Going Solo

Mdisho, being a true child of his tribe, understood the principle of war very well. ‘Why don’t we strike first?’ he said, excitedly. ‘Why don’t we take them by surprise, these Germani out here, bwana? Why don’t we kill all of them before the war begins? That is always the best way, bwana. My ancestors always used to strike first.’

‘I am afraid we have very strict rules about war,’ I said. ‘With us, nobody is allowed to kill anyone until the whistle blows and the game is officially started.’

‘But that is ridiculous, bwana!’ he cried. ‘In a war there are no rules! Winning is all that counts!’

Mdisho was only nineteen years old. He had been born and brought up 700 miles inland from Dar es Salaam, near a place called Kigoma, on the shores of Lake Tanganyika, and both his parents had died before he was twelve years old. He had then been taken into the household of a kindly District Officer in Kigoma and given the job of assistant shambaboy or gardener. From there he had graduated into the household as a house-boy and had charmed everybody by his good manners and gentle bearing. When the District Officer had been moved back to the Secretariat in Dar es Salaam, the family had taken Mdisho with them. A year or so later, the DO had been transferred to Egypt and poor Mdisho was suddenly without a job or a home, but he did have in his possession one very valuable document, a splendid reference from his former employer. That was when I was lucky enough to find him and take him on. I made him my personal ‘boy’ and soon the two of us had formed a friendship that I found rather marvellous.

Mdisho could neither read nor write, and it was impossible for him to imagine that the world extended much beyond the shores of the African continent. But he was undoubtedly intelligent and quick to learn, and I had begun to teach him how to read. Every weekday, as soon as I got home from the office, we would have three-quarters of an hour of reading. He learnt fast, and although we were still on single words, we would soon be progressing to short sentences. I insisted on teaching him how to read and write not only Swahili words but also their English equivalents, so that he would learn a little basic English at the same time. He loved his lessons and it was touching to see him already seated at the table in the dining-room with his exercise book open in front of him when I came home in the evenings.

Mdisho was about six feet tall, superbly built, with a rather scrunched-up flat-nosed face and the most beautiful pure white absolutely even teeth I had ever seen.

‘It is most important to obey the rules of war,’ I told him. ‘No Germani can be killed until war has been properly declared. And even then the enemy must be given the chance to surrender before you kill him.’

‘How will we know when war is declared?’ Mdisho asked me.

‘They will tell us on the wireless from England,’ I said. ‘We shall all know within a few seconds.’

‘And then the fun will begin!’ he cried, clapping his hands. ‘Oh bwana, I can hardly wait for that time to come!’

‘If you want to fight, you must become a soldier first,’ I told him. ‘You will have to join the Kenya Regiment and become an askari.’ An as

kari was a soldier in the King’s African Rifles, the KAR.

‘The askaris have guns and I don’t know how to use a gun,’ he said.

‘They will teach you,’ I said. ‘You might enjoy it.’

‘That would be a very serious step for me to take, bwana,’ he said. ‘I shall have to give it a great deal of thought.’

A few days after that, things started hotting up in Dar es Salaam. War was clearly imminent, and elaborate plans were made to round up the hundreds of Germans in Dar es Salaam and upcountry as soon as war was declared. There were not a lot of young Englishmen in Dar, perhaps fifteen or twenty at the most and all of us were ordered to leave our jobs and to become, by some magic process, temporary army officers. I was given a red armband and a platoon of askaris to command, but never having been a soldier in my life, except at school, I felt rather at a loss with twenty-five highly trained troops with rifles and one machine-gun in my charge.

Dar es Salaam

Sunday, no date

Dear Mama,

Last week I finally succumbed to Malaria and went to bed on Wednesday night with the most terrific head and a temp of 103º. Next day it was 104º and on Friday 105º. They’ve got some marvellous new stuff called Atebrin which they straightway inject into your bottom in vast quantities which suddenly brings the temperature down; then they give you an injection of 15 or 20 grams of quinine and by that time you haven’t got any bottom left at all – one side’s just Atebrin and the other’s quinine.

I suppose that by the time you get this letter war will either be declared or it’ll be off, but at the moment things, even here, are humming a bit. We’re all temporary army officers, with batons, belts & all sorts of secret instructions. If we go out of the house we’ve got to leave word where we’ve gone to so that we can be called at a moment’s notice. We know exactly where to go if anything happens but everything’s very secret, and as I’m not sure whether our letters are being censored or not I’m not going to tell you any more. But if war breaks out it’ll be our job to round up all the Germans here, and after that things ought to be pretty quiet …

I was summoned to the army barracks in Dar es Salaam where a British Captain in the KAR gave me my orders. He was seated at a wooden table with his hat on in a swelteringly hot tin hut, and he had a little clipped brown moustache that kept jumping about when he spoke.

‘As soon as war is declared,’ he said, ‘all male Germans must be rounded up at the point of a gun and put into the prison camp. The prison camp is ready, and the Germans know it is ready, so many of them will try to escape from the country before we can catch them. The nearest neutral territory is Portuguese East Africa, and there is only one road running there from Dar es Salaam, the coast road going south. Do you know it?’

Dar es Salaam

Friday 15 Sept

Dear Mama,

I’m very sorry I haven’t written to you for such ages but you can guess that things have been humming a bit here. Now all the Germans in the Territory, and it’s a pretty big place in which to try to catch them, have been safely put inside an internment camp. And we army officers were the people who had to collect them. The moment that war broke out at about 1.15 p.m. on Sunday the alarm was given on a series of telephones and certain key men dashed round and collected their squads, & proceeded to the police lines to be armed and to receive orders. At the time, I was actually out guarding the road going down the South Coast to Kilwa and Lindi with native troops (Askaris) and a blockade across the road. All I heard was a grim voice down the field telephone which said, ‘War has been declared – standby – arrest all Germans attempting to leave or enter the town.’ Then the fun started. I better not say any more or the censor might hold up the letter …

I told him I knew it very well.

‘Down that road’, the Captain said, ‘every German in Dar es Salaam will try to run the moment war is declared. It will be your duty to stop them and round them up and bring them back to the prison camp.’

‘Who, me?’ I cried, aghast.