The officer had the two-room apartment at one end of the upstairs block on the right-hand side of the boma. It had a small bedroom and another room with two comfortable chairs and a small desk where the officer sometimes sat down to write. There were seven rooms upstairs altogether, a replica of the downstairs layout, and there was a hierarchy to the arrangement. The two rooms at one end for the use of the commanding officer stood next to a large room in the middle of the block that was the mess, then came a room for each of the other four officers, beginning with the medical officer and ending with the Feldwebel, who had the small room at the far end because he was the lowest in rank. The other three officers in the boma had their rooms in the smaller building facing the gate, whose downstairs served as the infirmary and the padlocked store. The store contained provisions for the officers’ mess: tins of European delicacies and bottles of beer and wine and schnapps and brandy. The arrangements in both blocks were very orderly. The washrooms for both were downstairs in separate buildings. The sleeping quarters for the men who served the officers were in a two-roomed outhouse behind the blocks with an attached washroom that they shared. Hamza and Julius, who served the other four officers in their block, shared one room, and the two who served the smaller block shared the other.
Julius was much older than Hamza, in his late thirties. He was the senior orderly and had served in the schutztruppe for more than ten years. He could speak a little German and understood a lot more. He was the only one of them who was allowed in the provisions store, the key to which was held by the officer in charge of supplies. Julius was given that responsibility because he could write, he explained to the others. If he took anything from the store, he had to enter it into the book kept in there. He told Hamza about his mission education in Bagamoyo but chose to be imprecise about how long he had been in school. He was proud of his education and his religion. Now and then he would say: If like me you were educated and a Christian, you would think differently about whatever. Julius was slightly wounded in a tax raid on a village and his commanding officer posted him to batman’s duties while he recovered. ‘This is my third year and no one has thought to move me so I must be doing it well,’ he said.
The water did not run upstairs, not yet, although there were plans to introduce it, so in the morning Hamza filled the officer’s washbasin with fresh water and then went to fetch his coffee from the cooking shed. The officers’ meals were cooked in a shed inside the boma by women from the village, all of whom were wives of askari. By the time Hamza came back the officer was out of his inner room and dressed in his shirt and trousers, waiting for his coffee to arrive. Hamza then went into the inner room to make the bed and straighten out his clothes, often feeling the officer’s eyes on him through the open door. After that he went to the mess to help Julius set the table for breakfast. The officers from both blocks ate their breakfast in the mess and met there for a formal dinner every evening. Julius explained the crockery and cutlery required and the rudiments of serving at table. Then they went downstairs to wait for the men who served the smaller block to deliver breakfast from the kitchen shed and after that Hamza and Julius laid it out in their mess and called for the officers.
After breakfast they cleared and washed the dishes, which were for the exclusive use of the officers, put them away in the cupboards, cleaned the mess and then saw to the private rooms. Hamza tidied and dusted and aired the officer’s apartment, emptied and cleaned the washbasin and the chamber pot, then swept the veranda front and back and took the soiled linen in its own named bag downstairs for the laundrywoman to collect. It was a very orderly routine and he was expected to be all done by seven in the morning.
In the first few weeks of his new posting as the officer’s personal servant, he joined his troop in their drill session soon after seven because he had not completed his initial training. He saw them in the Exerzierplatz earlier than that, being put through their paces by the ombasha or the shaush while he swept the veranda or ironed the officer’s tunic and he longed to join them. When he could, he threw himself into the drill in an attempt to shake off the sense of unworthiness his intimate servitude to the officer made him feel. Sometimes they went out to the field for target practice or manoeuvres but he could not join them if they were going far. Just before noon he had to rush away to clean up and be ready to serve lunch to any officers who were eating in the mess on that day. By lunchtime it was often too hot to linger, and the officers bolted their food and hurried away to their rooms to rest until it was cooler. To Hamza this was a blessed part of the day when the boma and all the surrounding buildings in the settlement subsided and fell silent. Even the goats and the dogs in the village flopped down in a shady corner and panted the hot hours away. He took his time in the mess and on the back veranda because it was coolest there at that time of day, and when he retreated to the shared room downstairs he usually found Julius already asleep.
