A Matter of Time

by Alex Capus

  Kigoma, 22 December 1914 • Commanding Officer, Kigoma, to the Imperial Governor of German East Africa. Re: arming of the Gotzen. Steamer Gotzen on verge of completion. Launching scheduled for 25 January. Operational as soon as guns and matching ammunition reach here. Request immediate delivery of supplies indented for.

  Signed: Gustav von Zimmer, Kapitanleutnant z. See.

  15

  For God and the King

  thus it came about that, on 15 June 1915, Dr Hother McCormick Hanschell, thirty-two years old, married, acting medical superintendent of The Seamens Hospital in the Royal Albert Docks, a lifelong civilian who had never done a day’s military service but was wearing the uniform of a naval lieutenant which, though adorned with unorthodox badges of rank, had been made to measure, paraded in front of the splendid Victorian Gothic facade of Londons St Pancras Station in his capacity as a member of a top secret naval expedition. Hanschell was the third man from the front of a file of twenty-eight. Having no experience of military drill, he kept a sharp eye on what the men ahead of him were doing. When they turned to the right and marked time in their heavy boots he did likewise - and all this under the amused gaze of his wife Shirley, who, standing beside her friend Amy Spicer-Simson amid a throng of curious spectators, persisted in waving and blowing him thoroughly unmilitary kisses. When the men raised one arm and dressed by the right in a dead straight line he imitated them, and when they stiffened to attention with their thumbs clamped to their trouser seams he followed suit in an almost regulation manner and only half a second behind the others.

  Then Commander Geoffrey Basil Spicer-Simson made his appearance. He solemnly strode along the rank and inspected each of his men from head to toe, chin jutting and eyes narrowed, and when he reached the end of the row he inspected them all from the back as well. His right hand gripped a black leather riding crop - an unusual accessory for a naval officer - with which he smacked his left palm in time to his steps. Having completed his circuit, he stationed himself in front of his men,

  looked all twenty-eight of them keenly in the eye, and finally said, in a surly voice that seemed to convey he was sick of the sight of them: ‘Very well, men, fall out.’ The parade broke up and Hanschell and Spicer- Simson went over to their wives.

  ‘Here, before I forget,’ said Shirley, producing some opera glasses from her handbag. ‘Take these with you, one never knows.’

  Hanschell took them and put them in the pocket of his tunic, then folded her in a tight embrace.

  ‘Come home safe, my gallant warrior,’ she said, and gave him a lingering kiss. Then he and the others disappeared beneath the station’s neo-Gothic pointed arches. The express train that was to take them to Tilbury, at the mouth of the Thames, already had steam up.

  The journey took fifty minutes. Spicer-Simson’s expeditionary force had been allotted three second-class compartments. Hanschell, seated beside a window facing forwards, watched the summery suburban landscape glide past. Spicer-Simson, sitting opposite him, was in a good mood. He casually confided that he’d been to tea with King George V the previous day because His Majesty had wanted a first-hand briefing on the expedition. An awful nuisance in the midst of his last-minute preparations, of course, but he could hardly have refused the king’s invitation. Hanschell feigned polite interest. His thoughts were of Shirley, who would have to manage without him for quite a while. Still, it was a relief to know that she and Amy had decided to await their husbands’ return together. They were giving up the hotel rooms off Russell Square and moving to Swanage, where Spicer-Simson had rented a pleasant flat in Newton Road. His pay having been doubled by his promotion and overseas allowance, he had insisted that the two women quit their jobs at the munitions factory. When they protested that it was their patriotic duty to go on working there, Spicer-Simson had retorted - in his most languid drawl - that a country which allowed its female citizens to be bludgeoned in the street had no claim on their loyalty.

