The Reoccupation of Lower Mumba

The colony of Lower Mumba was acquired by Arransia in the 1880s during the “colonial scramble” of the time. It must be said that Arransia was left trailing in this scramble, as Lower Mumba is an unpromising place of little economic value. It has a land area of about 25,000 square miles, with a coastline of 110 miles, and then extending inland along the valley of the meandering, flood-prone, and unnavigable River Mumba. The coastal fringe is mainly swampy, malaria-ridden rain forest, but at the extreme north the landscape turns to arid savannah. No point in the country is more than 1000 feet above sea level.

Some copper mines were developed in the north, and in 1928 a railway was completed to link them with the coast at the capital of Port Hutchinson. However, Arransian rule was always carried out with a light touch, and during the Great War was severely stretched as contact with the home country was largely severed after the end of 1946.

This encouraged a Communist-led insurgency which gained strength in the 1950s. After the end of the war, the home country made strenuous efforts to suppress this. Extensive bombing was carried out, and the old battleship Great Bear was used for shore bombardment. However, a reluctance to engage ground forces proved the campaign’s undoing, and the last Arransian troops and officials were evacuated in 1958, somewhat to the embarrassment of Patrick Scullion, who was Chancellor at the time. No official peace treaty has ever been signed. The methodical General John Laurenson (1901-76), who was the commander of Arransian forces in the country, was never given the amount of ground troops he requested, and always insisted that the failure of the campaign was basically down to an unwillingness to commit sufficient resources, something that Scullion effectively admitted in the broadcast he made to the Arransian people about the withdrawal.

After this, the country passed through phases of Rolvian and Mayonnaise influence, but little was really changed, and indeed right down to 2009 it retained the fundamentals of the Arransian legal code, while babies continued to be given characteristically Arransian first names. It was renamed the People’s Republic of Mumbazo, and the capital renamed Nokandu. The railway became entirely derelict, the last through train having run in 1953, and the remaining sections in the south having not been used since 1973. Despite this, the population rose from just over 3 million in 1949 to 6.5 million in 2008, and it is amongst the ten poorest countries in the world.

Arransian governments consistently said they would provide reconstruction aid if the government would sign a peace treaty and introduce democratic reforms, but, while this offer was undoubtedly sincere enough, it was never called upon. In effect, Arransia washed its hands of the place.

In 2003, the Presidency passed to one Peter Chitongo (b 1961) who seemed to outdo all his predecessors in both economic mismanagement and the level of oppression while at the same time having a particular knack for winding up the former colonial power. Arransia may not have been in charge of Lower Mumba for over forty years, but Chitongo continued to insist that she was responsible for all his country’s woes. By 2007, the country had fallen victim to hyperinflation, and there were reports of widespread food shortages and the arbitrary execution of Chitongo’s political opponents. Inevitably, he was dubbed “Shitongo” in Arransia.

A certain amount of international pressure began to mount for Arransia to “do something” about the situation. As late as June 2008, the Arransian Foreign Minister Athol Barr made a speech in which he forcefully reiterated the long-standing position that the Lower Mumbans had made their own bed and would have to lie in it, and Arransian aid would only be forthcoming if requested. However, the tide was moving against this, and in November of that year, the Brunswickian President, Simon D’Arcy, said when asked the question that he considered Arransia still held some moral responsibility for what was happening in the country.

In retrospect, the press in both countries viewed this as something of a turning point, but in reality it seems that the Arransians had accepted the need to take some kind of action some months before this and commenced appropriate planning. On several occasions, Athol Barr made a public offer of Arransian assistance to Lower Mumba, and even expressed a willingness to hold talks with Chitongo without preconditions. Needless to say, all these offers were rebuffed. Somewhat ironically, much of the pressure in Brunswick for Arransia to act came from the left-wing end of the political spectrum. One commentator, however, warned them to be careful what they wished for. It was also noted that the senior Arransian sea admiral was Iain Moncrieffe (b 1952), in person a scholarly man of impeccable politeness, but who had gained notoriety twelve years before as the nemesis of the anti-whaling protesters.

On a foul, squally day in early April 2009, the veteran destroyer HMS Marske rather pointedly led the Queen Margaret, Sealion and Triumph and other vessels of the Arransian fleet out of Beadnell harbour, and two weeks later they were cruising in the tropical heat fifty miles off the coast of Lower Mumba. Knowledgeable observers noted that the carrier had a number of sheeted aircraft on the deck park, when the usual Arransian practice was not to take to sea any more than could be stowed in the hangar. Other military preparations were under way, which were fairly obvious to the keen observer, but which were not proclaimed to the world at large. The general view remained that the Arransians were engaged in nothing more than an exercise in sabre-rattling. One thing that did not go unnoticed was suburban commuters on the Danby railway system spotting a long goods train passing south carrying twenty tanks, no doubt headed for the military embarkation port at Lawrenny.

In one of the final interviews he gave, Chitongo was reminded that the Queen Margaret was now cruising off his coastline, to which he responded that he had nothing to fear from such a rusting wreck, a statement calculated to touch a raw nerve with the Arransians. He also at one point said he wasn’t worried about the Arransians because they were always drunk, a comment that to the Arransians didn’t really seem to follow.