At approximately four in the afternoon, as the muadhin was calling people to the alasiri prayer in the settlement mosque outside the boma, Hamza took a cup of coffee to the officer who by then would have showered and gone to his office. The Oberleutnant instructed him to stay nearby and his post was outside on the deck, sitting on a stool, within earshot if needed. This was the routine every afternoon. He was sent on various errands to the other officers or was asked to provide whatever additional acts of comfort the officer required: a glass of water, a cup of coffee or a fresh towel. From the beginning, at some point in those afternoon hours, the officer called Hamza in and taught him German, probably to amuse himself at first but also because Hamza proved to be such a willing learner. It began with naming things.
‘Fenster. You say it,’ the officer said, pointing to the window. ‘Tür, you say it. Stuhl, Auge, Herz, Kopf.’ Door, chair, eye, heart, head, pointing or touching himself as he spoke.
Then Hamza had to repeat whole sentences: ‘Mein Name ist Siegfried. No no, you say your name. Mein Name ist Hamza. Sie sind herzlich willkommen in meinem Land. You say it, but you have to say like you believe it. Sie sind herzlich willkommen in meinem Land. That’s good. You say it very well. It means you are welcome to my country,’ the officer said with his sneering smile.
Then he sent Hamza to the draughtsman’s table on which a book of field instructions was open with a blank sheet of paper beside it. He made him copy a few lines so that he could familiarise himself with writing German words. Every day he wrote a few which he then had to read aloud without at first knowing what they meant. At every opportunity the officer spoke to him in German, which at times he found amusing, and Hamza exaggerated his bafflement to make his superior laugh. If Hamza did not understand something, the officer translated it but the next time he expected him to understand and reply. Sometimes the officer played tricks on him and made him repeat self-mocking words before laughing and explaining them. It was a game for the officer, and it pleased him that Hamza was so responsive and quick. I will have you reading Schiller soon, he said, his eyes alight with mischief.
His eyes. Sometimes while Hamza was making the bed or sweeping the front veranda or ironing a shirt, he glanced round to find those transparent blue eyes fixed immovably on him. The first time it happened, he thought the officer had said something and was waiting for a reply, but the eyes did not move and the lips did not open. Then Hamza moved away in confusion, troubled by the intensity of those eyes. He came to sense a certain stillness at times when he was near the officer, and knew that if he looked, he would find those eyes fixed on him in that same way. It was an insolent and intrusive inspection, leaving him with no choice but to allow himself to be scrutinised at such length, to be viewed as if he were incapable of returning that gaze. He learned not to look.
His success at learning to speak and read a little German delighted the officer. He displayed Hamza’s achievements to the other officers in the mess, especially during and after their evening meals, when they had beer and schnapps to drink. He invited them to speak to Hamza, to try him out. The medical officer smiled benignly and looked him up and down as if searching for some evidence of his facility for German on his body. The other two officers in his block joined more willingly in their superior officer’s game and asked the simple friendly questions an adult might address to a child. Wie alt sind Sie? The other officers laughed and added comments Hamza did not understand, which amused them even more. Feldwebel Walther was not amused by the officers’ new game and snorted dismissively, later whispering in an angry mocking tone words that Hamza did not know but which, from the tone they were uttered in, he guessed were obscene or scornful. Julius smiled patronisingly during these exercises and told him afterwards that the officers were making a monkey out of him. Hamza left as soon as he could, to get away from their condescension and before the drinking and hilarity turned ugly.
‘Don’t take any notice of the Feldwebel,’ Julius told him. ‘He is a low-class man who should not be staying in the same building as these honourable officers. He smokes too much bangi then he goes chasing women in the village outside. His room stinks of smoke.’
Sometimes the drinking sessions went on late, perhaps when one of the officers was due to leave on a mission to discipline a village or a chief, or to go on an extended field manoeuvre. Then their voices and laughter could be heard all over the boma, and the Oberleutnant would be wracked by headaches the following morning, gripping his temples with outstretched fingers while his eyes were screwed up in agony. He always suffered like that after the late nights.
One afternoon Hamza came into the office with coffee and greeted the commanding officer as he was required to in German, but he was so engaged in what he was reading that he did not reply. The papers he held in his hand had the look of an official document, and Hamza saw the government crest on the top of the page. Eventually the officer noticed Hamza and waved him out of the office, and he did not call him back for their usual half-hour conversation class. When he came in to collect the coffee cup, the officer was leaning back in his chair with a vacant look in his eyes, deep in thought. Hamza waited to see if there were any further instructions. When there were not, he moved forward to collect the coffee tray. He was so absorbed in his scrutiny of the officer that he became careless in his movements. He stumbled against the desk and the crockery on the tray rattled noisily. The officer’s head spun round, a look of rage in his eyes. ‘Fuck off out of here,’ he said.
