A Matter of Time

by Alex Capus

  Spicer-Simson saw that all was in readiness for departure. ‘That’s good,’ he kept saying. ‘That’s very, very good.’

  The caravan’s departure began at dawn on 3 September and dragged on for seven hours. In the lead was a lorry carrying barrels of water for the steam engines. Then, singing as they trudged along in single file, strung out for over a mile, came the thousand porters laden with crates of food and ammunition, cans of petrol, first-aid kits, guns, rifles, spare parts, and officers’ personal equipment. Next to move out were the 120 askaris whom the Belgian colonial administration had assigned to guard the expedition, followed by the porters’ and road-builders’ three or four thousand wives and children. The sun was already high in the sky when the five hundred oxen set off, and by the time the two hissing, smoking steam tractors began to haul Mimi and Toutou towards the mountains on their massive steel wheels, right at the very back, Spicer-Simson was giving the signal to halt for a midday rest ten miles ahead.

  What lay in store for the caravan was a six-week trek, first across a mountain range 3000 feet high and then through dense jungle, followed by 200 miles by water along the upper reaches of the Congo River and another overland trek to the shores of Lake Tanganyika. Every day was fraught with difficulties, dangers and surprises, as I’m sure you can imagine. From my own point of view, however, the biggest surprises of all were once more provided - day after day until we reached our

  destination - by Commander Spicer-Simson. The first of these occurred only minutes after we left and only a few hundred yards beyond Fungurume, when the leading steam tractor keeled over for the first time because one of its front wheels had sunk into an anteater’s burrow. The machine weighed eight tons empty and fifteen with its water tanks full, so righting it by muscle power alone was quite out of the question. The expedition had gone without a hitch so far, but Spicer-Simson was now, for the first time, confronted by a serious problem. To my immense surprise he didn’t start drawling, threaten the driver with a court martial or have any natives flogged; he assessed the problem calmly, found the solution, and righted the toppled tractor with the aid of the other machine, steel cables, and blocks and tackle. I would never have expected him to preserve his composure in such an emergency, which might have spelt the end of our expedition, and I admired him greatly for it. However, I felt sure that he had exhausted his nervous energy, and that he would be bound to go berserk if another such incident occurred in the foreseeable future. Alas, fate ordained that less than ten minutes later the same steam engine toppled over on its side with a crash, sending up a great cloud of dust. The birds in the trees fell silent and everyone held their breath, waiting for Spicer-Simson to explode. It was as quiet as the dark side of the moon - but nothing happened. He reached into his pistol holster, where he keeps his monogrammed cigarettes, stuck one in his ivory holder and said: ‘Carry on, men. Do just the same as before.’

  The difficulties we encountered were innumerable, but Spicer-Simson overcame them all. One tractor or the other tipped over on its side at least ten times a day. The machines got bogged down, came to a stop with their boilers silted up, broke through our makeshift bridges and fell into the water. Dozens of oxen died from tsetse fever and exhaustion. Streams and rivers had to be bridged day after day, 150 times in all. Sometimes we ran out of water, so the steam engines gave up the ghost and people and cattle suffered from thirst. We passed through districts depopulated by sleeping sickness, dysentery and blackwater fever. But Spicer-Simson never lost heart, always pressed on confidently at the head of the column. I hardly recognized him. He had suddenly ceased to be the blustering

  buffoon who had made fools of us in front of everyone, and become a calm, shrewd, circumspect leader of men. Spicer-Simson was Moses in the wilderness, Alexander in Persia, Caesar in Gaul, Genghis Khan on his long march. He no longer boasted and preened himself, no longer played the Roi Soleil and bullied his subordinates, but did his job with painstaking diligence and positive humility. If a dispute broke out in our ranks he settled it with a wisdom worthy of Solomon, and if someone was frightened or down-hearted he spoke kindly to them. I’ve never seen a person happier or more at one with himself than Spicer-Simson at that time. He treated Mimi, Toutou and the two steam engines with tender concern, and to us 5000 people, who trusted him blindly, he was a strict but just father who infected us all with his fervour and utter determination. By degrees, our expeditionary corps became infused with a kind of deadly earnestness, and all those who had ridiculed Spicer-Simson aboard the Llanstephen Castle now accorded him involuntary respect. In short, it was thanks to his willpower that we surmounted all our difficulties and got Mimi and Toutou to their destination safe and sound.

