Chapter 7: Defeat

Shona Kabentinde likes her new name. It is the same name as her new husband Khawja and, like the whites, she decided to take his name as her own. It is the white custom and she thinks it's a good one. Some of the white customs are strange and harder for her to understand. For instance, the white men take only one wife. How is one wife to cope with the work and the children? How can one wife bring honour to her husband?

Her husband Khawja had a senior wife, but now she has given herself to another. Shona was a little puzzled as to why Khawja did not beat this man. She reasons it's because the man is a chief and beating him would cause big problems within the white people's village. Khawja shows her that he is a man of wisdom when acts like that.

When her husband came to her father and uncles to ask for her, he had offered them a big bride-price. Her family had been very honoured. Khawja said that she must keep knowledge of their marriage from the whites because they will be very angry. He therefore claimed her well away from them, among the rushes that grow down by the banks of the great river Rukwa.

He claimed her while Khawja's senior wife was still living in his house. He told her that she could not come to his house because his senior wife would be very jealous. Shona was angry that she couldn't live with her husband. She would sit by the white's big house for hours and look across at her husband's home. She felt bad thoughts towards this Kherda and was happy when she left for the White chief.

Before that happened, Khawja found them an old disused hut beyond the western stream. There were holes in the walls and the roof leaked but Khawja and two of her brothers fixed it up for them. It was lonely out there when Khawja was away so he used to invite her sister and some of the other girls to go out and keep her company. Sometimes they were there when Khawja came and, every so often, he'd have them stay when they made love together. He said the whites do this occasionally to show the girls what a husband and wife do together. She thinks it is a good idea.

She even let them help him get ready for her. He would tell them to take off their clothes and touch him with their mouth and hands. Shona would lie on their cot and display herself for him. The girls were very curious about white men's bodies. He will, though, only make a baby with Shona.

She had been terrified when the 'Hairy chins' came to make war on them. The German-whites' spirits had been the stronger, however, and the 'hairy chins' had run back to their village as fast as they could go. She wishes the 'hairy chins' would now move their village somewhere else, for it is too close to them. Khawja told her that the 'Hairy chins' are waiting for more of their people to come, and that we must be very polite to them. He said the Askaris will go with the German-white chiefs and leave them to make peace. He told her not to worry because the white chiefs of the 'Hairy chins' will make sure they will not be harmed.

She has heard from her husband that his senior wife, the one who left him for another, the one called 'Kherda' has been taken by the 'Hairy Chins.' It has wounded his heart because he still loves her. One day, she knows, Khawja will cherish her in the same way. After all she has his child growing inside her.

The white 'Missionary man' tells the African that their spirits are false. Shona doesn't understand this, because she can hear them chatting to each other in the streams and on the wind. The ëSisuluí spirit, she knows, has touched her husband, because he has the gift of knowledge and wisdom. The 'Sisulu' is very powerful and Shona knows she is lucky to have her husband.

One day, he has told her, they will walk as man and wife through the great village of the whites and their women will talk to her and treat her as an equal among them. How could they not do that? After all, her husband teaches their children.

Meanwhile, Gerda Carpentier feels nauseous and dizzy from the blow to her head. She lies on a cot in the headquarters tent of the British camp amid the flies and stifling heat. The British medic, who bandaged her poor abused head, pronounced that she had suffered concussion. He has told her she'd had a blow on the back of her head and she was very lucky. Gerda doesn't feel lucky, however: just sick.

She is tired of the British Officer's questions. Tired of his grilling her about her husband Klaus Spangenburg. She wishes he would go away but he keeps coming back, sometimes alone and sometimes with that huge Indian. They speak in French, because the Britisher can't understand German. Sometimes he would translate from French to English for the Indian to understand. It is very tedious. There is one thing the English do not know, though. Gerda can understand English quite well, however she finds it difficult to converse in that language. Hence she can understand things she wasn't meant to know.

The English call them 'Huns'. She doesn't like the reference to the Asiatic barbarians who raided the glory of Rome. But, she supposes, she wasn't meant to.

"Are the Germans so short of men that they get their wives to fly their aeroplanes?" the Captain asks.

"And your English women? They do your laundry and polish your buttons?" Gerda replies, petulantly

"Damned right they do!" the Britisher tells her, "they leave fighting to the men. Never heard of such a thing among Europeans. Your husband mustnít have much regard for you to let you fly into a battle."

"Klaus doesn't tell me what to do, pigs!" Gerda angrily tells him.

The English Captain laughs and, after translating for the Indian, he too roars with laughter. Gerda boils with rage.

"A frisky mare isn't she, Daffadar?" he tells him in English, "I wouldn't mind training her in a bit of 'dressage'? What do you think, what?"

"If she was an Indian wife, she would not be talking so!" replies the Sikh, shaking his head.

Gerda understands what they are saying clearly. She sees a red flash before her eyes, senses the bitter taste of absolute hate rising in her mouth and nose.

