I—WITH THE AFRICAN MOUNTED RIFLES
"Sahib," said a man of an Indian mountain battery, when we were in standing camp in the shadow of Kilimanjaro, "you are obviously not infantry, and you are as certainly not cavalry. What are you?"
That was a question I had often asked myself since the day I enrolled as a signaller in the East African Mounted Rifles, locally known as "Bowker's Horse"—a deceptive nickname, for at that time we rode mules. We got horses later on, and uniforms and accoutrements all of a piece; but in the early days of the war we were an irregular corps of straight-shooting, cheery, undisciplined scallywags, wearing garments of our own devising, saluting or not as the notion occurred to us, and literally pawing the ground in our simple-minded anxiety to ride straight into "German East" and crumple up such slight resistance as we expected to meet. The corps was composed, for the most part, of settlers, a sprinkling of juniors from Government offices, an estate agent or two, and a leavening of those nondescripts who float round any new colony, to be inevitably washed up when any piece of adventure or devilry comes along.
That was how we looked at it then; we were booked for the great adventure, and were prepared to start on it out of hand with our own rifles and ammunition and a few scrag-ends of mule.
For some days after the declaration of war Nairobi looked as it does in race week, and I wonder someone didn't get killed in the crush at Mackinnon's Corner, where all the principal roads converge. White men, brown men, black men, motors, bicycles, and mules seethed about all over the crossing. Somalis would bring up a batch of mules to be passed by the vet., and those would kick and bite their way through the maelstrom, whilst our local scorchers, who had blossomed into motorcycle despatch-riders, added to the joy of things by coming down Sixth Avenue like streaks and jamming on both brakes when within a few feet of the crush. This pleased the mules, of course.
It was an education to watch some of our bar-room buck-jumpers at play on the lightsome blend of fiend and whirlwind called a mule. There was a man in my troop called Eccles, who wasn't a "Buffalo Bill" at the best of times, and they served him out a mustard-crossed white mule that looked like some kind of loathsome slug. It kicked you when you tried to mount, and promptly bucked you off if you succeeded in getting on—a perfect brute, in short.
Eccles's first experience was at a parade in Government Road, when the mule took him out in front of the troop, deposited him on the hard road, and then capered about him, apparently undecided whether to trample on him or eat him. When we got out into camp the mule developed a habit of lying down in every stream or bit of water we crossed, and after a few days of this sort of thing Eccles decided to lead his mule. One morning, however, the animal disappeared into the blue, to the huge delight of Eccles, until a heliogram came through from the next camp to say that the mule had arrived there. Eccles scarcely spoke for two days. We sent a couple of Somali scouts over, and they, five Europeans, and a crowd of porters spent a futile morning in trying to catch the brute.
Then our regiment commandeered all the mules and horses from that camp. This one refused to be caught, but attached itself to the corps, and, as we could neither catch it nor get rid of it, both Eccles and the mule enjoyed complete happiness.
II—THE MULE AS A COMRADE
The study of the gentle mule, as a matter of fact, occupied most of the first part of our time with the regiment. We camped along the railway line, and the entraining of mules is one of the most exciting pastimes I know, although the procedure is simple enough. One man leads the mule up to the door of the horse-box, whilst two others link arms across its hindquarters and heave or push it on board before it has had time to realize their intention. Sometimes it realizes first, and then heartless spectators gather round and yell with joy at the stirring scene. The man who pulls at the bridle has a busy time, for if the box is nearly full when he packs his steed in he has to quit through a storm of hoofs and teeth, and I've caught fragments of conversation on these occasions that would turn a dock-laborer green with envy.