  Were all still fit and well, incidentally. The fact that our expedition has so far escaped any tropical diseases is due in part to the dry season, but also - if I may be immodest enough to mention it - in no small measure to me and my bicycle. Although I haven’t saved a single human life with my doctor’s bag, and have seldom even opened the medicine chest, my bicycle has preserved us all from an untimely end on countless occasions. You must picture it this way. Your husband - the proud possessor of a wangled lieutenant’s uniform and a hard-earned Cambridge degree - saw it as his most important task, every day of our expedition, to ride on ahead for a few miles under the African sky and find us a place in which to bivouac that night. It had if possible to be virgin territory untouched by man, because the healthiest places on earth are those on which no one has yet set foot. That’s the whole secret of our good health: wherever no one can be seen far and wide, there too will be an absence of human diseases: no malaria or cholera, no dysentery or diphtheria or syphilis. An old jungle doctor’s maxim, that! Of course, it didn’t exactly enhance my popularity when, at the end of a long day’s march, and when

  we were already within sight of the next native village, where millet beer and mutton stew awaited us, I led the whole expedition on a miles-long detour to some lonely, godforsaken wilderness. My companions threatened mutiny on two or three occasions, but I kept them in line by vividly describing the symptoms they could expect if they overnighted in a native village.

  The day before yesterday, 26 October 1915, we reached Albertville, the most important harbour on the Belgian shores of Lake Tanganyika. The place consists of little more than a few lice- and flea-ridden army huts and a natural harbour at the mouth of the Lukuga River containing a small steamer badly damaged by gunfire. Eighty miles away on the other side of the lake is the German port of Kigoma, and there lies the Wissmann, which were supposed to sink. I hope to God it’ll be a bloodless business for both sides, and that we’ll all come home safe. But that won’t be for another few months and I’m loath to leave you without news for so long. There’s a very sensible Flemish medical corps captain here named Zetterland, with whom I’m on quite good terms. He has a cousin at the Belgian embassy in London and will see to it that my letter eludes the censor and reaches you via the diplomatic bag. If you’re reading this, the plan will have succeeded. The person who delivers it will tell you how you can reply.

  Let me know whether you’re well and happy, my darling. Above all, don’t worry about your ever faithful, devoted husband and dearest friend,

  Hother McCormick Hanschell

  i8

  Seven Hundred Seasick Soldiers

  so anton ruter, Hermann Wendt and Rudolf Tellmann were reunited in February 1915. They worked harmoniously together from dawn to dusk every day, and everything was almost as it had been in the old days. Tellmann still didn’t utter a word, but he’d always been a taciturn individual, so this didn’t seriously impair their working relationship. He effected an unavoidable minimum of communication by nodding or shaking his head, and just occasionally, when young Wendt had cracked a joke, he could be seen to smile. In the evening, when the sun went down beyond the dark coastal range across the lake, he would carefully deposit his tools in the storage shed, give his hands a thorough wash on the beach with wood ash and s
and, and return to barracks. He never showed his face again until the next morning.

  The nocturnal thefts were becoming less frequent now that von Zimmer had taken every conceivable precaution against them, but the unknown thieves were never caught and their spoils never recovered. Von Zimmer had briefly toyed with the idea of conjuring them up with the aid of the sjambok, as before, but he refrained from doing so for fear of sparking off the revolt he had narrowly escaped the first time. He limited himself to doubling or trebling the number of sentries on duty and ensured that the beach and the paths leading to the headland were patrolled round the clock.

