by Edward Paice
An intercepted Belgian wireless message confirmed the destruction of the Hedwig, but Zimmer remained unaware of exactly how this had occurred. What he did know was that his supremacy on Lake Tanganyika was now ‘seriously threatened’. The Wami, a former tender to the Königsberg in the Rufiji delta and sister ship to the Kingani, and the Adjutant arrived by rail in February and could have restored the balance of power. But Zimmer did not use either of them and ordered Kigoma ‘put into a state of defence’.12 He never revealed why he did not send the Goetzen across the lake to investigate the loss of his two vessels. He may have feared encountering the (unbuilt) Baron Dhanis in a trap; or he may have been under strict orders that the Goetzen could only be used for the transport of troops. Either way, when Spicer-Simson caught a glimpse of the Goetzen for the first time the day after sinking the Hedwig and decided that he could not attack it under any circumstances, a stalemate ensued.
Stalemate was a good enough situation for the Allies. Spicer-Simson attracted accusations of an attack of cold feet from some Belgians, whose single-mindedness seemed to have increased as a result of America’s suggestion that Belgium might consider selling the Congo to Germany as part of a compromise peace, but his decision was undoubtedly correct. Lake Tanganyika was not the Thames. Sudden squalls of immense ferocity were common and the British motor boats did not provide reliable gun platforms in choppy waters. Furthermore, a single shell from Goetzen’s guns would have vaporised any of his craft, and Spicer-Simson knew that Kigoma’s shore defences were formidable. His decision also disappointed some of his crew who, under his leadership, had begun to believe in their own invincibility: one remarked that ‘it seemed that [the Goetzen] was as windy of us as we were of her’.13 But Spicer-Simson knew that the right decisions are not always the popular ones, and was unperturbed by any mutterings of discontent. The mere presence of his gunboats was obviously sufficient to enable Allied troops to use Lake Tanganyika again – if only a ship large enough to ferry them could be found – and that was all that he had been asked to achieve.
Spicer-Simson and his crew were credited by the Belgians, despite the carping about cold feet, with ‘a remarkable performance of which England should be justly proud’.14 But their failure to complete the Baron Dhanis grated with the British commander, and the atmosphere at Lukuga began to sour. Spicer-Simson had always found his Belgian naval opposite number, Commandant Goor, easy to work with; it was Belgian bureaucracy that had proved a nightmare both to the British and the Belgian servicemen on the lake ever since he arrived. Colonel Moulaert, who assumed command of the Belgian Brigade Sud in February 1916, admitted as much when he observed how much time ‘had been lost in hesitations and vain discussions’15 about the Baron Dhanis. In fact its construction had been largely abandoned when the British expedition arrived the previous October, but subsequently the Belgian government changed its mind and Moulaert was charged with overseeing its completion as fast as possible. In the meantime he informed Spicer-Simson that his government had secured the use of four (British) Short seaplanes which would put paid to the Goetzen. Moulaert and Spicer-Simson, both proud men and zealously protective of their own authority, quickly – and unsurprisingly – fell out; and, rather than trust any longer in an ally who had let him down on countless occasions, Spicer-Simson set off at the end of February with Commandant Goor to search for a lake steamer that could take the place of the Baron Dhanis if, as he guessed might happen, she was never completed.
When Spicer-Simson began his antics on Lake Tanganyika in December 1915, the South African preparations for an invasion of German East Africa were well under way, and the identity of the man appointed to lead the expedition was revealed. Given the uncertain political climate in South Africa Smuts was forced to declare himself unavailable, but he and Botha were confident that the War Office’s suggestion of General Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien was a good one. Smith-Dorrien was widely respected both in Africa (having fought in the Zulu War in 1879, Omdurman and the Anglo-South African War), in India (where he had commanded the 4th Quetta Division), and in Britain (where he was credited with having played the leading role in saving the British Expeditionary Force at Le Cateau in 1914). Furthermore, he was not entirely ignorant of the conditions that would confront him in East Africa as his wife was a goddaughter of Sir Donald Stewart, a former Governor of the protectorate.
