. If they’re already organizing against us, I’d like to know what they intend. Get along towards Makinkundi. The Dutch normally keep a lighter alongside the loading jetty. We could rig a machine gun on that and move downstream. We could do a lot of damage before they became aware of us.’

  ‘It would take us all night to get everything aboard,’ Lorenz said. ‘And we couldn’t do it after daylight. It would be suicide in daylight.’

  Heidegger looked at him coldly. ‘If dying worries you, Lorenz,’ he said, ‘there’s always the escape route down the Bic.’

  In fact, the Bic was already occupied.

  The pinnace had made good time downstream with an ebbing tide and they had progressed round the corner opposite Kupr into the entrance to the river Rokel until they had arrived at its tributary, the Bic.

  Against the dark background of the hills, the entrance to the river looked like a cave, a black hole in the searchlight’s beam among the paler shadows of the crowding mangroves. As the patches of mud were picked up, Corporal Fox eyed them dubiously from the wheelhouse.

  ‘I’m not going in there till daylight, sir,’ he said to the padre. ‘It’s too tricky.’

  It was pitch dark as he shut down the engines and dropped the anchor. As they swung on the lifting sea, the rain that had frustrated Lorenz reached them. At first it was just a few heavy spots plink-plonking on the roof of the wheelhouse, then the heavens opened and, the men crowded on deck, new to this sort of weather, tried to cram below. Fox quietened the grumblings by offering tea, and the few mugs they had on board were handed round and shared, though it was impossible for more than a few to sit down.

  Eventually the rain stopped and they could see the stars and Fox ordered everybody out on deck again. One of the new arrivals promptly celebrated the event by falling overboard, and only Feverel’s quickness with the boat-hook prevented him from being drowned. He was shoved below and given another mug of tea to quieten his complaints.

  ‘I’ve lost my specs,’ he said loudly. ‘I had ’em on when I fell in.’

  Fox sighed. It was always the same with flight mechs, riggers, fitters, photographers, electricians, wireless ops and clerks. They were always falling in the water. Normally it stopped everybody getting too bored, but they could have done without it at this moment.

  The day came suddenly. A bright blinding glare rose behind the hills and sent a shaft of flame to touch the high misty blueness of early daylight, then the sun itself appeared, a yellow eye staring across the curve of the earth. As it grew lighter, they saw the tide had covered the narrow mud-flats and then that a small ship was lying a mile or two offshore.

  ‘Where’s she come from?’ Fox asked. ‘What’s she doing there?’

  There was no sign of life ashore, though they could see crocodiles on the mud further up the creek and could hear the screams of monkeys and the raucous cries of birds. The sun beat down on them like a brassy gong, swallowing all the moisture that had been left on the decks by the rain.

  The padre, who was supposed to be in command, held what he tried to think of as a conference on the foredeck with Fox and Feverel. The operation was supposed to be an inter-services affair. The navy were looking after the entrances to the river Bunce. The army at Mamo were to advance at first light along the river bank towards Yima, while more soldiers – when they arrived – were to push down from Hawkinge. The RAF were watching Makinkundi, while the pinnace, carrying thirty five men, was to poke its way up the river Bic from the sea. The operation had been buttoned up quickly enough, but it was still a typical West African lash-up that went with the four-inch nails through the swivels in the chain cable of the aircraft buoys. Telephones were non-existent and the radio linkage was uncertain, but at least all the aircraft had been refuelled and bombed up, though to get them off the water and into the air when the panic button was finally pressed was going to be a full-time job. The alarm had come at a distinctly inconvenient time, and it was a strange sensation to the padre – to be acting as a general.

  None of them was sure what they were supposed to do but it was finally decided that they should move further up-river and that Feverel should explore ahead of them with the little punt. They were just lowering it into the water when they discovered that the falling tide had stranded the pinnace with its bow on an unexpected mud bank.

  ‘Oh, charming,’ Fox said bitterly, staring at the chart with a frustrated expression. ‘There’s no bloody mud bank marked here. We’ll have to stick out a kedge. There’s plenty of water around if we can reach it.’

  The boat-hook and the lead line appeared and, watched by their landlubber passengers who were intrigued by these nautical mysteries, they went round the pinnace taking soundings. It was hot now and the men sitting on the hatch cover, many of them beginning to suffer the first tortures of prickly heat, couldn’t rouse much enthusiasm for what was going on.

  ‘We here for keeps?’ one of them asked, scratching at the livid red rash that had appeared on his chest.

  ‘Not on your life,’ Feverel said, mud-spattered but brisk despite the temperature.

  They found a channel from the stern to deep water, and an anchor was lowered to the punt and attached to the winch hawser, then the punt chugged away and the anchor splashed down.