There was a charge in the atmosphere in the mess that evening, which must have been to do with what the officer had been reading earlier in the afternoon. The officer must have received new orders. The talk between the officers was generally excited but at times briefly sombre, and altogether far too fluent and fast-moving for Hamza to follow with assurance. He did not think they were speaking so fast deliberately to baffle him and Julius. For a while they seemed unaware the servants were even there, but at some point they exchanged glances and must have decided that they did not want to run the risk of being understood. The commanding officer nodded at the Feldwebel who ordered Julius and Hamza to leave the mess. Hamza heard many words whose meaning he came to understand more fully later but the one he knew already was Krieg. Vita. War.
He asked Julius when they were back in their room, ‘Who are we fighting?’
‘Who do you think? Did you not hear them say it was going to be a big war? I thought you were a miracle German speaker,’ he said, scowling with disdain. ‘It could be the Belge or the Portuguese, but the British won’t let them do that, so it must be all of them. We’ll be fighting all of them. The Germans wouldn’t say it was going to be a big war if they were talking about Wachagga or Wahadimu.’
The following morning, when Hamza brought him his coffee, the officer said with one of his sardonic smiles, ‘No drill for you today. You missed a class yesterday. I want you in my office as soon as you have done your chores. We must not allow communications from the high command to interfere with your lessons.’
*
In time the routine changed. The officer wanted Hamza nearby more and more often. The game of teaching his servant to speak and read German absorbed him and began to turn serious. He even issued a challenge to his officers, after several drinks, betting them that he would have their young schüler reading Schiller before the monsoons arrived. Which monsoons? The other officers laughed. Maybe ten years from now.
As before, every morning Hamza filled the officer’s washbasin with warm fresh water and then went to fetch his coffee. It had to be made every day from beans roasted the previous evening and pounded first thing in the morning. He did not know if the women in the cooking shed followed these instructions exactly but the officer did not complain. When he came back with the coffee the officer was still in bed in the inner room and took his coffee there when before he would have been up and dressed in his shirt and trousers. Hamza waited on the back veranda while the officer washed and then called him in to help with his boots and leggings. Once Hamza came back in too soon, when he judged that the officer was finished washing, and saw him standing bare-chested in the inner room. His torso was blotched with burn scars. Hamza retreated hastily and waited to be called back. He expected a rebuke but the officer merely talked to him as he usually did at this hour and made him reply. He called it their first conversation class of the day. Perhaps he had not seen Hamza enter. Then Hamza went into the inner room to make the bed while the officer continued the conversation as he was shaving. At times the Oberleutnant fell silent and Hamza knew without looking that he was staring at him in that strange way of his.
After breakfast he and Julius cleared the mess and saw to the rooms and their other chores, and then Hamza reported to the Oberleutnant’s office. He tidied what needed tidying then waited outside for instructions. He carried messages to the other officers and sometimes to the troops outside the boma in the village. He wandered around there if he was not in a hurry, and if it was the right time he went to the mosque for prayers and the company. Every day he collected the sick report from the medical officer who refused to let his assistant bring it to the Oberleutnant because he said he was a medical orderly, not an errand boy. Many of the officers and the askari suffered from attacks of malaria from time to time, even though they all took a dose of quinine every day and slept under mosquito nets. Some were already infected before they joined up but there were also times on manoeuvres when they were unprotected and the mosquitoes could do their work. There were cases of dysentery and venereal diseases and jiggers in the toes. There were small outbreaks of typhoid, which had to be rigorously isolated and contained in the infirmary. It was from his surreptitious reading of the sick report that Hamza learned the well-kept secret of opium addiction among the Nubi non-commissioned officers.
When he made his daily call at the infirmary, the medical officer smiled at him in a knowing way Hamza had come to dislike but had to pretend not to notice. One morning as he handed over the report, the medical officer said to his assistant, speaking carefully for Hamza’s benefit, ‘This young man has become an obsession of our Oberleutnant’s. He is going to make him a scholar. He has promised us that this young man will soon be reading to him at bedtime.’
