Tales of the Incredible Hoke Robertson

While on a scuba vacation in Thailand, I recalled one of my visits to the dark continent; Africa. The year was 1962, I just finished training the first two groups of men who would become SEAL Teams 1 & 2 when I received an urgent request from one of my old friends, Brigadier General Louis Carcaus of the Legion E’strange, or French Foreign Legion.

The General was about to conduct a rescue mission in the old French colony of Burkina Faso and desperately needed someone not only familiar with the topography , but also fluent in the Gur, Mande and Fula languages of that country, as well as the Kwa and Assante languages of Cote d’ Ivoire, or the Ivory Coast where the operation would begin. Since I had just finished editing a “Dictionary of the Languages of the Niger Basin” he immediately thought of me. Never one to leave a friend in need, I was able to get a back seat ride in an SR-71 and made the trip to southern France in about 3 hours.

On arriving at the Legion’s headquarters in France, I was briefed on the mission. A religious group on a humanitarian medical trip had been taken captive by some Igbo-Balewa separatist group and were being held hostage until their demands were met. The plan was to infiltrate into Burkina Faso first via the Black Volte River, and then via the Komoe River and surprise the rebels and rescue the hostages.

I and about 75 Legionnaires snuck into the Ivory Coast on a ship that hauled bat guano, commandeered a few river boats and made our way upstream. While making the arduous portage from the Volte to the Komoe we happened upon a small tribe attempting to flee the fighting caused by the separatists. Unfortunately the tribe had chosen to make the river crossing near the fabled clear waters of the Ngmbutto spring, just where it flows into the Komoe.As everyone knows, these springs make the river crystal clear for a short distance and are the home of the famous arboreal hippos of the Volte River.

As the tribe members attempted to cross the river, the hippos leapt from the trees to defend their territory. The large splashes of the hippos hitting the water were generally the last thing you heard before meeting your Maker on the dark continent. As I watched in horror, the alpha male of the hippos, his ears flattened in anger, plowed through the water towards the make-shift raft of the tribe.

Being conversant with Nigerian crocodile habits, I jumped onto an especially large one’s tail. As expected, the involuntary reaction of the croc was to flail its tail in the opposite direction which launched me into the air thirty feet on a trajectory to the now frantic tribe members. As the Legionnaires protected the tribe members still on shore, I swam to the rescue of those in the water. Just as the male hippo began to attack the boat, I pulled the tribe’s juju man’s stick and thrust it into the hippo’s gaping maw. While it flailed about unable to close its jaws, I hung onto one of its massive incisors and reach around to apply pressure to the large neck artery. Soon the hippo went unconscious. The tribe was so grateful they made me an honorary member and I was awarded the juju man’s medicine stick which even today hangs above my mantle. Someday I will relate the story of that “stick’s” magical history but that is for another day. HOKE ROBERTSON