As the German Navy prepared to intercept the great British convoy sailing from Canada, and armies numbering in the hundreds of thousands continued to clash across Europe, the war assumed a very different character far to the south, beneath the jungles of Africa.
By late August, the Entente had made little progress against Greater German Cameroon from the sea. Southern Bauxi, the fortified port at the mouth of the Sanaga, had refused to yield to naval pressure, while Germany's deliberate concentration of settlement and industry around the three Bauxi towns left few easier coastal prizes worth taking. With transport ships already desperately needed to carry men and matériel toward Europe, Britain, France and Belgium increasingly turned toward invasion by land.
French forces pressed in from the north, British columns from the west, while Belgian troops advanced out of the Congo from the southeast. Here there were no broad roads or railways capable of carrying entire divisions forward. The jungle forced armies into long, winding columns along narrow trails, soldiers and scouts cutting the path ahead while ammunition, food, tools and even light artillery followed largely through human strength.
One such Belgian column had already spent nearly a week forcing its way northwest through the Congo toward the German frontier.
More than ninety percent of it consisted of Black African men drawn from different peoples and districts across the colony. At the front marched soldiers of the Force Publique, Belgium's colonial army and police force. The African rank and file, commonly called askaris, wore dark blue tunics trimmed in red, red fezzes and heavy ammunition belts, their uniforms stained almost black by sweat, rain and red jungle mud. Behind them came hundreds of porters dressed in whatever simple work clothes they possessed, carrying ammunition crates, food sacks, tents, tools and medical supplies through country where wagons and pack animals were often useless.
Some porters had accepted the work for miserable wages. Others had been recruited through quotas, coercion or outright compulsion and possessed little meaningful choice in the matter. Whatever the colonial administration called them, many laboured under conditions scarcely distinguishable from forced servitude.
The hierarchy of the column was obvious. At the bottom trudged the porters beneath their loads. Above them marched the askaris, armed and disciplined, carrying out Belgian orders and keeping the column moving. Above them all sat the white Belgian officers, several borne through the jungle in carrying chairs upon African shoulders, comfortably raised above the worst of the mud.
The Belgians commanded. The askaris ensured obedience.
One officer in particular had long since exhausted whatever patience he had brought into the jungle. He hated the heat, the mud and, most of all, the mosquitoes. They seemed drawn to him without mercy, whining around his ears and landing upon his neck and cheeks no matter how often he slapped them away. By that point every delay felt like a personal insult.
So when a porter finally staggered beneath his load and collapsed onto his hands and knees, bringing the column behind him briefly to a halt, the Belgian's temper snapped almost immediately.
"What is this?" he roared, swatting another mosquito against his cheek. "Get up! Get up, you useless scum!"
The porter tried. His arms shook beneath him, his chest heaving as he struggled for breath, but the enormous load had emptied whatever strength remained in his legs. He managed only to lift his head toward the officer towering above him.
"Please, sir... just a moment..."
The begging disgusted him.
Another mosquito settled against his temple. The Belgian slapped at it, missed, and his expression twisted.
"No excuses! Get up!"
The porter opened his mouth again.
The whip answered first.
The heavy hippopotamus-hide lash cracked through the humid air and struck him across the face just as he looked upward. The blow tore a deep line through dark skin and caught one eye directly. Blood sprayed across his cheek as the eye ruptured beneath the impact.
The porter screamed and collapsed into the mud, clutching desperately at his face while blood streamed through his fingers.
The Belgian merely sneered.
"God damn it, shut him up!" he snapped. "Get him on his feet! Move!"
Two askaris stepped forward without hesitation. One seized the wounded man beneath the arm and hauled him upright while another shoved his fallen pack against his chest.
"Take it."
The porter could barely see. His entire body trembled, blood running from the ruined eye and along the lash wound across his face, but fear overcame everything else. With shaking hands he caught hold of the load, dragged it back onto his shoulders and somehow forced his legs beneath him.
For a moment he swayed. Then he took a step, and another.
The Belgian watched him go, and a satisfied little smile crept across his face as though the man's obedience had vindicated the punishment.
"There," he said. "You see? You had the strength after all."
He settled back into his chair and slapped another mosquito from his forearm.
"Good. Now let's get a move on."
The column resumed its march. The wounded porter stumbled forward beneath his burden, one side of his face slick with blood, while nobody around him offered more than a passing glance. To the askaris, such cruelty was hardly remarkable; more often than not they were the ones expected to administer it.
