All the Army is looking for the gunnery lieutenant, H.M.S. ----. Time
indeed may soften the remembrance of the evil he has done us, and in the
dim future, when we get to Dar-es-Salaam, we may even relent
sufficiently to drink with him; but now, just halfway along the dusty
road from Handeni to Morogoro, we feel that there's no torture yet
devised that would be a fitting punishment.
Strange how frail a thing is human happiness, that the small matter of a
misdirected 12-inch shell should blight the lives of a whole army and
tinge our thirsty souls with melancholy. For this clumsy projectile that
left the muzzle of the gun with the intention of wrecking the railway
station in Dar-es-Salaam became, by evil chance, deflected in its path
and struck the brewery instead. Not the office or the non-essential part
of the building, but the very heart, the mainspring of the whole, the
precious vats and machinery for making beer. And there will be no more
"lager" in German East Africa until the war is over.
All the long hot march from Kilimanjaro down the Pangani River and along
the dusty, thirsty plains we had all been sustained by the thought that
one day we would strike the Central Railway and, finding some sufficient
pretext to snatch some leave, would swiftly board a train for
Dar-es-Salaam and drink from the Fountain of East Africa. The one bright
hope that upheld us, the one beautiful dream that dragged weary
footsteps southward over that waterless, thorny desert was the
occupation of the brewery. We had heard its fame all over the country,
we had met a few of its precious bottles full at the Coast, had found
some empty--in the many German plantations we had searched.
Now "Ichabod" is written large upon our resting-places, the joy of life
departed, the sparkle gone from bright eyes that longed for victory,
and, as King's Regulations have it, alarm and consternation have spread
through all ranks. Even the accompanying news of the tears of the Hun
population in Dar-es-Salaam at this wanton destruction, failed to
comfort us.
The Navy were very nice about it. They were just as sorry as we, they
said. The gunner had been put under observation as a criminal lunatic,
we understood. But they had just come from Zanzibar, and every one knows
that all good things are to be found in that isle of clover. All the
excuses in the world won't give us back our promised beer again.