Your name is Paul Mpenzi, and you have always been something of a troublemaker. Whether it was driving your mother sick with worry by stealing bananas from the plantation near your village, to getting well-acquainted with the headmaster's cane in school for a series of truly spectacular pranks, you are proud for having the knack of finding or creating adventure (and by 'adventure' you mean 'havoc') wherever you go.
It was this knack of yours more than anything that drove you to join up, though you made all kinds of reassuring noises at the earnest-looking white recruiter that yes, of course you were a good and patriotic Irromic citizen, and had you mentioned how glad you were that the Kaiser had finally beaten those foreign bastards, whoever they were? Your sudden desire for the thrills of army life was also motivated by the fact that your mother, god bless her, had finally passed on, and had spent so much of her life trying to keep you in check that she had never found the time to remarry. Your father had died in a skirmish on the Kongo Border before you even knew him, and your reputation for fooling around with young women all over the region barred you from marrying any respectable girl within a hundred miles. So, young, broke, unmarried and more than a little curious, you had chosen to join the Askari.
The soldiering life turned out to be good fun, to your surprise: though parade drill and maintenance and the various amounts of 'chicken shit' that soldiers had to deal with was boring, you proved to be a natural at hand-to-hand fighting and set a new company record at marksmanship, and the brief explosives course was the most fun you'd had in years. You'd been dreading what your officers would be like: you'd grown up stealing fruit from an IEA plantation, after all, and had heard all kinds of stories about how Westerners thought people like you to be lower than dirt. Luckily, Lieutenant Schafer had been, for the most part, fair and levelheaded; the only exception had been when your attempts to use your new explosives training to put on a "firework show" for the Kaiser's birthday had resulted in a fairly large crater where your outpost's parade ground used to be and a few nearby livestock dropping dead from shock.
To your relief, you had been placed on field kitchen duty "pretty much forever" as Sergeant Chausiku had put it, and there your punishment had ended. New regulations for requisitioning explosives had been rolled out for units across the colonies, and it quickly became a part of regimental lore that you had had a hand in the decision. Even Schafer, defeated, had joined in the custom of raising a glass of whatever was strongest and giving the Kaiser fondest birthday wishes every year. As it turned out, the kitchens proved a good place for you, once you'd actually gotten cooking sorted out; the kitchen was a hub for all kinds of dealmaking, and you soon formed a warm relationship with the quartermaster by letting the ingredients for his favorite dishes routinely fall off the back of a truck.
That was probably what saved you when the war broke out. You were playing cards with your friends Aoko and Fredrick-and beating them handily too, you might add- when the sound of gunfire sent you dashing into the brush with rifles at the ready. You found the team currently watching the border in the midst of a blazing firefight with a party of Kongolese soldiers attempting to cross the river. You did as you had been taught, staying carefully in cover and supporting the machine-gun, keeping the enemy's head's down with a fusilade of rifle-fire whenever the gunner had to pause to change belts. The enemy kept pressing onward regardless, until you broke out the rifle grenades, including an extra crate which the quartermaster had generously and discretely provided you. A few high explosive volleys served to check their advance, but as your seemingly-bottomless reserves of explosives started to run low the enemy remained fixed tenaciously in place, cowed but obviously waiting for when your ammunition was all used up.
Rifle fire proved ineffective at actually scoring kills when the enemy was hunkered down in cover, and when you tried to throw grenades the enemy simply hurled them back. Ultimately you realized this wasn't working, and figured that you'd been given bayonets for a reason, so you fixed them, ordered the machine gun team to keep their heads down with a long burst, and charged the second the gun had stopped firing. You got in among them quickly; Aoko getting his head smashed in with a rifle-butt provided all the impetus you needed to fight with as much ferocity as you could muster. It had all been going great until the armored car had showed up. You gamely attempted to put it down with the last of the rifle grenades, but though you took off a wheel and, you think, killed the driver, in the end you had no choice but to retreat.