And within minutes, the whole incident had seemingly been forgotten. The column stretched forward once more in a long, uneven line beneath the trees, men sweating beneath the oppressive heat as they forced themselves onward through red mud, tangled roots and air so humid that every breath felt heavy in the lungs. Porters bent beneath their loads, askaris pushed ahead with rifles on their shoulders, and the whole procession crept forward metre by metre beneath the dripping canopy.
For a while there was nothing except the scrape of boots, the dull thud of bare feet, creaking equipment and the constant buzz of insects.
Then the column stopped again.
The Belgian officer's head snapped up at once, and his expression darkened.
"What now?" he barked, rising sharply in his chair. "What is this? Why are we stopping again?"
Nobody answered.
Men ahead were craning their necks and exchanging uncertain looks. The halt had come from somewhere near the front, but whatever caused it had not yet travelled back with an explanation.
That only irritated him further.
"For Christ's sake." He slapped the arm of his chair. "Take me forward. I'm not sitting here while these idiots decide whether they remember how to walk."
His carriers obeyed, forcing the chair forward through the stalled column as porters and askaris crowded aside along the narrow trail. Branches scraped against the wooden frame and brushed across the officer's uniform while men stepped awkwardly into the undergrowth to make room. Before long the sound of running water rose above the insects and dripping leaves, growing steadily louder until the jungle finally opened before them.
The river stretched broad and brown across their path, moving slowly beneath broken shafts of sunlight that filtered through the canopy. It was exactly the crossing their scouts had promised: shallow near the banks, somewhat deeper toward the middle, but nowhere apparently dangerous enough to halt infantry. Several askaris had already entered, wading forward with their rifles held above the water as the current climbed from their knees toward their thighs and waists.
Yet they had stopped.
Every rifle was raised, some aimed toward the far bank, others toward the dense vegetation behind it. The Belgian officer followed their line of sight and frowned.
A single man stood knee-deep in the shallows near the opposite bank, bare from the waist upward with a spear held loosely in one hand. His dark skin was streaked with white ash across the face, chest and shoulders, the pale markings standing out sharply against the jungle behind him and giving him an almost skeletal appearance.
To the Belgian, he looked primitive, half-naked and utterly insignificant.
Which only made the hesitation of his men more irritating.
He glanced from the lone figure to the askaris, several of whom were still pointing their rifles not only at the man in the river but at the tangled roots, bushes and dark spaces between the trees behind him, as though expecting the jungle itself to come alive.
The Belgian's expression tightened.
"What are you doing?" he snapped. "Why have we stopped? It is one man. One."
His lip curled as he looked over the line of raised rifles.
"What, are you frightened of a ghost now?"
He gave a harsh laugh and kicked the wooden frame beneath him. "Forward! Take me across. I'll deal with this myself."
The carriers reluctantly descended into the river. Water climbed around their legs as they bore him past the stationary askaris and farther into the current, the chair swaying above their shoulders while the painted warrior remained perfectly still. By the time they approached the far bank, the distance between them had narrowed to only a few metres.
Then the warrior spoke.
"This is Duala land," he said in clear German, his voice calm enough to carry across the water without effort. "You shall not pass. Turn back, or you will be met with fire and death."
The Belgian's eye twitched in irritation before a slow smile spread across his face.
"What did you say?" he asked, leaning forward. "You dare speak to me—and in German, no less?"
When his carriers reached the shallows, he made no attempt to climb down. He remained seated above the warrior, looking down upon him as though the difference in height alone confirmed the natural order between them.
"You court death, you little Neger," he said, his voice dropping into open contempt. "Standing there as though you command me? No. I don't think so."
He waved one hand lazily toward the jungle behind the warrior.
"Go. Get out of my sight. Run back to your village and tell your primitive little masters that they surrender to me now. You will provide guides, and those guides will take us to these German Bauxi towns. If everyone behaves themselves, perhaps my seventy-five-millimetre cannon will have no reason to erase your miserable huts."
The Duala warrior did not move.
The Belgian's smile disappeared.
"And if they refuse, then we burn them out. We take the land. We cut off hands if that is what it takes to teach the lesson, and we kill as many of you as necessary until you understand what it means to stand against us—the Belgians."
Still the warrior showed no fear.
