War

by Roald Dahl

  Ah well. The bullfrog, I told myself as I sat there in the dark forest, is not after all so very different from a lot of human males that I could think of.

  I borrowed an army blanket from the Sergeant and settled down for the night beside the telephone. I thought briefly about snakes and wondered how many there were gliding about on the floor of the forest. Probably thousands. But the askaris were chancing it so why shouldn’t I?

  The phone did not ring in the night and at dawn the Sergeant built his fire again and cooked us some more rice and bananas. It didn’t taste so good early in the morning.

  Shortly after eleven o’clock the tinkle of the field telephone made everybody jump. The voice on the other end said to me, ‘Great Britain has declared war on Germany. You are now on full alert.’ Then he rang off. I told the Sergeant to get all his men into their positions.

  For an hour or so nothing happened. The askaris waited behind their guns and I waited out in the open beside the two trucks that were blocking the road.

  Then, suddenly, away in the distance I saw a cloud of dust. A little later, I could make out the first car, then close behind it a second and a third and a fourth. All the Germans in Dar must have made arrangements to assemble and travel together in convoy as soon as war was declared, for now I could see a line of cars, each about twenty yards behind the one in front, stretching for half a mile down the road. There were trucks piled high with baggage. There were ordinary saloons with pieces of furniture strapped on their roofs. There were vans and there were station-wagons. I called the Sergeant out of the forest. ‘Here they come,’ I said, ‘and there’s plenty of them. I want you to stay out of sight with the men. I shall remain here and meet the Germans. If I raise two arms above my head, like this, the machine-gun and all the rifles are to fire one burst over the heads of these people. Not at them, you understand, but over their heads.’

  ‘Yes, bwana, one burst over their heads.’

  ‘If there is violence towards me and they try to force their way through, then you will be in charge and must do whatever you think right.’

  ‘Yes, bwana,’ the Sergeant said, relishing the possibility. He returned to the forest. I stood out on the road waiting for the leader of the convoy to reach me. The lead car was a large Chevrolet station-wagon driven by a man who had two more men beside him in the front seat. The rest of the car was filled with baggage. I put one hand up for him to stop, which he did. I felt like a traffic cop as I strolled over to the driver’s window.

  ‘I am afraid you cannot go any further,’ I said. ‘You and all the others must turn around and go back to Dar es Salaam. One of my trucks will lead you. The other will bring up the rear of the convoy.’

  ‘Vot sort of bull is this?’ the man shouted with a heavy German accent. He was middle-aged with a thick neck and he was almost bald. ‘Move those trucks off the road! Vi are going through!’

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ I said. ‘You are now prisoners of war.’

  The bald man got slowly out of the car. He was very angry and his movements were full of menace. The two men with him also got out. The bald man turned and signalled with his arm to the fifty-odd cars that were lined up behind him, and immediately a man, and sometimes two, got out of each car and came walking towards us. There were women and children in many of the cars as well, but they stayed where they were.

  I didn’t at all like the way things were shaping up. What was I going to do, I asked myself, if they refused to go back and tried to barge their way through? I knew there and then that I could never quite bring myself to give the order for the machine-gun to mow them all down. It would be an appalling massacre. I stood there and said nothing.

  In a few minutes a crowd of not less than seventy Germans were standing in a half-circle behind the bald man, who was clearly their leader.

  The bald man turned away from me and addressed his countrymen. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Let’s get these two trucks off the road and move on.’

  ‘Hold it!’ I said, trying to sound twice my age. ‘I have orders to stop you at all costs. If you try to go on, we shall shoot.’

  ‘Who vill shoot?’ asked the bald man contemptuously. He drew a revolver from the back pocket of his khaki trousers and I saw that it was one of those long-barrelled Lugers. Immediately, at least half of the seventy or so men standing around him produced identical weapons. The bald man pointed his Luger at my chest.

  I had seen this sort of thing done a thousand times in the cinema, but it was a very different thing in real life. I was properly frightened. I did my best not to show it. Then I raised both arms above my head. The bald man smiled. He thought it was a gesture of surrender.

  Crack! Crack! Crack! All the guns behind me including the machine-gun opened up and bullets went whistling over our heads. The Germans jumped. They quite literally jumped. Even the bald man jumped. And so did I.

  I lowered my hands. ‘There is no way you can get through,’ I said. ‘The first man who tries to go on from here will be shot. If all of you try, then all of you will be shot. Those are my orders. I have enough fire-power in there to stop a regiment.’

  There was absolute silence. The bald man lowered his Luger and suddenly his whole attitude changed. He gave me an ugly forced smile and said softly, ‘Vy do you not let us through?’

  ‘Because we are at war with Germany,’ I said, ‘and you are all of German nationality, therefore you are the enemy.’

  ‘Vi are civilians,’ he said.

  ‘Maybe you are,’ I said. ‘But as soon as you get to Portuguese East, you’ll find your way back to the Fatherland and become soldiers. You are not going through.’

  Suddenly he grabbed my arm and put his Luger to my chest. Then he raised his voice and screamed to my invisible troops in Swahili, ‘If you try to stop us I am going to shoot your officer!’

