Chapter 9

The worst biter that we have met in the many "fly-belts" that lie along the Northern Railway is the tsetse fly: especially was he to be found at a place called Same, and during the long trek from German Bridge on the Northern Railway to Morogoro in the south. At one place there is a belt thirty miles wide, and our progress was perpetual torture, unless we passed that way at night. For the _Glossina morsitans_ sleeps by night beneath leaves in the bush, and only wakes when disturbed. For this reason we drive our horses, mules, and cattle by night through these fly-belts. Savage and pertinacious to a degree are these pests, and their bite is like the piercing of a red-hot needle. Simple and innocent they appear, not unlike a house fly, but larger and with the tips of their wings crossed and folded at the end like a swallow's. They are mottled grey in colour, and their proboscis sticks out straight in front. Hit them and they fall off, only to rise again and attack once more; for their bodies are so tough and resistant, that great force is required to destroy them. They are infected with trypanosomes, a kind of attenuated worm that circulates in the blood, but fortunately not the variety that causes sleeping sickness. At least we believe not. In any case we shall not know for eighteen months, for that is usually the latent period of sleeping sickness in man. Their bite is very poisonous, and frequently produces the most painful sores and abscesses. But if they are not lethal to man, they take a heavy toll of horses, mules, and cattle. Through the night watches, droves of horses, remounts for Brits's and Vandeventer's Brigades, cattle for our food and for the transport, mules and donkeys, pass this way. Fine sleek animals that have left the Union scarcely a month before, carefully washed in paraffin in a vain attempt to protect them from flies and ticks. But what a change in a short six weeks. The coat that was so sleek now is staring, the eye quite bloodless, the swelling below the stomach that tells its own story; wasting, incredible. Soon these poor beasts are discarded, and line the roads with dull eyes and heavy hanging heads. We may not shoot, for firing alarms our outposts and discloses our position. To-night the lions and hyaenas that this war has provided with such sumptuous repasts will ring down the curtain. A horse's scream in the bush at night, the lowing of a frightened steer, a rustling of bushes, and these poor derelicts, half eaten by the morning, meet the indifferent gaze of the next convoy. More merciful than man are the scavengers of the forest. They, at least, waste no time at the end. Strange that the little donkeys should alone for a time at least escape the fly; it is their soft thick coats that defeats the searching proboscis. But after rain or the fording of a river their protecting coats get parted by the moisture, and the fly can find his mark in the skin. So the donkey and the Somali mule that generations of fly have rendered tolerant to the trypanosome are the most reliable of our beasts of burden. Soon, these too will go in the approaching rainy season, and then we shall fall back on the one universal beast of burden, the native carriers. Thousands of these are now being collected to march with their head loads at the heels of our advancing columns. The veterinary service is helpless with fly-struck animals. One may say with truth that the commonest and most frequently prescribed veterinary medicine is the revolver. Certainly it is the most merciful. Large doses of arsenic may keep a fly-struck horse alive for months; alive, but robbed of all his life and fire, his free gait replaced by a shambling walk. The wild game, more especially the water buck and the buffalo whose blood is teeming with these trypanosomes, but who, from generations of infection, have acquired an immunity from these parasites, keep these flies infected. Thus one cannot have domestic cattle and wild game in the same area; the two are incompatible. And shortly the time will come, as certainly as this land will support a white population, when the wild game will be exterminated and _Glossina morsitans_ will bite no more.

More troublesome, because more widely spread, are the large family of mosquitoes. The _anopheles_, small, grey and quietly persistent, carries the malaria that has laid our army low. _Culex_, larger and more noisy, trumpets his presence in the night watches: but the mischief he causes is in inverse ratio to the noise he makes. _Stegomyia_, host of the spirium of yellow fever, is also here, but happily not yet infected; not yet, but it may be only a question of time before yellow fever is brought along the railways or caravan routes from the Congo or the rivers of the West Coast, where the disease is endemic. There for many years it was regarded as biliary fever or blackwater or malaria. Now that the truth is known a heavier responsibility is cast upon the already overburdened shoulders of the Sanitary Officer and the specialists in tropical diseases. _Stegomyia_, as yet uninfected, are also found in quantities in the East; and with the opening of the Panama Canal, that links the West Indies and Caribbean Sea, where yellow fever is endemic, with the teeming millions of China and India, may materially add to the burden of the doctors in the East. Living a bare fourteen days as he does, infected _stegomyia_ died a natural death, in the old days, during the long voyage round the Horn, and thus failed to infect the Eastern Coolie, who would in turn infect these brothers of the West Indian mosquito.

