Naked Against the Night🌛🌃

By Gerrishon Sirere

The jungle night was still and black. Only the slightest breeze rippled through the tall grass of the countryside. Then, suddenly, at a quarter past twelve, not ten miles west of Ndola Airport, a big airliner fell from the skies and crashed in a blazing wreckage.

This was the Albertina. The treetops ripped away her left wing as she struck. Yet, on she rode, shakily and with a terrible speed, cutting a wide swath of devastation along her wooded path.

Those who were not instantly killed by the impact does soon enough in its fiery aftermath.

Only two survived the moment of disaster: the Secretary General of the United Nations, Dag Hammarskjold, and an aide. Hammarskjold himself, thrown safely clear of the crash site, was left to linger in the still of night and perhaps to pray for help. The other crawled some distance then collapsed.

At length, a pair of native men approached, looking cautiously about them all the while. But they offered no help. They had come only for looting. One of them espied a small machine that looked much like a typewriter still in working order. It would be of considerable value to them in the market place. So they took it with them and were quickly gone.

Now all was still once more and hopeless. Straining, Hammarskjold clutched at the dead brown leaves on the ground and held them in the fish of his left hand. Then he died.

The moon was caught in the branches:

Bound by its vow,

My heart was heavy.

Naked against the night

The tress slept. "Nevertheless,

Not as I will...."

The burden remained mine:

They could not hear my call,

And all was silence....

Dag Hjalmar Agne Carl Hammarskjold was a mystery in his own time. His poetry and private correspondence reflected a constant preoccupation- some called it obsession- with the image of himself on Calvary.

He was the intellectual of the international set. And few pretended to understand him- the way he went about agreeing with those who spoke against him, the way he insisted on negotiating important policy from a position of weakness rather than from one of strength. But few as well denied the success of his accomplishments. By the age of 31, he had become the youngest man ever to serve as Sweden's undersecretary of finance. Ten years later, he entered the foreign ministry, raising to cabinet rank as deputy minister. 

At 46, he was appointed chairman or his country's delegation to the United Nations. The next year, he was elected Secretary General of the U.N General Assembly, a post to which he was reelected for a second 5 year term in 1957.

He took on the job with the zeal of religious mission. To him that world organization was more than a forum among men. 

As things stand, there are and will always be too many unanswered questions surrounding the mysterious and tragic death of Dag Hammerskjold that September night.