Tip & Run

by Edward Paice

  Britain did gain something from the bargain. The offensive capability of the Belgian troops was far greater than their number appeared to indicate. Fighting on both the Kivu and Rusisi fronts during 1915 had been almost continuous, providing valuable training for the Belgian askari and their officers; and even before the war Congolese askari had possessed a fearsome reputation. Many were recruited from the Wamanyema tribe (to which was attached an infamy for cannibalistic proclivities); and they were also the only Allied troops able to move at a comparable speed to von Lettow-Vorbeck’s field companies. The Belgian method of colonial warfare precluded the use of supply lines in the field, the askari having to rely for survival on their locust-like looting abilities. British field commanders, and their political masters, were rather squeamish about the effect that this inevitably had on its victims and chose instead to have their rate of advance determined by the speed with which supplies could be brought up to any front. But no one denied the efficacy and results of the Belgian modus operandi, and British commanders were to prove more than happy to exploit its advantages over the next eighteen months. A further gain was Belgium’s agreement that ‘in view of [Britain’s] major contribution’ to the military build-up in the Congo ‘[its government] would proffer no territorial claims at the end of the war’.7 Grogan was not at all sure that this promise would be kept, but it was accepted at face value in Whitehall and he was left lamenting that his ‘good friend Henry’ had been superseded by Tombeur, whom he regarded as ‘negative’ and simply ‘a pet of the Belgian court, nominated to reap glory’.8

  To the south, the preparations for an offensive were also proceeding apace. It was a peculiarity of the campaign that responsibility for the advance from Nyasaland and Northern Rhodesia remained not under the authority of the War Office but of the Colonial Office. But at least someone somewhere selected the right man to lead this force after the unfortunate demise of a less-than-popular previous commander when giving a demonstration of how to throw grenades that went disastrously wrong. Brigadier-General Edward Northey would become one of the few British generals to distinguish himself in East Africa. A short man with a military moustache and monocle, he had fought at Mons, the Marne and the Aisne with the King’s Royal Rifles; and while recovering from a wound sustained when commanding the 15th Infantry Brigade in June 1915 he was notified that his services were next required in East Africa.

  Northey arrived at his new post in January 1916 and proceeded to cover 550 miles in three months to discover what he had inherited on his 200-mile front. The western section was held by about 400 men from the Northern Rhodesia Police and British South Africa Police, most of whom had simply sat at their border posts for six months. The eastern section was manned by the 1st King’s African Rifles under Colonel Hawthorn and about 1,300 officers and men of the 1st and 2nd South African Rifles, many of whom had proceeded straight to Nyasaland after serving in German South-West Africa. Although the police units contained many veterans of previous conflicts in Africa, the KAR were the only regular soldiers in the whole force.

  Northey found very poor morale among the police, and was astonished that there was no unified chain of command on his front. A BSAP sergeant described ‘the tremendous feeling of discontent’ among volunteers who were itching for a fight rather than loitering on a diet of bully beef and biscuits in their ‘Swiss chalet’ grass huts, as Northey referred to them. In this general atmosphere of discontent verging on mutiny the troops manning the western section of the British defences vented their spleen on their commanding officer, Colonel Ronald Murray, formerly of the Bulawayo police. Murray was regarded as ‘a stern, unbending sort of chap . . . rather given to parading the men and haranguing them for what he thought were their shortcomings’; and any man falling sick he derided as a ‘scrimshanker’. There was no question but that Murray, whose very dark hair and eyebrows invited comparisons with a beetle, and whose swarthy features earned him the nickname ‘Kaffir’, was decidedly ‘unpopular’ – but in time he, like Northey, was to gain the respect and admiration of all those who served under him.

