African Laughter - Doris May Lessing [27]
He shrugged.
‘Were you brought up in this country?’
‘Canada.’
‘Ah, I see.’
‘All right, what do you want to know?’
‘For instance why was it in the Bush War, the black civilian casualties were always so high when “incidents” were reported?’
He sat thinking for a while. Then: ‘All right, I’ll tell you the story of something that happened. In the Rhodesia Herald it said, “One member of the Security Forces killed, five civilians, eleven Terrorists.”’
THE BUSH WAR
He was with five others on patrol in the bush. They were travelling fifteen to twenty miles at night, and lying low in the day. He was patrol leader. They each carried food for eight days.
‘I had a self-invented muesli, of milk powder, oats, wheatgerm, raisins, and bits of salami. I ate one pound of this a day, with half an onion. We sucked dew off the grass in the morning, if we didn’t come on any decent water. The muesli was in a plastic bag and that was good because it didn’t make a noise: tins clash, and give you away. Everybody made up their own rations. Biltong came into its own, I can tell you. We saw two men lurking about outside a village. We thought they looked suspicious, probably spies for the ‘terrs’. You acquire an instinct, after a bit of practice. We took them prisoner. So there were eight of us. They didn’t mind going along with us. We didn’t even have to tie their hands. They had no spirit, those chaps, poor buggers, government forces or the ‘terrs’, they got it in the neck either way. Then we heard the ‘terrs’ singing their freedom songs in a village we didn’t know was there. It was just luck. We knew they didn’t know we were there. All the different groups of ‘terrs’ told each other of their whereabouts, or where we were, through their talking drums. We usually had some Aff with us who could tell us what the drums were saying, but not that trip. But the ‘terrs’ wouldn’t have been singing their heads off if they knew we were half a mile away. We left the two prisoners with two guards. One was shitting in his pants with fear. That is what is meant by the smell of fear.’
The four crawled up to the edge of the village in the dark. It was cold. They lay in the grass just far enough away from the firelight. There was no moon. ‘It was the usual thing. A song, and then a speech. Then a song and another speech.’
One of the ‘terrs’ was sitting on a scotch cart, its wheels within touching distance of the four watchers, who lay as still as they could, trying to breathe quietly.
‘Luckily he was drunk. We were watching the leaders going in and out of a hut where we were sure a girl was. They were having a good time with her. We could hear her laugh. The ones who made the longest and most fiery speeches got most time in the hut. I had given orders no one should open fire until I did. I knew they were itching to let go, with all those drunk ‘terrs’ reeling about. I waited until the girl came out of the hut to have a pee. Then we all threw our bombs into the hut. Girls were screaming, and I realized there were other girls in there. There was general firing for about a minute. The ‘terrs’ ran away into the bush. They didn’t know how many soldiers were out there in the dark. We could have been a whole battalion, not just four. One of us was hit by a ricochetting bullet. He died later.’
The four went on lying in the grass, waiting. They did not know one of them was badly wounded.
‘He did feel blood trickling, but he thought it was just a scratch. We were listening to the groans of the wounded. We had no idea how many there were. Several times grenades went off. The usual trick, a grenade put under a corpse, or held under him by a wounded man–kamikaze stuff, the idea was we would get it, when we moved him. But sometimes the grenades went off when they weren’t supposed to. When the light came, there were several dead, including civilians, lying on the earth between the huts, and in the huts where I thought there was only one girl, were several dead ‘terrs’ and three dead girls. The girl who had come out to have a pee had a smashed hip. We gave her morphine