The Biafra Story

by Frederick Forsyth

  Adekunle later made the Rivers pay a stiff price for their loyalty to Biafra. As Ojukwu had predicted, the territory was impossible to defend against a force equipped with scores of boats and ships. Defending units had to be split into penny-packets to watch every spit of land and island. The Nigerians could pick their spot and move in off the sea. By the middle of July landings had been made at Degema, Yenagoa, Brass and a score of other places. On the mainland Nigerian infantry forces moved through Igritta, Elele and Ahoada, to capture the rest of the ‘Rivers State’.

  So far Colonel Adekunle had never operated outside the minorities areas. He had never set foot in Ibo-land, while the other two Nigerian Divisions had never operated outside Ibo-land except for the First Division’s campaign to capture Ogoja Province. In some ways therefore, despite his enormous weapons advantage, Adekunle had had it easy.

  This is not to say that fighting was any less severe in the minorities areas than in Ibo-land, nor that most of the chiefs of the minority groups did not remain loyal to Biafra. But in the minorities areas it was easier to find dissidents prepared to collaborate either through genuine conviction or desire for advantage, and these Nigerian agents had done enormous work guiding the Nigerian forces and revealing to them hidden byways which only the local people could know.

  It had also been easier to introduce into the minorities areas some weeks before an attack scores of agents imported from the Eastern minority communities in Lagos. Some of these agents nevertheless defected once they got among their own people again, and told of large sums of money being seeded around the minority areas to buy over the local chiefs, of agents provocateurs preaching hatred of the Ibos, and of threats of violent reprisal in the event of the local people remaining loyal to Biafra when the forthcoming attack took place.

  The techniques were not unsuccessful in some parts, though few of the original promises made were ever fulfilled and the behaviour of the Nigerian soldiery usually brought swift disillusionment. Violence habitually came in two waves. The Federal combat troops moved through first, shooting everything on sight regardless of tribe, destroying and looting property regardless of ownership. The violence of the soldiery was usually in proportion to the casualties they had had to take in order to capture a position. Thus where a town fell easily without a shot being fired, and the population swung rapidly into a pro-Nigerian attitude commensurate with the brisk change in the power balance, there sometimes occurred periods of amity between the infantry and the local population. This never happened in Ibo-land, but no one in Ibo-land had very many doubts that their fate was in any case sealed.

  After the infantry moved on, the second-rate garrison troops moved in. Within weeks the local indigenes had learned that ‘One Nigeria’ was a fine slogan but an unattractive reality when it involved a seemingly limitless occupation by soldiers who had not been discouraged from thinking anything in occupied Biafra was theirs for the taking. That was why by the end of 1968 some of the most fertile breeding grounds in the whole country for the budding Biafran guerrilla movement were those minority areas that had been longest under Nigerian occupation.

  In July Adekunle prepared to make his first move into Ibo-land and began to push towards Owerri. He had developed his ‘OAU plan’, the capture of Owerri, Aba and Umuahia in quick succession. Somewhat intoxicated by the sense of his own importance and under serious illusions about his competence, Adekunle had vaunted his intentions for a quick kill of the remainder of Biafra far and wide. His increasingly erratic behaviour caused a tide of complaints and General Gowon was repeatedly forced to apologize on his behalf. But he could obviously twist Gowon round his finger when he wanted anything and he remained at the head of the Third Division to build up his one-man kingdom.

  Towards the end of July his forces had pushed up the Port Harcourt to Owerri road as far as Umuakpu, twenty-three miles south of Owerri. Colonel Ojukwu, wishing to go to Addis Ababa but not liking to see Owerri fall while he was away, ordered Steiner and his Commandos to leave Awka and come down to Owerri.