From the outset, however, Smith-Dorrien was beset with difficulties stemming from the War Office’s neglect of the East African campaign. Lord Kitchener, the Minister for War, persisted in his belief that no matter how parlous the situation confronting Tighe the diversion of materiel and men to East Africa was undesirable; and he was well aware, from his Boer War days, of the immense cost that warfare in Africa could entail. The Colonial Secretary, Andrew Bonar Law, did not agree – and he soon proved a powerful ally to those in the War Office who were working to circumvent Kitchener. When Kitchener visited the Near East in November, the War Office ‘[brought] the whole thing to a head’, with the result that when ‘the Chief ’ returned ‘the business was practically settled’. Kitchener was ‘by no means enthusiastic’ about the news that greeted him but despite his reservations ‘he accepted the situation’.16
Kitchener’s acquiescence removed one obstacle, but Smith-Dorrien’s task remained daunting. He was very short of time, and encountered problems at every turn in securing the particular types of weaponry – and sufficient shipping tonnage – to ensure a quick victory in East Africa at an acceptable cost. The strain was immense, and it was exacerbated by acute seasickness and an attack of pneumonia during his voyage out to Cape Town in December. Over New Year Smith-Dorrien ‘hovered between life and death’ for three days during a stop at Madeira; but despite his illness he continued to take on a heavy workload for the remainder of the voyage and after reaching South Africa. He was in constant consultation with Botha and Smuts and the volume of telegrams transmitted during January between his headquarters, East Africa, India, and London attested to the gathering pace of the build-up. Draught and pack mules from Buenos Aires, Ford chassis suitable for water-carrying, units of armoured cars, a 5-inch howitzer battery and further mountain batteries, specialist railway companies, two British officers fluent in Urdu to act as Foremen of Works, a first consignment of the nine million rounds of Mark VI ammunition, sixty miles of railway track with fifteen engines and 100 wagons from India by March – the list of Smith-Dorrien’s requests grew daily. But after three weeks Dr Hugh-Smith tapped the general’s lungs and ‘drew off 4½oz of rank poison’. Smith-Dorrien wrote in his diary ‘self not worth much’.17 His weight had fallen to just nine stone and at the end of January he finally had to admit that he was, quite simply, ‘all done in’. ‘It would have killed him to have gone to East Africa’, wrote Sergeant Castle, his clerk of five years; and he expressed the great disappointment of all members of Smith-Dorrien’s Staff: ‘No one could have worked harder to make [the expedition] a success . . . I shall always think of Sir H. with all his peculiar and hard-to-get-used-to ways as a great man, a fine soldier and a God-fearing gentleman.’18
Kitchener expressed his regrets at the news but by 12 February, when Smith-Dorrien was graciously seen on board the Balmoral Castle by Louis Botha, ‘the Chief’ had still not taken the trouble to inform him of the identity of his successor. Rumours that Smith-Dorrien was dead may have been wide of the mark but he had, so far as the War Office was concerned, ceased to exist; and what followed created ‘the sensation of the campaign’.19 Smuts was again offered the supreme command in East Africa and, though he regretted the loss of a man in whom the Union Government had the utmost confidence, this time he and Botha felt that the political situation in South Africa was stable enough for him to accept. On the evening of 11 February, Smuts left Pretoria bound for East Africa. The Star reported that ‘the feeling of the countryside in regard to . . . East Africa is distinctly optimistic’,20 but Smuts’s enemies in theNationalist camp pounced on the new opportunity to condemn his ‘jingoism’
and question why South African ‘boys’ had to go to East Africa at all. Hertzog’s mouthpiece, Die Burger, openly accused Smuts of running away from his party’s embattled predicament at home.
