Harkaway's Sixth Column Read Online Free Page B

vehicles and by 17 August, less than a fortnight from the beginning of the Italian advance, the men on the hills above Eil Dif learned that the convoys were finally at sea and heading for Aden. Somaliland was lost.
    ‘What now?’ Gooch asked heavily. Automatically, his eyes turned to Harkaway. The idea of blowing up the road seemed entirely pointless now and what was in his mind was merely a means of getting south to Kenya.
    Tully wasn’t listening. He was staring about him. ‘You know,’ he observed unexpectedly, ‘it’s worth a bit, this lot.’
    ‘What lot?’ Gooch asked.
    ‘This lot here. Two Vickers water-cooled, two Brens, four Lewises, fifty-four Enfield rifles, a bit out of date but still working, one hundred and fifty Martinis, very out of date but also still working, four mortars, two pack guns, a few land mines, several boxes of grenades, and Christ alone knows how much small arms ammo. Seems a pity to blow it all up. Think what it’d be worth if we could sell it.’
    Gooch frowned. ‘Who’d buy it?’
    ‘The wogs.’ Tully gestured. ‘For hunting. They’d jump at it. There’s game around. Especially up here. Dik-dik and gerenuk. I’ve seen ‘em. Perhaps bigger stuff even. All we have to do is show ‘em how to use ‘em.’
    There was a long silence. ‘It belongs to the army,’ Grobelaar ventured.
    ‘Not now, mate,’ Tully said. ‘They abandoned it.’
    ‘How do they pay?’ Gooch asked. ‘I haven’t much use for bloody camels. There’s no call for ‘em in Islington, where I come from.’
    Tully smiled. ‘There’s silver, old son. Silver bangles. Silver anklets. Silver necklaces. You’ve seen ‘em. They’d give silver for a rifle.’
    Gooch looked about him uncertainly and Tully went on eagerly. ‘We could make a fortune,’ he said. ‘Make our pile, head for Djibouti with a camel or two and use some of it to hire a boat to get to Aden. We could head for Khartoum. Live there in luxury. Nice house. A few birds. Perhaps we could even get down to Portuguese East Africa. They’re neutral there and I bet there are a few skulking there already to avoid the war. We could live like lords.’
     

3
     
    In the town of Bidiyu, General Ettore Guidotti was in the process of settling in. Bidiyu lay astride one of the roads that ran from Jijiga in Abyssinia across the border of British Somaliland to Berbera, and his job and that of the 7th Savoia Battalion, supported by the 49th Colonial Infantry, was to make sure it remained open.
    There was little to fear now from the British, because they’d all disappeared, and Italian troops had even pushed across the borders of Italian Somaliland and Abyssinia into Kenya and the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. There was little to do, in fact, except bring Roman culture and the dignity of the Duce’s empire to the conquered country and wait until Graziani pushed through Egypt from Libya to join them.
    Bidiyu was a collection of white buildings surrounded by feathery pepper trees and flat-topped acacias, with here and there a few staunch zinnias thrusting upwards in muted pinks and muddy yellows. It never looked at its best in the hard glare of the sun, when you seemed to see only the shrivelled old men and women gossiping under the thorn trees of the marketplace. Camels plodded by and men from the interior stacked up the piles of dried sheepskins they had brought for sale. Somali labourers, still staggered by the change of ownership but sensible enough to realize it meant little difference as long as they were willing to work for the new authority, sang a high-pitched song as they toiled on the road out of town. A disgruntled Indian merchant who had not bothered to leave with the British sipped spiced tea in the shade of a coffee house, and Somali girls, lean and beautiful, moved past with a grace that would have been the envy of Roman society, enticing in their gaily-coloured robes.
    Guidotti had taken over the biggest house in the town, the old British