  In the course of Northey’s three-month tour he boosted morale immensely. He commenced proper training operations, authorised raids across the German border which immediately curtailed German activity along the front, and imbued his men with a sense of purpose. The troops soon discovered that he was also the most approachable leader any could imagine – a ‘true gentleman’ and ‘very ordinary, preferring to wear shorts like the rest of the men’9 – and he ensured that all his men were kept informed of what was happening in the wider war. Sergeant van der Spuy of the South African Mounted Rifles Battery wrote after listening to one of Northey’s talks:

  It was very interesting, very explicit and was told by one of the original expeditionary force, who has taken part in most of the big battles from Mons onwards, as well as having been wounded twice. He proved a splendid lecturer and by the aid of blackboard diagrams explained things from the very beginning. Many things we did not know or understand were fully dealt with and made quite plain, and it was not till we heard from him the truth of what the western front is like that we realised the grandness and terrors of it, and from what we heard, if [the soldiers there] plumbed the depths of misery and despair, they have also risen superior to them by unsurpassable human courage and endurance.10

  Northey’s aim was to counter the feeling of isolation among his men and dispel any doubts about whether ‘their’ war mattered. This was important, because his men would soon need ‘unsurpassable human courage and endurance’ in equal measure when confronted by campaign conditions every bit as testing as those of the war in Europe. As one officer serving under Northey wrote:

  Africa could be cruel as well as beautiful. She flayed her children with the whip of fear and greed, and balanced reckless reproduction with orgies of destruction. Everywhere was strife; a frenzied struggle for survival. I recalled the wrestling of tree and creeper, eternally at one another’s throat for a place in the sun; the jostling of bushes for a share of the sustaining soil. I could not forget that the lion, hunter of antelope and zebra, could be brought to a slow and painful death by the tiny chigre, the burrowing flea that is barely visible to the naked eye. And Man, intruder into Nature’s own preserve, could never be at peace. He entered at his peril; ceaseless struggle was the toll he had to pay.11

  FIFTEEN

  The ‘First Salaita Show’

  Monsignor le Roy, a Catholic missionary who alighted on Taveta in 1890, described the place as ‘un Éden africain . . . une Arcadie’; and he was not at all surprised that the handful of Europeans who had preceded him had all left feeling ‘une sympathie marquée’ towards its inhabitants. The Wataveta, two or three thousand in number, were drawn from a number of different tribes. Most had moved to the ‘exuberantly’ fertile area to seek refuge from enemies (or hardship) in and around the 5,500-acre forest, where banana cultivation soon became the bedrock of society. The menfolk mostly dressed like the Masai (but spoke Swahili); polygamy was the norm; everyone worked the land, but ‘not very hard’ as it was so fertile; and the Wataveta’s government of two assemblies – one for the old and one for the young – resembled ‘a republic without a president’.1 Three decades after le Roy’s visit, the Wataveta’s ‘Éden africain’ was no more: after eighteen months of German occupation, those of its inhabitants who had not fled elsewhere found themselves right in the path of the imminent British advance.

  The 4,000 or so volunteers of the 2nd South African (Infantry) Brigade, comprising the 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th South African Infantry, began arriving in East Africa on 14 January 1916 and were immediately sent to the rapidly expanding camp at Mbuyuni. Many of the officers had seen action in the Boer War, as had some of their men; but most of the latter were hastily recruited and virtually untrained teenagers and there was a marked shortage of experienced NCOs. These were very much ‘scratch’ battalions and it was a tall order for their officers to meld them into effective fighting units in a matte
r of weeks. Furthermore, the Africa in which the South African troops now found themselves was very different from their Africa, and it was decided that the best form of training would be to put the men into the field as soon as possible.

