by Edward Paice
By 3 a.m. four full attacks on the South African lines had been repelled when silence finally fell on Kondoa. At dawn some sixty Germans and askari were found dead on the battlefield, many with empty bottles ‘smelling of dop’ 10 in their haversacks, and the figure rose during the day to eighty-five. The South African infantry had held firm, sustaining less than thirty casualties and earning five immediate MCs and 3 DCMs; and the crews of the eight South African 13-pdr guns had excelled themselves in the defence of the town.
The failure of the night attack was self-evidently a disaster for von Lettow-Vorbeck, who had personally accompanied the advance patrols down from the heights and satisfied himself that the low hills in front of Kondoa were unoccupied. What had, astonishingly, not been realised – even with the commanding view from the heights and the assistance of what he called his ‘perfectly new and excellent map’11 – was that a second line of small hillocks ran behind the first and it was along these that the South Africans were entrenched. Given that 13/FK had spearheaded the attack on what was their peacetime garrison the error was all the more inexplicable, and the roles of the ‘First Salaita Show’ had seemingly been reversed. Von Lettow-Vorbeck had detected the error at about 11 p.m. from the unexpected line of ‘flashes . . . of rifles and machine guns’ in the darkness and, as the wind shifted, the noise of stout defence. But by then it was too late to abort the attack.
Von Lettow-Vorbeck was not wont to flinch at a setback, but one can deduce that his disappointment was extreme from his unusually inaccurate statement about the cost of the error. He did not conceal the fact that von Bock, a retired infantryman who farmed near Arusha, had been severely wounded in the attack or that Friedrich von Kornatzki, one of his best officers, was dead. But in estimating his casualties at ‘about fifty killed and wounded’ out of an attacking force of ‘about 400 rifles’, he was being conservative on two counts. German casualties included at least 128 dead, as was alluded to in a German newspaper soon afterwards, and his claim that the attack was merely a probe does not ring true in the light of what happened next. His patrols no doubt did detect ‘considerable bodies marching from Arusha’, and he was absolutely right that Kondoa’s defenders ‘did not seem to be in great strength as yet’: they numbered no more than 1,000 all told. But in concluding that any successful attack on them ‘would have to be made over open ground against defences which with our few guns we could not sufficiently neutralise’, that he was bound to ‘suffer considerable and irreplaceable losses’ in such an attack, and that he therefore ‘decided to refrain from a general attack’,12 von Lettow-Vorbeck was being disingenuous (and commenting with the benefit of hindsight). His usually faultless intelligence and the familiarity of many senior German officers with the area had, after all, decided his shift of almost twenty companies to Kondoa-Irangi – an immensely complicated and risky manoeuvre executed at speed. And the South African force opposite him numbered no more than 600 rifles until the week before his opening attack. For von Lettow-Vorbeck to claim, as did one British Staff officer on his behalf, that he ‘had made a miscalculation’13 was equally disingenuous in the light of odds of about four to one in his favour. The mauling he received on that night of 9 May was a massive setback which completely derailed his well-laid plans.
The battle had been ‘touch and go’ for van Deventer, who throughout the night had kept ‘his personal transport wagon inspanned and ready to flit’14 (and had the attack been launched just three days earlier Smuts himself, on a morale-boosting visit to the ‘discrepit’ men at Kondoa, might have been captured). Van Deventer’s legendary luck had held once again, but the stalemate now existing on his front was hardly the result that Smuts had wished for. In the ranks no one knew quite what to expect next, though there was jubilation on the morning of 10 May. That day an artillery duel occurred but the night was quiet. On 12 May 9/SAI and some mounted troops fought an engagement on the right flank, and the next day 12/SAI were ordered to prepare to attack, Lieutenant Faure wishing by now that he ‘could get a good rest – this game is very trying as we get very little sleep’. At 11 a.m. the regiment evacuated its trenches and moved to attack German positions on the left flank frontally. ‘Quite a decent bombardment’ began and a detachment was sent out to draw fire, but with mounted troops baulking at a simultaneous attack on the German right the attack was cancelled at the last minute. This was fortunate for the South African troops. Similar probing manoeuvres continued over the next few days, by the end of which it seemed unlikely that von Lettow-Vorbeck would press again. By mid May Kondoa, and the whole of the Irangi plain, stank of rotting horse flesh; only 300 of van Deventer’s force of 2,000 were fully fit (and even the fit were described as being ‘none too bright’);15 the two brigade doctors had worked themselves into an early grave; and even after the first valiant carriers arrived on 14 May rations were one cup of flour, one cup of rice, and a little tea, sugar and salt per man per day.
