In general outline, the native version of the four-day encounter agreed with Stanley's. But the warriors' stories contradicted the explorer's account that the “riflemen did execution among the mountaineers.” They all insisted that their casualties were but one killed and two wounded.
Stanley never committed himself on the exact number of Undussuma casualties. But his book states that King Mazamboni, in beseeching peace, declared that he had been prevented from negotiating sooner “by the clamor of young men who insisted upon fighting. But now, as many of them have been killed, he was ready to pay tribute.”
Perceiving your correspondent's doubt that so few Undussumas could have been hit by Stanley's Askaris, armed with the most modern American carbines, the gathering of veterans finally produced an elder named Kinsala, “Multitude.” In a firm voice and fixing his interrogators with his eye, Kinsala declared: “I am the brother of the only man killed by the followers of the Stone Breaker.”
Asked whether Stanley participated in the shooting, the Undussumas replied: “No. The Stone Breaker wore a revolver but used it only to kill cows for beef.”
Had Stanley lost any men?
Ngonjaibo, “He Likes Them,” another veteran, contributed a further incident not mentioned by Stanley but which all present confirmed.
“The Breaker of Stones lost no men in the battle with the Undussumas but afterward, when he returned through our country from Lake Albert, he lost one traitor soldier by hanging.”
As for the peace terms—omitted by Stanley—the Undussumas said: “We pledged to give them passage and not to molest them. We promised not to run away and hide in the bush but to remain in our villages and behave in a friendly manner.”
The aged Bungamuzi interjected: “And we gave them guides to take them to the lake.”
How many?
He replied instantly, “Seven,” and with octogenarian triumph ticked off their names upon his skinny black fingers.
As the red African sun sank low on the wooded western horizon Bungamuzi described the blood rite whereby the peace terms were sealed.
Stanley's peace pact, in the blood of his Arab subaltern and an Undussuma warrior, opened the way for Bula Matari's many subsequent journeys through the Undussuma country which dominates the Nile's headwaters.
Breaker of Stones is gone as well as most of the Undussumas of his day, but his pact remains as an example to a cynical world.
VII
With Haile Selassie in
Addis Ababa
There was nothing simple about African travel in wartime 1941, even on an expense account. Having cabled his dispatches from Léopoldville, to return to Ethiopia to cover the British siege against the Italians in Gondar, Weller had to make a circuitous route to avoid Axis forces: first by car to Goma via Irumu, south to Kampala (Uganda), plane down to Nairobi (Kenya), and train to the port of Mombasa; by ship and sailing dhow to Mogadiscio; across the Indian Ocean to Aden (described herein); back across the strait and overland to Addis Ababa, then Gondar. This journey took more than two weeks and cost the CON a thousand dollars—almost $15,000 in today's money. Also, his Leica was stolen in Gondar.
The articles in this section are in the order written rather than the order published. Presumably the dispatches appeared as they were received, and the newspaper left out Weller's dates of writing to avoid confusion. Other dispatches in the archive, omitted here, were killed by British military or political censors.
Missing from the interview with Selassie was a far more spirited statement of support for the American people. Just after Weller's first dispatch was sent, a second dispatch, “a personal message to the American people in the hour of their national defense,” was soon killed by British political censorship in Cairo, “who seemed to have forgotten that there was in Africa such a person as Haile Selassie. Of course he had to be censored, whoever he was.” Here is how Weller recalled the incident:
Two days later the Emperor wrote out, by request, a message to the people of the United States of America. He wrote it out in his own hand, and studied it for a full day before sending it to [my] basement room in the Hotel Imperial. The Emperor, accustomed to being pinned somewhere between Great Powers, lets them wait. Neither London nor Rome can hurry him. He does nothing hastily.
“America, which has always respected the rights, liberty, and integrity of all nations however small and has never recognized any conquest of aggression; America, one of the most peace-loving nations of the world, is now attacked without provocation by a brutal aggressor. The whole world will recollect America's effort through her illustrious President to prevent the outbreak of the war which now rages throughout the world. Japan has made war against America and has thrust aside all offers of peace in the Pacific.