  By this time it had become clear that Steiner was content to command the Brigade and do the operational planning, at which he was good, while leaving the actual combat to Williams. This lean Welsh-born South African, cheerfully admitting he was half mad, had a habit of proving he was bullet-proof by standing amid a hail of fire while men were shot down around him, waving a walking stick and shouting obscenities at the Nigerian machine gunners, which drove them frantic with rage. But the Biafran Commandos responded to this bravado by imitation, and ‘Taffy’s boys’ got a reputation as hard fighters. At any rate Nigerian prisoners admitted their infantry did not like to find itself up against the Commandos, which pleased Steiner and Williams enormously. By this time they had been joined by three newcomers, a burly Scot, a lean, soft-spoken but highly dangerous Corsican, and a handsome young Rhodesian called Johnny Erasmus, no intellectual but a wizard with explosives.

  South of Owerri, in the face of Umuakpu, Steiner put Erasmus to work to build a ring of obstacles in the path of the Nigerians. After three days, and having felled two hundred trees, dug pits, planted mines, linked booby traps, arranged arcs of fire, dug bunkers and wedged everything wedgeable with grenades with the pins taken out, Erasmus announced that the Nigerians could either stay at Umuakpu or use paratroopers. In fact they never did breach those obstacles; they were eventually outflanked and dismantled from the rear.

  Leaving the Biafran infantry ensconced behind this Maginot Line, Steiner sent Williams and five hundred Commandos round the side. They struck on 4 August not at Umuakpu, but at Nigerian battalion HQ at the next village down the road, Amu Nelu. Within an hour Williams had destroyed the HQ, recuperated a large quantity of equipment, arms and ammunition, left over 100 Nigerian dead on the road and departed in time for breakfast. The effect of Amu Nelu was not long in coming. The Nigerians sent an emissary through the lines to the Biafran infantry asking for a local truce.

  Within a week the Commandos had to be transferred again, this time to Okpuala, half way along the road from Owerri to Aba. The Nigerians were moving from the south against this road junction as well, and the Scot and the Corsican were detailed to stop the advance. A series of fierce battles ensued during which both were wounded. But a mixed force of Commandos and infantry held the Nigerians short of Okpuala until after Aba had fallen.

  Aba, shielded from the south and west by the curve of the Imo River, was presumed to be safe from attack. It was the biggest city left, now overflowing not only with its original refugees but many of those from Port Harcourt. It was also the administrative centre of Biafra. Across the Imo there had been two bridges, one at Imo River Town on the main road from Aba to Port Harcourt, the other at Awaza further west. The first bridge had been blown up, the second was intact but mined. It was the Awaza bridge the Nigerians chose. When they appeared on the far bank, the Biafrans blew the charges, but they had been badly placed. It was one of the most serious errors of the war. The bridge went down, but a gas pipeline a few yards to one side escaped the blast. Along the top of this pipe ran a catwalk, and the Biafrans, out of ammunition, watched helplessly as the Nigerians started to cross on foot in single file. This was on 17 August. Williams was sent for with 700 men, but he could not get there until the morning of the 19th. By this time the Nigerians had put across three battalions.

  The Commandos fought for two days to try to get the bridgehead back, but while two Federal battalions held them a mile from the water, the third marched south and captured the northern bank of the other, bigger bridge. Seeing that it was useless, Williams pulled back to the main Aba–Port Harcourt road. For six days the Biafran Twelfth Division assisted by Williams’ men, now made up to 1,000, fought back as a tide of Nigerians crossed the Imo on foot. Feverish work was in progress, reportedly with Russian engineers, to re-build the Imo River Bridge to bring over the heavy equipment.

  Williams, holding the main axis, did not rate the Nigerians very dangerous so long as they lacked their armou
r and artillery, although they still outnumbered the Biafrans many times in guns, bullets and mortars. On 24 August the bridge was completed and the attack column rolled across. The ensuing battle was the bloodiest of the war. Williams threw in his 1,000 Commandos in attack rather than wait in defence. The impertinence caught the Nigerians offguard. They had a reported three brigades in the main column up the main road, and the intention was to march easily to Aba, brush aside the resistance and move on to Umuahia.