Ten days later van Deventer’s supply situation finally began to improve, though food would remain ‘practically non est’ 16 for some time to come, and much-needed reinforcements began to trickle in. As the rains eased a little, 7/SAI and 8/SAI covered the 120 miles from Arusha in twelve days, reaching Kondoa on 24 May (Empire Day), but the motorcyclists of Colonel Fairweather’s South African Motor Cycle Corps still found it impossible to cross the Irangi plateau at an average speed any greater than 3 mph. However, on 31 May – Union Day – the troops received a huge morale boost when the first South African biplanes ‘buzzed’ Kondoa (a feat in itself, as the town was at an altitude that aviators on Europe’s Western Front considered safe from anti-aircraft fire); and news arrived that the advance down the Northern Railway against Kraut’s force had begun. A visit from the Bishop of Pretoria in early June was also well received, the more so as he described van Deventer’s thrust at Kondoa as ‘as fine a bit of work as has been done up here, and worthy to rank among the big marches of any previous campaign anywhere’.17
In truth, Kondoa had been a miraculous escape that could have temporarily ended Smuts’s political career as surely as the Dardanelles had Churchill’s; and it would be months before he could consider advancing against the Central Railway from Kondoa.
EIGHTEEN
The Advance down the Northern Railway
From his lookout post in the North Pare Mountains a young German sailor observed as Smuts’s troops assembled for the advance down the Northern Railway. ‘When I saw how strong they were,’ he wrote, ‘it made me feel quite sick: I could scarcely count the brutes.’1 Von Lettow-Vorbeck’s diversion of troops to Kondoa meant that Kraut had just nine companies at his disposal between Kahe and Tanga, no more than 1,750 troops in all.* But he had prepared every mile of ground for a fighting retreat, and nine guns, commanded by the indomitable explosives expert Werner Schönfeld, were deployed along the railway and in the hills to the north.
Smuts divided his force into three columns: Sheppard’s to follow the Pangani River, Hannyngton’s in the centre, and Fitzgerald’s on the left – a total of about 7,500 rifles.† He was expecting stern resistance, which may have partly explained his decision to keep the battered 5/SAI and 7/SAI – the heroes of Latema-Reata – in reserve. But there was also mounting discontent among the South African infantry on this front. For two months they had been at a standstill in a ‘fever belt’ and, as many refused either to take quinine or use their mosquito nets, the toll had been great. In just two weeks in early April 2,000 South African troops had been admitted to the field hospital at Taveta, and even the ranks of the medical staff were decimated: at another hospital on the slopes of Kilimanjaro in mid April one in seven of the 172 patients were ambulance staff. British Army regulations were also experienced by the South African troops for the first time, and were hugely unpopular. Instead of being given extra fatigues as a punishment for misdemeanours, a trooper was liable to be tied to a tree for hours on end. For many, however, it was the ‘jiggers’ – fleas which burrow under the toenails to lay their e
ggs – that caused the greatest suffering during the lay-up and, together with the miseries of malaria, blackwater, and the impossibility of moving through the thick black cotton soil, led to the realisation that this was going to be ‘pre-eminently a campaign against Nature’.2
On 18 May, two months after the capture of Kahe, Smuts’s three columns resumed the offensive in the north-east. Three days later they crossed the Ruwu River largely unopposed, and by 29 May had advanced more than 100 miles through dense bush and in blistering heat. The capture of Mombo forced Kraut to turn south towards Handeni, using the specially constructed trolley-line that had for so long been a key link in the line of communication between the Northern and Central Railways, and the sole German company defending Tanga also withdrew southwards down the coast leaving the Northern Railway in British hands. But despite the loss of the railway German resistance stiffened the further south Kraut retreated. Soon fierce rearguard actions became commonplace, most notably at Mkalamo on 9 June, where the British and South African troops crossed the Pangani River; and at Kangata, where 5/SAI were ambushed on 20 June and sustained twenty per cent casualties (rendering the battalion inactive until October). By then Smuts’s men were subsisting on two biscuits a day; had realised the extent to which the German askari ‘barefooted, and therefore silent in the bush, was a dangerous opponent’;3 and had, as one trooper put it, ‘met every animal except the jabberwok’.4 Most serious of all, however, was the growing sick-list. Of the 1,500 troops for whom the 2nd South African Field Ambulance was responsible, one third were sick. The ranks of the 2nd Rhodesia Regiment and Driscoll’s Frontiersmen were reduced by half; of the Indian battalions none mustered more than 350 rifles; and even the now ‘seasoned’ 2nd Loyal North Lancs had to be ordered to Cape Town for three months’ recuperation.