Lieutenant Schafer's reaction ran the gamut from stunned (apparently the Kongolese were rolling in with heavy armor all along the border, and no one quite knew where they'd got it from) proud, (he'd called you the finest Askari unit the Irromic Empire had ever fielded, which you think would have made Aoko happy to hear, genuine patriot that he was) shocked ("You did what when you ran low on ammo?") and back to proud ("Fuck it, you fought well boys, even if you're all crazy.")
From then on it had been all-out war for months, fighting under General Holn all along the Southern front. It was terrifying, it was thrilling, it was bold, it was everything you'd dreamed of when you joined the army. Fast, mobile warfare of the kind your people had been fighting since the Crushing had driven them here, generations before anyone had even thought of a machine gun. Your unit found, to their delight, that Nyasalanders were getting a reputation for being "bold, verging on suicidal", as you heard Holn had put it in conversation with a superior. You and your comrades loved it, but you didn't quite see what he was talking about; sitting back and waiting to get slaughtered, that seemed suicidal. Really, when you thought about it like that, a silent bayonet charge under the cover of darkness was just about the safest thing in the world for an Askari to be doing, and your mother didn't raise a coward, as much as she might have wished it to be so.
Schafer hadn't been quite as enthusiastic, though he was still very aggressive, which you appreciated. He made a lot of speeches about rushes and making use of fire support and "For God's sake at least bring up a mortar or something", but after the first few times he let it go and just ran in with you. His sidearm did fearful work in close quarters which had saved you on more than one occasion, so you did your best to stick with him and stab anyone who looked like they might get past it. By the time he made his fifth hand-to-hand kill, everyone agreed that he was the finest officer in the whole company, and that it was a damned good thing they'd finally got him broken in to how to fight sensibly.
What hadn't been fun was learning about what the Kongolese had done to your village. The fighting had hit it hard, and you heard from an old friend that it was unlikely that it would ever be re-settled; the fields had been laid to waste, the livestock killed, the houses burnt to the ground, and although he didn't tell you what had happened to any locals who couldn't get away you got the picture. You had never held much attachment to it since your mother had died; all your friends were in the Askari now, and you hadn't been home in years, but it was a place of many fond childhood memories, and it stung to know that you could never return. To cope, you put your all into fighting; you came through charge after charge after charge with distinction, and took a new and vicious glee in terrifying the Kongolese with night raids on their forward positions which vanished as soon as they brought fire support to bear.
Then, thank God, you began to advance; now you were swimming in supplies, and once again leveraging your friendly relationship with the quartermaster to redistribute them as best you could. The highlands proved to be trickier terrain to fight on, no heavy brush to cover your advances, but with a bit of practice the uneven terrain worked just as well for camouflaging movements and granting you the element of surprise. Eventually, as you approached M'banza you came upon a series of enemy defenses, just as you had been taught about when you first joined the Askari. Your unit had been assigned to attack a difficult section of the highlands at Holn's personal request, according to Lieutenant Schafer; he looked put out when your friends and you took one look at the area and started to laugh. It was tricky, sure, you'd have to leave a lot of the heavy ordinance behind, but it was doable.
The fighting was bitter, nonetheless. Working alongside tanks was a hazard in itself; they drew fire like nothing else, and the smaller ones tended to throw tracks, explode, or break down in other exciting ways. The gigantic vehicles trundled along obliviously, but when one of them fired its guns the noise alone seemed to scramble your brain a little. From there there was a day of brutal trench fighting; you went through a dizzying maze, and although others seemed to get hit by bullets or sharpened spades or shrapnel, you managed to get through unscathed. You even topped your previous shooting record when you defended a wounded sergeant Chausiku by killing five men in five seconds with a series of perfect shots. A sixth rushed you when you stopped to reload, but Chausiku managed to trip him up long enough for Schafer to round the corner and put three bullets into him.
