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.‘It wasn’t them who cracked it off.It was the claymores that panicked the elephants.’I knew he was right, but that didn’t make things any easier.I stood up, getting hold of myself, and used the radio to call our remaining guys together.I couldn’t help feeling irritated when Genesis started to recite a short benediction, commending Andy’s soul to the Almighty, and I shouted at him to shut up.‘Where was God when the elephants charged?’ I said bitterly.‘He wasn’t fucking looking after Andy.’Genesis opened his mouth to say something, but I poked him in the chest with my forefinger and snapped, ‘Eh, just keep quiet.’We unrolled our one para-silk stretcher and got the body into it, to carry it back to the holding area.By then darkness had settled back on the bush, except where the fires lit up patches in the distance and, closer, a couple of places where Kamangans were feverishly hacking at elephant corpses by torchlight.‘Joss!’ I yelled.‘Where are you?’‘Here.’ He answered from only a few feet away.He must have been coming in search of us.‘I went, ‘What a fuck-up!’For the moment he didn’t reply.I think he was choked as well.Then I was aware of him standing beside me, his black face invisible, only his DPMs showing faintly in the moonlight.He pointed at the shrouded body and asked, ‘Who is this?’‘Andy.’‘Andy! Oh my goodness! I’m sorry.Was it an elephant?’‘Yep.What about you? Have you got casualties?’‘Two dead.Two broken legs, one broken arm, one flesh wound from a bullet.’‘What about casevac?’‘It will be difficult from here.’‘You’ve said it.Let’s get back to the holding area and talk about it there.’I should have bollocked him for letting his men run riot, but I let it go, because I’d seen enough of their behaviour to realise it was utterly unrealistic to expect the sort of discipline that prevails in British forces.Nor did I tell him to call off the guys who were carving up the elephants.I knew the whole Kamangan army was shit-poor, and hadn’t been paid in months, so who was I to deny them the fat haul of dollars they might get from selling tusks?At 2300 local time – 2100 in the UK – I called Hereford on the satcom phone to report our casualty.‘What d’you mean, it was an elephant?’ said Pete Dickson, the Duty Officer, incredulously.‘We were on a night ex,’ I white-lied.‘A herd of about fifty ellies wandered on to our position and stampeded.Came right through us.There wasn’t time to move or do anything.Andy got knocked down and trampled.’‘Killed outright?’‘Instantaneously.When you see the body, you’ll know.His chest is about two inches front to back.’‘Jesus!’‘Listen,’ I went on.‘We need to get him out fast.He won’t last a day in the kind of heat we’re having.’‘You mean a charter aircraft?’‘Exactly.There’s a firm called Kam-Ex, in Mulongwe.You can contact them through the embassy.’‘Are they going to be happy to fly into your area?’I lied again.‘There shouldn’t be any problem.We’re still well north of rebel territory.’‘Okay.And is there a strip close by?’‘There will be.There’s a straight bush road with a good level surface.It just needs a bit of scrub cleared, and we can do that at first light.’I gave the coordinates, which I’d punched into my GPS as Waypoint Four.‘Right,’ said Pete.‘We’ll see what we can do.But we’ll need a full report on the incident in due course.’‘Of course.’‘D’you want to speak to the CO in the morning?’‘Not unless he wants to speak to me.’‘Okay, then.Until tomorrow.’Dawn saw us back on the bush road with a force of forty Kamangans.We’d chosen a stretch on which the scrub was light anyway, and now those razor-sharp machetes came into their own.In the cool of the morning the guys worked well – I had to hand it to them – and in little more than an hour we’d cleared a strip four hundred metres long, cutting back the shrubs on either side of the track to create an open corridor about twenty metres wide.Provided no strong cross-wind got up, a reasonable pilot ought to be able to land and take off without difficulty.At that stage – 0630 – we had no confirmation that an aircraft was available, but I went ahead preparing the strip anyway [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]