by Edward Paice
We had no concerts ’hind the lines; we got too bored to speak,
And there was no change of rations; and our water bottles leak.
So don’t despise our efforts, for we’ve done our level best,
For it wasn’t beer and skittles, those two years without a rest,
And though the world forgot us we think we stood the test.
From ‘The Return of the Cohort’ by Owen Letcher
SIX
The Coast
Tighe’s success in clearing German troops from the Umba Valley enabled British East Africa’s European population to enjoy a relatively untroubled Christmas. Marquees and tents lit with Japanese lanterns were rigged up overlooking Mombasa harbour, creating an ambience that could have been mistaken for that ‘at the White Hart, Hendon Way’; and in Nairobi festive season gossip – including the observation that ‘whilst skirts retain their fullness and evince signs of becoming wider as the winter advances, the bodices appear to get plainer and tighter’1 – was as prominent in the pages of The Leader as news of the war.
Hundreds of miles to the south, even the naval ratings keeping watch on the Königsberg were able to make light of their dreary, debilitating task. Coffin-shaped floats with lanterns were launched into the Rufiji delta bearing such seasonal greetings as ‘Try our Christmas pudding – large six inch – small size four point seven’,2 and the humour was reciprocated. Looff had moved his cruiser to a ‘new hiding place’ on 20 December, and felt sufficiently secure to celebrate onshore, where long tables laden with beer, cigarettes and gifts from all around the colony were set around a small mango tree; and a week later the German sailors were celebrating in similar fashion when HMS Weymouth sent them a wireless message which read ‘we wish you a happy New Year and hope to see you soon’. Looff replied: ‘Thanks for the message, if you wish to see us we are always at home’.3
The season of goodwill proved to be short – and illusory. Tighe’s success could not mask the fact that there were only 4,000 ‘reliable’ troops in British East Africa, backed by a reserve of 1,000 rifles whose performance in combat was considered rather less reliable.* Further advances southwards from Jasin or from Voi, on the Uganda Railway, towards the German stronghold at Taveta were therefore out of the question until such time as a substantial numerical advantage could be assured and the necessary supply and transport arrangements put in place. But to do nothing was as unappealing a prospect as suffering another resounding defeat; and when Tighe, a man who was ‘appalled by administrative detail’4 and treated anyone less optimistic than he ‘like a naughty schoolboy’,5 became alarmed by a bizarre rumour that Belgian troops from the Congo had advanced 300 miles into German East Africa and captured Tabora, he succeeded in goading Wapshare into action.
The unlikely target of British attentions was Mafia – a small, malarial island of about 13,000 inhabitants that had once been a favoured haunt of coastal pirates and in 1890 had been swapped with Germany for the strip of land connecting Lake Nyasa with Lake Tanganyika that became known as the Stevenson Road. Thereafter it had become the focus of an unsuccessful attempt by a few intrepid German planters to break the British monopoly of the clove industry, centred on Zanzibar and Pemba; otherwise its significance had remained slight – until its position ten miles off the Rufiji delta presented Wapshare with a relatively risk-free opportunity to raise British morale and secure a more proximate base than Zanzibar from which to conduct further operations against the Königsberg.
The ‘invasion’ of Mafia by four companies of 1/KAR and one company of the 101st Grenadiers – 500 troops in all – began on 9 January 1915. Resistance was only encountered two days later at a hillock near the village of Ngombeni, where three Germans and thirty askari led by reservist Lieutenant Erich Schiller held out for a couple of hours before being persuaded to surrender. The following day the German administrator at Kilindoni followed suit and, at the cost of fewer than a dozen casualties, the Union Jack was raised over Mafia after an absence of twenty-five years. The success of the joint operation – in which HMS Fox, HMS Weymouth and the Kinfauns Castle took part – was scarcely compensation for the failure at Tanga, but there was considerable relief in the ships’ wardrooms that, whatever the growing doubts about Drury-Lowe’s merits as Senior Naval Officer, at least Captain Caulfeild’s ‘footling orders’ and ‘mismanagement’6 had been dispensed with. On 12 January the invasion force re-embarked for Mombasa, leaving only Colonel Mackay, the former senior Intelligence officer of IEF ‘B’, and a single company of the 63rd Palamcottahs to atone for their respective ‘sins’ at Tanga by garrisoning the sweltering hell-hole that was Mafia.