  What came next happened very suddenly. There was the crack of a single rifle shot fired from the wood and the bald man who was holding me took the bullet right through his face. It was a horrible sight. The Luger dropped on to the road and the bald man fell dead beside it.

  All of us were shaken up, but I managed to pull myself together enough to say, ‘Come on, let us not have any more killings. Turn your vehicles round and follow our lead truck back to town. You will be well treated and the women and children will be allowed to go home.’

  The crowd of men turned and walked sullenly back towards their cars.

  ‘Sergeant!’ I shouted and the Sergeant came out of the forest at the double. ‘Put the dead man in one of the trucks and take it to the head of the convoy,’ I said to him. ‘You go with the front truck and lead them all to the prison camp. I shall bring up the rear in the second truck.’

  ‘Very well, bwana,’ the Sergeant said.

  And that was how we captured the German civilians in Dar es Salaam when the war broke out.

  Mdisho of the Mwanumwezi

  By the time we had seen the Germans safely into the prison camp and I had made my report, it was nearly midnight. I went off home to get a shower and some sleep. I was tired and dirty and I was feeling very unhappy about the killing of the bald-headed German. The Captain at the barracks had congratulated me and said it was exactly the right thing to do, but that didn’t help.

  When I got home, I went straight upstairs and took off my clothes. I took a long shower, then I put on a pair of pyjamas and went downstairs again for a badly needed whisky and soda.

  In the living-room I lay back in my armchair sipping the whisky and ruminating upon the strange events of the last thirty-six hours. The whisky felt good and I was slowly beginning to relax as the alcohol got into the blood-stream. Through the wide-open french windows I could hear the Indian Ocean pounding the cliffs below the house and as always when I sat in that chair, I turned my head a little in order to allow my eyes to rest upon my beautiful silver Arab sword that hung on the wall over the door. I nearly dropped my whisky. The sword was gone. The scabbard was still there but the sword itself was not
in it.

  I had bought my sword about a year before from the Captain of an Arab dhow in Dar es Salaam harbour. This Captain had sailed his old dhow clear across from Muscat to Africa on the north-east monsoon and the journey had taken him thirty-four days. I happened to be down in the harbour when she came sailing in and I gladly accepted the invitation of the Customs Officer to accompany him on board. That is where I found the sword and fell in love with it at first sight and bought it from the Captain on the spot for 500 shillings.

  The sword was long and curved and the silver scabbard was wonderfully chased with an intricate design showing various phases in the life of the Prophet. The curved blade was over three feet in length and was as sharp as a well-honed chisel. My friends in Dar es Salaam who knew about such things told me it was almost certainly from the middle of the eighteenth century and should properly be in a museum.

  I had carried my treasure back to the house and had handed it to Mdisho. ‘I want you to hang it on the wall over the door,’ I told him. ‘And I shall hold you responsible for seeing that the silver scabbard is always polished and the blade is wiped with an oily rag once a week to prevent it from rusting.’

  Mdisho took the sword from me and examined it with reverence. Then he drew the blade from the scabbard and tested the edge with his thumb. ‘Ayee!’ he cried out. ‘What a weapon! I could win a war with this in my hand!’

  And now I sat in my armchair in the living-room with my whisky, staring appalled at the empty scabbard.

  ‘Mdisho!’ I shouted. ‘Come here! Where is my sword?’ There was no answer. He was probably in bed. I got up and went out to the back of the house where the native quarters were. There was a half-moon in the sky and plenty of stars and I could see Piggy the cook squatting outside his hut with one of his wives.

  ‘Piggy,’ I said, ‘where is Mdisho?’

  Piggy was old and wrinkled, and he was very good at making baked potato with crabmeat inside. He stood up when he saw me and his woman disappeared into the shadows.

  ‘Where is Mdisho?’ I said.

  ‘Mdisho went away early in the evening, bwana.’

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘I do not know. But he said he was coming back. Perhaps he has gone to see his father. You were away in the jungle and I expect he thought you would not mind if he went off to pay a call on his father.’

  ‘Where is my sword, Piggy?’

  ‘Your sword, bwana? Is it not hanging over the door?’

  ‘It’s gone,’ I said. ‘I’m afraid someone may have stolen it. The big french windows into the sitting-room were wide open when I came in. That is not right.’

  ‘No bwana, that is not right. I don’t understand it at all.’

  ‘Nor do I,’ I said. ‘Go to bed.’

  I went back into the house and flopped down again into the armchair. I felt too tired to move any more. It was a very hot night. I reached up and switched off the reading light, then I closed my eyes and dozed off.

  I don’t know how long I slept, but when I woke up it was still night and Mdisho was standing just inside the french windows with the light of the half-moon shining down on him from behind. He was breathing fast and there was a wild ecstatic look on his face and he was naked except for a small pair of black cotton shorts. His superb black body was literally dripping with sweat. In his right hand he held the sword.

  I sat up abruptly.

  ‘Mdisho, where have you been?’ Little flashes of moonlight were glinting on the sword and I noticed that the middle of the blade was darkened with something that looked to me very much like dried blood.