The two men shared a smile, which the assistant allowed to slide into a leer. Sometimes when Hamza was serving in the mess and he was close to the medical officer’s chair, he felt his thigh being stroked as he passed. The medical officer did it so that no one else noticed and then, when he caught Hamza’s eye, gave him that same smile. Hamza asked Julius if he did that to him too and he grinned and said no.
‘It’s you he’s after. He likes you. Didn’t you know? Everyone knows that the medical officer is a basha. People say that his assistant is his wife. Even in Germany itself the soldiers are allowed to have sex with each other. One of the governors of this whole Deutsch-Ostafrika was a basha. There was a court case a few years ago when he was accused of keeping a manservant just for sex.’
‘The governor himself was taken to court? Who can take the governor to court?’ Hamza asked. ‘Doesn’t the governor own the court?’
‘This is a Christian government,’ Julius said with a tiny smug smile. ‘No one owns the court.’
‘But the governor, taken to court because he is a basha!’ Hamza said, still incredulous.
‘Yes, the governor himself and several of his officers. Did you not hear about that?’
‘No,’ Hamza said.
Julius looked pityingly at him. He considered Hamza unfortunate in many ways and told him so, not least because of his lack of a mission education and his backward religion. Hamza guessed that Julius thought himself better suited to serve the commanding officer instead of having to look after those of lesser rank, especially the bad-tempered Feldwebel, a disgraceful class of man in Julius’s often-repeated opinion. He dropped his voice now as he continued, ‘I have heard even the Kaiser himself,’ he whispered, nodding his head meaningfully.
‘No, you’re adding too much salt,’ Hamza said in exaggerated disbelief. ‘The Kaiser himself.’
‘Not so loud! Yes, only they try to hush all this up because they are afraid we will laugh at them.’
When Hamza was not running errands or sitting out of the way on the stool outside the office, and the commanding officer was not occupied with military duties in the boma or in the field, he called him in, on a whim it seemed, and made him sit at the draughtsman’s table with some writing exercise. It was often copying from the field manual, which had translations of simple phrases from German to Kiswahili and a variety of instructions in German that Hamza had to copy and translate. When he did not know a word, he spoke it out loud and the officer told him its meaning. Sometimes the lesson was reversed and the officer asked for the Kiswahili word for something. What is the word for frankincense? Ubani. How do you say numb? Ganzi. What is the word for foam? Foam? Bubbles. Mapovu.
The officer sometimes interrupted his own work to have a few minutes’ conversation with Hamza. He gave him an almost imperceptible nod of approval when he did well, and smiled with reluctant glee when he achieved something unexpected. You are doing very well, he told him, but you’re not yet ready for Schiller. Lessons sometimes continued in the afternoon as well so Hamza felt, as he had never done before, like someone at school. They ended with the muadhin calling people to the maghrib prayer in the village outside the boma, which was usually the signal for the officer to pour himself his first schnapps of the evening.
Hamza was now visibly under the Oberleutnant’s protection, and while he was not spared the bullying and abuse that was regular military practice in the boma, he was at least safe from the floggings and hard labour which were inescapable for many of the troops. He was not spared the Feldwebel’s contempt, though. He called Hamza a toy soldier behind the commanding officer’s back.
‘Whose toy are you? You are his pretty toy, little shoga plaything, aren’t you?’ he said, wagging a finger in disdainful warning and once reaching out and squeezing Hamza’s nipple. ‘You make me sick.’
A kind of gloom descended on the Oberleutnant at times and he fell silent for long periods, or else spoke cryptic words that sounded like self-mockery. When Hamza looked up enquiringly, he said something cruel or scornful. Do you want to know exactly what I said, you slow-witted baboon? Hamza learned not to look up when he sensed this mood and, if he could, kept his distance. He had known from the beginning that the officer was capable of violence. He had seen it in the light in his eyes which glistened involuntarily, and in the tightening of the skin at his temple, as if he were suppressing a burning urge. When he was in deep concentration or sunk in despondency, he kneaded that fold of skin abstractedly. Hamza dreaded these dark moments when he was vulnerable to any humiliation the officer wished to inflict on him. He had his own ways of doing this, which involved a scornful stare, and sometimes the crash of something against the desk followed by a stream of abuse during which Hamza stood quite still while the officer raged and then gave an abrupt order for him to get out. He did his best to keep away when he suspected the onset of this mood, but this too could be viewed as a provocation if the officer called for him and he was not there or took too long in coming.