“People of America! Great is your struggle, but liberty and justice are on your side, and you will crush the warmongers. Great will be your victory and through it peace will be given to the world. You have the full sympathy of the people of Ethiopia and of myself.
“Rest assured that God is with the Army which fights under the standard of Liberty and Justice.”
INDIAN OCEAN TURNS HEAT ON SOLDIERS
Somewhere in the Gulf of Aden—December 6, 1941
(written mid-November)
If the pores of troopships were not of iron, one would say that they perspired too.
It was hot in the Indian Ocean and it is hotter now in the Gulf of Aden. They say that when we get into the Red Sea, where Africa and Asia lie to the left and right of us, that oven will really turn on the heat.
This is the route plied by the giants of Great Britain's maritime fleet, their tween-decks choked with troops, their forward and stern bulkheads cluttered with squatting Africans and Asians. It is a hot way to go to war, no matter where you come from.
From Nairobi, Kenya Colony, to Addis Ababa, capital of Ethiopia, it takes four hours by plane for anyone from a colonel to a major-general. If your rank is between an African tent-carrier and a Sandhurst lieutenant colonel—this is where a foreign correspondent belongs—you have fourteen days of travel before you.
Ten are spent aboard ship, mostly in convoy. Although the nearest transport with its grey-brown uncamouflaged sides and lackadaisical smoke wreath is about three hundred yards away, you soon get the impression that it is crowding you. In this heat it is too close for comfort. You don't want anything or anyone near you, even if it's a ship. What you would like is a cold Atlantic breeze. Between equatorial Africa and Arabia there isn't any such thing.
Even the stateroom fans get tired whirling all day. They pause inexplicably, as though to rest. After a few hours they resume work again. Nobody knows why they stop, and nobody knows why they start again.
There was an electric flat iron aboard. After pressing sweat-saturated uniforms all day long, it finally rebelled and refused to heat up anymore. Someone suggested dropping it overboard but nobody felt strong enough to carry it as far as the rail. Besides, we might run into a breeze. Perhaps it will start working then. Until that, you simply keep your wet shirts hanging in rows before the electric fan.
Under the drab awnings to cover the top deck, peculiar eddies of heat are waiting to entrap the fool who thinks there may be a breeze up there. It is hotter under the canvas than July at the circus. Look upward and you see black smoke pouring from a funnel—straight up. It is not true that there is no breeze. There is, but it is traveling in precisely the direction we are steering, at precisely our speed. The long canvas windtraps, meant to catch the air and carry it down the ventilators into the broiling engine room where the temperature is 114, are motionless.
The gunners in the anti-aircraft towers, built above decks, sit directly in the sun. You would not be surprised to see the pith helmets catch fire on their heads. They have cooked for hours, long past the point where perspiration is possible. Their faces have the look of a Thanksgiving roast that needs basting. An acute ear could probably hear the sound of their brains simmering.
At br
eakfast and luncheon officers and non-coms eat in two separate relays. Dinner they take together. Dressing for dinner consists of tucking in your damp shirttail. The food is what people in more humane latitudes describe heartily as a “good, nourishing hot meal”—usually of soup, thick and hot enough to get the pores nicely opened. Then broiled fish. The chief dishes are roast beef, veal, or chicken served piping hot, with baked or boiled potatoes so hot they have to be handled with a spoon, and warm vegetables like carrots or parsnips. Every dessert is the same—pudding with hot sauce. The beverage is hot coffee.
Old King's African Riflemen and gold coasters tie extra napkins round their necks like hotel chefs and go patiently through the entire menu. It is perfectly good usage to wipe your streaming face, neck and arms with your napkin. But don't try to wring out the napkin surreptitiously between your legs. It is not done. Simply allow it to drop with a wet plop to the floor and ask for a new, dry one.