At exactly the same time as Mafia fell into British hands, von Lettow-Vorbeck began the preparations for his next move. A message from the Kaiser had recently arrived and, emboldened by the knowledge that ‘the Fatherland [was] proud of its sons’* in East Africa, the German commander-in-chief decided that Tighe’s occupation of Jasin needed to be countered immediately. It might, von Lettow-Vorbeck suspected, be a prelude to an advance down the coast to Tanga and with that in mind he ordered 4/SchK and 15/FK to reconnoitre the defences of Jasin’s fort and a nearby sisal factory on 12 January. The prompt arrival of British reinforcements from the Umba Valley camp, just three miles north of Jasin, forced the German troops to retreat and a further probe four days later was also seen off. These encounters furnished von Lettow-Vorbeck with valuable information about how British troops would deploy in the event of an attack, and within a week he had concentrated fully nine companies to the south of Jasin in readiness for the execution of a classic ‘horns of the bull’ assault of the sort once favoured by the Zulus. Captain Otto was to assault Jasin fort frontally with 9/FK and the irregular ‘Arab Corps’, supported by a battery of two guns under reservist Bruno Fromme; Major Kepler was to advance on Otto’s right with 11/FK and 4/FK; and Captain Adler was to lead 15/FK and 17/FK on the left flank. Meanwhile a trolley-line from Tothovu, seven miles to the south of Jasin, would enable von Lettow-Vorbeck speedily to deploy his force reserve – 1/FK, 6/FK and 13/FK led by Captain Schulz, Demuth’s 7/SchK of European reservists, and Hering’s two C73 field guns – wherever they were required. Von Lettow-Vorbeck’s determination to regain German supremacy over the coastal borderlands was self-evident: his attack force was larger than that which had concentrated at Tanga by 5 November the previous year.†
The terrain over which the German troops advanced at dawn on 18 January was even less favourable than that encountered by the British troops to the east of Tanga. Dense vegetation and a multitude of streams criss-crossed the battlefield, hampering progress and robbing the initial attack of the advantage of complete surprise, and by the time German troops appeared within range of the fort SOS rockets had been fired to call for reinforcements from Umba, and Colonel Raghbir Singh’s garrison of Kashmiris and Grenadiers all stood at the ready. What ensued was hardly the introit that von Lettow-Vorbeck had hoped for: Otto’s frontal attack was stopped in its tracks by disciplined and accurate fire from the fort, Major Kepler was killed in the first hour of fighting on the German right, and when the elite 13/FK was sent to reinforce Otto it lost its three senior officers – Spalding, Langen and Oppen – in just ten minutes.
Captain Adler’s simultaneous attack on Jasin’s sisal factory 1,000 yards north of the fort fared rather better. Although one company of 1/KAR, led by Captain Giffard, arrived promptly from Umba it was unable to break through to the factory and by 9 a.m. the garrison of forty Kashmiris was surrounded. For two hours the Indian troops stood their ground ‘with great spirit’ against ‘very heavy rifle and machine-gun fire’7 from Captain Adler’s askari; and when their ammunition ran out Subadar Mardan Ali led a bayonet and kukri charge at the German lines which resulted in three-quarters of his men reaching safety. But with their departure, Adler’s two companies were able to turn their full attention to preventing any British reinforcements from reaching Colonel Singh’s garrison in Jasin’s now-isolated fort.