Fortunate it is in one way that _anopheles_ is the mosquito of lines of communication, of the bases, of houses and huts and dwellings of man, rather than of the bush. Our fighting troops are consequently not so exposed as troops on lines of communication. For this blessing we are grateful, for lines of communication troops can use mosquito nets, but divisional troops on trek or on patrol cannot. Soon we shall see the fighting troops line up each evening for the protective application of mosquito oil. For where nets are not usable it is yet possible to protect the face and hands for six hours, at least, by application of oil of citronella, camphor, and paraffin. Nor is this mixture unpleasant; for the smell of citronella is the fragrance of verbena from Shropshire gardens.

Least in size, but in its capacity for annoyance greatest, perhaps, of all, is the sand fly. Almost microscopic, but with delicate grey wings, of a shape that Titania's self might wear, they slip through the holes of mosquito gauze and torment our feet by night and day. The three-day fever they leave behind is yet as nothing compared to the itching fury that persists for days.

Finally there is the bott-fly, by no means the least unpleasant of the tribe. Red-headed and with an iridescent blue body, he is very similar to the bluebottle, and lives in huts and dwellings. But his ways are different, for he bites a hole into one's skin, usually the back or arms, and lays an egg therein. In about ten days this egg develops into a fully grown larva, in other words a white maggot with a black head. It looks for all the world like a boil until one squeezes it and pushes the squirming head outside. But woe to him who having squeezed lets go to get the necessary forceps; for the larva leaps back within, promptly dies and forms an abscess. Often I have taken as many as thirty or forty from one man. It is a melancholy comfort to find that this fly is no respecter of persons, for the Staff themselves have been known to become affected by this pest.

With the flies may be mentioned as one of the minor horrors of war in East Africa, one of the little plagues that are sent to mortify our already over-tortured flesh, the jigger flea. As if there were not already sufficient trials for us to undergo, an unkind Providence has sent this pest to rob us of what little enjoyment or elegant leisure this country might afford. True to her sex, it is the female of the species that causes all the trouble; the male is comparatively harmless. Lurking in the dust and grass of camps, she burrows beneath the skin of our toes, choosing with a calculated ferocity the tender junction of the nails with the protesting flesh. No sooner is she well ensconced therein than she commences the supreme business of life, she lays her eggs, by the million, all enclosed in a little sack. What little measure of sleep the mosquitoes, the sand flies and the stifling nights have left us, this relentless parasite destroys. For her presence is disclosed to us by itching intolerable. Then the skill of the native boys is called upon, and dusky fingers, well scrubbed in lysol, are armed with a safety pin, to pick the little interloper out intact. Curses in many languages descend upon the head of the unlucky boy who fails to remove the sack entire. For the egg-envelope once broken, abscesses and blood poisoning may result, and one's toes become an offence to surgery.

All is well, if a drop of iodine be ready to complete the well-conducted operation; but the poor soldier, whose feet, perforce, are dirty and who only has the one pair of socks, pays a heavy penalty to this little flea, that dying still has power to hurt. Dirt and the death of this tiny visitor result in painful feet that make of marching a very torture. So great a pest is this that at least five per cent. of our army, both white and native, are constantly incapacitated. Hundreds of toenails have I removed for this cause alone. Nor do the jiggers come singly, but in battalions, and often as many as fifty have to be removed from one wretched soldier's feet and legs. So we hang our socks upon our mosquito nets and take our boots to bed with us, nor do we venture to put bare feet upon the ground.

A yell in the sleeping camp at night, "Some damn thing's bit me;" and matches are struck, while a sleepy warrior hunts through his blankets for the soldier ant whose great pincers draw blood, or lurking centipede or scorpion. For in these dry, hot, dusty countries these nightly visitors come to share the warm softness of the army blanket. Next morning, sick and shivering, they come to show to me the hot red flesh or swollen limb with which the night wanderer has rewarded his involuntary host.

NIGHT IN MOROGORO

There's nothing quite so wideawake as a tropical night in Africa. At dawn the African dove commences with his long-drawn note like a boy blowing over the top of a bottle, one bird calling to another from the palms and mango trees. Then the early morning songsters wake.

There is no libel more grossly unfair than that which says the birds of Africa have no song. The yellow weaver birds sing most beautifully, as they fly from the feathery tops of the avenue of coconut palms that line the road to the clump of bamboos behind the hospital.

But they fly there no longer now, for our colonel, in a spasm of sanitation, cut down this graceful swaying clump of striped bamboos for the fear that they harboured mosquitoes. As if these few canes mattered, when our hospital was on the banks of the reed-fringed river. Morning songsters with voices of English thrushes and robins wake one to gaze upon the dawn through one's mosquito net. Small bird voices, like the chiff-chaff in May, carry on the chorus until the sun rises. Then the bird of delirium arrives and runs up the scale to a high monotonous note that would drive one mad, were it not that he and the dove, with his amphoric note, are Africa all over. A neat fawn-coloured bird this, with a long tail and dark markings on his wings.