  On 3 February, 5/SAI and 6/SAI were detailed to support the 2nd Loyal North Lancs in carrying out a reconnaissance from Serengeti camp towards ‘Observation Ridge’, from which two batteries opened fire on the small German fort on Salaita Hill; and at the same time the 2nd Rhodesia Regiment and 130th Baluchis demonstrated in force towards the hill. The conclusion drawn from the exercise was that Salaita was held in ‘considerable strength’,2 and during a further foray by 6/SAI two days later 300 enemy askari were spotted occupying their former positions on Observation Ridge. Shots were exchanged, but there were no casualties until someone tripped on a mine on the west bank of the Njoro riverbed on the way back to camp, throwing Colonel Molyneux to the ground and injuring one private. On 9 February the entire South African Brigade was again ordered off to demonstrate in front of Salaita while the 61st Pioneers searched the Njoro drift and the old caravan road for more mines, and as it deployed before the ‘first line of fortifications round [Salaita’s] Eastern slopes’ about 200 German askari and a number of Europeans were seen ‘bolting for the entrenchments’. Despite their best efforts, the South African troops ‘failed to draw fire from the enemy’3 and were ordered to torch the long grass either side of the main track running past Salaita to Taveta in preparation for the main attack. The force then retired, reaching Mbuyuni by 2.30 p.m., and a week of manoeuvres – which constituted the brigade’s only training in the field – came to an end.

  At dawn on 12 February the South African troops received their orders from General Malleson for a ‘reconnaissance in force’ of Salaita. There were no doubts about what this meant: the British High Command intended to clear the way for a full-scale advance on Taveta. ‘We were told’, wrote one trooper, ‘to carry one blanket each, bandolier-fashion over our shoulders and take one day’s ration . . . We were informed that we would be sleeping on Salaita that night.’4 Morale was high. In their short stay the South Africans had, like Mgr le Roy before them, found the nights ‘delightfully cool’ and the scenery ‘splendid’. To the west rose snow-clad Kilimanjaro, to the south lay Lake Jipe and the Pare Mountains, and the ground between the British lines and the Taveta forest in places resembled ‘home park-land’.5 The night before, thirty-three-year-old Sergeant Lane of the South African Medical Corps, a scout-master and civil servant in peacetime, noted in his diary that ‘it makes one feel a man to be marching along with all those thousands of troops . . . the next twenty-four hours should produce some excitement. I wonder what I shall write in these pages for tomorrow we fight. Hurrah!’6 Young Victor Morton also recorded that ‘the men moved out as cheery as youngsters going to a football match . . . we were ordered to cover our helmets in grass and [chaffed] one another at the quaint appearance.’7

  Brigadier-General Percival Scott Beves, commanding the South African Brigade, was not quite so cocksure and had voiced his doubts to General Malleson. An enthusiastic butterfly collector and musician, the well-liked Beves was particularly concerned that after a week of demonstrations towards Salaita the attack would hardly come as a surprise to von Lettow-Vorbeck, especially as the nine planes of the RNAS and the recently arrived 26th (South african) Squadron of the Royal Flying Corps had also been busy overhead; and he argued that there was no way of knowing how many German troops were garrisoned at Taveta waiting to reinforce Salaita Hill at a moment’s notice. He also complained at being denied the use of 8/SAI, the fourth battalion in his brigade, half of whom had arrived at Mbuyuni two days earlier. Malleson dismissed all these issues, pointing out that adequate artillery preparation and a force of 6,000 South African and British troops would suffice to overwhelm any opposition that von Lettow-Vorbeck could muster. Beves was assured that the intelligence gathered during the past week – both on the ground and from the air – indicated that the garrison on Salaita Hill would be held by no more than 300 rifles, with two machine-guns and no artillery; and that ‘the assault would be over before any forces could reach the scene from Taveta’.8 If German reinforcements did begin to appear then Belfield’s Scouts, a volunteer mounted unit detailed to reconnoitre to the north-west beyond Salaita, would be able to warn of their approach in good time.

