Bishop of good hope, The

Spectator, The, Nov 4, 2000 by Rankin, Nicholas

Each November the British war dead of Madagascar are remembered. Nicholas Rankin meets the bishop who conducts the service

IF you want to be forgotten, get yourself buried in a Malagasy cemetery. Within weeks, no one will know you were ever there.

Paul Congo, a bearded professional storyteller who always carries the caduceus that he carved from a vine-writhed branch, gave me the Vichy French casualty figures from the 1942 Allied invasion of Madagascar - 171 moms, 343 blesses - and then pointed me towards the cemetery.

Over the broken wall the graveyard was a wilderness grazed by goats. I waded through the dry brown stalks, trying not to think about snakes, past desolate clumps of grey, leggy cabbage. Only the newest graves bore a handpainted sign and a few whitewashed rocks to frame the gap macheted out of scrub. Unmaintained, it all returns to bush.

There are no identities on the rusting crosses in the French military section. The only names are those of the battles of 1942: Nosy-Komba, Hell-Ville, Ambomadiro, Betsiaka, Diego Suarez, Cap Diego, Anjiamena, Joffreville, Sakaramy, Vohema, Andapa.

For the British, the Madagascar campaign was one of the odder successes of the second world war. Early in 1942, with armies reeling backwards in North Africa and the Far East, Allied strategists realised that Japanese submarines could do serious damage to military supply-lines round the Cape of Good Hope, since all ships used the Mozambique Channel between the east coast of Africa and the red island of Madagascar. The French colony had opted for Vichy in 1940, and Vichy had military treaties with imperial Japan. What Madagascar offered the Japanese navy was one of the world's great natural harbours in the northern tip of the island at Diego Suarez (now Antsiranana). To block a Japanese jump across the Indian Ocean, Churchill ordered the storming of Diego Suarez.

Operation Ironclad was planned and executed in seven weeks, and was a model for many combined landings to come, in North Africa, Italy and Normandy.

The initial invasion of 5 May 1942 was no walk-over. The Malagasy and Senegalese defenders inflicted casualties: 121 killed, 305 wounded. And a Japanese twoman midget submarine later torpedoed the battleship HMS Ramillies in the middle of the harbour.

The Allied dead lie in the Diego Suarez British war cemetery. It's not far from the overgrown Vichy graves, but the contrast couldn't be greater. Behind the fence, under the sign of the sword in the cross, a kempt garden displays trim lawns round the beds of 315 headstones. There are ten sailors and 15 airmen among the soldiers. Walking slowly, ducking the circling sprinklers, I said each man's name aloud, from Gunner Bafiri Yobure of the East African Artillery to Second Lieutenant S.B. Black of the Seaforth Highlanders. On the grave of Private M. Faydherbe from Mauritius: `Devant ma froide pierce passant, dis une priere, car ici je n ai pas ami.' On a British 20-year-olds stone: `He gave his all, his unfinished life.'

There's one Hindu, S. Palanee from Mauritius. Only Captain Genussow of the Green Howards, attached to the King's African Rifles, has the Star of David on his stone. There are many Muslims among the 132 East Africans who make up almost half the dead. Unsegregated from them, under their `Union is Strength/Eendrak Maak Mag' springbok badges, lie ten South Africans.

The clean-cut stones show that the assault brigade - the East Lancashire Regiment, the Royal Scots Fusiliers, the Seaforth Highlanders and the Royal Welsh Fusiliers - took the brunt of the casualties on 5, 6 and 7 May 1942. Diego Suarez fell early on the seventh, after an amazing midnight sortie by 50 Royal Marines off the destroyer Anthony, which had dashed past the guns into the harbour.

I read the livre d or, the book of remembrance, sitting under the bougainvillaea in the rich afternoon light. The men in this Commonwealth cemetery are not forgotten. Every November there is a Remembrance Day service here.

The man who holds it is Monsignor Keith Benzies, the Anglican .Bishop of Antsiranana, who lives off the rue de la Prison. When he came out on to his veranda, he was wearing a short-sleeved purple shirt with pectoral cross, black trousers and black shoes. He has a fine, ascetic face and a quick smile. While we talked about the poppy-day services, in which all faiths are represented (though he worries about no one saying Kaddish for Captain Genussow), I met a succession of the halt and the lame: Claudette the seamstress who has been blind from birth, Therese the barefoot ex-deaconess who lost an arm in a buscrash, moustachioed Dominique in his wheelchair, once abandoned to crawl with withered legs. The bishop doesn't only look after the dead.

Keith John Benzies was born in Stepps, Lanarkshire, one of twins. When the boys were 17, their mother and younger brother flew out to see their father who was teaching in Nigeria. The return flight crashed, killing his mother and brother. Keith read modern languages at Glasgow, hoping to become a diplomat, but got religion and went as a French-speaking missionary to Madagascar. Six years, they said; he's stayed for 34.