Page 59 - WTP Vol. XIII #3

Lieutenant, and a Sergeant in the Native Forces?”
Moore answered instead of Hariaksh as was his pre- rogative by rank: “We met Colonel Rodgers at the Boarding House. He was desperate for company after so long in Hospital, so he invited us for drinks and some old-time sakes laughs, seeing as we were all from the same Expeditionary. The Colonel got direct- ly drunk though after only a few whiskeys, and surly I might add, so I left.”
“Wait a minute,” Graves blurted out. “This Colonel Rodgers was the blighter that pulled back after the false reconnaissance at Beersheba?”
“Yes,” replied Hariaksh, then seeing the puzzled ex- pressions on the civilian’s faces, he explained. “Rodg- ers was the Intelligence Officer for Sir Charles Dobell at both the First and Second Battles of Gaza.”
“The first an un-mitigating disaster,” added Graves, “and the second a blood bath.”
“That’s right,” Moore said. “At First Gaza we whipped Jerry’s ass. Surprised him across a forty-klick front and with our forces hidden by a thick fog that came rolling in off the sea, the Krauts were running. All we had to do was hotfoot up the coast and push him through, and out the other side of Jerusalem. But of course, then it happened.”
“Happened? What happened?” asked Eliot.
“This Rodgers was the Chief Intelligence Officer,” Moore said. “In charge of keeping Headquarters in touch with the advancing Regiments; running field phones and radios, messengers coming and going on motorcycles from all over the battlefield, when for some reason Rodgers hears about a stall on the line. An inconsequential one really, but he panicked, recommended calling the whole thing off, convinced Dobell to order a general withdrawal.”
“Several of my buddies got blown to hell during that disengagement while Rodgers sat safe behind his bunker wall,” Hariaksh said shaking his head.
“How could a mere Colonel call off an Army offen- sive?” Frazer asked incredulously.
“You’d have to know Chalice Dobell’s cowardly repu- tation to understand that,” Graves said with a gri- mace. “He was with the Africa Corp in 1914. Sent to secure the German colonists in Cameroon. A sure thing you’d think. Well, he lost twenty percent of his forces to fever and dysentery. Poor planning and staff work, they said. He didn’t bring enough medicos to work the line properly.”
“He’s a reputation for a runner and not a fighter,” Moore added. “So, if someone on his staff said the line was slowing Dobell would have seized up and hesi- tated and that’s exactly what he did.”
“What happened afterwards?” Horwitz asked.
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“T
he fear of the dead,
which on the whole, I believe to have been probably the most powerful force in the making of primitive religion.”
“As did I,” added Hariaksh. “The Colonel and I weren’t exactly of the same social class, so there really wasn’t much to talk about; that is, after the usual soldiers’ complaints about who’s dead and whose fault it is.”
“Ah yes,” Frazer said. “The Native Brigades fight sepa- rately do they not?”
“Yes. Although our Officers are all white by British law. Ironically my Superior had never clapped eyes on England before the war. Being raised in the East India Company he was much a foreigner as I was the first time he arrived here on furlough.”
“So, Sergeant, you didn’t know the deceased then?” asked Horwitz.
“To be honest I didn’t, Sir,” the small man replied. “I met Lieutenant Moore on the Passage and booked with him for a room because it’s cheaper that way. Then when he told me that Colonel Rodgers of Do- bell’s staff was staying downstairs, and that he was taking him out for a drop, I went along for curios- ity’s sake.”
“Curiosity?” Frazer asked. “Why curious?”
“Well, you have to understand we all thought he was dead, especially after the First Battle of Gaza.”
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