  Shirley had wept with laughter the first time she saw Hanschell in uniform - in fancy dress, as it seemed to her. She couldn t for a moment imagine that his cutlass was really sharp or his pistol capable of firing real

  bullets. For all that, it had tickled his vanity to show off his martial attire to her, and he was immensely gratified to think that she would picture him in such a manly, martial get-up during his absence. He was even more gratified by his new status when, just before they left, she briefly abandoned her flippant attitude and played the tearful officers wife for a minute or two.

  In fact, Hanschell was anything but a warrior. A reserved and courteous man, a clever and sympathetic physician, and an amiable and gentle if somewhat absent-minded husband, he was one of those people for whom the world contains few certainties. Forever aware that almost every decision he made would somehow or other turn out to be wrong, he had long ago come to terms with the fact that all human desires, hopes and undertakings are sooner or later doomed to end in failure.

  In the early days of his friendship with Spicer-Simson it had puzzled Hanschell that he should not only tolerate the company of such a pompous individual but seek it and come to appreciate it. Before long, however, he realized that what did his soul good was the man’s very optimism, his artless, childish spirit of enterprise and naive idealism. SpicerSimson was, of course, a vulgar, uncouth, self-important show-off, but wasn’t this blustering braggart really more modest and humble than he himself, the eternally hesitant, vacillating physician who nonetheless took himself seriously enough to lament the futility of his own existence?

  Hanschell had seen through himself years ago. His medical vocation had long been suspect to him - long before he met Spicer-Simson. He had begun to have doubts about the altruism of his calling while still a student, and the ostensibly philanthropic nature of his profession had long struck him as hollow and affected. He found it embarrassing that his patients should regard him as a kind of saint with the power to decide whether they lived or died, because their faith in him was in grotesque contrast to the feeling of impotence that overcame him, who had graduated with distinction from Cambridge, when standing beside most sickbeds. He didn’t regard himself as a total failure, because he indisputably had his daily successes when setting broken bones, sewing up flesh wounds or lancing abscesses. But the vast majority of patients suffered

  from baffling infections and growths, mysterious circulatory disorders, colics and respiratory diseases. These he could diagnose and name insofar as contemporary academic medicine allowed, but he could seldom identify their causes and even more rarely cure them by rational means. So the bulk of Dr Hanschells day - he had admitted this to himself long ago - was given over to sympathetic observation, friendly encouragement and a great deal of hocus-pocus administered with the aid of his white coat, his stethoscope, and a wide assortment of coloured placebo pills. Even where his cures were concerned, he had long since ceased to have any illusions about them. It was true that he could credit himself with having preserved hundreds of patients from imminent death in the course of his career; but it was equally true that most of those who had recovered - or died - in his care would have fared no better or worse in the care of their grandmothers.

  To Dr Hanschell, therefore, the expedition to Africa was an act of liberation. He would at last be leaving behind all his existential doubts and devoting a few months of his life to a task whose clarity left nothing to be desired. Two boats had to be transported to a lake in Africa, and it was his job to see that every member of the expedition returned home unscathed. He would submit himself to the simple, utterly unequivocal rules of military symbiosis, he would toil and sweat and fight for survival, and he would never for an instant wonder whether what he was doing was meaningful or not. Hanschell was firmly resolved to ignore the patent absurdity of the venture. He would not wag his head at the fact that two small boats were to be loaded aboard a big one and conveyed for 6000 nautical miles, or more than a quarter of the earths circumference, to Cape Town at the southern tip of Africa,
where they would be loaded on to a train and transported another 2700 miles in the opposite direction. He would not burst out laughing when two Royal Navy vessels were hauled across bone-dry stretches of savannah, far from water of any kind, nor would he express any moral misgivings when, in the heart of Africa and for no discernible reason, Britons, Belgians and Germans exchanged lethal broadsides aboard toy boats. Dr Hanschell was determined not to be surprised by anything. He would do his best to see that

  every member of the expedition remained healthy; that apart, he would not worry needlessly. Above all, he would obey Spicer-Simson’s injunction and refrain from making facetious remarks about matters that lay outside his sphere of medical competence.