  For three days Williams and Erasmus led less than 1,000 young Biafrans clutching bolt-action rifles against the pride of the Nigerian Army. They had no bazookas, no artillery, precious few mortars. The Nigerians threw in a rain of shells and mortars, five armoured cars and a monsoon of bazooka rockets. Their machine guns and repeater rifles did not stop for seventy-two hours. The backbone of the defence was the ‘ogbunigwe’, a weird mine invented by the Biafrans. It looked like a square cone with dynamite packed into the narrow end and the rest stuffed with ball bearings, nails, stones, scrap iron and metal chips. The base is placed against a tree to absorb the shock, the trumpet-shaped opening, covered over with plywood, faces down the road towards the oncoming forces. It is detonated by a wire and experts advise the firer to stand well back. On exploding, the ogbunigwe sweeps clear a ninety-degree arc in front of it, with a maximum killing range of over 200 yards. Such a device let off at short range will normally destroy a company and stop an attack in its tracks.

  The Nigerians came up the road standing upright with no attempt at taking cover, chanting their war cry, ‘Oshe-bey’. They were swaying oddly from side to side. Williams, who had done time in the Congo, took one look and said, ‘They’re doped to the eyeballs.’

  Erasmus started to let go the ogbunigwes at point-blank range. The Nigerians were cut down like corn. The survivors swayed, moved on. On the first day Erasmus triggered over forty ogbunigwes. One of the Saladin armoured cars had its tyres shredded and withdrew. Biafran ammunition ran out, but the leading Nigerian Brigade had been ruined. Impeded by anti-tank ditches, they had filled them in with shovels, one relay team taking over from the previous one as the teams were cut down. Faced with fallen trees weighing many tons, they lifted them bodily out of the way, the team doing the work being blown to fragments as the mine beneath the tree went off automatically.

  As the leading Nigerian brigade was changed, Williams urged his exhausted men to take advantage of the disorder in front of them and charge. They won back the three miles they had lost during the day and returned to their original positions. Waiting for the next day the troops slept while Erasmus started preparing more booby traps and Williams returned to Aba for ammunition. But the ammunition planes were not arriving. Steiner, promoted Lieutenant-Colonel, who had moved his headquarters to Aba, appealed to the Army Commander, then to Colonel Ojukwu. There was no ammunition. Williams returned to the front. For Sunday 25 August his men had two bullets each.

  That Sunday was a repeat performance of Saturday, and Monday followed suit. Then for six days there was calm. Later it was reported that Adekunle had filled the hospitals of Calabar, Port Harcourt, Benin and even Lagos with his wounded from the Aba column. How many dead never got off that road was not counted, but Williams put the number at close to 2,500.

  After licking its wounds the Third Division launched another attack on Aba, but not up the main road. They took the Commandos’ right flank and the flank crumbled as the armoured cars rushed through. Aba fell on 4 September, not from the front but from the side. Steiner fought his way out with a handful of cooks armed with machine pistols. Colonel Achuzie nearly had a head-on collision with a Nigerian Saladin as he swept round a corner. Williams was still six miles south of the town holding the axis when Aba fell behind him. He came out with his men across country.

  Colonel Ojukwu ordered the Commandos to return to base camp, recruit fresh men, re-form and re-fit. From both axes, Aba and Okpuala, 1,000 returned of the 3,000 who had moved to Awka nine weeks previously. In mid-September Steiner went on leave for a fortnight and Williams took over acting command.

  The assault on Aba of 24 August had been the signal for the allround ‘final assault on Ibo-land’ which the British Parliament had been told would never happen. Every sector burst into flame, in the south from Ikot Ekpene which had already changed hands six times, to Owerri; in the north Haruna made one spirited attempt to burst out of Onitsha and link up with his men at Abagana, while the First Division threw all its force against the demilitarized Red Cross airstrip at Obilagu. This fell on 23 September.

  On 11 September the Nigerians launched a fast attack by boat up the River Orashi towards Oguta, a lakeside town not far from Uli Airport. Unspotted, the boats crossed the lake and the men disembarked. Oguta was still full of people and there was a lot of killing. After the flight of the townspeople Oguta was systematically looted and more Nigerians came across the River Niger from the Midwest. An angry Colonel Ojukwu called his commanders and told them to get Oguta back in forty-eight hours. Ojukwu himself directed the operation, with Achuzie as operational commander. The Biafrans swept back into the town and the Nigerians fled for the river, leaving several hundred dead behind them, including their commander.