Captain McLean of the Queen Margaret gave an extended TV interview to an Arransian journalist in which he stressed how his ship, and the rest of the squadron, were fully prepared for whatever they would need to do. At the end of the interview the reporter asked about the health of the ship’s cat, to which McLean replied, without batting an eyelid, that she wasn’t too happy because it was too hot for her, and presented the unfortunate animal to the camera. Indeed she – normally a very active and inquisitive large grey tabby called Polly – did look rather fed up. Chitongo took this as further evidence he was dealing with idiots. The point must be made that MacLean was a man of mixed race, some of whose ancestors may have been taken as slaves from the coast on which Lower Mumba stood two hundred and fifty years before.

In view of the Lower Mumba situation, it had already been announced that there would be no official military celebrations on Ugglesby Head Day (Thursday 14 May), and it came as no real surprise to many observers that on that day the Arransians staged a meticulously planned operation in overwhelming force to seize control of the key points in the country. This had been cleared in advance with Brunswick and, while all front-line units involved were Arransian, the Brunswickians provided some of their large transport aircraft to allow a more rapid build-up of troops and equipment.  

The operation centred on the capital, Port Hutchinson (alternatively known as Nokandu) which straggled for about fifteen miles along the broad estuary of the River Mumba. The main government buildings were about eight miles inland from the harbour. It had two main prongs, with a paratroop attack to seize the international airport, which could then be used to bring reinforcements in by air, while a seaborne invasion force took control of the harbour where they were able to land tanks and other heavy equipment. Aircraft from the Queen Margaret put out of action what limited military targets there were in the country, and blew up an ammunition dump on the outskirts of the city to spectacular effect. Six B-39 bombers flying from Trinity Island rendered unserviceable all the substantial paved airfields in the country apart from the main airport, to guard against the unlikely possibility that the Rolvians would try to fly troops in.  

There was a little token resistance at first, but this soon melted away once it became clear that the Arransians were acting in deadly earnest. By noon local time a convoy of tanks and armoured personnel carriers was rumbling inland along the main boulevard through the city, and by 2 pm the Presidential Palace had been seized. Unfortunately, it appears that Chitongo was killed by his own troops and so it was never possible to put him on trial for human rights violations. His Chief of Police officially ordered all resistance to cease around mid-morning the following day. Two Arransian Marines lost their lives, one from enemy fire, one in an accident, and it is estimated that about 40 Lower Mumbans were killed.  

In the early evening of the 14th, Edward Douglas made what was considered to be a very well-judged TV broadcast in which he explained the rationale behind the operation, congratulated the Arransian forces on the skill and professionalism they had demonstrated and gave due recognition to the contribution of “our Brunswickian friends”. The whole operation had been approved on a bipartisan basis, and Lorna Bradshaw had been fully briefed, but even so she was heard to grumble to her colleagues that, despite the economic slowdown, she would now have little chance of winning the next election now that Douglas had wrapped himself in a flag.

During the evening, many Arransians settled down in their local pub to watch extended TV footage of their compatriots bombing and shooting things and blowing things up. Probably the most memorable image was the square-jawed Lt-Col Patrick Curtin (b 1967), commander of the 1st Battalion, No. 6 Regiment (Parachute) giving a description of the dawn assault on the airport while behind him there was a row of massive transport planes from which vehicles, stores and equipment were busily being unloaded, a vision that made many women of a certain age go weak at the knees. As Chitongo had expelled virtually all foreign journalists, apart from one from Mayenne who was rapidly picked up by a Marine snatch squad in Nokandu, the Arransians were totally in charge of the news agenda and indeed had deliberately withheld any news footage until Admiral Leslie and his fellow commanders gave a press conference in mid-afternoon, by which time the issue was clearly settled.  

The flinty Admiral Hewitt, commander of the RNAS, was accused from some quarters of being heavy-handed, particularly in putting out of service most of the paved airstrips in the country. This was a charge unlikely to cause him to lose much sleep, and he replied that he didn't recall any military commanders in history who had failed through being too heavy handed, and a big hammer would do all the jobs a little one would do.  

There was a certain amount of muttering in the international community about the Arransians taking unilateral action in this way, but since the situation certainly needed to be dealt with, and the Arransians had done so in a decisive and almost surgical manner, it was difficult to complain too strongly. The Rolvians predictably accused them of "reckless neo-colonial adventurism" but even this was little more than going through the motions. While heading back home from Lower Mumba, the Queen Margaret was provocatively "eyeballed" for a day by the Rolvian carrier Admiral Senyavin, which originally entered service in 1984 as the Partiya Kommunisticheskaya. However, the canny Admiral Moncrieffe defused the situation by inviting his Rolvian counterpart to share a bottle of 35-year-old Ulpha malt whisky that he happened to have in his cabin, and the two spent the afternoon reminiscing and discussing how politicians were the sea officer's real enemy.  

In some quarters in Arransia there was a tendency to overplay the military achievement of the operation – although a handful of activities had required genuine courage, in reality it was overall no more than a well-executed example of kicking in an unlocked door. Admiral Leslie, the Commander-in-Chief, made sure that all the units involved received the appropriate praise, but went on record as saying that “to listen to some people you would think we had just won the Battle of Ugglesby Head all over again”.

Some days after the event, once foreign press representatives had appeared on the scene, a Brunswickian journalist asked an Arransian marine – who was a senior NCO, not a raw recruit – whether the operation sent a message to the rest of the world. “Aye,” he replied, “you don’t fuck with us!”

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