"The Duala have no master," he replied evenly. "We bow only to our king, to God... and to His emissary, the Prince of Iron, Oskar."
For the first time, the officer's expression shifted.
Only slightly, but the name had landed.
Behind him, the askaris were becoming more uneasy by the second. The river had gone strangely quiet around them. No birds called from the opposite bank. Nothing moved among the trees, and yet men increasingly felt as though the jungle were watching. Rifles turned slowly toward the elevated ground, toward dark spaces between roots and trunks, toward patches of brush thick enough to conceal whole groups of men.
They did not need anyone to say the word.
Ambush.
The Belgian either failed to understand what his soldiers had already realized or refused to acknowledge it.
"I see," he said slowly, contempt returning to his face. "So fire and death it is, then?"
He gave a short, humourless chuckle and rose to his feet upon the frame of the chair, boots planted against the wooden supports as he towered above the warrior.
"Well," he added with a faint shrug, one hand already drifting toward his sidearm, "I suppose that concludes our talks."
The pistol came free almost casually.
The Duala warrior barely had time to react before three shots cracked across the river in rapid succession. The first struck high in the head, snapping it violently aside as white ash and blood burst into the air. The next two drove into his chest and shoulder, knocking him backward into the water. He collapsed with a heavy splash, the current immediately carrying streaks of red across the brown surface.
Several askaris recoiled instinctively. They were men accustomed to violence, but the suddenness of the execution still caught them between movements, some lowering themselves slightly in the water while others froze with rifles half-raised.
The Belgian merely lowered his pistol, a thin thread of smoke curling from the barrel.
Then the vegetation above the far bank erupted.
A second ash-painted warrior burst from the greenery at full speed and hurled himself from the elevated ground, machete already raised overhead. For a heartbeat he seemed suspended against the pale sky before plunging directly toward the officer.
"What the—"
The Belgian reacted on instinct and fired repeatedly. Bullets tore into the man's side and chest, twisting his body in midair, but they could do nothing to stop the momentum already carrying him forward.
He crashed into the Belgian with all his weight.
The machete came down with him.
Its blade buried itself beside the officer's neck and deep into the collarbone, splitting cloth, flesh and muscle in one brutal stroke. Blood burst across his shoulder as the impact drove both men backward. The chair lurched beneath them, the carriers stumbled, and the entire structure overturned into the river.
Wood cracked against stone as men and chair disappeared beneath the muddy water.
The Belgian surfaced moments later coughing and thrashing, pain blazing through his shoulder and neck. He staggered upright in the waist-deep current and clamped one hand over the wound, but blood continued pouring freely between his fingers. His vision blurred almost immediately, while the sounds around him seemed distant and distorted, as though his head were still beneath the surface.
Then the far bank erupted in gunfire.
Muzzle flashes burst from vegetation that only moments earlier had appeared empty. Rifles cracked along the treeline, and bullets tore into the exposed askaris standing in the crossing. Men jerked beneath the impacts and disappeared beneath the water; others collapsed sideways and began drifting downstream as widening clouds of red stained the current.
The river dissolved into shouting and confusion. Some askaris wheeled toward the far bank and returned fire, their rifles answering unevenly against the hidden attackers, while others began struggling backward toward the safety of the near shore. Men still on land attempted to form a firing line, but the narrow crossing had already become a killing ground and the spearhead was breaking apart faster than its officers could restore order.
Near the centre of it all, the Belgian officer swayed on his feet.
Bullets hissed past him while his pistol hung forgotten in one hand and the other remained pressed desperately against his neck. Through his failing vision he saw bodies turning slowly in the current. He saw the Duala warrior he had shot drifting nearby, the white ash washing from his face into the reddened water. His carriers lay motionless where the chair had overturned, and farther back his askaris were falling one after another beneath the fire from the jungle.
He blinked and tried to focus.
Nothing sharpened.
A bitter sound escaped his throat, somewhere between a laugh and a dying breath.
"Fucking..." he muttered, the words thick and slurred. "Useless... scum..."
Then his legs finally gave way.
His hand slipped from the wound and he pitched forward into the river, disappearing beneath the surface as the current caught his body and carried him downstream among the other dead.
Behind him the ambush continued, rifles cracking through the jungle while the shattered Belgian spearhead fought desperately to escape the crossing.
The trees remained unmoved by any of it, and the river simply continued on its way, carrying the dead with it.