  ‘Mdisho!’ I cried. ‘For heaven’s sake what have you done?’

  ‘Bwana,’ he said, ‘oh bwana, I have had a most tremendous victory. I think you will be very pleased about it when I tell you.’

  ‘Tell me,’ I said. I was getting nervous.

  I had never seen Mdisho like this before. The wild look on his face and the heavy breathing and the sweat all over his body made me more nervous than ever. ‘Tell me at once,’ I said again. ‘Explain to me what you have been doing.’

  When he started to speak, the words came rushing out in a cascade of crazy excited sentences, and he didn’t stop until he had finished his story. I didn’t interrupt him, and I will try to give you a fairly literal translation from the Swahili of what he said as he stood there looking so splendid in the open doorway with the half-moon shining on him from behind.

  ‘Bwana,’ he said, ‘bwana, yesterday down in the market I heard that we had started to fight the Germani and I remembered all that you had said about how they would try to kill us. As soon as I heard the news, I started to run back to the house, and as I ran I shouted to everyone I saw in the streets. I shouted, “We are fighting the Germani! We are fighting the Germani!”

  ‘In my country, as soon as we hear that someone is coming to fight us, the whole tribe must know about it as soon as possible. So I ran home shouting the news to the people as I went, and I was also thinking of what I, Mdisho, could do to help. Suddenly, I remembered the rich Germani that lives over the hills, the sisal planter whom we visited in your car not long ago.

  ‘Then I ran even faster towards home, and when I arrived I ran through the kitchen and shouted at Piggy the cook, “We are fighting the Germani!” I ran into this room and took hold of the sword, this wonderful sword which I have been polishing for you every day.

  ‘Bwana, I was very excited to be at war. You were already out with the askari on the roads, and I knew that I should do something too.

  ‘So I pulled the sword out of its glove and ran outside with it. I ran towards the house of the rich sisal-owning Germani over the hills.

  ‘I did not go by the road because the askaris might have stopped me when they saw me running with the sword in my hand. I ran straight through the forest and when I got to the top of the hills, I looked down the other side and saw the great plantation of sisal belonging to the rich Germani. Away beyond it I could see his house, the big white house we visited together, and I set off again down the other side of the hill into the sisal.

  ‘By then it was getting dark and it was not easy dodging around the tall prickly sisal plants, but I went on running.

  ‘Then I saw the white house in front of me in the moonlight and I ran straight up to the front door and pushed it open. I ran into the first room I saw and it was empty. There was a table with some food on it but the room was empty. Then I ran towards the back of the house and pushed open a door at the end of the passage. That was empty too, but suddenly through the window I saw the big Germani standing in the back garden and he had a fire going and he was throwing pieces of paper on to the fire. He had many sheets of paper on the ground beside him and he kept picking up more and more and throwing them on to the fire. And bwana, there was a huge elephant gun lying on the ground by his feet.

  ‘I pushed open the back door and I ran out and the Germani heard me and jumped round and started to reach for the gun but I gave him no time. I had the sword raised in both my hands and I swung it at his neck as he bent down to pick up the gun.

  ‘Bwana, it is a beautiful sword. With one blow it cut through his neck so deeply that his whole head fell forward and dangled down on to his chest, and as he started to topple over I gave the neck one more quick chop and the head came right away from the body and fell to the ground like a coconut.

  ‘I felt good then, bwana, I really felt awfully good, and I remember wishing I had had you with me to see it all happening. But you were far away on the coast road with your askaris doing the same sort of thing to lots of other Germani, so I hurried home. I came home by the road because it was faster and I didn’t care any more about the askaris seeing me. I ran all the way and the sword was in my hand and sometimes I waved it above my head as I ran, but I never stopped. Twice people shouted at me and once two men ran after me, but I was flying like a bird and I was bringing good news back home.

  ‘It is a long distance, bwana, and it took four hour
s each way. That is why I am so late. I am sorry to be so late.’

  Mdisho stopped. He had finished his story. I knew it was true. The German sisal-owner was called Fritz Kleiber and he was a wealthy and extremely unpleasant bachelor. It was rumoured that he treated his workers badly and had been known to beat them with a sjambok, which is a murderous whip made of rhinoceros hide. I wondered why he hadn’t been rounded up by our people before Mdisho got to him. They were probably on the way out there now. They were in for a shock.

  ‘And you, bwana!’ Mdisho cried out. ‘How many did you get today?’

  ‘How many what?’ I said.

  ‘Germani, bwana, Germani! How many did you get with that fine machine-gun you had out on the road?’

  I looked at him and smiled. I refused to blame him for what he had done. He was a wild Mwanumwezi tribesman who had been moulded by us Europeans into the shape of a domestic servant, and now he had broken the mould.

  ‘Have you told anyone else what you have done?’

  ‘Not yet, bwana, I came to you first.’

  ‘Now listen carefully,’ I said. ‘You must tell nobody about this, not your father, not your wives, not your best friend and not Piggy the cook. Do you understand me?’

  ‘But I must tell them!’ he cried. ‘You cannot take that pleasure away from me, bwana!’