As Hamza’s understanding of German improved, he took in more of what the officer was saying, at times the same thing repeatedly, often when he was writing: Why did it have to turn out like this? Why did it have to turn out like this? He would exclaim in rage at the heat or at a correspondent he was addressing: There is no point in saying the same thing over and over again – although that is what I am doing. At other times he would speak to Hamza directly, as if they were in the middle of a conversation: The stupidity of explaining ourselves and what we are doing has no limit because none of it is in the least convincing. We just say the same thing over and over again. At such moments Hamza pretended he was deaf, and perhaps to the officer he was invisible.
Then one day the Oberleutnant announced a large-scale manoeuvre in two days’ time, to get all the troops combat ready. Preparations had been intensifying and field messages and telegrams had been growing more frequent. They were all waiting for the order to move. The officers held long sombre conferences and took the troops out on regular exercises. War was coming. In a quiet moment at the end of that day of frenzy when Hamza was tidying up in the officer’s apartment, he sensed a sinister silence which was so thick it terrified him.
‘What are you doing here? What is someone like you doing in this brutish business?’ the officer asked into the silence.
‘I am here to serve the schutztruppe and the Kaiser,’ Hamza said, stiffening to attention and looking straight ahead.
‘Yes, of course you are. What nobler duty can there be!’ the officer said mockingly, coming around to face him. ‘I suppose you could ask me the same question. What is a man from the lovely little town of Marbach doing here in this shithole? I was born into a military tradition and this is my duty. That’s why I am here – to take possession of what rightfully belongs to us because we are stronger. We are dealing with backward and savage people and the only way to rule them is to strike terror into them and their vain Liliputmajestät sultans, and pummel all of them into obedience. The schutztruppe is our instrument. You are too. We want you to be disciplined and obedient and cruel beyond our imagining. We want you to be thick-skinned heartless braggarts who will do our bidding without hesitation and then we will pay you well and give you the respect you deserve, whether slave, soldier or outcast. Except – you are not one of them. You tremble and look and listen to every heartbeat as if all of it torments you. I have watched you from the beginning when they first brought you here. You are a dreamer.’
Hamza stood quite still, staring ahead.
‘I pulled you out of that line because I liked the look of you,’ the officer said, standing two paces in front of him. ‘Are you frightened of me? I like people to be frightened of me. It makes me strong.’
The officer stepped forward and slapped Hamza on the left cheek then slapped him with the back of his hand on the right cheek. Hamza gasped from the shock and after a moment felt his flesh tingling with pain. The officer was now only inches away and Hamza breathed in again the astringent and medicinal smell he had caught the first morning the Oberleutnant inspected the recruits, only now he knew that it was schnapps.
‘Did that hurt you? Your suffering does not concern me,’ the officer said, standing very close to him. Hamza avoided eye contact and saw the stretched skin on the officer’s temple ripple against his cranium. ‘Answer my question. Are you frightened of me?’
‘Ndio bwana,’ Hamza said loudly.
The officer laughed. ‘I teach you to speak and read German so you can understand Schiller and you answer me in that childish language. Now answer me properly.’
‘Jawohl, herr Oberleutnant,’ Hamza said, and then to himself: Scheißer.
The officer looked grim-faced at Hamza for a moment and then said ‘You have lost your place in the world. I don’t know why it concerns me but it does. Well, perhaps I do know. I don’t suppose you know what I’m talking about. I don’t suppose you have any idea of the jeopardy that surrounds you. All right, go and do your work.’ As he turned away and walked towards the inner room, he said over his shoulder, ‘Get out, and make sure all my gear is ready for the manoeuvres.’
*
The war started two days later. The telegram orders arrived the morning after they returned from manoeuvres. They were to take the train to Moshi and then march to positions near the border to reinforce the defensive line. The orders were carried out with trained and practised precision. The troops marched from the boma to the town in close formation, singing their marching songs, while their officers rode ahead of them or strode beside them. The carrier corps, the wives and children and livestock, came behind them, so that by the time everyone was boarded, the train was so full that the carriers and the gun boys had to ride on the roof. After Moshi they marched north towards the border with British East Africa. That was how that part of the world was at the time. Every bit of it belonged to Europeans, at least on a map: British East Africa, Deutsch-Ostafrika, África Oriental Portuguesa, Congo Belge.