  So the Gotzen slowly but steadily neared completion. The launching, which had been scheduled to take place on 25 January 1915 in the presence of Governor Schnee and his wife Ada, had to be postponed for another two weeks because of the bent propeller shafts. The 8 February

  deadline also had to be deferred, likewise those of 12 April and 18 May. Each of these postponements burdened von Zimmer with the unpleasant duty of telegraphically informing the Governor, who responded with indignant enquiries that compelled him to make embarrassing excuses. The delays were all the more regrettable, militarily speaking, because Rhodesian units had gone over to the attack at the southern end of Lake Tanganyika and Belgian troops at the northern end were preparing to skirt the lake by land. It was more imperative than ever for the German military authorities to be able to embark their numerically inferior forces on a large vessel and transport them quickly from one end of the lake to the other.

  On 5 June 1915, while Ruter, Wendt and Tellmann were installing the windscreen wipers on the bridge, Kapitanleutnant von Zimmer came walking across the headland. Ruter could see, even at a distance, that he had news to impart - bad news from Ruter s point of view, good news from his. The Kapitanleutnant was clearly triumphant. He wasn’t striding swiftly and purposefully along, as he usually did, but proceeding at a leisurely pace. He might have been out for a casual stroll, or simply enjoying the start of the dry season and intent on savouring its joys to the full. Every few steps he paused for a ruminative look at the clouds in the sky, the rippling surface of the lake or the flowers by the wayside. When he walked on he would skittishly kick aside pebbles on the path, and when he drew level with the bridge he gave the Papenburgers a thoroughly unmilitary wave. There was a sheet of paper in his left hand. It turned out to be a telegram from Governor Schnee.

  ‘Well, my dear Ruter,’ he said when he’d climbed to the bridge, ‘the time has come. The Gotzen will set out on her maiden voyage at 0600 hours the day after tomorrow.’

  ‘No, she won’t,’ Ritter retorted.

  ‘Oh yes, she will. No more arguments, that’s over and done with. The Gotzen will sail at 0600 the day after tomorrow, Governor’s orders’ Von Zimmer handed the telegram to Ruter. ‘Here, read it yourself.’

  ‘The ship isn’t seaworthy yet, Herr Kapitanleutnant. She’d founder in the slightest sea.’

  ‘That’s enough, drop it. We’re going and that’s that. We’ll all be on board, by the way: you and your Papenburgers, I myself and Oberleutnant Horn and Corporal Schaffler - all of us. Wasn’t I right? Go on, admit it. Aren’t we all in the same boat?’

  ‘Over my dead body.’

  ‘Pardon me for saying so. Corporal Riiter, but your body is of no interest to anyone here. It really is time you got used to the idea.’

  ‘The ship will founder.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘In the slightest sea.’

  ‘A pity, but we’re sailing all the same. The matter is out of our hands now. At this moment, while we’re having this nice little chat, the third battalion under General Wahle is on its way here by special train. By tomorrow afternoon seven hundred askaris will be here at the harbour, waiting for us to transport them to Bismarckburg at the southern tip of the lake. What do you suggest, Riiter? Should I ask the general for a few months’ grace? Should the Imperial Defence Force take a break from the war until Shipwright Riiter of Papenburg completes his job?’

  ‘We’ll never make it to Bismarckburg.’

  ‘See to it that we do, Corporal. We need this ship.’

  ‘Over my dead body.’

  ‘Forget about your body, man. And stop taking umbrage.’

  ‘But - ’

  ‘I know, Riiter, I thoroughly sympathize with your attitude - in fact I fully share it. I’m a hundred per cent on your side, have you really failed to grasp that yet? Unfortunately, that’s now beside the point. Simply bow to the inevitable and do what needs to be done. We sail in precisely thirty-six hours’ time, whether we like it or not.’

  At dawn on 9 June 1915 a Belgian sergeant named Stephane Dequanter was standing guard over one of the 85 mm guns protecting the coast at Albertville. It was a cool, cloudy morning. The night had been a cold one,

  Dequanter was tired, and the lake was wreathed in mist. All at once a shape loomed up out of the murk. Growing steadily larger and more distinct, the dark, towering, awe-inspiring shape glided past Dequanter. The Belgian sergeant fished out his notebook and, during the few seconds it remained visible, made a sketch of this apparition.

