The Great World War 1914–1945: 1. Lightning Strikes Twice. John Bourne

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СКАЧАТЬ this recalls a Victorian/Edwardian concept of the civilised West high-mindedly carrying ‘the white man’s burden’, one must also recognise the downside. Meinertzhagen, who invariably favoured expansion of the native King’s African Rifles, reported this exchange with General Aitken who commanded Force B at Tanga in 1914:

      ‘When I was in East Africa in 1906 I visited the German military station at Moshi and was shown everything by some friendly German officers. I formed a high opinion of their efficiency and reported them as better trained, disciplined and led than our own King’s African Rifles. I told this to Aitken, who said with some heat: “The Indian Army will make short work of a lot of niggers.’”¹⁶

      As history has shown, General Aitken, soundly defeated, would have cause to reconsider his judgement. Arnold Wienholt, another British officer serving with the Intelligence Corps, seems to express the general attitude when he calls the natives ‘big children’¹⁷, but at the same time – and this eventually became the general view – he speaks for the mature army when he concludes that, ‘The German East campaign proved, at any rate, that, with training and discipline, the negro can become a first-rate soldier.’¹⁸ Although slow to change, attitudes nevertheless changed, and among the men who fought in East Africa, former prejudices were humbled.

      In Burma during the Second World War racial attitudes were much changed. General Stilwell, for example, said, ‘If I can prove the Chinese soldier as good as any Allied soldier, I’ll die happy.’¹⁹ This is not to say that Stilwell was without prejudice – his ludicrous references to the English as ‘limeys’ were legion – but such nonsense was always professionally and politically competitive.²⁰ British and Americans who served with the Karens and Kachins invariably spoke highly of them. Brigadier Bernard Fergusson has paid continual tribute to the Karen scouts of the Burma Rifles who were assigned to serve under his command²¹, and about the Kachins, OSS man Neil H. Barrett said this: ‘Any time a movement was started to fight the Japs the Kachins were the first to respond and, I might add, they were fearless, ruthless fighters, and the Japs feared them.’²² Vague notions that Wingate harboured a prejudice against the Indian Army were put to rest by Brigadier Michael Calvert who described the multi-ethnic character of the Special Force in these words:

      ‘In all there were seventeen British battalions, five Gurkha battalions and three West African battalions in the Special Force. No Indian battalions were used, owing to the difficulty, at that time, of special feeding, cooking, camp followers, etc, insisted upon by the Indian army, whereas all the battalions in Special Force could, and did, eat any type of food, although certain special provisions were sometimes made for the Gurkhas.’²³

      With admiration, Calvert later wrote, ‘At one time my brigade major, Francis Stewart, had to compete with seven different races in Brigade HQ, comprising British, Indian, Burmese, Karens, Chinese, West African, and Gurkhas.’²⁴ Finally, on the basis of his personal experience, Slim offers this appreciation, an appreciation that puts some of the racial delusions entertained early in the East African campaign fully and finally to rest:

      ‘In Burma we not only fought against an Asian enemy, but we fought him with an army that was mainly Asian. In both respects not a few of us with little experience of Asians had to re-adjust many ideas, among them that of the inherent superiority of the white man as a soldier. The Asian fighting man is at least equally brave, usually more careless of death, less encumbered by mental doubts, little troubled by humanitarian sentiment, and not so moved by slaughter and mutilation about him. He is, by background and living standards, better fitted to endure hardship uncomplainingly, to demand less in the way of subsistence or comfort, and to look after himself when thrown on his own resources.’²⁵

      One subject about which no man fighting for any side, either in East Africa or Burma, harboured a single delusion was the difficulty to be faced in contending with raw nature. And raw nature in the tropics was a matter far divorced from raw nature as it was experienced in Europe. With the vagaries of weather everyone had to contend, but there all similarities between the fronts ended. To the lasting misfortune of the men who fought in the tropics, the threats and dangers imposed by nature arrived in a multiplicity of forms.

      Occasionally, one supposes, soldiers fighting in Europe were bitten by dogs, scratched by cats, or bedevilled by lice and insects; if so, their problems with the animal kingdom were minuscule when compared with those of the tropical fighting man. Writing about East Africa, Christopher J. Thornhill recalled:

      ‘Charging rhino were to be a feature of this campaign – we had to get used to them and more or less dodge their cyclonic onslaught; for nothing but death will stop a rhino once he takes it into his head to charge, and it is not always prudent to let off firearms when enemy patrols are about. That day I counted no less than eight full-grown rhino disturbed by our advance, three of which charged, two of them being shot.’²⁶

      At Maktan on 3 September 1915, Angus Buchanan recorded this diary entry:

      ‘Out on reconnaissance, to position enemy holding about eight miles west of our camp. Moving quietly through bush – our party two whites and two porters. On outward journey ran across a rhinoceros, who charged on hearing stick break underfoot; but he stopped about ten yards short, when he then got our wind, and cleared off rapidly with a quick turn and snort, apparently afraid of us. Self and companions, at the sound of the rushing crash of the charge, had backed behind stoutish trees, with rifles ready, but the natives, in an incredibly short moment, had squirmed frantically into the bushes overhead.’²⁷

      As W. E. Wynn wrote, ‘In peace we laughed at the rhino, behind his back… In war the rhino was no longer funny. He was a nuisance. To my own knowledge eight men were killed by charging rhinos.’²⁸ W. T. Shorthose, after reporting a number of men killed or wounded by buffaloes, went on to state: ‘Not only from German rifles did our men suffer in the East African campaign. I am correct in stating that numbers of carriers were taken by lions, also sentries, others crushed to death by elephants or tossed by buffaloes and rhinos, and many poisoned by the bite of snakes.’²⁹ Given the incredible abundance of East African wildlife and the utterly uncertain nature of its reactions to man, the threat it posed was ever-present. Francis Brett Young describes a fine bull oryx several times charging his column before a thin line of machine-gun porters finally parted from before its straight horns, which allowed the cornered beast to escape into the bush.³⁰ The aggressive African honey bee – today called ‘the killer bee’ in the United States – several times disrupted entire military columns on the march.³¹ And at least once, at Tanga, the viciousness of the bees played a significant role in a British defeat:

      ‘As a matter of fact, wild bees worried the Lancs a good deal. It sounds ridiculous, but I saw it myself. Apparently wild bees were in abundance in some of the palms, and bullets happened to break up their nests. They all came out angry and stung anything in their way. I myself got stung twice by angry bees, and some of the Lancs were stung all over by hosts of these little pests. Of course, they said the Germans had let bees lose on them, but this must be nonsense.’³²

      When a predator was involved, a sudden attack could be far more threatening:

      ‘The enemy soon got to hear that we were in their neighborhood, especially as we were getting in the Government tax food from the various villages, to prevent it falling into the enemy’s hands. However, we had our own troubles close at hand, for a few days after making our temporary camp and erecting shelters, a leopard, coming into the camp at night (we had, of course, no fires), seized and terribly mauled my white companion. The horrible beast, sneaking in, had seized his victim by the head, and, dragging him off his stretcher, had actually taken him away some fifteen yards before we were able to help him. Being asleep at the time, I was rather muddled for a few seconds when his shrieks started, and I fear was all too slow in coming to his assistance. It was not till he had cried СКАЧАТЬ