  On arrival at Tilbury, after a train journey of only twenty-two miles, his new-found military stoicism and docility were sorely tested for the first time. They had scarcely got out of the train when Spicer-Simson ordered his twenty-eight men, whom he had only just submitted to one thorough inspection, to undergo another. He marched them down to the International Cruise Terminal, where the big ocean liners docked. There, in the midst of a milling throng of passengers, they were made to dress off by the right and form a dead straight line. That done, Commander Spicer-Simson gave each man a rigorous going-over as though he feared that his units turnout had deteriorated considerably after fifty minutes in the train.

  Hanschell would have liked to draw his commanding officers attention to the fact that the military spectacle the expeditionary force presented to a quickly growing crowd of curious spectators was not exactly conducive to secrecy. Reluctant to be found guilty of making a facetious remark about a matter outside his sphere of medical competence, however, he submitted to inspection without comment. Feeling quite convinced that an extremely embarrassing scene was imminent, he fell into single file behind Spicer-Simson and followed him up the gangway of the Royal Mail steamer. Mimi and Toutou had both been securely wrapped up and lashed down aboard, the former on her focsle, the latter on her poop deck.

  The Llanstephen Castle was ready to sail, leaving England enshrouded in mist and drizzle. The crew were already preparing to cast off and stewards were hurrying along the passageways calling: ‘Last call! Any more for the shore! Last call!’ Up on the main deck, Spicer-Simsons expeditionary force was suddenly surrounded by an agitated crowd. Staid middle-class ladies were menacingly brandishing their umbrellas, young men stepping forward and rolling up their sleeves, elderly gentlemen twirling their moustaches.

  ‘This is a mailboat, not a troopship!’ cried an Anglican priest, dinging to his hat brim with both hands. ‘We don’t want any soldiers on board!’ shouted a shrivelled old lady in a black dress and a widow’s bonnet. Dr Hanschell was puzzled for a moment. Then he understood: they were afraid of being torpedoed if there were military men on board. Only the previous month the Lusitania and twelve hundred passengers had been sent to the bottom by a German U-boat because her holds were full of ammunition. Hanschell debated whether to say a few soothing words but thought better of it, that being definitely up to Spicer-Simson. When he turned to the Commander, expecting him to make some rejoinder, he was taken aback. Spicer-Simson had closed his eyes and was smiling appreciatively. This was just the kind of scene he enjoyed - fraught with passion, drama and intense emotion - and in the eye of the storm was none other than himself. Revelling in the fear, rage and hatred that was descending on his head, he was only awaiting the right moment to bring the drama to a climax and destroy his adversaries at a stroke.

  His opportunity came in the shape of a pretty young woman dark brown plaits, fiery black eyes and a baby in her arms, who stormed up to Spicer-Simson. Hanschell could see that she was fiercely determined and would never give way, but he knew she was doomed. There was nothing he could have done to save her.

  ‘Get off this ship!’ she yelled, her voice breaking with fury.

  ‘Good day, madam,’ Spicer-Simson drawled, gazing dreamily out across the misty expanse of the Channel. ‘Is there something I can do for you?’

  ‘There certainly is! Get your men together and go ashore. At once!’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘At once, you hear? I paid for a passage on a civilian ship, not a trooper!’

  ‘I understand, madam: you’re afraid we’ll be torpedoed. Well, I’m afraid there’s always that risk - we’re at war, after all. Regrettably, there’s a strong possibility that the Germans will drown us on the high seas. The Huns take no prisoners, as everyone knows. That’s a really pretty little baby you have there, madam. My compliments’

  ‘You want to get us all killed? Get off this ship at once!’

  ‘On the other hand, madam, you must surely appreciate that I and my men are running that risk without complaining? Is there any reason why the same should not be expected of you? Is your life and that of your child more precious than mine? Are you worth more than my men here?’

  ‘You... you’re...’ The young woman was speechless.