Their column of one hundred and fifty askari stretched for a mile or more with the addition of all the followers. The askari were at the front of the column with their officers riding ahead and the staff-surgeons and medical orderlies immediately behind them. That was always the formation on a march and in battle. Then came the carriers bringing equipment, ammunition, supplies and the officers’ personal effects. Behind them came the camp-followers with a small group of askari under a German officer as a rearguard, to counter desertion and pilfering.
The wives and partners were not just camp-followers. When the schutztruppe marched, the whole boma settlement marched with them. For one thing, the askari would not go to war without their partners. For another, the schutztruppe lived off the land when they could and it was the women who foraged for food and information, who cooked for the troops, traded where there was trade, and kept their husbands content. It was a concession Wissman had to make when he set up the schutztruppe and it was not possible to unmake it without risking widespread mutiny and desertion.
Many of the askari in Hamza’s troop were seasoned campaigners and some of them knew this area. When they were camped in askari lines in the evenings they told stories of their earlier exploits in these parts: how they subdued the disobedient Wachagga chiefs Rindi and his son Meli, and hanged thirteen of their other chiefs, how they razed villages for hiding food or for sabotage, and how they dealt with the rebellious people of Meru and Arusha who had killed German missionaries. They were all washenzi to the askari. They had to be subdued and flogged and disciplined and terrified. The more they rebelled, the worse their punishment. That was the way the schutztruppe worked. At the slightest sign of resistance, the schwein were crushed and their livestock slaughtered and villages burned. These were their orders and they carried them out with an enthusiastic efficiency that terrified their enemies and brought them respect in the eyes of fellow askari and the community. They were ferocious and merciless, wallahi.
As they told their swaggering stories and marched across the rain-shadow plains of the great mountain, they did not know that they were to spend years fighting across swamps and mountains and forests and grasslands, in heavy rain and drought, slaughtering and being slaughtered by armies of people they knew nothing about: Punjabis and Sikhs, Fantis and Akans and Hausas and Yorubas, Kongo and Luba, all mercenaries who fought the Europeans’ wars for them, the Germans with their schutztruppe, the British with their King’s African Rifles and the Royal West African Frontier Force and their Indian troops, the Belgians with their Force Publique. In addition, there were South Africans, Belgians and a crowd of other European volunteers who thought killing was an adventure and were happy to be at the service of the great machinery of conquest and empire. It was astonishing to the askari to see the great variety of people whose existence they had not even known about. The magnitude of what was to come was not clear this early in the war as they marched to the border, their German officers riding ahead of them on their mules, their wives and children straggling cheerfully behind, and somehow or other they were all able to find ways to sing and laugh and join in convivial displays.
Hostilities on the border began with the German commander attempting to take Mombasa a few hundred miles away. The target turned out to be too far for their supply lines and the schutztruppe was forced to retreat. For months to come, the war for Hamza and his troop was repeated patrols and raids to cut the railway in British East Africa. On the coast, the British made a landing in Tanga. In November 1914 the Royal Navy and accompanying troop ships arrived at the port and demanded its surrender. The small schutztruppe force prepared to resist, withdrawing from the town from fear of bombardment by the Royal Navy ships. The rest of the inhabitants of the town, who had nothing at stake in the war, recoiled and cowered in terror or fled to the country if they could. The point of trying to take this town was that it was the terminus of the railway, which ran to Moshi in the north.
The British landing ended in disaster. Several battalions, mostly Indian troops, were disembarked some little distance up the coast from the port. Their commanders were not sure what opposition to expect so made this cautious approach. The disembarkation was made in darkness, wading hip-deep in the sea. In the morning the troops found themselves in thick scrub and high grass without any certainty of the direction of the town. As they made their way towards what they took to be the town, they were harassed and picked off by the schutztruppe, who were reinforced by troops rushed down from Moshi on the train. The schutztruppe were expert at this hit-and-run style of war and their tactics created a panic in the troops and the carriers who took fright and ran. As casualties mounted, more soldiers ran and then after repeated panics everybody ran, and those who were still being landed ran straight back into the sea.
