William Boyd - An Ice-Cream War

As soon as the advancing files of men entered the brush at the foot of the hill the German machine guns opened fire. Youell soon caught up with his men who were pinned down on the lower slopes huddling and crouching at the roots of the thorn bushes. Progress was impossible. A runner was sent back to ask for an artillery bombardment, and soon the field batteries began to pound the slopes in front of them.

Temple knelt beneath the flimsy shelter of the thorn bushes as the sun rose higher in the sky. About fifty flies seemed to be buzzing around him. Perspiration dripped from the end of his moustache. The constant crash and boom of explosions filled his ears. Battles, he thought, were unbelievably noisy places.

Youell and his adjutant had a map spread on the ground and were trying to work out the positions of the battalion’s other companies and the 2nd Rhodesians. Temple felt an urge to perform a natural function but thought Youell might object to him lowering his trousers in what was in effect temporary battalion HQ. He certainly had no intention of crawling off into the bush for the sake of privacy.

Presently the barrage lifted and the advance continued, making somewhat better progress through the openings and pathways cleared by the heavy shelling. Temple stuck close to Youell as they clambered, puffing, up the slope. All around him Temple could hear the pop-gun reports of rifles, and the yelling and shouting of the KAR askaris. The noise of gunfire was continuous and Temple assumed that at least some proportion of it must be coming in his direction, but so far there had been no sign of the enemy.

They halted, gasping for breath, at a rock outcrop. Some KAR soldiers occupied the uppermost boulders. Temple calculated that they couldn’t be far away from the summit. He felt exhausted from the climb. Youell took off his sun helmet to reveal surprisingly boyish wavy hair.

“Are we near the top, Smith?” he asked.

“I think so, sir,” he said.

“Let’s take a look.” Youell began to clamber up the rocks. He glanced back. “Come on, Smith.”

Temple followed him up. They crouched behind the boulders. The firing seemed to have died down somewhat on their section of the hill. Youell spoke some words of encouragement to the askaris.

“Have a look, Smith,” Youell said.

“Me, sir?”

“Yes,” Youell said. “Find out where we are.”

Temple took off his sun helmet. Although it was only cork and canvas it gave the illusion of affording some protection. Now he felt the sun warm the top of his head. His brains seemed to heat up. He had an unpleasant sense of the fragility of his skull, as if it could be as easily shattered as an eggshell. Cautiously he raised his head above the rocks. The summit was a mere fifty yards away. He could see a battered redout, crumbled earthworks, scattered sandbags and boulders. There was heavy firing somewhere to his right. It all seemed quiet ahead. Perhaps the Germans had pulled back again?

Temple told this to Youell in a whisper.

“Why are you whispering, Smith?”

“Sorry sir.”

“Can you see anyone at the summit? Are the Rhodesians there?”

“I couldn’t say, sir.”

“Well have another look, dammit.”

Temple looked again. He thought he saw some figures moving behind the earthworks. He ducked down and put on his sun helmet.

“The summit’s definitely occupied, sir.”

“Us or them?”

“I couldn’t make out, sir.”

Youell called down to his adjutant to see if there had been any word from the Rhodesians. The adjutant said he’d heard nothing and sent off a runner.

Then they heard someone shouting from the summit. In English.

“Hey! You down there. The Germans have gone.”

Youell smiled in triumph. “You see, Smith. We’ve done it.”

He stood up. “Well done you men!” he called. “KAR here. Coming up to join you.”

“Sir,” Temple cautioned. “If I were you I wouldn’t—”

The fusillade of shots slapped through the air, pinging and buzzing off the boulders. Colonel Youell was spun round and toppled backward off the outcrop. Temple scrambled after him, the air suddenly loud with firing once again. The shocked adjutant turned his colonel’s body over. Temple saw the blood pumping strongly from a wound below his ear, pouring down his neck and congealing in the dust.

“Oh God,” the white-faced adjutant said, looking up at Temple. “Do you think he’s going to die?”

With the help of two askaris Temple dragged and carried Youell’s dead body down through the mangled thorns to the bottom of the hill. There they found a stretcher and tramped back through the knee-high yellow grass towards Taveta. The firing grew more distant as they moved away. A steady stream of injured men were stumbling or being helped across the plain. Temple looked back at Reata, its outline blurred by dust clouds, the firecracker sounds of the battle faint in the warm pleasant afternoon.

At the casualty clearing station, the harassed medical orderly indicated a row of dead men laid out like game-birds after a shoot. Temple felt he couldn’t leave a colonel with the corpses of ordinary soldiers, so he had him taken back to Taveta in a motor ambulance. Once there they joined the procession of stretcher cases being ferried towards the field hospital, set up in the stable block of the police barracks. Their route took them in sight of Pughe’s brigade HQ. Temple ordered his stretcher bearers to change course. Youell’s death should be reported to the General.

Pughe left his group of staff officers, who were all surveying the hills through binoculars, and limped over. He was smoking a cigar.

“Yes? It’s, um, the American chappie, isn’t it?”

“Yes, sir. Smith, sir.”

“Well, who’ve.” He started again. “Wha’s th’matter. Matter.”

“Colonel Youell, sir. He’s just been killed on Reata hill.”

“ Good God! Eddie Youell? How the hell did that happen?”

“Bullet in the head, sir. He stood up.”

Pughe winced. He seemed to be swaying gently. He changed his stance slightly. “My God. Good God. Brave man, Eddie. God.” He puffed on his cigar. “What’s it like up there? Damned hard to make out. They’ve got the Baluchis well pinned down on Latema.”

“They’re still on the summit, sir.”

Pughe nodded, waved his cigar vaguely in Temple’s direction, turned round very cautiously and rejoined his staff.

Temple left Youell’s body at the field hospital and dismissed the two askaris. He then went back to the KAR tents and got his mule-handler to saddle up his mule. The town was milling with troops, wagons, oxcarts and motor lorries as three South African battalions were brought in as reinforcements for the beleaguered men on the two hills. No one challenged or questioned him as he rode out of town and took the track that branched off to Smithville.

♦

It was three in the afternoon as Temple approached the familiar surroundings of his farm. Away in the distance he could see the placid peak of Kilimanjaro, the white snows reflecting back the afternoon sun. He could hear, very faintly, the distant pattering sound of gunfire as the assault on the two hills continued. Behind him rose clouds of dust on the road between Taveta and the new railhead as supplies and fresh troops were brought in. He seemed to be completely alone in the landscape. He had come across no pickets or patrols of either side. However, the thought crossed his mind as he drew near Smithville that it might still be occupied, being far enough away from the main British advance. He dismounted and tied his mule to a tree.

He left the track and struck out into the bush in a wide semi-circle which would eventually bring him up behind the house. He realized that he had left his rifle somewhere on Reata hill. He was unarmed, apart from a large penknife he always carried. He took it out of his pocket and opened the blade. He wasn’t quite sure what he’d do if he encountered anyone but he felt marginally less ill at ease now that he flourished some sort of weapon.