In East Africa the reaction was also mixed. The ever-enthusiastic Mickey Tighe had greeted Smith-Dorrien’s appointment as evidence that the War Office was at last taking his campaign seriously and would give him a fighting chance of finishing it. The change of commander-in-chief bothered him not one jot. But among some of his ‘Red Tab’ officers Smuts’s appointment was greeted more cautiously. In their eyes Smuts was an ‘amateur’ whose reputation as a soldier was not proven; and the campaign in German South-West Africa had not been on a scale that established the South African generals as the masters of strategy they thought they were. Furthermore, Colonel Victor Franke, the German commander in German South-West Africa, was no von Lettow-Vorbeck. It was admitted that Smuts had acquired a certain notoriety for his brave but ultimately futile 1,000-mile raid into the Cape in the closing stages of the Anglo-South African War; and word had it that his planning skills had proved invaluable to the suppression of the Afrikaner rebellion and the campaign in German South-West Africa. But such military skills as he possessed were self-taught, and first and foremost Smuts was regarded as a politician. It is not surprising that Smuts’s appointment as field commander of a force which might exceed 25,000 troops caused some astonishment but on the other hand, as one of his Staff officers pointed out, the British ‘dugouts . . . had not been very successful’.21
With plans for what would become known as ‘the first Salaita show’, the start of the offensive in German East Africa, already so advanced, Smuts’s first real test would have to wait. As a prelude to the advance proper Longido was reoccupied before the end of January, and General Malleson succeeded where he had failed in July 1915 when he pushed four battalions and eighteen guns forward to Mbuyuni, less than twenty miles from Taveta. A few days later Serengeti, four miles further on, was wrested from the Germans and the military railway from Voi – now dubbed ‘the crazy line’ on account of the obvious results of the rapidity of its construction – was extended to this new British camp. The advance also compelled a strong German force commanded by Captain Doering to abandon the mountain of Kasigau, thirty miles to the south of Voi, and when they did so German raids on the Uganda Railway became much more hazardous to execute and therefore less frequent. Resistance to these cautious moves was slight. British troops suffered serious casualties in an incident on the coast, when Major Wavell and thirty men of his Arab Corps were killed in a scrap with a much larger German force near Mwele Ndogo; and a ‘demonstration’ near Bukoba might well have resulted in the annihilation of a detachment of 98th Infantry had it not been for the support of the Lake Victoria flotilla. All in all, however, the British preparations seemed to reveal no insurmountable causes for concern other than the continuation of average monthly wastage rates – due to disease – of approximately ten per cent; and the embarkation of the first troops from South Africa helped to create the impression that the situation in East Africa was at least ‘stable’.
The preparations for an offensive did not escape von Lettow-Vorbeck’s notice. As early as the beginning of December German prisoners were telling their captors that they knew the Boers were coming, and their commander was determined to ‘encourage the enemy’ so that as many troops as possible would be ‘diverted from other and more important theatres of war’.22 The South Africans, even those with combat experience in the Boer War or in German South West-Africa, had scant idea of the conditions that awaited them; and until their commander-in-chief arrived they were in the hands of British generals whose abilities had been sorely tested – and frequently found wanting – during the first sixteen months of the war.
THIRTEEN
The African War
‘The outbreak of war came as an unexpected shock to the natives as a whole,’wrote Charles Hobley,the Provincial Commissioner of British East Africa’s Coast Province; ‘like most of our countrymen,’ he added, ‘the natives naturally had no conception of the magnitude of the struggle or its possible duration.’ This much was certainly true at the outset, as it was of civilians in Europe, and during the first eighteen months indigenous communities in eastern Africa responded in a multitude of different ways. War quite simply presented an opportunity both to individuals and to groups keen to vent old grievances against the government and to settle old scores with neighbours.
