William Boyd - An Ice-Cream War

“Yes,” said firmly. “We are crossing the Rovuma up by the Ludjenda confluence. In two or three days. Meet us there. But don’t waste time, Erich. A Zeppelin is not going to make much difference once we’re over the river.”

♦

Von Lettow and Rutke left to rejoin the main Schütztruppe column some five miles away at Newala. It was from there that von Bishop had been summoned at first light by a message from Deeg. Nanda was now, to all intents and purposes, clear of troops. There remained only the large numbers of sick and wounded in the hospital, two dozen women and children from the surrounding plantations, Deeg and his squad of ruga-ruga and the sixteen NCO prisoners.

Von Bishop told Deeg to select three of his best men to form the tracking party. Deeg and the other ruga-ruga were to stay behind in Nanda and surrender to the British when they arrived.

Von Bishop walked wearily up the deserted main street towards the hospital. All the sick and wounded had been assembled here. The hospital was so crowded that many were laid out in the shade beneath trees. Others were lying in hastily erected grass shelters. Across the road from the hospital the NCO prisoners formed a curious group by the main gate of the stockade.

Von Bishop saw Liesl standing on the narrow stoop that ran along the front of the hospital. She stood like a man, her hands behind her, feet apart, gazing out over the drab view, rocking gently backwards and forwards. She was smoking a cigarette and, von Bishop noticed with a squirm of irritation, wearing her coloured glasses.

She saw him approach. “Erich!” she exclaimed. “What are you doing here? I thought the Schütztruppe were at Newala.” Some wounded men lying on stretchers at one end of the stoop looked up in mild curiosity.

“They are,” he said. “I came down this morning.” He paused, scrutinizing her face. “He’s escaped, you know.”

“Who? Gabriel? No, I didn’t know. When?” She seemed quite unconcerned. She puffed at her cigarette, then glanced at its glowing end. Von Bishop stared in frustration at the dark opaque lenses of her glasses. She had called him Gabriel.

“Yes, Cobb ,” he said pointedly. “Somebody in the town must have helped him.”

She shrugged. “He’s been here a long time. All the boys know him.”

“I’m going after him,” he said. “Von Lettow’s orders.”

“As you wish, Erich,” she said and blew a stream of smoke into the sunlight.

♦

Von Bishop tightened the girths on his saddle. His mule munched contentedly on some dry grass. A few yards away stood three of Deeg’s ruga-ruga. He felt unsettled and irritated. He had said goodbye to Liesl, and it had turned out to be both infuriatingly formal and non-committal. He had told her that he would be rejoining von Lettow’s final column when he had recaptured Cobb and that she, no doubt, would be interned in Dar for as long as the war went on.

“We must continue to fight,” he said without much fervour. “At all costs.”

“Of course, Erich,” she had replied.

He said goodbye and stepped forward to kiss her. She removed her coloured glasses and, briefly, their lips touched. Von Bishop stepped back and held her at arm’s length, his hands on her shoulders. He looked uncomprehendingly into her eyes. His wife seemed a total stranger to him. He suddenly noticed the fleshiness of her shoulders and upper aims, how the material of her dress was creased and tight across her bosom. She used to be a handsome woman, he thought sadly to himself. How this war has changed her!

With a sigh he heaved himself up onto his mule. He saw Deeg walking over from the POW cage.

“I’m sure he’ll head north towards the British,” Deeg said. “I’ve told my boys to ask local villagers. They see everything. With a bit of persuasion…”

“Good, good,” von Bishop said testily. Really, people like Deeg were a disgrace. “Do your men speak Swahili?”

“Ah,” Deeg said apologetically. “I regret, very little. But they are obliging fellows, quick to learn. You can easily make them understand any order.”

Von Bishop looked round at the ruga-ruga. Two wore brimless felt caps. The third was bare-headed, his skull shaven apart from a round tuft of hair above his brow. They were draped in coils of tattered evil-smelling blankets and armed with old.70 rifles. Large machetes hung at their waists. They smiled winningly at him, revealing their filed, pointed teeth. Absolutely the worst sort of irregular, thought von Bishop. Still, they would know the country. Cobb wouldn’t get far.

“Let’s go,” von Bishop said. He kicked his mule into action and trotted off down the main street, the ruga-ruga loping behind.

After he left Liesl, Gabriel crept into the rubber plantations and waited for dawn. As soon as there was a faint light he set off through the comparatively open bush, keeping the rising sun on his right hand side. It was fairly easy going. The countryside was sparsely wooded, the ground covered in thick, waist-high grass with the odd tangle of thorn thicket. He kept to paths only if they headed due north. He wanted to make as much distance as possible while he was still fresh. He bypassed native villages but made no real effort to hide himself. The main German force was south of Nanda now, he knew, based at Newala. There was a rearguard to the northwest of the town on the road that led to Nambindinga. His plan was to strike north for a day or two — depending on progress — then strike east, forming the two sides of a right-angled triangle to the Nanda-Nambindinga hypotenuse. He calculated that he should meet up with the advancing British columns in three days or thereabouts.

After an hour or so the ground began to rise as he entered the gentle foothills of the wide Makonde plateau, a sizeable spur of which separated Nanda and Nambindinga. In the dips and valleys the vegetation grew thicker and for a lot of the time he passed through thin woods composed of spindly trees. At mid-morning he found a safe place to stop, a dry gully with a thick screen of bushes and scrub. He found a patch of shade and ate some of the hard unleavened bread that Liesl had supplied and drank a few mouthfuls of water.

He felt curiously exhilarated and quite pleased with himself. His limping gait had carried him along tolerably well. His leg was barely aching. He took from the sack the book Liesl had given him, Die Leiden des jungen Werthers : ‘The Sorrows of Young Werther’, he translated. He had never read it, just used its fine pages to make cigarettes. The first eighty-seven pages were missing. He started to write on the upper and lower margins of the first available page. A little self-consciously he wrote, “Report of Capt. G.H. Cobb att to 69th Palamcottah Light Infantry. Taken prisoner at Tanga. 4⁄11⁄1914. Account of imprisonment and escape.” He paused. He knew that he might fail in his endeavour and the request to Liesl for writing materials had been made with this in mind. If his body should be found, he wanted his identity to be ascertainable, and some record of the facts to be established. That was most important.

“Next of kin,” he wrote. “Major—”: he paused and scratched out ‘Major’ and replaced it with ‘Charis Lavery Cobb, The Cottage, Stackpole Manor, Stackpole, Kent’. As he added the full stop the point of his pencil stub broke. He swore. Writing Charis’s name and the familiar address brought back long dormant memories. He found himself thinking of their days in Trouville, their walks along the promenade. He brought to mind an image of Stackpole in high summer, the field in front of the house, the river, the willow pool. He remembered the boiling afternoon he had gone swimming with Felix, the dinner when the electric light had failed, the major furiously ringing a silent bell. He felt a debilitating sense of homesickness sweep through his body.