Interlude: scenes from the fall
Natal, March 1945:
“More of them,” said Sergeant Fraser.
Private Ivan Vujović, Sixth Territorial Reserve, had already heard. As he watched, six bombers marked with the Ashoka chakra screamed overhead, three fighters above and behind them. Another squadron with the same markings followed – Indians from the
Viraat, no doubt – with two British and one more Indian close behind.
They saw Vujović’s coastal defense station – he was sure of that – but they paid not the slightest attention to it, nor did they deign to notice the scattered anti-aircraft fire sent their way. The fleet would take care of that; they had other missions and other targets.
“Five wings?” Fraser asked formally, and Ivan confirmed. The sergeant thumbed his radio. “Richmond, this is Scottburgh Station. Forty-five, headed your way. Thirty bombers, fifteen fighters.”
“Acknowledged. Out.”
“Well, now they know,” he said conversationally, as Richmond broke radio contact. “A lot of good it’ll do ‘em.”
“Not many fighters, at least.”
“Probably don’t need ‘em.”
You’re probably right, Vujović reflected. Forty-five planes in just this group – the whole Natalian air force only had thirty.
No, scratch that – we probably don’t have them anymore.
“You know,” he said, “they’ll have the fight the recruiter promised us. ‘Not a real war, Ivan, it’s a shooting gallery against natives with hunting rifles.’ Didn’t work out that way for us, but it looks like it will for them.” He repeated the last sentence, suddenly aware that he was alive at that moment only because the incoming bombers had other things to do.
“More fool you believing a recruiter, then?”
“Oh, I didn’t believe him. I just wanted land of my own, and I figured a little fighting would be easier than waiting for the bastards in Belgrade to get around to land reform. This, though…”
Ivan trailed off and picked up his rifle. He’d suddenly had enough of a hopeless fight, and he’d had
more than enough of what the Specials were doing behind the lines. He’d never cared for that even in the bush war – he’d tried to stop it when he could – and now, when there was no purpose to it at all…
“I’m going home. Can’t do any more good here than there.”
Fraser looked at him sharply, then shrugged. He’d never been any more fond of the bush war than Ivan had. “Been thinking the same thing,” he said. “I think I’ll go with you – wait a minute while I get my pack.”
The lieutenant at the duty desk heard that. “Stop that right now!” he shouted. “That’s desertion in the face of the bloody Kaffirs. One more step and I’ll shoot you where you stand!”
“Will you, Bill?” Vujović’s rifle was already up and pointed at the officer, and it spoke more loudly than his lack of military courtesy. “Bet you can’t before I shoot you first. And I’m not worried about a court-martial either – there won’t be an army to court-martial me in a few more days, and I’ll take my chances till then.”
“The Kaffirs’ll…”
“Damn the Kaffirs. I’ve got a family and a farm, if they let me keep it.”
He hoped they would. He’d have to live under African rule, but that didn’t bother him, or at least not much. His people had lived under the Turks for centuries – some of them still did. That had become better, but they’d survived even when it was bad. Africans could hardly be worse. Let the British settlers bang on about them, as long as they let him stay.
With his rifle still on the lieutenant, he backed out of the room, and Sergeant Fraser followed.
*******
“You’ve got to go, ma’am,” John Hughes said.
“I’ve told you before, John, I will
not desert my country.”
“Ma’am, there won’t
be a country very much longer. The British command has told me, unofficially, that they’re delaying the blockade of Durban harbor for twenty-four hours so you can leave. But if you’re not out today, you won’t get out at all.”
Hughes exhaled heavily and looked at the woman who had been his queen for more than twenty years –
she had never shrunk from the royal title even when her husband had never dared use it. The British were sincere about letting her leave – the last thing they wanted was the embarrassment of capturing their own former queen consort in arms against them. But they’d do it if they had to, and if the Indians got here first, they wouldn’t hesitate at all.
That was every bit as written in stone as the delayed blockade.
The problem was persuading her. The old hands who’d followed her from England said that coming to Natal had been at least as much her idea as Albert’s, and where he’d been a supporter of the Imperials, she’d been a fanatic. They said she was half the reason Albert hadn’t followed the racial views of his father and grandmother, and from listening to her these twenty-four years, he could believe it.
“Your Majesty,” he said; the formal title broke through the moment’s silence. “There’s nothing to save. We’re fighting the whole British Empire, and India too…”
“Kaffirs.”
“Kaffirs they may be, but there are twenty of them for every one of us. More than that, with the territorial reserve deserting in droves. You have no more duty to this country, ma’am – and think of your other one. Do you really want to put the British government in the position of deciding what to do with you?”
“They wouldn’t dare.”
He could see she believed that. It wasn’t true, but there would be no convincing her. “What if it isn’t them, ma’am?” he asked, taking a different tack. “Most of the units closing on the city are Indian… and there are also Sotho and Xhosa regiments out there. What if one of them is first into the palace?”
That got to her where the nation’s plight hadn’t. She’d spent many evenings talking about what Kaffirs would do if they got their hands on an Englishwoman for a minute, and she believed that just as she believed the British people still held her sacred. She’d have stayed while the city fell and invited the conquering British general to tea, but facing an Indian or African one…
“It seems,” she said at last, “that people everywhere will eventually rebel against their betters. The British did so twenty years ago and the Kaffirs now, so I must bow to my fate again.”
“Very good, ma’am. The ship is ready.”