British East Africa had been conquered with remarkable ease and lack of bloodshed by comparison with the sub-Saharan colonies of Britain’s colonial rivals. There had been fewer than thirty ‘punitive campaigns’, many of which amounted to little more than patrols, in the two decades preceding the war; and only two of these involved African casualties in excess of 1,000. The relative paucity of casualties did not, however, connote complete acquiescence on the part of the conquered. Certain tribes, such as the Kikuyu, quickly adapted to the arrival of Europeans in their midst and even to the taxation – hardly a new concept to any African society – that accompanied it. Others did not. The coastal Giriama people, renowned as traders of slaves and ivory and as skilled manufacturers of arrow poison, numbered some 60,000, and although their society was highly decentralised they had retained a strong sense of identity and a distinctive spiritual life through centuries that witnessed the comings and goings of the Portuguese and Arabs. When the British appeared as the latest in this line of ‘visitors’ the Giriama had simply responded in time-honoured fashion, resisting any attempts to incorporate them into the emerging colonial economy. After 1912 relations with the government began to come to a head over persistent labour and tax demands, both of which the Giriama regarded as eroding their way of life and wealth, and on 4 August 1914 the tribe rose in revolt.
Many British government officials suspected German agents of encouraging the uprising, given the historic connections between the Giriama and German East Africa through ivory-trading, but such suspicions were wide of the mark. The timing of the revolt was sheer coincidence, its main trigger being the destruction that day of the principal Giriama shrine, the Kaya Fungo, south of Kilifi. Once started, however, it was clear to those involved in the rebellion that it was to their considerable advantage that the British were preoccupied with the wider war: as one British administrator put it, the Giriama ‘were told we were at war and that we were powerless to retaliate’.1 After a number of incidents prompted by the government’s demand that the Giriama vacate their fertile lands north of the Sabaki River, KAR troops were despatched to put down the uprising. The ensuing ‘pacification’ was carried out by the end of August 1914. Casualties were not heavy, not least because the Giriama sensibly succumbed to what one of their opponents called ‘chilled abdomen, an African variety of the disorder known as cold feet’.2 But the resultant fine levied on the tribe was extremely onerous and the heavy-handed way in which reparations in cash, labour and livestock were collected from loyal and disloyal headmen alike only served to foster further resentment and extreme hardship. This would be compounded by the drought of 1916, which led to famine, and by the curtailment due to the war of ivory-smuggling across Lake Jipe, to the south of Taveta, into the German colony. The Giriama grudgingly adhered to the peace terms but by 1918, with the government hard-pressed on the war front and anxious to avoid a further conflagration, they were already moving back north of the Sabaki.
In the far west of the country similar ‘unrest’ also occurred in the early months of the war. The clash between British and German troops at Kisii in September 1914 unleashed lawlessness and looting on a grand scale until action was taken to stop it. This was as swift and decisive as that used to suppress the Giriama revolt: some eighty Gusii lost their lives, hundreds of huts were burnt, and more than 3,000 cattle were confiscated. Thereafter, in the words of one policeman on the punitive patrol, ‘the tribe gave no further trouble’3 – not least because over 20,000 young male Gusii, about half of the total able-bodied male populat
ion, were removed from the district to work for the military in the course of the war.
If the action of the Gusii smacked of opportunistic hooliganism in the face of the temporary absence of government officials, the impression was misleading. The British had had to send ‘punitive expeditions’ against the Gusii in 1904 and 1908; and one of the features of the 1914 uprising – equally evident in that of the Giriama – was the involvement of traditional spirit mediums, cults, and prophets or prophetesses. In the case of the Gusii their sacking of the British boma at Kisii was directly attributable to the rising popularity of ‘Mumboism’, a rejection of all things European in a bid to return to the state of affairs that existed before ‘their concepts of peace, good government and life were rudely shattered by colonial rule’;* and in that of the Giriama, the prophetess Me Katilili wa Mwadarikola played a central role in fomenting revolt and instigating secret oath-taking among a widely dispersed and decentralised people. A common characteristic of such cults was the dispensing of medicine that would supposedly turn British bullets into water and, despite its obvious inefficacy, adherence to Mumboism grew rapidly in western British East Africa during the war, only abating when, paradoxically, the Gusii blamed the cult for the great famine of 1919.