  Special report.

  At 0615 hours today a huge German steamer passed our position coming from the north. The ship looked just like an ocean-going steamer and was definitely three or four times the size of the Wissmann. Derricks fore and aft, possibly a wireless aerial on the aftermast. Some kind of gun turret behind the funnel. Impossible make out details because of mist. The steamer was proceeding south at about the same speed as the Wissmann. The native labourers say they have never seen the ship before.

  A sketch of the steamer is enclosed.

  S. Dequanter, NCO i/c guard post.

  f ;

  i s

  The fact is, the Gotzens maiden voyage was a disaster. According to Gustav von Zimmers report she cast off at six a.m. but had made less than half a mile by nine o’clock because she was having to battle against heavy seas and a strong south wind. Her boilers generated insufficient steam pressure because they were being fired with green wood instead of coal, with the result that the pitching, rolling vessel made little headway.

  Lack of time had prevented enough ballast from being taken on, so her draught was insufficient too. The stern kept rising so far above the surface that the ship’s propellers rotated in mid air.

  Meanwhile, 700 askaris were sitting or lying crammed together in the infernal heat, total darkness and swarms of rampaging mosquitoes below deck. The juddering steel floor plates were wet and slippery with vomit and excrement, so they slithered from side to side whenever the ship rolled. Since there were still no bulkheads or fittings in the belly of the ship, every lurch sent the helpless men tumbling over one another, tossed around willy-nilly like flotsam in the surf. For the first half-hour, the groans and lamentations issuing from below were audible in the officers’ cabins, but they were soon replaced by an ominous silence.

  The Gotzen got into dire straits when, at half past eight, the steampowered steering gear failed. The manual steering gear gave up the ghost shortly afterwards, leaving the ship at the mercy of the waves and causing her to roll heavily. This was particularly dangerous because neither the hatches nor the bulkhead doors were watertight. Two or three big breakers would have been enough to make the ship heel over sufficiently to take on water and sink within minutes. In an account of the voyage written later on, when he was back on dry land, Kapitanleutnant von Zimmer attributed the fact that this did not happen to pure luck.

  It is not known what Riiter, Wendt and Tellmann were doing at this time of extreme danger, but one assumes that they were making feverish efforts to repair the steering gear. Fortunately, the wind subsided after two hours and the lake became calmer in consequence, and shortly after nine o’clock the helmsman reported that the steam steering gear was working again. The Gotzen set a course for Bismarckburg, and for the next eighteen hours she steamed south at eight knots without further incident. At three on the mornin
g of the second day, however, when she was on a level with Utinta, her steering gear failed again. She started to pitch and roll badly, veered off course, and was driven northwards by the wind at a speed of four miles an hour. Less than two miles off the rocky coast and constantly in danger of running on to a hidden reef, she might well have gone down with all hands, not to mention the millions

  of mosquitoes and cockroaches that had populated the bowels of the ship since her keel was laid.

  After the Gotzen had drifted rudderless for an hour, the steering gear was repaired once more. She turned to face the wind and waves anew, steamed steadily south, and reached Bismarckburg at seven on the evening of the third day.

  Kapitanleutnant von Zimmer to Governor Schnee

  Bismarckburg, 8 August 1915

  Your Excellency,

  Further to my report of 20 July concerning the maiden voyage of the Gotzen, I have the honour, as instructed, to send you the following list of defects. I take the liberty of recommending that the suggested improvements be promptly undertaken by Shipwright Ruter, and that all the requisite resources be made available. The ship cannot be rendered operational otherwise. Signed: Zimmer.

  1 The draught is insufficient. The Gotzen is almost unsteerable in a heavy sea.

  2 The hull is single-skinned, hence extreme danger of foundering should the ship hit a rock.

  3 The bulkheads between individual compartments are too few and too weak. If water gets into one compartment, ship threatens to be a total loss.

  4 If a double bottom is installed, trimming tanks should be added because without them the ship cannot be trimmed.