Hughes wondered where it would take them – Switzerland, maybe, or Sweden. They’d let Queen Mary stay, and with the money she still had, she could live well there. It would be exile, though, and that would hardly be pleasant: women in her family lived a long time, too, so she might look forward to ten years of regret or even twenty.
At least she’s been exiled before, he thought.
This isn’t the country where she was born, so maybe leaving it is easier. That wouldn’t be true of him: he
had been born here, and three generations of his family before him. This was the land he loved, the only one he had known – and he would be leaving it too. The British had been polite about that, but they’d been very, very firm.
He took the bags that had been packed for the queen, one in each hand, and followed her past silent servants who wouldn’t miss her at all. There was a fiacre outside, and he loaded the bags in the boot and held the rear door open. Queen Mary got in, and he beside her, and the driver started for the harbor.
*******
“They’re coming,” Bhekizizwe Dlamini whispered.
Manelesi Zuma nodded and hand-signaled to the men on the other side of the road. Those who had rifles readied them, and the others prepared what weapons they had. Zuma himself had a rifle that a Mosotho supply sergeant had arranged to lose, and he fixed his bayonet to the end – Specials weren’t worth bullets.
A few kilometers west, bombers pounded the front lines as the invading troops tightened the ring around Durban. Here, the Specials acted like none of that mattered. They were going into villages as they’d always done and shooting anyone who looked like they might cause trouble, or anyone they just didn’t care for. They’d passed a dozen bodies already this morning – men, women and children, shot in the middle of the road or hanging from trees beside it.
Preventing sabotage, they called it. Maybe that would make sense if the army had a chance of holding on – but as things were, it was just murder for the fun of it.
“Wouldn’t expect anything else from the Specials,” he murmured. Bhekizizwe nodded quickly: he knew exactly what his comrade meant.
Manelesi touched his bayonet again, testing its sharpness against his fingertip. They would stop the murder here. It would be revenge also – there’d been plenty of
that in the years of bush war – and…
“It doesn’t matter who fights,” Dlamini said, echoing his thoughts. “It matters who wins.”
Exactly. If they stood aside and held the British and Indians’ coats, then all the bush fighting wouldn’t matter. The only way they’d have a say in what would happen to this country after the Imperials fell would be if they were in at the kill. Take out the Specials now, then link up with the allied regiments…
There was a sharp report as the first of the Specials entered the kill zone, and then others from both sides of the road. Half of them went down before they ever knew they were under attack, and the others started firing at random. It would take them seconds to react, but those were seconds they didn’t have.
Zuma broke cover with a shout and saw that others all along the roadside were doing the same. He held his bayonet in front of him and charged, and he felt it drink blood.
*******
General Chatterjee heard his name called and turned to see a British adjutant with a paper in his hand. “We have word from the 37th, sir. They’ve taken the parliament building.”
“Very good. That’s the last of the center city, isn’t it?”
“Yes, sir. Just the perimeter around the harbor…”
“And the buildings on side streets.” Gunfire a block or two away gave testament to the resistance of one such building, its staccato rhythm cutting into the boom of the artillery pounding the harbor. “How many are we still facing?”
“Sixteen at last count, but I’m expecting another report within the hour.”
Chatterjee nodded. “It would be nice if they’d bloody well realize they’ve lost.” Durban was all but taken, and the scattered resistance in the hinterland could be mopped up in detail, but as long as the redoubts by the harbor held out and the fortress buildings blocked access to neighborhoods, more soldiers and innocent civilians would die.
Not that too many haven’t done so already. Durban already looked like Calcutta when he’d taken it in ’21, and some of the things he’d seen on the way to the city reminded him of nothing more than the siege. Bombed-out villages, burned fields, bodies by the side of the road – Natal was evidently determined to go out the way the Imperials did everywhere they ruled.
He remembered how they’d dealt with the people who’d burned houses and fields back home. The guerrillas in the bush were dealing with the Specials the same way, and his troops weren’t in a very different mood. He’d ordered them to take prisoners, and they had no problem letting the Natalian regulars or reservists surrender, but the Specials always seemed to get shot before they could raise their hands. They were trying to give up to the British troops now, but most of
them weren’t feeling very kind-hearted either.
It’s a damn bloody business, and the sooner it’s over, the better. Let the Congress – funny they call it that – decide what to do with this place when we’re done.
Chatterjee walked out of the command tent onto the bombed-out street, and it was suddenly a blur of different wars. He’d learned his trade fighting for the British Empire in the Great War and perfected it fighting against them in the war of independence, and here he was, not fighting
for them again but at least on the same side. The world had turned upside down one more time before he retired: at his age, he supposed he should be used to it.
“Can we get the 39th into the harbor from the sea side?” he asked the adjutant.
“I think so, sir. They’ve still got some Anastasias in the warehouses, but between the
Edward VII's guns and the air cover, we can keep their heads down enough to get landing craft in.”
“Do it, then.” The 39th was one of the old Congress regiments – it had been Chatterjee’s regiment in the Great War, the one in which he’d enlisted as a private and come home a major. Its men wouldn’t thank him for this job, but it would be easier than many of the things they’d had to do then. And if they could clean out the harbor, they’d be that much closer to taking the city.
“And Morrison?” he added.
“Yes, sir.”
“You were in Bengal in the last war, weren’t you? Fighting my army?”
“I was, yes,” Morrison said guardedly.
The world turned upside down one more time, and he doesn’t know which way it’ll shake him.
“In case I haven’t said so before, it’s good to have you back.”