By mid afternoon it was clear that the situation was a stalemate and Tighe decided that any new attack would have to wait until HMS Weymouth arrived offshore the following day to provide naval support. Tighe’s decision was based upon a belief that the garrison at Jasin would be able to withstand a siege lasting a week. This may have been true as far as comestibles were concerned, but in mounting such a solid defence most of the ammunition – 300 rounds per man – had been expended by nightfall. Worse still, the sole machine-gun in the fort was no longer working, and Captains Hanson and Turner of the 101st Grenadiers reluctantly gave the order to surrender.
The capture of almost 300 Kashmiris and Grenadiers, and the thwarting of any imminent advance on Tanga that Tighe might have been planning, prompted von Lettow-Vorbeck to declare that his attack on Jasin had been ‘completely successful’8 (and that the enemy had sustained more than 700 casualties). News of the victory was immediately despatched to Berlin in the hope that it might even arrive in time for the Kaiser’s birthday on 27 January. But the price of success was considerable. Von Lettow-Vorbeck’s troops had expended 200,000 rounds of ammunition; his senior Staff officer, Major Kepler, had been killed; and a further six officers and eighteen German NCOs also lay dead, including the German leader’s great friend, Freiherr Alexander von Hammerstein-Gesmold, and many officers who had distinguished themselves at Tanga. Total German casualties amounted to almost 300, and even von Lettow-Vorbeck had suffered the indignity of being shot through his bush hat and in the arm. On the face of it, Jasin was less like an outright ‘victory’ than a rather costly exercise prompted by a rush of blood to the German commander’s head, an irresponsible initiative by a man who after Tanga entertained thoughts of invincibility and was even prepared to risk fighting offensively over terrain that neither he nor his senior officers, with the sole exception of a reservist who had once worked on the sisal plantation at Jasin, knew at all well. On the other hand Jasin was entirely consistent with von Lettow-Vorbeck’s strategy of inflicting as much damage on his enemy as possible before the ‘decisive’ battle – which he remained convinced would take place in the near future around Handeni – and, in that context, his casualties and the use of irreplaceable materiel were justifiable. Besides, neither side expected the war to last much longer and a second major victory in German East Africa could only strengthen Germany’s hand at the negotiating table.
Von Lettow-Vorbeck did recognise, amid the jubilation of his troops, that ‘such heavy losses as we had suffered could only be borne in exceptional cases’, and that he ‘could at most fight three more actions of this nature’. Materiel was one constraint, but even that paled in comparison with the problem of manpower. There was no problem recruiting askari aplenty. The difficulty after Jasin was finding sufficient officers and NCOs among the colony’s European population to train and lead them: by the end of January 1915 one third of the Schutztruppe’s thirty-three officers with the rank of Oberleutnant and above had already been killed or severely wounded. It was this alarming fact that not only forced von Lettow-Vorbeck to authorise a round of instant promotions but also to modify his tactics. There would be no attempt to repeat the blows struck at Tanga and Jasin in 1915. But this did not signify any diminution in the resolve of the German commander, who heard in February that his brother had been killed on the Western Front during the first month of the war: his new tactic was simply to concentrate on causing maximum disruption to British East Africa’s lifeline – the Uganda Railway.
The limitations imposed on von Lettow-Vorbeck by the battle at Jasin were as nothing when compared to those immediately imposed on Wapshare and Tighe by the War Office. Even though Tighe did not regard his clearance of German troops from the Umba Valley and the occupation of Jasin as offensive measures, or even a prelude to offensive measures, Lord Kitchener viewed them as ‘risky expeditions’9 of a type which he had expressly forbidden. As a result all British positions south of Gazi and Msambweni were abandoned and by the second week in February Tighe’s force, having sustained some 500 casualties, was back where it had started before Christmas – a move which made it abundantly clear to his demoralised and debilitated troops that the invasion of German East Africa had been postponed ‘for some time to come’.10
Looff had discussed the possibility of joint operations with Major Kepler just prior to the outbreak of war, but the German Navy had always forcefully resisted any subordination to colonial land forces and the captain of the Königsberg had largely been left to his own devices by von Lettow-Vorbeck. As January drew to a close he was frustrated that the enemy cruisers off the delta never came within range of his guns, but took considerable pride in the fact that by 1915 ‘there [was] not one [other] German cruiser operating by herself in the whole world . . . All the others have preceded us in honour and in death.’11 Like von Lettow-Vorbeck he recognised that the best he could do was ‘to engage the greatest number of the enemy’12 and all incursions by the plethora of smaller British craft were forcefully opposed by the delta’s defence force, commanded by retired naval officer Werner Schönfeld.