  Malleson’s confidence was unsurprising given his apparent numerical advantage. But he was a Staff officer by training, and one who had not inspired widespread confidence since his arrival with IEF ‘B’ in November 1914. Most of his forays into the field had ended badly, the arrogance he had displayed during two visits in the company of Ewart Grogan to the Belgian High Command had greatly exacerbated tensions on that front, and he had earned a reputation for being ‘clever as a monkey but hopelessly unreliable’.9 Malleson’s orders from Tighe were to take Salaita by frontal assault, thereby ‘expelling the enemy from British territory’;10 and he was not going to let Beves – whom he considered over-cautious – stand in his way. Had he listened to Beves, or not dismissed ‘the Boer method of making wide and unexpectedly rapid flanking manoeuvres favoured by South African troops as rather a vulgar form of warfare and not suitable for English officers and gentlemen’,11 the attack might have fared very differently. Indeed had Malleson displayed the foresight simply to disrupt the train of donkey-carts which supplied Salaita with water, the German stronghold would, by von Lettow-Vorbeck’s own admission, have become ‘untenable’.12 Most unfortunate of all, however, and reminiscent of Tanga, was the fact that British intelligence about German troop dispositions was woefully inadequate, and consequently the chances of Malleson’s chosen method of attack succeeding were no better than Aitken’s had been.

  Von Lettow-Vorbeck was kept fully informed by his Chief Scout, ironically a Boer resident of German East Africa by the name of Piet Nieuwenhuizen, as his enemy ‘frequently showed considerable bodies of troops’ in front of Salaita during the first week in February; and he and Major Kraut, commanding the German troops in the Kilimanjaro area, became increasingly certain that a major attack was imminent. Three companies were moved up from Taveta to reinforce Salaita, a further three under Captain Schulz were deployed between Taveta and Salaita, and Taveta itself was reinforced from troops stationed at the nearby New Steglitz Plantation. If the opportunity arose Kraut was therefore in a position to counter-attack in force: altogether he had 1,300–1,400 men on, or reinforcing, the ‘almost impregnable’13 defences on Salaita, supported by no fewer than twelve machine-guns, a 7-pdr field gun, and two light ‘pom-pom’ guns.

  The 2nd South African Brigade and the 1st East African Brigade – 6,000 men with eighteen guns and forty-one machine guns – moved out independently but simultaneously on 12 February.*The first of Beves’s force to leave Serengeti camp in a north-westerly direction were the sixty mounted Belfield’s Scouts who rode off to scout beyond Salaita Hill for signs of German reinforcements; they were not seen again until the battle was all but over. In their wake, one company of 7/SAI and a double company of the 61st Pioneers (whom Aitken had dismissed after Tanga as being ‘fit only as labourers’) formed the advance guard, followed by the rest of 7/SAI, the 28th Mountain Battery, two double companies of 61st Pioneers, two armoured cars of the RNAS under Lieutenant-Commander Whittall, 5/SAI and 6/SAI, the Volunteer Maxim Company and the ammunition column. Meanwhile the East African Brigade moved due west towards Salaita.

  At 6.45 a.m. both brigades had reached the Njoro riverbed and were about one and a half miles apart. Here they were issued with the orders for the attack. Malleson intended ‘enveloping Salaita from the north’ with ‘Belfield’s Scouts and 2 armoured cars to watch right flank . . . mounted infantry and 2 armoured cars to cover left flank’. Leaving the Pioneers at the dry riverbed ‘to improve ramps and search for mines’,14 an hour later the men of Colonel Freeth’s 7/SAI – a battalion composed almost entirely of Australians and New Zealanders resident in South Africa – ha
d struggled through the dense bush north of the Salaita–Serengeti track until they reached a position on the edge of a patch of open ground 1,000 yards from the base of Salaita Hill. Although it was remarked that the South Africans had gone up ‘in beautiful style’,15 all were extremely thirsty by now as the watercarts had been left in the rear; and progress through the dense scrub had proved unduly strenuous due to Beves’s insistence on moving in massed battalions. To the right Colonel Molyneux’s 6/SAI, supported by the two RNAS armoured cars and the Volunteer Maxims guarding the battalion’s open right flank, had also reached the position from which it was to attack, as had Colonel Byron’s 5/SAI on the left. Far from ‘enveloping’ Salaita, as Malleson described the movement, these three South African battalions had in fact done nothing more than deploy in such a way as to launch a frontal attack on the north side of the hill.