Then as the sun rises and the early morning heat dries up the song birds' voices, the earth and the life of the palm trees drowse in the sunshine.

But at night, from late afternoon to three in the morning, when the life of trees and grasses and ponds ceases for a short while before it begins again at dawn, the air is full of the busy voices of the insect world. Until we came south to Morogoro, to the land of mangoes, coconut, palms, bamboos, we had known the shrill voice of cicadas and the harsh metallic noises of crickets in grass and trees. But here we made two new acquaintances, and charming little voices they had too. One lived in the grass and rose leaves of our garden, for the German blacksmith who lately occupied our hospital building had planted his garden with "Caroline Testout" and crimson ramblers. His voice was like the tinkling of fairy hammers upon a silver anvil. And with this fine clear note was the elusive voice of another cricket that had such a marked ventriloquial character that we could never tell whether he lived in the rose bushes or in the trees. His note was the music of silver bells upon the naked feet of rickshaw boys, the tinkle that keeps time to the soft padding of native feet in the rickshaws of Nairobi at night. At first I woke to think there were rickshaw boys dragging rubber-tyred carriages along the avenues of the town, until I found that Morogoro boasted no rickshaws and no bells for native feet.

Punctuated in all the music of fairy bands and the whirr of fairy machinery were the incessant voices of frogs. Especially if it had rained or were going to rain, the little frogs in trees and ponds sang their love songs in chorus, silenced, at times, by the deep basso of a bull frog. And often, as our heads ached and throbbed with fever at night, we felt a very lively sympathy for the French noblesse of the eighteenth century, who are said to have kept their peasants up at night beating the ponds with sticks to still the strident voices of these frogs.

With it all there is a rustling overhead in the feathery branches of the palms in the cobwebby spaces among the leaves that give the bats of Africa a home. A twitter of angry bat voices, shrill squeaks and flutters in the darkness. Then stillness--of a sudden--and the ground trembles with a far-off throbbing as a convoy of motor lorries approaching thunders past us, rumbling over the bridge and out into the darkness, driving for supplies.

The road beside the hospital was the old caravan route that ran from the Congo through Central Africa and by the Great Lakes to Bagamoyo by the sea. For centuries the Arab slaver had brought his slave caravans along this path: it may have been fever or the phantasies of disordered subconscious minds half awake in sleep, or the empty night thrilling to the music of crickets, that filled our minds with fancies in the darkness. But this road seemed alive again. For this smooth surface that now trembles to the thunder of motor lorries seemed to echo to the soft padding of millions of slave feet limping to the coast to fill the harems or to work the clove plantations of his most Oriental Majesty the Sultan of Zanzibar.

THE WATERS OF TURIANI

Halfway between the Usambara and the Central Railway, the dusty road to Morogoro crosses the Turiani River. In the woods beside the river, the tired infantry are resting at the edge of a big rock pool. Wisps of blue smoke from dying fires tell of the tea that has washed beef and biscuit down dry and dusty throats. The last company of bathers are drying in the sun upon the rocks, necks, arms and knees burnt to a sepia brown, the rest of their bodies alabaster white in the sunshine. It is three o'clock, and the drowsy heat of afternoon has hushed the bird and insect world to sleep. Only in the tree-tops is the sleepy hum of bees, still busy with the flowers, and the last twitter of soft birds' voices. Soft river laughter comes up from the rocky stream-bed below, and, softened by the distance to a poignant sweetness, the sound of church bells from Mhonda Mission floats up to us upon the west wind.

Yesterday only saw the last of Lettow's army crossing the bridge and echoed to the noise of the explosion that blew up the concrete pillars and forced our pioneers to build a wooden substitute. Alas! for the best-laid schemes of our General. The bird had escaped from the closing net, and Lettow was free to make his retreat in safety to the Southern Railway. Here at Turiani for a moment it seemed that the campaign was over. Up from the big Mission at Mhonda, the mounted troops swept out to cut off the German retreat. All unsuspected, they had made then-big flank march to meet the eastern flanking column, and cut the road behind the German force in a pincer grip. But the blind bush robbed our troopers of their sense of direction, and the long trek through waterless bush, the tsetse fly and horse-sickness that took their daily toll of all our horses reduced the speed of cavalry to little more than a walk. A mistake in a bush-covered hill in a country that was all hill and bush, and the elusive Lettow slipped out to run and hide and fight again on many another day.