Leutnant Spangenburg returns with the Wachtmeister to Rungwa beside himself with guilt and rage. I have rarely seen him so het up. I too am angry, angry with the pair of them. Gerda, because she has lost our aeroplane, which I have come to regard as a valuable asset, and above all, I'm angry with Spangenburg. Thanking the Wachtmeister for his loyalty and bravery for ensuring the Leutnant's return, I invite Spangenburg into a spare room at the Fleischer's, my command post.

"That was irresponsible and unbecoming an Officer," I tell him.

Ignoring my criticism, he begs me to send an expedition to retrieve Gerda.

"She may be alive, and injured!" he says. "Those Indians, who knows what they might do to her?"

"And no thanks to you, Leutnant..."

"Damn you sailor!" He snarls angrily at me. "All your polite rules mean nothing here. This is a fight to the death and there is no room for gentlemen. The English know this, and so do I!"

"That is regrettable, Leutnant," I snap back, "but you think I don't understand the bitterness of war? I'm speaking of pointless little feuds that endanger the men you have a responsibility for. The Wachtmeister may have been killed. It would be on your conscience if..."

Before I finish my sentence, he storms from the room. I ask one of my staff to watch him in case he embarks on another foolhardy venture.

Musarewa, stationed on top of the Junker's barn, calls urgently that troops are advancing towards his position. We expected this; in fact, we believed this would be the enemy's first move. For us, the position is indefensible for it is too far away to hold with the troops at our disposal. To the enemy, however, it closes the road north and puts his artillery within range of 'flat top.'

Our Krupp gun emplaced on 'Flat Top' is old and worn. Although it has the range to bombard the Estate, we can't guarantee its accuracy at that distance. The worn barrel lining causes the shell to wobble in flight and doesn't form a perfect 'gas seal' for the projectile. Hence the shell will deviate and this, of course, becomes greater the farther the shell is fired.

Not so the Naval gun, however. This is one reason we have not ordered it into battle as yet. It is our reserve 'anti-artillery' weapon.

I order Musarewa over to our reserve Observation Post on the opposite side of the Rukwa. We have provided two canoes for the man and his equipment. From this position and 'Flat Top, ' we are able to observe the enemy's placement of his guns. They have brought two up, one they position in the Junker's piggery, the other behind the wall of the kitchen garden. As to the Junker's porkers, I assume they died on active service. Their only hope would have been if their captors were Mohammedans, for they do not eat pork. Accompanying their guns is a squadron of cavalry. These take up various positions around the buildings and environs.

The estate has been well charted for the range takers of our guns. They only need the name of the target and the order to fire. As dusk begins to gather, our guns and theirs sit and watch each other in a tense stand off. Who is going to fire the first shot?

After dinner a runner arrives with the news that the main enemy army is closing on Uwimbi. The town militia has fled south for Lettow and Uwimbi is going to be left to the British. Where is their relief column for Rungwa? Not for the first time today, I am puzzled by the tactics of the English.

A messenger arrives at Captain Harris's tent to advise him that 'A' squadron and the half-battery of guns have taken up position without incident. 'E' squadron is detailed to protect communications between that position and headquarters. That leaves the remaining half- battery and the regiment reserve of two squadrons to defend the camp against attack. It is impossibly few for such an area of operations and the Captain knows it. He still, however, has not forwarded a request for more troops.

Why is this? Can anyone really know what is going on in the mind of the British officer? Vanity? Blind self-delusion? Perhaps a refusal to see he is wrong and a misguided faith in his 'special operations.'

He believes he now holds the 'trump' card in his bizarre game of 'cribbage.' Holding the wife of the 'heart' of Rungwa's defence will surely bring the Leutnant to him. Maybe, by way of a 'treat', an exchange of prisoners, or some secret raid on his headquarters. One way or another, he must come for her, and the Captain will be ready.

An exchange is just what I have in mind as Kommandant. We have, after all, a British General in our care and surely he must be at least equal to the freedom of one woman. Consequently, I send a Feldwebel over to the British under a white flag to request a conference.

Preparatory to the exchange, should it be agreed, I invite the General back from the civilian camp to the hotel for consultation. Over supper, I acquaint him with the day's operation and he seems incredulous. He cannot believe, he says, that an experienced officer such as Colonel Rogers would countenance such an attack. Regretfully, I have to tell him we believe this Colonel was killed and expressed sorrow. As it turned out, they were close friends. We, of course, are forced to converse in French, at which neither of us are particularly fluent.

"I believe, Captain, that your protagonist is one Captain Harris," he informs me, "a top fellow but a bit prone to a rush of the blood, don't you know!"

I explain that he is not the only one with that flaw. Indeed it can be found in my second in command.

"Quite!" he says, "I had the pleasure of his acquaintance from Uwimbi to Rungwa. Bit of a firebrand, what?"

