118
I FIRST met him at Kut-el-Amara when he was a prisoner under escort. He
was a cheerful, happy, individual, very willing, and always crooning his native
songs while he was at work he never bothered to learn the British Tommies'
songs of that day, for which we were thankful. Somehow they always seemed a little
shallow when sung by a man of another colour and race. The only name we knew him
by was Pea Soup,' and he was one of the blackest, shiniest, natives that ever came
out of Central Africa. At that time he was learning from the Army Authorities what
discipline means, for he had wilfully disobeyed an order, and was now a prisoner awaiting
trial.
He had signed on for duty as a fireman on one of the Tigris river boats under the
control of the Inland Water Transport, and while his vessel was awaiting orders at Kutr
he had been ordered ashore to assist in some work going on at the quayside. He had
the temerity to point out that he was a ship's fireman, and had only signed for that
work. It was fatal of course he was under escort now waiting to be sent down river
to Basrah for a court martial and disgrace. A few days later I went up to the line, and
Pea Soup and his court martial went out of my memory.
Two years later, when I was idling on the deck of a West African liner at Freetown r
Sierra Leone, I was hailed with a shout of delight from a Kroo Boy who was working
one of the winches at a forward hatch. A sling of palm kernels was dumped hurriedly
down the hold, the winchman left his work, and came rushing up a gangway to greet
me ks an old friend. I savvy you for Mesopotamia, massa you savvy me, Pea Soup?"
He hurried on to remind me of all the details of our last meeting in far away Kut, and,
like the majority of men of his race, he had a vivid, retentive memory, calling completely
to mind all those little details of the past which in the whirl of life is apt in an European
to become slurred and misty. The last I saw of him he was going ashore in a lighter,
a wave of his hand, the same cheerful grin on his face.
sfc
A year before I first ran into Pea Soup I spent many a, long hour of the night listen
ing to exciting yarns and experiences of pre-war days on the veldt from a South African,
a hardened old campaigner if ever there was one. At that time we were sharing sentry
duty in the front line on the Somme, waiting for the fatal First of July, 1916.Those
escapades of his in the earlier years of this century were shared with a bosom friend,,
one Scholey by name, but during one of their affairs in 1913 Scholey had been left behind
in a hospital in Windhoek (they were working German territory at the time) and
all efforts my friend had made to trace him when he returned later had failed Scholey
had disappeared. Three years later here was Scholey's friend a British Infantryman
in France with,as he used to say,no hopes of ever seeing Africa and my pal again."
A few weeks later I was in a London Hospital, and in the next cot was a man from
one of the South African Regiments. While we were exchanging news and reminis
cences during those long days of idleness I found myself listening to exactly the same
story I had heard a few weeks previously. You will have guessed of course who it was.
Actually the name over his cot was not Scholey, but that was a small matter of his own.
How delighted he was to learn that I could put him in touch with his old partner again..
There was no doubt about it. He struggled through a letter, got it away that evening
for France, and during the next few days joyfully awaited a reply. He got one about
a week later, but it was from a kindly R.A.M.C. orderly to say that his friend had been
killed in action that week.