  ‘There you are, then! Chin up, madam, I can set your mind at rest. The Germans won’t torpedo this ship, they’ve no idea that I and my men are on board. Our mission is secret, madam - top secret. Apart from you and I and these good people, only His Majesty the King knows we’re here. And if the worst should come to the worst, which God forbid, it will be a great honour for you and your baby to go to the bottom in company with men of the Royal Navy, aren’t I right?’

  So saying, he strode off and disappeared into the Llanstephen Castle’s saloon while the ship’s siren announced her departure and rendered further conversation impossible.

  i6

  Mushy Sweet Potatoes

  silence descended on Wendt’s beer garden after Mkenge’s flogging. Mkenge himself never reappeared, and Mkwawa and Kahigi, the two Bantu, played their board game elsewhere. Another bitter blow from Wendt’s and Riiter’s point of view was that Mamadou the brewer stopped delivering from one day to the next. Saddest of all, though, Samblakira’s visits also ceased. She no longer brought their breakfasts or lunches or suppers to the yard or the beer garden, nor did she visit either of them at night.

  The two men bore their undeserved solitude with calm, craftsmanlike determination. Since no one brought them any food they had to get hold of some themselves, and since they were now dependent solely on themselves they drew closer together. Anton Riiter saw to it that they were daily supplied with firewood, beans, sweet potatoes and the occasional chicken. Initially reluctant, the Arab traders tried to avoid dealing with someone whose business could so easily lead to a taste of von Zimmer’s sjambok. On the other hand, Riiter was still in charge of the shipyard and an important customer, and because he had acquired a perfect grasp of Arab diplomacy, with its combination of obsequious cordiality and gentle coercion, they eventually met his requests in full, albeit at extortionate prices.

  Young Wendt, who had learnt a bit about the preparation of African dishes from Samblakira, took over the cooking. At first his chickens were tough, his beans insipid and his sweet potatoes mushy, but he regarded this as food for thought, not a reason to give up. He soon discovered that, far from being metaphysical, what went on inside cooking pots was

  M3

  merely a dialectical interplay between cooking times and temperatures. And when he further discovered that the mechanics of cooking, like those of shipbuilding or world history, do not succeed without a pinch of insanity, his mutton and vegetable stews soon became almost as good as Samblakira’s.

  The solitude was harder to cope with. Riiter and Wendt had quickly grasped that Samblakira, Mkenge, Mamadou, Mkwawa and Kahigi were shunning them not because they had severed their ties of friendship, but because they feared for their lives. This was understandable. Before Kapitanleutnant von Zimmer went off on patrol he had set up a checkpoint on the summit of the promontory. This commanded a good view of Wendt s beer garden, and the armed sentries who manned it day and night had evidently been instructed to check and record the particulars of anyone who ventured out there. The yard
and the Gotzen were also closely guarded round the clock, and burning torches illuminated the storage sheds on all sides after dark.

  Riiter and Wendt behaved as if they didn’t notice all these things. At sunrise every morning they strode past the sentries with grim determination and made their way down to the yard to work on the Gotzen until dusk. On a makeshift slipway only a stones throw from them, Rudolf Tellmann was riveting the dismembered Kingani together on von Zimmers orders. He never spared a glance for the Gotzen. Riiter and Wendt called and waved to him, strolled over several times a day and offered to help or invited him to eat with them, but he went on riveting without a word. He might have been deaf and blind. The day finally came when the last rivet was in place and the rebuilt Kingani looked as if she had never been sawn into four sections. The seams were invisible, and mounted in the bow was a brand-new Maxim machine gun. Tellmann beckoned the askari sentries over and thrust some ropes into their hands, then knocked away the chocks and launched the boat without more ado. When he saw that she was well afloat and the askaris would have no difficulty in towing her over to the quay, he strode off without a word, disappeared into the barracks and never returned to the yard again.

  Riiter and Wendt spent their evenings together in the beer garden,