Looff’s greatest concern, other than keeping the Königsberg ready to pounce at the slightest opportunity for a break-out, was the health of his men. Malaria was rife among his crew, despite the best efforts of Dr Eyerich’s staff at the hospital on the nearby plantation of Neustieten. By Looff’s own admission morale was also poor, the men fatalistic, and although the welfare of a baby hippo kept everyone occupied for the fifteen days that it survived, diversions were few. Work continued on trying to rig torpedoes to one of the small craft in the delta, but this initiative proved as frustrating as the occasional attempt to send a steamboat to Dar-es-Salaam. Always thwarted by the vigilance of the Royal Navy, such attempts only served to emphasise the degree to which the German sailors were now well and truly imprisoned.
An official blockade of the East Coast was declared on 28 February, begging the question as to what state of affairs had existed before, and a week later the bushy-eyebrowed, monocled Admiral Herbert King-Hall arrived from the Cape to take direct command of the East Coast operations, flying his flag on board HMS Hyacinth. King-Hall had started his naval career in 1874 at the age of twelve, weighing five stone and measuring just under four feet four inches in height. Four decades later one petty officer remarked that he still ‘didn’t stand as high as six of coppers’ and added that he had ‘seen a better looking monkey in a zoo’13 – a fact readily admitted by King-Hall, who took great pride in introducing himself to people as ‘the ugliest man in the British Navy’. Appearances aside, he was a forceful and bustling officer, and his appointment was an indication that Churchill wanted an end to Dru
ry-Lowe’s ‘woolliness’ even if it meant dealing with a man as opinionated and self-assured as himself. The one blot on King-Hall’s war record thus far had been the failure of his squadron to deal with the Königsberg, but as HMS Weymouth was ‘the only really efficient modern vessel in the whole pack’14 at his disposal he did not consider such allegations at all justified. Either way King-Hall meant to put the record straight. Like Churchill he possessed an innovative mind: the Cutler seaplane expedition, however short-lived, attested to that, as did the planning of a new aerial initiative.
Cutler’s fate had in no way deterred King-Hall from using the new weapon of air power and in January No. 4 Squadron of the newly formed Royal Naval Air Service was detailed to East Africa. Led by Flight Lieutenants Cull and Watkins, the party numbered twenty in all, including a mechanic lent by Sopwith and two men from the propeller manufacturer Messrs Lang. They and their two Sopwith 807 100hp seaplanes were collected from Bombay by the Kinfauns Castle and arrived at their secret base on Niororo Island, about 100 miles south of Zanzibar, on 20 February. A single, fleeting look at their new ‘desert island’ home would have dispelled any thoughts of living up to the RNAS’s reputation for being ‘Rather Naughty After Sunset’. With only the island’s headman and thirty-strong family as astonished onlookers they commenced trials immediately, and no sooner had they done so than their respect for Cutler’s ‘brilliant feat’15 of reconnoitring the Rufiji delta soared. He had at least managed to get airborne in the thin tropical air which proved quite beyond the new Sopwith machines, the more so when loaded with bombs. Eventually, after one of their planes was irreparably wrecked, these pioneer aviators, or ‘chauffeurs of airplanes’ as Churchill was somewhat pompously wont to refer to their ilk, discovered that flight could be achieved on days of high humidity – but only with one hour’s fuel and only to a height of no more than 1,500 feet. The squadron agreed that ‘something had to be done’,16 not least in order to save face in front of Niororo’s inhabitants, all of whom turned out to watch each doomed trial.