And then, all at once, that was it. Schafer was shouting to "Come back boys, that's enough, we'll get overextended!" and so you and your comrades had rallied and taken stock. The highlands were yours; down below you could see the enemy's third line waiting, all around you the sounds of battle continued. You spread out and secured the trench, like the professionals you were; even after such brutal and exhausting combat, you knew that leaving yourselves open just meant you'd be tossed back and have to do it all again tomorrow. As the day wound on, you noticed that the sound of the big guns started to peter out, replaced by the crackle of rifle fire. You mentioned as much to Schafer.
"They're getting low on ammunition." he said. "It'll be nothing but sniper fire for tonight, I shouldn't wonder. They'll have brought up more shells by morning." At this every man in earshot turned to fix him with a look, and after a moment's pause he nodded. "You have the right of it boys." He said. "Go get your bayonets." At sunset you wished a fond farewell to Chausiku, now missing an eye, and slipped him a bit of money so that he could get himself a proper glass one. Then you stood on the parapet with the others and waited, and as night fell you crawled out of the earthworks and crept towards the next and final line.
The enemy never saw it coming: you were on them so fast that the sentries didn't even have time to cry out before you cut their throats, and when someone finally called out the Kongolese were slow to rise, exhausted from the day's fighting. You were on them with a roar, hacking and slashing with your bayonet, picking off an enemy whenever the chance presented itself, and from there you pressed inexorably onward until at last you broke through to the other side.
The other side turned out to be some kind of motor pool: neat rows of trucks lined up and waiting to transport men and ammunition wherever they might need to go. They were shiny and new too, far better kept than the broken-down clunkers you'd seen behind your own lines. Still, your curiosity propelled you onwards, and after another few minutes of going down the line of trucks and taking anything interesting-looking, you found it: a great metal monster, with the lights of M'banga glittering in the distance. After a moment to appreciate her beauty, you ran back to Schafer. You had a brilliant idea; perhaps the greatest trick you would ever play. You could see it all unfolding in your head as you found him and saluted.
"Sir," you asked, "Do you know how to get a train started?"
And so it was that the 2/4 Nyasaland gleefully loaded themselves up into trucks, loaded the trucks onto the train and headed straight for M'banga. You were confused at first when orders came down from the company commander, at Schafer's suggestion, that the men polish their buttons and shine their boots. Then you dismounted at the station, formed up to march in parade fashion, and it struck you. It was all you and your comrades could do not to laugh aloud as you marched to the steps of the palace in the early morning light and listened to your commander, with casual ease, declare that they were here to negotiate your surrender. From there it was a few very nervous hours of frantically trying to establish radio contact while pretending everything was normal, and then all of a sudden the army was here and the war was over.
For finding the train and giving Schafer the idea to get it running, combined with various other acts of valor in the Battle of Zaire and the preceding months, you were given a large cash bonus (apparently they weren't entirely clear on whether or not they were allowed to give medals to Askari) and offered either an immediate honorable discharge or a posting of your choice.
Discharge you turned down straight away: all your friends had been in the army, and now they were going back to their home villages, but you'd never be able to do the same. You thought about asking to be posted to Dars-El-Salaam, or even put in charge of a border outpost somewhere in case the Kongolese got up to their old tricks, but your old curious trickster's urge kept nagging at you. You knew, deep down, that for whatever reason you were finished in Africa. But how to get a posting somewhere else?
Then it hit you. It was customary to give the local commander an honor guard of Askari, and what's more that same commander was already bringing a retired Schafer home with him. So, as nicely as you could, you asked to be assigned to guard the nice Oberstleutnant, thank you very much.
And so you find yourself on the deck of a ship for the first time, travelling home to guard the family of a man you've never met in a place you've never seen before. You can hear adventure calling you from here. Or maybe that's your mother, sighing with exasperation as she watches her son push her sanity to its limits one last time. A pair of white women pass you on deck, all done up in their Western dresses, staring at you as they go by. You smile and tip your uniform cap, leaving both of them giggling and red in the face.
You turn to walk the deck, letting a bit of swagger into your practiced military gait.
Let them stare. You're a war hero, god damnit.
