Harkaway's Sixth Column Read Online Free Page A

left and the base personnel were now aboard the ships to make room for the troops who would be arriving from the last-ditch defences that had been constructed in the hills.
    Since there was nothing they could do, they made themselves comfortable. It wasn’t all that difficult because even in Berbera there had never been either fresh milk or butter and most things had come out of cans, and in the hills the thirsty climate of the plain and the sea-coast gave way to one that was equable, even invigorating. There was grass here instead of sand, box trees, acacias, a variety of flowering aloes with crimson and yellow blossoms, gum, myrrh and frankincense. In some sheltered spots there were junipers or wild fig trees, and in a few of the gorges even maidenhair, while everywhere there were euphorbias lending an artificial stage-like effect with their candelabra branches and dark creased trunks.
    ‘AH we need is a few girls,’ Tully pointed out cheerfully. ‘They’re not bad, these Somalis. Slim. Nice hips and taut little tits.’
    ‘Just try and take one,’ Harkaway said quietly, ‘and their brothers’ll have your balls off quick as light.’
    ‘Yeh - well -’ Tully considered this. ‘Of course, you could do it proper. They’d sell you one.’ ‘Twelve camels is about the going rate, I believe.’ Gooch was silent for a moment. ‘Or a rifle,’ he said slowly. ‘We’ve got plenty of them.’
     
    Ten days later they had still made no effort to move because there seemed to be even less point than there had been earlier. At the Tug Argan a desperate battle was being fought and they could hear the thump of bombs and the thud of artillery. Occasionally, they saw Italian aircraft looking for targets, and the main road below the hills was swarming with Italian troops. The native bandas were constantly moving up and down it, wild strong-looking woolly-headed men in white robes criss-crossed by cartridge belts, more than willing to fight, and it seemed better not to try their patience too much. The conquest of Somaliland seemed assured now and perhaps it would be easier to stay put until the dust had settled.
    The chief problem was boredom. They hadn’t much to say to each other. They were all too different and Harkaway was distinctly unforthcoming. But he always had been un-forthcoming and they put it down, as everybody did, to his past. Harkaway’s past had been mentioned in whispers in the bars and canteens in Berbera but never to Harkaway. Again and again, it slipped out, in references to people he knew, to hunt balls, to taxis when everybody else rode in buses, and for the most part his friends had exchanged glances and said nothing. Now he was brooding over something. Though the others didn’t know it, he was becoming ambitious. He could see no future in merely hiding from the Italians, and was itching to do someone some damage. In his lumpish, awkward, aggressive way, Gooch resented Harkaway’s aloofness but there was nothing he could do about it. If Harkaway chose to ignore them, then that was exactly what he did.
    ‘He’s all right,’ Tully said in answer to Gooch’s grumbles. ‘He just gets things on his mind. What do you think about the situation, Kom-Kom?’
    Grobelaar shrugged and gave a shadowy, cobwebby smile. ‘Alles sal regt kom,’ he said.
    ‘What’s that mean, you Dutch bastard?’
    ‘It means everything will work out.’
     
    The fight at the Tug Argan went on. Every day the Italians surged forward to break the British grip, so their mechanized columns could burst through to the coast, and since there were just too many of them, positions were being encircled and the British were slowly having to withdraw, first from one hill, then from another.
    But the troop embarkation in Berbera had already begun and, as men withdrew from their positions and headed for the coast they were taken on board ship while the Italians were still licking their wounds in the hills. The town was full of burning