  As the pinnace’s six-cylinder diesels went astern, the winch was also started. The sound of the engines grew louder and the watching airmen, puce in the face under the heavy equipment, moved nearer for a better view.

  ‘Keep away from th
at hawser,’ Fox shouted. ‘If it parts, it’ll have your goolies off.’

  There was a hurried shuffle forward to safety and Fox groaned. ‘Not forrard,’ he said. ‘That’s the bit we’re trying to get off the mud.’ He gave the padre a harassed look. ‘Sir, can you get ’em in the hold? As far aft as you can. It might raise the bow.’

  The telegraph pinged and the bight of the hawser leading to the kedge lifted from the water with a spatter of drops and a loud twang as the strain came on. As the engines went full astern a dirty grey-looking froth floated forward from where the screws churned uselessly at the mud. Fox cut the engines and went aft for a look. In the hold, the padre had everybody lined up, harness, rifles, ammunition and all, and a lot of hot bewildered faces stared up at Fox.

  ‘Try jumping up and down,’ he suggested.

  ‘What for?’ The inevitable question came.

  ‘It might help get us off,’ the padre said. ‘Now be quiet and do as I tell you.’

  Feeling stupid, they all jumped together.

  ‘Again.’

  ‘Side to side now, sir,’ Fox said. ‘Might roll the bow in the mud and clear a passage.’

  In no time the padre had the bewildered landlubbers moving from port to starboard and back again. As the engines and the winch started once more, the wire tautened slowly again and then came out of the water, vibrating madly. The splice began to twist and the wire was like a thin steel bar, humming and singing over the towing horse. The pinnace trembled and the water from the stern raced along the side as if she were moving, rushing and boiling as it surged forward.

  ‘Come on, you bastard bloody boat!’ Fox was muttering savagely to himself in the wheelhouse, imagining the shame of having to admit spending the whole period of the operation stranded on the mud. ‘And let’s have those stupid sods jumping again, you silly little vicar!’

  A message, somewhat more polite, was passed to the padre and, as the airmen started to jump up and down again, a shout came from the punt.

  ‘She’s moving!’

  There was a different kind of shiver from the pinnace this time, then the hawser dipped suddenly, splashing into the water with a loud whack.

  ‘Haul it in,’ Fox shouted, weak with relief. ‘She’s moving!’

  He shut down the engines and they began to haul themselves off with the winch alone, the pinnace moving quite distinctly now, sliding off the mud, slowly at first but gathering speed all the time. Then, settling herself like a duck taking to the water, she was finally properly afloat and swinging round, alive once more.

  A faint derisive cheer came from the hold.

  Because Cazalet was off the air, to Molyneux there seemed no alternative but to go to Makinkundi personally and let the men there know exactly what to expect.

  ‘Keep your ears open, George,’ he warned Mackintosh. ‘I’m taking a radio. Inform me if anything happens. I can be back in three-quarters of an hour if necessary.’

  With daylight, Maxey had brought his men back to the loading jetty to join the party from the second seaplane tender. From the jetty, Molyneux could just see the roofs of the mine through the trees. He looked at his watch. The biggest anti-submarine sweep they’d ever been called on to deliver was just over the horizon and he was terrified of losing his machines. But he was also worried that the signal to go would arrive at any moment and he had the uneasy feeling that he was in the wrong place again. His position was at the base but, since he’d started this half-baked operation, he felt he ought to have some part in it.

  He turned to the men carrying the radio. ‘How about setting it up in that bar there?’ he said. ‘Then we can be in contact with the base.’

  The two wireless operators, both new to West Africa, placed the set on a table just inside the doorway. One end of the aerial was attached to a pole in the roof and they were looking round for somewhere to attach the other end when Ginger’s Lizzie gestured to a gas lamp in the middle of the village.

  The wireless operators stared in amazement. ‘Does it light?’ they asked.

  They were still wondering when the set came to life. It was Mackintosh.

  ‘We’ve just had that chap Cazalet on the telephone,’ he announced. ‘There’s no sign of the bastards headed north. I told him we’d been under fire and that we thought now that they were holed up at the mine. He decided we were dead right. He’s already on the way back, but he’s having trouble. There’s a bridge washed out at Kamimbo but he’ll have the West African boys there as soon as he can. He asked if you could keep the bastards busy.’

  Molyneux frowned. ‘Who does he think I am?’ he asked. ‘Rommel?’

  Cazalet arrived with a rush. The lorries were packed with eager black men in the khaki uniforms and bush hats of the West African Frontier Force. The rear was brought up by a British sergeant in a Bren gun carrier – old because all the new ones were in North Africa, but still serviceable, its gun capable of doing a great deal of damage.

