Book description
Somalia is one of the world's most desolate, sun-scorched lands,
inhabited by fierce and independent-minded tribesmen. It was here that
Gerald Hanley spent the Second World War, charged with preventing
bloodshed between feuding tribes at a remote outstation. Rations were
scarce, pay infrequent and his detachment of native soldiers
near-mutinous. In these extreme conditions seven British officers
committed suicide, but Hanley describes the period as the most
valuable time' of his life. With intense curiosity and openmindedness,
he explores the effects of loneliness. He comes to understand the
Somalis' love of fighting and to admire their contempt for death. Of
all the races of Africa,' he says, there cannot be one better to live
among than the most difficult, the proudest, the bravest, the vainest,
the most merciless, the friendliest: the Somalis.'
