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Striders Strike Water in Kalahari Desert

by Graham Butler

Kommandant Dick Bartlett's Striders' Afrika Korps had cut a brutal swathe through Southern Africa. They'd swaggered through the Comrades Marathon, driven a wedge through Zimbabwean lines to capture the Zambezi and smashed their way from Victoria Falls into Namibia along the Caprivi Strip before storming their way hundreds of miles across the desert to the Atlantic Ocean.

At Swakopmund, the very heartland of the old German colony of South West Africa, the ruthless Herr Gruppenfuhrer Schmidt had excited his troops to a frenzy with totalitarian speeches and countless glasses of schnapps and had them goose stepping at Midnight along the town's broad Strasse Kaiser Bill.

The turning point of this evil tide came during their return journey through the Kalahari regions of Botswana, that vast wilderness of grey dust and thorn trees. Little could they even imagine that Botswana's oldest but deadliest ally, the freezing winter nights, would indirectly become the undoing of this barbarous Bartlett battalion.

At their campsite near the desert metropolis of Nata, Botswana, the Bartlett forces lit a camp fire on the sand, cooked their food and, over many drinks, exchanged battle stories around the glowing embers of the fire.

At around 11pm they locked the troop carrier and retired to their sleeping bags. The still of the freezing cold desert night was disturbed only by a contingent of Afrikaner lager louts who rampaged around the camp until they too fell into their drunken sleep some time around 1am. All was peaceful, or at least it was for a while.

Imagine the pandemonium when a muffled explosion and roaring noise rang out just before 2.30am. Some searched desperately for tent zips, others thrashed frantically reaching for their Swiss Army penknives to cut their way out of the imprisoning canvas of their K-Mart tents. Flashlight beams cut through the desert night and all was utter chaos.

Who was attacking? What was on fire? Was it the Afrikaners? Why the Gott in Himmel was a jet of water spurting from the desert ground feet into the air and already beginning to flood the campsite?

What Barlett's Afrika Korps hadn't reckoned with was African plumbing! By some very slim odds and cruel mischance, they'd lit their camp fire directly over a plastic water pipe which the Africans had laid a mere four inches below the sand instead of the regulation two feet. The heat of the fire had eventually melted the plastic pipe which, under high water pressure, had ruptured in fairly spectacular fashion.

Footnote: Members of the Striders Afrika Korps were Dick and Claire Bartlett, Graham and Patrick Butler, Derek Smith and their Zimbabwean friends, Pete and Jill Pocket.

With the flood waters rising, nobody came to help or even investigate the disturbance in the sub-zero night. Dick Bartlett had the presence of mind to find the water tank and turn off the stop cock. Litigation is pending.