SCOUTING

Of the many aspects of this campaign none perhaps is more thrilling than life on the forward patrol. For the duty of these fellows is to go forward with armed native scouts far in advance of the columns, to find out what the Germans are up to, their strength, and the disposition of their troops. Their reports they send back by native runners, who not infrequently get captured. Like wolves in the forest they live, months often elapsing without their seeing a white face, and then it is the kind of white man that they do not want to see; every man's hand against them, native as well as German, unable to light fires at night for fear of discovery, sleeping on the ground, creeping up close, for in this bush one can only get information at close quarters; always out of food, forced to smoke pungent native tobacco. They have to live on the game they shoot, and it is a hundred chances to one that the shot that gives them dinner will bring a Hun patrol to disturb the feast. Theirs is without doubt the riskiest job in such a war as this.

Here is the story of a night surprise, as it was told me. The long trek had lasted all day, to be followed by the fireless supper (how one longs for the hot tea at night!), and the deep sleep that comes to exhausted man as soon as he gets into his blankets. Drowsy sentries failed to hear the rustling in the thicket until almost too late; the alarm is given, pickets run in to wake their sleeping "bwona," all mixed up with Germans. The intelligence party scattered to all points of the compass, leaving their camp kit behind them. There was no time to do aught but pick up their rifles (that is second nature) and fly for safety to the bush. Now this actual surprise party was led by one Laudr, an Oberleutnant who had lived for years in South Africa, and had married an English wife. Laudr had the reputation of being the best shot in German East, but he missed that night, and my friend escaped, unharmed, the five shots from his revolver. Next morning, cautiously approaching the scene of last night's encounter, he found a note pinned to a tree. In it Laudr thanked him for much good food and a pair of excellent blankets, and regretted that the light had been so bad for shooting. But he left a young goat tied up to the tree and my friend's own knife and fork and plate upon the ground.

Another story this resourceful fellow told me concerning an exploit which he and a fellow I.D. man, with twenty-five of their scouts, had brought off near Arusha. They had been sent out to get information as to the strength of an enemy post in a strongly fortified stone building--the kind of half fort, half castle that the Germans build in every district as an impregnable refuge in case of native risings. With watch towers and battlements, these forts are after the style of mediæval buildings. Equipped with food supplies and a well, they can resist any attack short of artillery. Learning from the natives that the force consisted of two German officers and about sixty Askaris, my friend determined not to send back for the column that was waiting to march from Arusha to invest the place. Between them they resolved to take the place by strategy and guile. Lying hid in the bush, they arranged with friendly natives to supply the guard with "pombe" the potent native drink. Late that night, judging from the sounds that the Kaffir beer had done its work, they crept up and disarmed the guard. Holding the outer gate they sent in word to the commandant, a Major Schneider, the administrator of the district, to surrender. He duly came from his quarters into the courtyard accompanied by his Lieutenant. "Before I consider surrender," he said, "tell me what force you've got?" "This fort is surrounded by my troops, that is enough for you," said our man. "In any case you see my men behind me, and, if you don't 'hands up,' they'll fire." And the "troops"--half-clad natives--stepped forward with levelled rifles.

The next morning the Major, still doubting, asked to see the rest of the English troops, and on being informed that these were all, would have rushed back to spring the mines that would have blown the place to pieces. But the Intelligence Officer had not wasted his time the previous night, and had very carefully cut the wires that led apparently so innocently from the central office of the fort. My friend brought this Major, a man of great importance in his district, to Dar-es-Salaam; and during the whole journey the German never ceased to complain that bluffing was a dishonourable means of warfare to employ.

On yet another occasion he had an experience that taxed his tact and strength to the utmost. In the course of his work he seized the meat-canning factory near Arusha that a certain Frau ----, in the absence of her husband, was carrying on. The enemy used to shoot wildebeest and preserve it by canning or by drying it in the sun as "biltong" for the use of the German troops. My friend was forced to burn the factory, and then it became his duty to escort this very practical lady back to our lines. This did not suit her book at all. With tears she implored him to send her to her own people. She would promise anything. Cunningly she suggested great stores of information she might impart. But he cared not for her weeping, and ordered her to pack for the long journey to Arusha. Then tears failing her she sulked, and refused to eat or leave her tent. But this found him adamant. Finally she tried the woman's wiles which should surely be irresistible to this man. But he was unmoved by all her blandishments. So surprised and indignant was he that he threatened to tell her husband of her behaviour, when he should catch him. But here it appears he made a false estimate of the value of honour and dishonour among the Huns. "A loyal German woman," she exclaimed, laughing, "is allowed to use any means to further the interests of her Fatherland. My husband will only think more highly of me when he knows." So this modern Galahad of ours turned away and ordered the lady's tent to be struck and marched her off, taking care that he himself was far removed from her presence in the caravan. "What fools you English are," she flung back at him, as he handed her into the custody that would safely hold this dangerous apostle of _Kultur_ till the end of the war.

"HUNNISHNESS"