  As they stopped, the radio started cheeping and the British sergeant took down the message and headed for Cazalet’s car. Cazalet glanced at the flimsy and looked up at Hubbard, the lieutenant in command of the black soldiers who was bending over a map spread on the bonnet. ‘Done it,’ he said. ‘The chaps who were landed at Mamo from Freetown flushed out the buggers with the machine guns. They stopped firing.’ He lifted his head to cock an eye at the first streaks of daylight appearing over the cotton trees and palms.

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Let’s go.’

  He stood back, watching the black soldiers climb into the lorries. They arrived in the army straight from the bush, brave, loyal, superstitious and childlike, qualities they soon lost when they reached the ports where the coastal Creoles carried their Bibles to hide their breaches of the law. They were proud of being soldiers and enjoyed showing their paces on the dusty parade ground where, every evening, an African sergeant drilled them fiercely. The watching black crowd enjoyed it, too, and it was Lieutenant Hubbard’s habit to punish his men for their misdemeanours by striking their names from the drill roster so that they sulked in their huts until allowed to join in again.

  Growling slowly down the road, the lorries stopped fifty yards short of the mine and the soldiers deployed on both sides of the road that ran up to the gate. It was constructed of heavy timbers criss-crossed with barbed wire and was firmly shut and locked. Beyond it, the mine buildings reached out towards the river Bic.

  Cazalet was still studying them when Inspector Yorke arrived, Sergeant Laminah grinning all over his face at the speed at which they had travelled. As Yorke informed him of what had been done, Cazalet studied the barbed-wire fence. Yorke watched him, wondering what was in his mind. ‘Are you going in?’ he asked.

  ‘That’s the general idea,’ Cazalet said. ‘There’s bound to be a bit of old iron flying about.’

  ‘Well,’ Yorke said, ‘that creates a bit of a snag. We want no more riots and a few dead men could start one. I’m told there are fifty or more Africans from Makinkundi of yesterday’s shift still in there.’

  ‘Not now there ain’t,’ a voice said from behind them. ‘We’ve got ’em out.’

  As they turned they saw Ginger Donnelly watching them, his ugly face interested, as shadowy, dusty-looking and scruffy as usual. He was leaning on his long forked stick and under his arm he held a deep gourd-shaped raffia and cane basket in red, black and yellow patterns within which it was possible to hear something moving.

  ‘Where did you come from?’ Cazalet asked.

  ‘Just passin’,’ Ginger said. ‘On me way down the road there.’ He indicated the basket. ‘Got this to deliver.’

  ‘And what did you mean when you said you’ve got them out. Whom have you got out?’

  ‘The shift workers.’

  ‘Where’ve they gone?’

  Ginger gestured. ‘Up there. Makinkundi. They waded through the swamps. They’ve gone ’ome.’

  ‘Who sent them home?’

  ‘I did.’

  Caz
alet looked at Ginger’s grubby figure. He wore no badges on his muddy khaki and it was impossible to tell whether he were military or civilian. ‘And how did you accomplish that miracle?’ he asked.

  ‘Put a fetish on the place,’ Ginger said. ‘They was scared of bein’ shot if they nipped outa the gate.’

  ‘Why didn’t they go out by the river then?’

  ‘Scared o’ crocodiles.’

  ‘They’ve seen crocodiles before.’

  ‘Yeh, but in Makinkundi they think they’re magic. So we told ’em a curse ’ad been put on the mine and if they stayed where they was their arms and legs’d fall off and they’d break out in warts or turn into frogs.’

  ‘You can do that?’

  Ginger shrugged. ‘Not reelly. In fact, there wasn’t no curse. I just got the witch doctor to say there was. He’s a pal o’ mine. I know all the witchies, snake charmers, magicians and ju-ju boys round ’ere. They decided to take a chance on the crocs. They’re all in Makinkundi now. It wouldn’t work for me, o’ course. I don’t believe in curses. But they do. They drop dead if the old witchy says they’ve got to. I expect we’ll ’ave to get the fetish took off when you’ve finished or they’ll never go back.’

  Cazalet eye him for a moment. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘that seems to be that worry disposed of.’ He turned to the British sergeant. ‘Ask Lieutenant Hubbard to let me have the loud-hailer, Sergeant, please.’

  The loud-hailer was brought up and he blew into it a couple of times. ‘Hope they’re not difficult,’ he observed. ‘But I think I’m being optimistic. I notice they’ve parked all their diggers and lorries very strategically, and it’s a good bullet that’ll go through a bulldozer. Ah, well…’ he raised the loud-hailer and directed it towards the group of huts ‘…here goes!’ He blew twice more and began to speak into the microphone.

  ‘Jan van der Pas Company!’ His words boomed out, echoing among the trees. ‘This is the British army. We wish to enter your compound. Please open the gate.’