Harkaway's Sixth Column Read Online Free PDF Page A

Residence, a place of stone blocks of brownish coral colour with a wooden verandah running the whole way round the second floor. Once it had been luxurious after the Victorian fashion but, between the departure of the British and the arrival of the Italians, Somali looters had rampaged through the place. However, the furniture, carpets, curtains and beds remained, though here and there scattered papers still blew about the corners of the gardens, and on the walls surrounding the house, a few muscular slogans had been painted: Credere, Obbedire, Combattere and Vivere Pericolosamente. Believe, Obey, Fight and Live Dangerously were good fascist creeds, Guidotti felt. He would have preferred them to have been painted somewhere else, but there were many young men anxious to show their strength and their courage and, if nothing else, the slogans showed their eagerness.
    The house was pleasant enough. Its previous occupant had lived well in a country that had little to recommend it, and there was French wine in the cellar to add to the chianti Guidotti had brought with him. The garden was overgrown but there were a few trees and a few bougainvillaeas to give shade to the wide verandah, while the view of the purple hills that surrounded the town was magnificent.
    Among the things Guidotti was expected to do was to erect a column with the date of the capture, topped by a bust of the Duce to show who was in charge, and a few kilometre posts of the type that studded the road which ran through Italian Somaliland from Mogadiscio. In Italian Somaliland they were tall and square and made of concrete, gave the distances to the Abyssinian towns of Addis Ababa, Jijiga and Harar, and announced the existence of the Strada Imperiale, or the Via Graziani, as the first governor of the new colony had chosen to call the road. Guidotti’s road was to be the Strada Del Duce and he intended to immortalize himself by calling the stretch for which he was responsible the Via Guidotti. There might be objections later, but once it was set in concrete with a fascist eagle or two, complete with laurel wreaths, fasces and the letters SPQR, in the manner of the old Roman legions, it might well remain there for a thousand years.
    It would require a parade, of course, with the troops drawn up in lines, the priest and his acolytes in their robes, fascist hymns, and Guidotti in full dress of white jacket, gold-braided lanyard and sword. It was a splendid sword and Guidotti always enjoyed wearing it. He was well aware that it had no purpose whatsoever except as decoration and he was intelligent enough to realize it made him look a little over-dressed, even a little pompous. But he was proud of it. It had been presented to him by General Franco after the war in Spain, and was of finest Toledo steel with a chased blade, a hand-grip of gold wire and a gold-cord swordknot to bind it to his hand if he should ever need to use it, which was most unlikely.
    ‘Not too many wreaths for the dead,’ he instructed Colonel Piccio, his chief of staff. ‘We wouldn’t wish to be too ostentatious.’
    He walked to the table and, pouring two glasses of the recently departed Englishman’s cool Muscadet, handed one to Piccio.
    ‘To the Duce,’ Piccio said loyally.
    Guidotti smiled. ‘And to us, Piccio. You, me, Di Sanctis and the rest of us. After all, the Duce spends his time in Rome in considerable comfort. We’re the ones who do the work.’
    Piccio clicked his heels. ‘To us, Excellency,’ he agreed. ‘I think we have this place well under control with little likelihood of trouble.’
    ‘Who could cause it?’ Guidotti asked. ‘There is no one.’
     
    Well, almost no one.
    By this time, the men in the cave above Eil Dif had almost forgotten the war.
    The plan to hit at the Italians had finally been abandoned. There was no longer the thump of bombs, the thud of artillery or the flickering light of gunfire in the sky at night.
    They had seen lorries approaching from the