In the meantime the Royal Navy was firing its guns into the town, destroying buildings and killing an unknown number of its inhabitants. No one bothered to count afterwards. One of the targets the Royal Navy hit was the hospital where the wounded were being treated by the Germans, but that was the random ill luck of war. By the time it was all over and the British asked for a truce, leaving most of their equipment behind, several hundred of their troops were dead on the road and in the streets of the town. An unknown number of carriers were also killed or drowned. No one bothered to count the dead carriers either, not then nor throughout the whole war. As soon as this encounter was settled, Hamza’s troop was railed up the line to Moshi and back to their old position. It was going to be that kind of war for the schutztruppe, a frenzy of rapid advances and retreats.
Despite the failure of the landing, the British Imperial machinery ground into gear, and troops began to arrive from various parts of the globe. It was certain to be just a matter of months before the conflict was over, they believed, but the German commander had other ideas. Every time the British Imperial forces thought they had the schutztruppe trapped they slipped away, leaving their sick and badly wounded for the British to look after. The schutztruppe were often exhausted and many of them fell ill, but there was also exhilaration in the swift raids and retreats that outwitted their enemies. They fed themselves on whatever they found in the villages and farms, plundering and confiscating wherever they could.
Pressed on all sides, the schutztruppe retreated in two columns, one along the lakes to the west and the other due south from Moshi. Hamza was in the column that headed due south. They dragged their big guns and equipment, their wives and servants and baggage, on the retreat across the Uluguru mountain ranges. It was in the retreat from Morogoro across the Uluguru that Komba, their platoon leader, was killed. A large piece of metal from a shell smashed into his chest and tore him to pieces. Several others in the platoon were also killed in the same action or did not come back. For the next several months Hamza’s troop retreated slowly south towards the Rufiji river, constantly fighting, some of them fierce battles as in Kibati where thousands were killed.
The Rufiji was in heavy flood that year and the mosquitoes were rampant. More askari died from blackwater fever than from any other cause. Carriers were seized by crocodiles as they crossed the swamps. Hyenas dug up the dead. It was a nightmare. They finally crossed the Rufiji and afterwards fought the Battle of Mahiwa, which was the worst battle of all for Hamza’s troop and for the schutztruppe. It was a costly victory for them but still they retreated, to the southern highlands and then to the Ruvuma river and the border with Portuguese East Africa. On the way they shed equipment and wives and children, leaving them behind to be interned by the British. They did not always know where they were, even with their maps, and they were forced to capture and question local people. There was always someone among the askari who could understand enough of the language to put the question, and somehow or other the infliction of sufficient pain elicited the required answer. No one needed to order the askari to do violence and brutality on the people. They knew what was needed and required no instruction. At this stage of the war, most of the soldiers engaged in combat were Africans and Indians: troops from Nyasaland and Uganda, from Nigeria and the Gold Coast, from the Congo and from India, and on the other side the African schutztruppe.
Even as the schutztruppe lost soldiers and carriers through battle, disease and desertion, their officers kept fighting on with manic obstinacy and persistence. The askari left the land devastated, its people starving and dying in the hundreds of thousands, while they struggled on in their blind and murderous embrace of a cause whose origins they did not know and whose ambitions were vain and ultimately intended for their domination. The carriers died in huge numbers from malaria and dysentery and exhaustion, and no one bothered to count them. They deserted in sheer terror, to perish in the ravaged countryside. Later these events would be turned into stories of absurd and nonchalant heroics, a sideshow to the great tragedies in Europe, but for those who lived through it, this was a time when their land was soaked in blood and littered with corpses.
In the meantime, the officers made sure to maintain European prestige. When they made camp the Germans were in separate lines from the askari, sleeping in their camp beds under mosquito nets. When they stopped by a stream, they were always upstream with the askari downstream and the carriers and animals yet further down. The officers made every effort to meet for a mess dinner every evening, where etiquette was observed as far as possible. They did not do any of the physical work associated with the askari or carriers: transporting equipment, foraging, making camp, cooking, cleaning dishes. They kept their distance, eating separately, demanding deference wherever they could. The whole schutztruppe army now, officers and men, were dressed in whatever bits of clothing they could salvage from fallen comrades and enemies, which some of the askari took as licence to adopt extravagant displays of feathers and badges, though their officers still strutted about as if they were dressed in silver buckles and gold epaulettes. The askari too had their own honour to maintain. They insisted on their difference from the carriers and considered it below their soldierly prestige to carry loads.
