The Ugandan who served in both world wars

Lazaro Omoding is more than a century old and served in both world wars. He shared his colourful war escapades with Caroline Ariba.

I set out for 117-year-old Lazaro Omoding’s home expecting to find a frail old man, immobile and probably even on a wheelchair. He is said to have served in not one, but two world wars. At the neat homestead in Koyille village, Kobuwin sub-county, Ngora district, I see two old men relaxing in a tree shade.

One of them blissfully munches on roasted groundnuts, like a youthful lad, as the other watches enviously, grinding his nearly toothless gum.

As tradition demands, I rush to the elderly men, kneel and greet them. I then decide that the weaker old man had to be Lazaro Omoding, the man I had travelled close to 400 kilometres to see. However, I shortly learn that the bubbly old man was the 117-year-old.

“Osodi eka tatait lo,” he says in Ateso to clarify that the weaker old man is actually his grandchild, his nephew’s son! I am at a loss for words.

I look back at the other man, who was said to be in his early 70s, just to see if he could dispute this, but he had not heard a word of what had been said, and now had a frown on his face, in an attempt to listen.

Steven Asiyat, Omoding’s relative, who had taken me to meet the veteran, told him that I had come to talk to him about the world war. A smile immediately spreads across his face.

World War

One day, in 1914, Omoding, only about 18 years old then, and his peers in Koyille village, awoke to news of a search by the clan chiefs for the village’s strong and healthy young men. He says he was everything they were looking for — a large fellow that would split firewood with ease and later sprint through the village as swiftly as a hunter.

“Nen akotosi kesi. Abeit a langir eong noi noi (This is what they were looking for. I was physically fit),” Omoding says, praising himself. As he says this, he coughs and laughs at the memory of his youth, keeps still for a moment, shakes his head and then puts his hands up to demonstrate how strong he was.

He and several other youth were told that they had been selected and were ordered to go to Nairobi. A wave of fear swept through the village. Myths and conspiracy theories emerged as villagers struggled to understand why they were being sent so far away from home.

A few weeks later, the much-dreaded day came and they set out on foot from the village to a train station in Kumi, about 30 kilometres away.

He suddenly stops his narration as if to recollect his thoughts and then dramatically crosses his arms as if to close himself in. His eyes go cold and he is quiet for a while. When he starts again, it is in a quieter, yet strong tone.

“We were taken to Tororo like a bunch of animals, tied onto the trains with ropes because it was the only way to ensure we did not fall off,” he explains.

For some of the men, it was the first time on a train and they were terrified. “The trains then were open, people travelled like cargo. It was a tough ride.”

Finally, they got to Tororo and were met by huge, tough-looking African men and a few White men.

Swinging his hands up and down, Omoding says they had no time to rest; they started jogging immediately. For the next three months, he and all the other men collected from many parts of the country, went through intense training and slept in tents.

Holding an imaginary rifle, he demonstrates how they were taught to shoot. His body ached every night until it adjusted to the training.

Then, it appears again, the smile that I had seen when I first mentioned the world war, and it grows wider until he is chuckling.

“After that, we were taken to Nairobi, still by train, but this time round we knew what to expect,” he says. In Kenya they marched to a forest for another intensive training session, only shorter. It involved chopping heavy wood and mingling mountains of posho. Turned out he was among the few selected to cook for the army.

Omoding bursts out laughing and says he does not remember eating more meat than he did that time, particularly game meat. While he was cooking, he once served himself a piece of meat with a bone so huge that he had to hold it with both hands!

“We spent a few months in Nairobi. I did not see much of the war then but I remember returning to Kobuwin a few months later, fatter than the men I was cooking for!” he recalls, laughing.

Upon arrival from World War I, Omoding got married, but soon had to head to Soroti district, where there were opportunities in building and carpentry. Also, it was home to the popular Amukeke market where trains loaded and offloaded merchandise.

A few years later, he returned to share his newfound wealth with his wife. He was shocked to find that she was now a concubine to one of his younger relatives. He was very angry; he left the village and headed back to Soroti, where he worked for over 10 years and only returned to bury his brother. His return excited many, who had dubbed him the notorious bachelor.

A few months after his return, the British sent a message asking them to pack and return for World War II. The Germans had intensified their fighting. Again, they were bundled in trains but this time round, he says, they sang all the way to Thika in Kenya, and later Mombasa.

“We sang in Kiswahili. One of the songs went, ‘Germany kutta mbajji’” he says. He starts to sing it in a husky voice while snapping his fingers and stamping his foot.

In Mombasa, they got on a ship that sailed far from the coast and stayed on the ocean for about nine months!

“We ate food that my peers and I called nyama nkebe (tinned beef), played football and trained inside the ship,” he says. They were returned to Mombasa and put on a ship to India where, it was rumoured, another lot of soldiers had been shipped off to the war.

A month or so later, they arrived in India for the battle they had trained hard for all along.

“India was good. I liked the rice and the women. In our days, all these diseases you people have today were not there,” he says

Battlefields

“I remember the first battle we had, we attacked the Germans and managed to surprise them! Do you know that even women fought among us?” he asks. As he says this, he draws a circle on the ground and illustrates how they surrounded the Germans. The order was shoot to kill.

“We built trenches and concealed ourselves for the next attack. Lying flat on our stomachs, we crawled and hid whenever the enemy seemed to sense danger.”

While they crawled, they had to be alert for the Swahili word pigga from the commander, This was the signal to fire. “People were falling left and right,” he says, his voice dimming.

“I lost some of my friends and brothers in that war, it was not easy. I remember my brother Etepu..” his voice fades off as the pain of the memory overwhelms him. I notice he has had enough of the tough war talk, and I interrupt. The smile returns when I ask about the place he loved the most. India was clearly his best. But he loved the women in Mombasa too.

Life after the war

“We were heroes on our return. Yes, I knew that we would get attention, in fact I was dying to come back home and show off! The women sought our attention and the young men envied us. There was no event in the district at which we were not recognised,” he says.

He was made a sergeant in the world war, and though he was proud of his achievement, he later wondered if his masters were proud of them too. They were given about 25 Indian rupees for a short while, then suddenly, the payments stopped coming.

“Can you imagine after being a soldier, going through all that training, and then having to return to heaping potatoes in the village?” he says.

Suddenly, he gets up and heads to a uniport, built by his great grandson. Inside, beside his thin, messy bed, is his palm leaf satchel containing his life’s belongings. In it is a cup that he carries with him everywhere.

The few antiques Omoding and his colleagues collected from both world wars were torched to flames during the 1980s insurgencies. He has watched his comrades die one by one.

Today, he is a chatty fellow who makes papyrus crafts for a living and depends on his brother’s children. All he has to show for his brave fight for the British, is, well, nothing! Apart from his stories. And the village people have had quite enough of his world war stories.

Life, he says, passed him by, not a child of his own, nothing..just memories.

Source The New Vision