  But Oguta had a by-product. Some of the Biafran troops used there had been taken from the right flank at Umuakpu, and on 13 September a Nigerian patrol probing the flanks discovered the weak spot. An attack was launched which outflanked the defences and brought the Nigerians to Obinze, ten miles south of Owerri. From there, on 18 September, they ran on into the town, led by armoured cars.

  In the north the First Division moved on from Obilagu and captured Okigwi town, also undefended as it had been the Red Cross distributing centre for the relief food arriving at nearby Obilagu. Here they distinguished themselves by shooting down a couple of elderly English missionaries, Mr and Mrs Savory, and two Swedish Red Cross workers. This was on 1 October.

  From that date the situation began to change. The arms shipper who had let the Biafrans down over Aba and Owerri had been dismissed and a new air bridge set up from Libreville, Gabon. Pilots of British, South African, Rhodesian and French nationality ran it. Acquiring more funds, Colonel Ojukwu gained access to a wider European arms market and greater quantities began to flow in. The Biafrans went on to the counter-attack.

  Steiner returned from leave, but he was still a tired man. Made commander of the newly formed Commando Division, he was clearly not up to the task. Suffering from nervous exhaustion, the mental illness of which he had a history began to reassert itself, giving him delusions of grandeur combined with a persecution mania. His behaviour became increasingly undisciplined, until he gave his men orders to hijack three Red Cross jeeps for his own use.

  Summoned to explain, he chose to remonstrate with Colonel Ojukwu, and the Biafran Head of State had no choice but to order him to leave. Six others of the officers he had brought back from leave with him went also. Williams took over again as Acting Commander, later to hand over command to a Biafran Brigadier. But while he was in charge two more battles were fought under his direction. Between 10 and 12 November one of the Division’s three brigades launched a series of attacks on Onitsha which, though they did not capture the town, cut the Nigerian perimeter down to a half its size and relieved the danger of a break-out.

  The attacks might have gone on had the Nigerians at Awka not launched an attack southwards to capture the villages of Agolo and Adazi, which threatened the Biafran heartland. The Commandos in the area fought back, assisted by two battalions of the Biafran infantry. The Nigerians took another beating and retired back to Awka.

  Elsewhere it was the same story through November and December. The Biafrans counter-attacked in most sectors, notably at Aba and Owerri. At Aba Colonel Timothy Onuatuegwu pushed the Federal forces back to the outskirts of the town, then swung his men down the right and left flanks. At Owerri Colonel John Kalu retook 150 square miles of ground around the town and laid siege.

  This bare recital of events ove
r eighteen months may seem to give the impression that the Nigerian advances into Biafra were a smooth and steady progression. This was not the case. Apart from the occasional instance where Nigerian forces had an easy run, they fought for every foot of the way. Often objectives were not taken until the third or fourth attempt. Sometimes they were blocked for months. Their expenditure in ammunition is conservatively estimated at several hundreds of millions of rounds, their losses several tens of thousands of men.

  Nor did they achieve an ability to control and administer what they had captured. Sticking closely to the main roads and the towns, avoiding the bush which covers over ninety per cent of the country, the Nigerians were able to draw lines on maps which bore little relation to the realities of the situation. Their own appointed administrators sitting in the towns vie for authority with the Biafran administrator sitting out in the bush in the overrun areas, and often the Biafran appointee’s fiat covers the majority of the land and the bulk of the largely rural population.

  The secret of Biafra’s survival lies partly in the leadership of Colonel Ojukwu, but far more in the people of Biafra. Neither the leader nor the army could have fought without the total backing of the people. The support from behind has to be there before an army can do more than put up a token resistance. The people contributed everything they had got; poor villages took collections, rich men emptied their foreign accounts to donate dollars and pounds. Tailors made uniforms out of curtain material, cobblers turned out army boots from canvas strips. Farmers donated yams, cassava, rice, goats, chickens and eggs. Bushmen came forward with axes and blunderbusses. Taxi drivers and Mammy-wagon owners drove troop convoys, priests and schoolteachers handed over their bicycles.