Of the other officers from the boma, the medical officer and Feldwebel Walther the Jogoo were still with the company. Two officers were killed on the retreat from the Rufiji and were replaced by an officer from the musikappel and a settler volunteer. Three were transferred to other companies. All of the askari who had joined up at the same time as Hamza were dead or missing or captured. After months and years of harried manoeuvres and disastrous engagements the remaining men were ragged and worn out. The medical officer had lost weight and grown a thick brassy beard. He was kept constantly busy tending to injuries and illnesses, issuing daily doses of quinine to the troops while his supplies lasted. He had to conserve supplies as best he could, so the carriers did not receive quinine any more. His orderly was still with him, lanky and phlegmatic as ever. The medical officer was even more cheerful than he had been in camp, chuckling and laughing as he saw to his grisly tasks, but it was a cheerfulness he kept going with his carefully guarded supply of brandy and other substances from his medicine chest. He had malarial fever punctually every two days which laid him out for several hours. These bouts took their toll, and each time he rose he seemed to have lost more weight and his smiles seemed to have grown weaker.
The Feldwebel was now out of his mind with rage at every irritation they encountered, his frenzy fed by bangi and the sorghum beer they confiscated from villagers. He never seemed to fall ill as all the other officers did at one time or another. His temper was so out of control that he frequently hit askari and porters with whatever was at hand: a cane, a whip or a piece of firewood. He was even more vicious than he used to be in his hatred and contempt for the local people whose land they plundered. To him they were savages and he spoke about them with greater ferocity than he showed towards the British enemy. He had a deep loathing of Hamza and abused him whenever he caught him out in any trivial, or sometimes imaginary, wrongdoing. Hamza kept out of his way whenever he could but it seemed at times as if the Feldwebel was looking for him.
Hamza was inseparable from the Oberleutnant, at his commander’s insistence, which aroused some of the other officers to glowering indignation, others to mockery and the Feldwebel to more hatred. The askari assailed Hamza with their grumbles and told him to pass them on to his officer. Hamza nodded and said nothing. He was required to roll out his sleeping mat beside the officer’s cot at dusk for an hour or two while he continued with what he called their conversation classes. After that Hamza was to pick up his mat and go back to the askari lines. Some nights the officer reached out to touch him in the dark. You are still there. You are so quiet, he said. Hamza did not know what he wanted of him. He felt trapped in the officer’s embrace and was made queasy by the enforced intimacy although it was easier to evade it in war than it had been in the boma. In the field there was a great deal more to occupy the commanding officer as they raided and hid and searched for food and the conversation classes sometimes seemed perfunctory.
The officer lost much of his scornful and satirical aura as their difficulties increased and now he was often cold and withdrawn, sometimes silent for long periods in the grip of his dark moods. The other German officers kept up a grim camaraderie, which made the Oberleutnant’s withdrawal more apparent. Their privations and way of war had weakened many of them but it had turned the officer inwards and made him hesitant where he had been so commanding before. He was more irritable with his officers and askari, and he was impatient with the villagers they plundered, sometimes issuing harsh orders to punish what he called acts of sabotage, burning their huts after confiscating all their supplies. At one village the other officers suggested the execution of an elder because he had refused to disclose an underground cache of yams, which they were only able to discover by beating a young boy and forcing him to tell them. The officer dropped his eyes before his officers’ request and then nodded and walked away. The Feldwebel shot the old man in the head.
Throughout the hundreds of nightmare miles they struggled through, Hamza carried out whatever orders his officer found it possible to give under their very reduced circumstances, and as far as possible tried to provide for him. He did his best not to draw attention to himself. He marched with the troop and ran on the crouch as he was trained to do and fired his gun when he needed to but he was not sure if he ever hit anyone. He ducked and weaved and yelled like the other askari but he shot at shadows, avoiding targets. By miraculous luck he did not have to engage in close combat, and he managed to avoid shooting any of the villagers they were at times required to take reprisals on because of their treachery or deceit. He ate the stolen food like everyone else and saw the ruination of the land and hurried away as they all did. He was in a state of terror from the moment he opened his eyes at first light, but in his exhaustion he sometimes reached a stage when he was unafraid, without bravado, without posturing, detached from the moment and open to whatever might happen to him. Sometimes he lapsed into despair.