The armed merchantman, who is our watchdog, cruises about a mile ahead. Apparently it spends most of its time at night watching to see that nobody aboard us allows a gleam of light to emerge when stealing a breath of air upon the deck. Our deck entrances, as a blackout precaution, are hung with triple curtains of canvas. Going out is like feeling your way through a labyrinth. Reaching forward, you touch something that feels slippery as a snail and realize it is a human arm.
But if the curtains are moved aside and a beam of light momentarily escapes, the night watch aboard the merchantman—whom the captain calls in convoy terms our “commodore”—never fails to notice. Immediately his blinker blue light begins scrolling across the mile of water and someone comes from our bridge to remind us in dour, Scotch waterfront accents: “Thairs a warr on.” He usually stays under the blue light outside the bar and has a quick one before mounting bridgeward again.
For nondrinkers of alcohol the little barman offers lime juice. He first brewed the drinks individually but soon found himself knee-deep in limes and verging on a nervous breakdown. Rummaging in the storehouse, he turned up a baby bathtub from the days when the ship was on a Far Eastern passenger run. Now the drinks are dipped directly from the bathtub where Indian amahs once bathed the sons of Poona colonels.
Most of the passengers prefer canned beer to bathtub juleps. Gliding over the waves from hot latitudes to hotter we leave bobbing upon the surface behind us a serpentine trail of tinkling beer cans. By day, they catch the glint of the sunlight. By night, they excite tiny phosphorescent animals who gather around them as they depart down our wake. The deepest, steadiest drinkers and perspirers claim they are rendering a public service by sowing the cans astern. If an Italian submarine or German raider slipped up behind the armed merchantman plowing ahead it might not hear. But we ourselves, standing by the rail, would certainly catch the sound, for the rattling beer cans against the invader's steel sides would give ample warning.
This Falstaffian school of anti-submarine defense thinks the battle of the Indian Ocean could be won if the breweries of Chicago, St. Louis and Cincinnati would introduce gallon-size kegs of tinned beer under the lease-lend act. They are themselves perfectly willing to defend the Atlantic convoys under the same plan.
Among the approximately 1500 military and naval proletarians aboard are only two women—girls rather—clad in the neat khaki of the auxiliary forces. One is married; the other married an officer after knowing him four days.
Yes, there is a war on. But the song they endlessly play on their portable gramophone comes from the United States and dates from the days of black-faced Bert Williams, even before World War No. 1—When That Midnight Choo-Choo Leave for Alabam. Played upon a troopship in the suffocating Gulf of Aden, outside the cabin window of the only American aboard, it unquestionably deserves to be called a hot number.
WRITER WATCHES ITALY'S SUN SET IN EAST AFRICA
Gondar Is Taken by British After 7-Month Siege
British Advance Battle Headquarters, Northwest
Ethiopia—November 26-27, 1941 (Delayed)
Italy's last foothold in Ethiopia was blasted from under her today when a blazing six-sided attack upon her mountain stronghold, under the direction of Major General Cyril Fowkes, brought the commanding Italian general, Guglielmo Nasi, to plead for terms.
Your correspondent writes Italy's epitaph in a trench a thousand feet above Gondar and five miles away as the crow flies, and the air rings with the detonations of Italian stores by General Nasi's demolition squads, continuing from Lake Tana to the northern escarpment of Ethiopia's network of canyons. Every hill and mesa is spouting smoke—either signal fires started by the King's African Rifles and the Ethiopian patriots as they took one summit after another, or the last traces of Italian positions, blown skyward by African and Indian artillery.
From half an hour before dawn until now, at 5:30 in the afternoon, your correspondent has been watching the tremendous panorama of the battle—infantry creeping uphill directly into the fire, airplanes dive-bombing and machine-gunning the ground troops, and Italian artillery firing until annihilated in positions deeply dug into the mountain. Although the British field radios picked up General Nasi's message to his outlying batteries, saying that surrender was imminent, further machine-gun fire can still be heard from Gondar.
