William Boyd - An Ice-Cream War

Felix and Gilzean led their mules onto the ferry and tethered them to the guard rails. When it was full of porters and their loads a flag was waved and a large steam engine coughed into life, winding in the cables and tugging the cumbersome ferry out into the stream.

Felix leant on the guard rail and stared in fascination at four hippopotami which were wallowing not far from the ferry’s route. He turned round and looked at the crowded mob of porters who seemed edgy and apprehensive. They wore singlets and loose pyjama-style trousers cut off below the knee. They all had canvas bags slung around their shoulders. Some carried calabash gourds, others saucepans and kettles. Felix noted that his once smart uniform was creased and grimy. He felt oddly proud. He wondered what Holland would think of him now, in the middle of Africa, crossing this powerful brown river, surrounded by jungle and wild beasts.

By the time they reached the far bank it had started to rain again. Gilzean and Felix remounted and set off up a wide path recently cut through the undergrowth. The rain poured down, battering the leaves of the trees, turning the path into a trickling rivulet. Hemmed in by the undergrowth, the gloom was more intense. Felix glanced upward. The setting sun had turned the clouds a sulphurous yellow-grey. His earlier feelings of awe and excitement were replaced by a mysterious depression and disgruntled impatience. When was this wretched journey going to end?

Just then he smelt a curious smell. They emerged from the trees into a clearing of sorts. Before them the pathway was flanked by an avenue of long smouldering bonfires, like huge middens or rubbish heaps that had been burning for days. Here the reek was at its most intense, a rich, choking, putrefying smell that caused Felix’s stomach to heave in protest. A thick bluey smoke curled from the heaps and stung his eyes, and he could hear the hiss as the falling rain extinguished a few pale flickering flames that were visible.

Unperturbed, Gilzean entered the infernal avenue. Felix kicked his mule to follow him. Then, peering through the smoke and sheets of rain, Felix saw what they were burning. Horses, donkeys and mules, dozens and dozens of them. Great heaps of blackened rotting carcases piled six or eight feet high, their stiff legs jutting out at all angles. As he rode between the fires he saw native soldiers sloshing parafin over the carcasses in an attempt to get them to burn. When this happened a great sheet of flame would roar up and there would be a sound of popping and cracking as the gases inside expanded and distended bellies swelled and burst, sending rank vile smells across the path between.

“What’s happening?” Felix shouted to Gilzean.

“They’re all deed,” Gilzean replied.

“I can see that,” Felix said impatiently. “But how?”

“Tsetse fly,” Gilzean said philosophically. “Gets every horse and mule sooner or later. We burn the bodies once a week.” They moved away from the smoke. Felix could see they were approaching a village; the ground had at some time been cleared for maize and millet fields. Flimsy straw and grass shelters had been erected under the trees for the potters and some more substantial tarpaulin covered lean-tos had been put up to protect the piles of stores. Everywhere were empty boxes and crates and what looked like large wicker baskets of the sort used to carry laundry. Rows of tents indicated the presence of soldiers; the native carriers, it seemed, had to make the best of whatever materials came to hand.

They went through a gap in a high thorn barrier. Felix saw larger tents, some straw huts and a mud-walled rectangular building with a new corrugated iron roof.

“Here we are,” Gilzean announced despondently. “Kibongo.”

Felix stared listlessly at the rain falling outside. It had been raining continuously for three months. He wouldn’t have believed it possible if he hadn’t been under it himself. Twelve company of the 5th battalion were still at Kibongo. Felix’s platoon was on picket duty. He had spent a damp and uncomfortable night beneath a straw shelter. He sat now on a folding canvas chair, watching the dawn light filter through the dripping trees in front of him. Twenty yards away were the perimeter trenches and a machine-gun post. The ground in front of the trenches had been cleared to a distance of fifty yards.

Gilzean was meant to be out there checking that everyone was alert.

It had been a quiet night, as had all his nights on duty. In his three months of active service there had only been one alarm. He had been sitting in the mess with Captain Frearson and two of his fellow lieutenants — Loveday and Gent — when there had been a ragged volley of shots from the perimeter trenches. At once the entire camp was in pandemonium. When they got to the scène of the action they found the body of the fourth officer, Lieutenant Parrott, with a neat bullet hole in his temple. Parrott, going through a bad spell of dysentery, had wandered off in search of a convenient bush in which to relieve himself. A jumpy sentry had heard him rustling about, and without a word of warning had emptied the magazine of his rifle in the general direction of the noise. His equally nervous companions had joined in. Parrott was extremely unfortunate to have been hit.

♦

The next day an auction of his kit was held. Felix bought half a bottle of South African brandy for £10 and also purchased Parrott’s toothbrush for £1. 13 s. 6d. He had an inch of the brandy left and was wondering now whether to drink it. He decided to wait until after breakfast. The extravagantly high prices were due to the fact that scarcely any supplies had got through to Kibongo since the rains had begun. The Rufiji was now six hundred yards wide, a surging, foaming mill-race which was impossible to cross. Of the entire line of supply back to the railhead almost half the road had been washed away or else was under six feet of water. For the last month officers had been on one-eighth rations. The day before Felix had been issued with one rasher of bacon, a tablespoonful of apricot jam, half an onion and a handful of flour. The men were living on a cupful of rice and nothing more. Everyone was frantic with a debilitating, gnawing hunger. All anyone could think of was food.

Urgent requests for more supplies merely prompted the retort that the lines of communication no longer existed and that everyone was in more or less the same state. However, the exposed position of Twelve company at the southernmost tip of the army’s advance made them suspect that if any unit was going to be hard done by it would be theirs. The mood in the officers’ mess was one of unrelieved fractious irritability. Felix thought that if the Germans ever got round to attacking, Twelve company would have surrendered without demur at the prospect of a square meal.

The Nigerian soldiers, Felix had to admit, bore the deprivations with stoical good humour, setting a far better example than the English officers and NCOs. When he had arrived at Kibongo in January there had been a more or less full complement of soldiers in the company — some one hundred and twenty — plus about three hundred porters. Since then over a hundred porters and thirty soldiers had died from various diseases, the most common being malaria and dysentery. But lately many more of the porters were dying through eating poisonous roots and fruit in a desperate search for nourishment.

A week before, one of Felix’s men had shot a monkey. The animal had been divided equally among the platoon, Felix being presented with the head in token of his seniority. His cook and servant, Human, had scraped as much flesh from the skull as possible and had been seasoning Felix’s meagre rations with slivers of monkey’s cheek, monkey’s lips and the like.