"Yes, Herr General. If we don't obtain the release of his woman friend, it may become rather like the Wild West, I think. A personal duel on Main Street."

Oh," he chuckles and eyeing my long barrel Colt revolver, he declares, "I see you've come admirably equipped for such a contest."

I cannot do anything but laugh at the General's jesting. He is, I believe, a fine fellow.

Just before dark, our Feldwebel returns, the enemy will talk but cannot guarantee an exchange. I sense some duplicity is afoot.

Nighttime, sees a dozen members of 'A' Squadron, 2/7 Bengal Lancers, creep through the reeds along the bank of the Rukwa river. Their high cavalry boots regularly sink into the soft mud; it is slow going. The objective, this time, is not the head of a German Officer, but the 10.5cm Naval gun from the Konigsburg.

The problem, however, is that the gun sits on a promontory on the other side of Rungwa. To reach it they have to sneak past the whole town and it's defenders. Perhaps subterfuge will achieve what a full frontal assault cannot?

It is a manifestation of 'cutting off the head' that so obsesses the British commander. The Askaris, he believes, are no more than a group of unruly children. Removal of the props that maintain their courage, in his mind, will see them fleeing like so many frightened geese. Perhaps, this man sees himself as a General Kitchener sending the Sudanese hordes of the Mahdi scrambling away in panic before the guns of his professional soldiers?

Around midnight, they encounter the first sentry post. It is a trench dug across the road with logs and brush piled in front. Pressing forward on their hands and knees, two men approach this post carrying their vicious butcher knives between their teeth. The trickling sound of the nearby water obscures all other sounds and they do their work, silently and efficiently.

The next obstacle is the town itself, and to negotiate this they slink along between buildings and water's edge.

Meanwhile, I have requested the presence of George Carpentier. He is an able linguist In French, English, Italian and Swahili. It took some time to locate the man; he seems to be living in some common law arrangement with a native girl well away from the other Whites. To my surprise, the sad man agrees to my request and journeys back over the river late at night.

He arrives with a shivering Black girl called Shona. She looks to be with child. Perhaps in hindsight his estrangement from his wife Gerda was understandable. She clings to the man's side like a frightened puppy, unfamiliar maybe to the society of White people.

I bring the man to the hotel for a briefing. He insists on bringing Shona with him. The Hotel concierge demands she be taken out, there being a policy of not having Blacks as guests. I insist she stays; after all I want the co-operation of this man tomorrow, not a man disgruntled over the treatment of his woman.

The outraged Hotel manager then fetches Inspektor Palmier but to the man's credit, he doesn't intervene.

I am a sailor, not a great thinker. Things I've learnt in life have been the skills I needed to accomplish the task in hand. I'm not a great reader of books unless they concern themselves with military or marine theory and practice.

Romantics at home may believe that war is a great adventure filled with daring escapades, heroic deeds and such like. In reality it is mostly utter boredom interspersed with tiny pieces of sheer terror. That boredom is often associated with a crushing discomfiture born of disease, unsanitary conditions, fierce heat and chilling cold. The terror: a realisation that someone at an impossibly short distance away wants to end your life. Despite all that there is perhaps too much time where one is left with nothing but the thoughts inside your head.

I have listened to the rambling conversations from the White citizens. Listened to their theories on 'Social Darwinism' and the evolution of the species. Dr. Otto swears that the African has longer arms because not so long ago he was swinging from the trees like a chimpanzee. I have no idea if that's true. All I know is that we are all God's children and if we expect the Africans to take up arms in the service of the German Empire, the least we can do is treat them with compassion and respect.

N'wimbi Zuni of Spangenburg's 'Uhlan' cavalry was one of the volunteers who exploded the mines at the skirmish of the ford. Regarded as a fierce and brave warrior, he has the reputation of having the eyesight of a leopard and the hearing of a native dog. This night, he is standing on Rungwa's steamboat landing as the British raiders creep past the hotel along the riverbank.

Zuni likes to listen to the river at night. He believes the river spirits talk to him in a far more eloquent fashion at that time. The river 'messengers' convey advice from all the Zuni warriors who lived before him. This time, his keen hearing hears something else, something out of place in the darkness.

Stepping back into the shadow of the rushes, he crouches, and listens.

I have just achieved some blessed rest when I'm awoken by a flurry of rifle fire. This time it seems to be coming from the middle of town so I leap from my cot, revolver in hand. One learns to sleep in one's clothes so instantly I hit the ground running. From the police post, I see flashes from behind the customs shed by the steamboat landing.

The guard has spilled out onto the street and they, too, are sprinting for the river. The firing appears to me to be moving in a southerly direction along the bank so I order the guard to split up. One group I order to go to the landing, the other to follow down the street. It's clear another attack is in progress and the enemy is by the water's edge. I make for the landing to size up the situation for myself.