Probably never has the awful chorus of modern warfare—the clatter of machine guns from aircraft and ground, the deep terrible boom of bombs and the stabbing note of field guns—been echoed against a setting so magnificent as from this sandbagged hillside brink, with a sheer 2500-foot drop to the pastures below.
The dozen officers composing General Fowkes' general staff stood by with binoculars pressed to their eyes, sending quick orders by telephone and radio to dozens of different positions. Though an airplane could cross the whole, vast battlefield in ten minutes it will be days before all the forces converging through these valleys can unite in Gondar.
Your correspondent slept last night under a hill shaken by Italian shells, which were seeking to wipe out eight field guns hidden nearby. At five o'clock this morning, with the stars still shining, he arose to watch the first barrage shoot its yellow tongues up over the hill toward Gondar.
Why has it taken the British forces in the wild country north of Lake Tana nearly as many months to isolate and suppress Italy's last remaining troops as it has taken them to sweep over all the rest of eastern Africa?
That is the unspoken question buzzing like a bothersome bushfly over the glories of the Ethiopian victory.
It was first predicted that Gondar would fall in days, but the time lengthened into weeks and months. It was stated that starvation would compel besieged forces under General Nasi—the bespectacled sixty-two-year-old Italian commander—to yield before General Fowkes, brisk, vigorous British commander in chief, who, as a brigadier in the King's African Rifles, already has bright successes at Addis Ababa and Jimma behind him. The popular image has the Italians high upon a castellated hill, defending against vastly superior forces and unable to take retaliatory action. Seen against the panorama of rapid Italian collapse elsewhere, Gondar's continued failure to fall seems to reflect upon the enterprise of its besiegers.
Even foreign correspondents, British, American and South African, have left the forces in this canyon-ridden, awesomely savage country to their thankless task. Your correspondent is the only newspaperman with them, the others apparently driven away not only by the studied lack of emphasis upon Gondar in the Allied communiqués, but by the slow, rudimentary method of press communication of military news that has characterized the entire Ethiopian campaign.
The Italians themselves have eschewed the subject, little desiring to salt the wounds of a shrinking empire. Thus Gondar has been forgotten and one of the interesting conflicts of the war ignored.
Actually, the struggle is different from the rest of the Ethiopian campaign. The first difference from Italian withdrawal elsewhere is that here the Fascists are fighting. With all lost except honor, they seem determined to rescue that. General
Nasi is the general chiefly responsible for the Italians taking British Somaliland in August, 1940, and never has received credit for it. As Governor of Ethiopia, he was ordered to use harsh policy, but refused, and successfully introduced appeasement. Thus his native troops are more loyal to him than to the average Italian general. He has instilled the Italians with something resembling willingness to die for this cause, admittedly forlorn from the start.
Only two days ago, upon the towering, pointed Venticinque Hill, your correspondent saw where a lone Italian machine gunner cut off from his comrades continued holding his post until he was wiped out by artillery fire.
Hand-to-hand fighting has occurred over almost every foot of the green mountain pastures, cornfields, wheatfields, yellow and grey, as the lines slowly closed in on the white spatter of buildings in Gondar. The slow bump of artillery fire shook the hills and puffs of smoke jumped in the air as ring after ring of hillside forts were penetrated. Yet, when bayonet charges were attempted uphill in the face of machine gun fire, the Italians failed to flee, as elsewhere, but stood their ground to meet the Uganda, Tanganyika, Nyasaland and Kenya riflemen.
Against the Ethiopian patriots led by British officers and against detachments of Haile Selassie's own army, the Italians frequently fought as if victory were possible. As a result death tolls are high and if General Nasi were to continue to resist, the vultures that tirelessly circle above the hills would have more work than the prison camps already waiting.
Your correspondent spent most of today in an artillery command position with the air overhead constantly swishing and crackling with a concussion of great shells. Time after time the infantry in the valley below advanced under covering fire against Fascist artillery shells which punished their advance. One after another the Italian field guns were wiped out and the East African armored cars first took Azozo Airdrome then entered Gondar from the south. Italy never put her single remaining Fiat into the air.
Weller's War Page 17