William Boyd - An Ice-Cream War

He scrabbled up the opposite side. He saw tree-dotted scrub between him and the safety of the forest and the coconut plantations. Head down, he ran across the two hundred yard stretch of clearer ground at full speed, leaping undulations and bushes and the large numbers of dead and dying scattered about. Almost idly he noted how a dead body seems part of the ground, as if the earth were in a hurry to claim it…He told himself he was in shock, poor Gleeson’s horrible injury had unsettled him. He would calm down in the forest, gather his strength and then go back and try to help him. Try to carry him to a casualty clearing station.

He fought his way through the first welcoming thickets, broke through into an open space, tripped and went sprawling. He found a depression in the ground and crawled into it. He lay back, an arm over his eyes, his chest heaving as he struggled to get his breath.

He sat up with a start. He couldn’t believe it, but he seemed to have fallen asleep for a few seconds. He had a pounding vicious headache. His mouth tasted foul with dried saliva. His throat was parched. Still the relentless popping of gunfire came from the direction of the town. He put his head in his hands, suddenly overcome with weariness and the emotions rampaging through his body. He pulled his knees towards him and rested his head on them. He rubbed his forehead on his kneecaps.

He unholstered his revolver. His hands looked like a stranger’s. Black with dirt, scratched, a badly bleeding knuckle (how had that happened?). They felt thick with blisters and callouses. He heard the booming reports of naval guns, and decided to try and make his way in that general direction. Most of the fighting seemed to be coming from the seaward edge of the town. He set off. After some time he came to one of the many rough tracks that lead east to west along the headland from Ras Kasone to Tanga. He debated for an instant whether to return to the beach or go back towards the town. With some reluctance he turned towards Tanga. He hadn’t gone more than twenty yards when he met Bilderbeck running down the path towards him.

“Cobb!” Bilderbeck shouted, “Just the man!” It was as if he and Bilderbeck had met on the steps of his club. Bilderbeck grabbed him by the arm. “This way,” he said and led him a little distance off the track. There, in the shelter of an earth bank were seven Rajput sepoys cowering together.

“Tell them to get up,” Bilderbeck said. “Tell them to take up firing positions up the road.”

“I’m afraid I don’t speak the language,” Gabriel said apologetically.

“What? Oh never mind.” Bilderbeck strode forward and started roughly pulling the sepoys to their feet, yelling “Get up!” and pushing them in the direction of the town and the firing. Two reluctantly obeyed, picking up their rifles and slouching dispiritedly off. The others crouched where they were, wailing and moaning softly. Bilderbeck drew his revolver and threatened them. Then he fired into the bank and there was a flurry of movement as the men leapt panic-stricken to their feet, milling around confusedly in evident terror at this mad Englishman with a gun.

But one man had not moved. He sat in a hunched squatting posture, one arm raised vaguely in protection, muttering distractedly to himself.

“Get up, you filthy coward!” Gabriel heard Bilderbeck roar. But the man wasn’t hearing anything. He was gibbering like a lunatic, high and piping, a loop of saliva hanging from his chin.

“I warn you,” Bilderbeck said. Gabriel couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Bilderbeck levelled his revolver at the sepoy’s head. The gun was only six inches from his head.

“I am ordering you,” Bilderbeck said in an eerily reasonable voice, “to get to your feet and take up a firing position at the end of the road.”

The man stared bleakly at the gun.

“Right,” Bilderbeck said angrily and fired. Gabriel flinched uncontrollably at the noise.

The bullet hit the sepoy just in front of his left ear. The man’s head jerked sharply to one side and he slumped back as if in a deep swoon. There was a delicate spattering sound as bits of expressed brain hit the leaves of the bushes behind the man. Immediately the other sepoys rushed up the track with cries of fear, Bilderbeck running behind them waving his revolver and shouting.

Gabriel looked down. On the toe of his boot was a greyish pink blob, like a wet, peeled shrimp. With a shudder he wiped it off on the earth and ran after Bilderbeck.

Soon they arrived at a semblance of a front line on the more open ground by the sea. Groups of men crouched behind trees and rocks, two machine guns covering a dirt road.

Bilderbeck seemed quite unmoved by his summary execution. He told Gabriel it was his third that day. Gabriel felt his body tingling and trembling, as if any moment he might drop from accumulated shock and exhaustion.

They took up a position behind a jumble of rocks and watched a company of North Lancs drawing back in reasonable order from the customs house and the sheds around the jetty which were just visible. Peering forward Gabriel could just make out German askaris darting across gaps in the alleyway to re-occupy the abandoned buildings. Ragged covering fire broke out from the British lines and one of the Maxims stuttered into life.

“Bloody day,” Bilderbeck said gloomily. “Everybody ran for it. You should see the beaches. Mass panic. People swimming out to the lighters. Disgusting! ” He gave Gabriel a fierce smile. “Where are your men?”

Gabriel explained about the bee attack and most of the bizarre and erratic course his day had taken. “What’s going on?” he asked, trying not to think about Gleeson.

“Well, we’ve been well and truly cut to pieces on the left. Fifty per cent casualties in the 101 stGrenadiers. The line’s in tatters, thanks to all the bloody cowards who ran away.” He went on. The town had been far more heavily fortified and defended than anyone had expected. Every building was like a blockhouse. With no organization, with huge gaps in the attack, with the left wing being pushed further and further back, the few gains made in the town had to be yielded.

“It’s all gone wrong ,” Bilderbeck said, as if it were a personal insult. “Even our general’s got no spunk for a fight.”

Gabriel felt suddenly overwhelmed by a desire to sleep. “I suppose I should try and get back to my men,” he said vaguely.

“They’ll be on the beach by now,” Bilderbeck sneered. He took out his map from his pocket and smoothed it on the ground. Gabriel thought maps should be banned. They gave the world an order and reasonableness which it didn’t possess. “Coconut groves,” it said in large letters. The phrase sounded pleasant, restful. It gave no indication of the tangled choking undergrowth they had clawed their way through at noon.

Bilderbeck’s finger traced a crescent on the map from the native graveyard up to the ditch then back to the coast. “We’re here now.” Bilderbeck tapped a point ahead of a building marked hospital. “The hospital’s just back there, overlooking the sea. You might find some of your men on the left of the line by the cemetery. There’s a mixed lot of North Lancs and Grenadiers around there. Go back down the road and take the first track on the right that’s marked with a red and white stake. It’ll take you along to the cemetery.”

He and Gabriel crawled away from the front line until they had lost sight of the town. Then they stood up.

“I’d better get back to headquarters,” Bilderbeck said looking glum. “See you later, Cobb.” He went behind a large tree and emerged with a bicycle, which he mounted and rode off down the track.

Gabriel walked slowly down the road behind him, which was now filled with troops making their unauthorized way back to the beach and the morning’s assembly point. As he cycled past each group Bilderbeck delivered a volley of insults and abuse but the dishevelled and exhausted men ignored him completely.