Forced Landing at Maidugari Or A Birthday Party with Six Thousand Horsemen from the Middle Ages

By Clevis O. Laverty

I have long since given up bemoaning any occurrence that takes me out of my way, causes me inconvenience, or seems to be a misfortune. Too often for me to complain, a mischance has made me a witness or a participant in some phase of living that I am glad I did not miss.

Pull up your chair, if I may be so informal, and let me tell you about one of those mischances.

During World War II, we were flying a cargo of medical supplies from Accra to Khartoum, enroute to Cairo, to patch up the soldiers who were putting up such a great fight against Rommel. Combining business with pleasure, we headed our C-54 toward the Lake Chad region, which is nearly on course, to obtain a close look at the wild game in its natural habitat. Perhaps we could stir them up a bit.

Well, Sir, it happened. We ran head-on into the wildest sand storm at ten thousand feet that you can imagine. We lost an engine, and we cursed the men that built it. Another engine began to falter, and we traced the designer’s ancestry in a not very complimentary way. I checked our position, and we headed for Maidugari.

Put your finger right in the middle of a map of Africa, and it will cover the walled city of Maidugari.

We soon ran out of the sand storm, but we were still in trouble and continued on our heading for Maidugari. Africa, with its hot/wet, too green jungles and equally hog/dry parched deserts, was not a place where we wanted any part of a crippled airplane.

Keeping that airplane airborne gave us a grand time the rest of the way in. We cursed our luck and grumbled about the mechanics who service airplanes. We lost no time in picturing Maidugari to one another in graphic detail, none very inviting. There were the short and sandy emergency landing strip (it was hard to tell it from the rest of the desert), a few struggling sandblasted trees, intense heat, rationed water, and four flimsy sprawling buildings that housed the U.S. Army’s small detail. All this was five miles from the walled city with its 25,000 native population. We would have to stay inside and vegetate after dark: lions roamed around outside.

We landed without incident and stepped into a 138-degree blast furnace that withered us on the spot. We had been correct in every detail; we had been there before. Subsequent events proved us to be wrong. One new element was added this time: the following day was Mohammad’s birthday.

A celebration had been planned, and a native arranged horses for us to ride to the ceremony. It was a hot dusty ride to the place where the festivities were to be held. The sun was a big ball of fire, and the saddles were hard. As I look back on the demonstration that I witnessed, however, the discomfort is a very dim memory, and I give thanks for that forced landing.

The incredibly crude gates of the walled city of Maidugari opened, and six thousand superb and well-groomed horses galloped through with the thundering roar of twenty-four thousand hooves. Even the loosely packed sand of this mid-African desert could not muffle their urgency. An almost unending stream of mounted figures charged through the gate, eight abreast, until it seemed as though that native city must have been completely disemboweled, leaving only a wall.

The whole situation was incredible; the twentieth century didn’t exist. This small section of the Dark Continent might have been lifted bodily from another age, a time far removed or from another world; it was unreal, and yet there it was right in front of us.

Here were a people who were apparently not in contact with the rest of the world, hundreds of miles from the nearest Muslim settlement at Khartoum, and we were told that they were observing Mohammad’s birthday on the right day. They had thousands of beautiful horses, and as far as the eye could see was hot, choking, life-denying sand. Here and there a few discouraged clumps of grass and even less frequent a twisted, misshapened stunted skeleton of a tree struggled hopelessly. Nothing could live here, but something did.

Wave after wave of horsemen swept along the dry field performing intricate and dangerous maneuvers to the delight of the observers lining the area. Dark-skinned natives clutched bright-colored heavy blankets about them in the 130-degree heat. Babies fed nonchalantly at their mothers’ breasts as gritty, grimy dust swirled about and enveloped them. Three or four American soldiers from the emergency landing field watched in obvious discomfort. Pith helmets perched on aching heads, and handkerchiefs tied around red necks soaked up the dust-streaked perspiration that ran down their faces.

The crew of the crippled transport that had been forced down the day before stared at the spectacle in utter disbelief, their no-longer-trim khaki uniforms sodden with sweat where they had leaned against their horses for support. They were held against their will by their fascination for the sight they were seeing.

A European colonial administrator, impeccably attired, not a hair out of place, bored, sat on the primitive reviewing stand beside the blanket-bedecked chieftain with the tribal headdress of his authority on his head and amulets around his neck. Here, too, was comfort of a sort, protection from the sum. Still, every breeze was a tongue of flame from the nether regions, and nothing screened out the thick, angry dust that tried to absorb everything.

The first phalanx of riders and horses arrived at the reviewing stand in perfect formation and dipped their lances in salute.

Lances! Shades of the 12th century! Pope Eugenius III himself might have just given them their commission to retake the Holy Land. Long, heavy lances were held in strong, mailed fists. Glinting, polished shields displayed the emblem of the cross. Armor and helmets encased the riders who sat astride crusaders’ saddles. A collector’s fortune, authentic as Brooklyn and in perfect condition, was being carried by each horse.

Much later, the six thousand horses returned, and the walled city engulfed all that remained of the trappings of some lost detachment of crusaders who had burned with religious fervor to wipe out the Muslims, trappings which were now being exhibited for Mohammad’s birthday by African natives wearing their tribal charms and amulets.

All that could be seen outside was the wind-swept sea of hot, unfriendly sand.