The six-week advance, during which the three columns ‘marched and fought, counter-marched and fought again’5 almost continually, again showed that Smuts’s strategy of executing ‘long turning movements in the hope of encircling the enemy forces’6 had not met with resounding success. But the offensive did at least end on a high note. On 24 June a German detachment at the Lukigura River was forced to fight by a sizeable mobile column led by Major-General Hoskins, and a bayonet charge by the Frontiersmen and the Kashmir Rifles secured a decisive victory. Thirty-four men of Captain Döring’s three-company detachment were killed and more than fifty captured. Here Smuts finally called a halt, having advanced 250 miles in six weeks, while scouts reconnoitred for a suitable camp to the east of the Nguru Mountains. It was time to let his lines of communication catch up, and for the troops – many of whom had suffered half a dozen bouts of malaria en route – to rest.
The supply situation remained dire. In April, in a staggering feat of engineering, the railway companies and sappers had managed to push a railway through from Taveta to Moshi just four days before supplies on the front line would have run out altogether, and the line had just managed to keep functioning through the rains. ‘In one place,’ an officer noted, ‘the line went through a flat which the rains had turned into a swamp. The sleepers floated and had to be held in place till the rails were laid on them. After the first train had passed, the whole line disappeared beneath the mud, and soon the rails were as much as 6in out of level. The sight of a train creeping through what appeared to be a sea of mud, with every vehicle tilted to a different angle was not one easily forgotten.’7 In April and May two more railway companies arrived from India to complete a railway battalion. They were sorely needed. A branch line was laid in the direction of Kondoa and the huge task of repairing the Northern Railway, wrecked by the retreating Germans, was begun even before the Royal Navy and land troops secured Tanga on 7 July – twenty months after the first ill-fated attempt – with a ferocious bombardment. The captured diary of Tanga’s Chief Coastguard recorded its effects: ‘our bombproof shelter proved ineffective and I, with several other people, found a drain for protection and the air was very stifling. 12-inch shells poured into the town for nine hours. All large and important buildings were wrecked. A shell fell right on my house, blowing all my belongings to glory. I last saw my bed go flying into the air having been driven straight through two stone walls. Such a fine bed too! It was a good job I was not lying in it.’ The account concluded ‘my God what savages these English are’.8
The capture of Tanga was a considerable boost to morale on board the ships of the blockading fleet. As one young officer wrote, ‘to say that we were weary of wandering up and down the coast for nearly two years occasionally bombarding objects of offence would be a slight exaggeration for there is always some excitement to be had out of big gun firing, but the arrival of some shell coming at us [from Tanga] undoubtedly added a zest to the pastime’.9 Just two weeks later the first train ran through Korogwe, and Botha had arrived from South Africa to assess Smuts’s progress.
The Royal Navy’s role in the capture of Tanga followed hard on the heels of an episode of which it was rather less proud (and which greatly augmented von Lettow-Vorbeck’s ability to prolong his resistance to the Allied invasion of German East Africa). In late 1915, in response to a plea from Schnee smuggled out through Portuguese East Africa, Berlin decided to risk sending a second blockade-breaking ship to East Africa. Sperrbrecher 15 was a veteran of twenty journeys out of Wilhelmshaven into the North Sea. Her Frisian skipper, Lieutenant Conrad Sorenson, and crew were therefore certainly experienced but a journey right out into the Atlantic, round the Cape and thence to a small bay in southern German East Africa was an altogether different proposition. Rechristened the Marie, the vessel left Hamburg on 16 January 1916 with instructions to maintain complete wireless silence for the whole voyage. Two months later, on 15 March, she steamed past the northern shores of Portuguese East Africa and made a mockery of the East African naval blockade by slipping into Sudi Bay, a small inlet on German East Africa’s south coast, about halfway between Lindi and Mikindani. Her crew had no idea what sort of welcoming committee the shore might provide at this prearranged destination. They had heard no news for two months and the question on all their minds was whether British troops had already seized the south coast ports. As she neared the coast gunfire rang out, but a rapid exchange of signals with the shore soon established that the Marie’s voyage was not in vain.
Sudi Bay lay at the mouth of a small river. Its narrow entrance led directly inland for a short distance before dog-legging to port through a succession of sandbanks, and it was overlooked by German watchposts and two artillery positions; as an extra precaution mines were laid across the entrance by the Marie. Once inside the bay she became invisible to prying British ships, hidden on the seaward side by a wooded spit over the top of which only the very tips of her mast were visible from the Indian Ocean. It was a near-perfect hiding place for the time that it would take to unload her 1,500 tons of cargo. The crew were greeted on shore by elderly reservist Asmuth, who apologised profusely for mistaking the Marie for an enemy ship. The following day Lieutenant Hinrichs, formerly First Officer of the Königsberg and now District Commander in Lindi, arrived by bicycle to extend a formal welcome. He was accompanied by Captain Kaiser, a ‘decidedly dashing and obviously highly respected officer’, who immediately arranged for a huge consignment of fruit for the crew which ‘tasted particularly good . . . after the long sea trip’.
Kaiser and Sorenson quickly busied themselves planning the unloading operation, and in no time the normally tranquil bay became a hive of activity. There was no lifting equipment so floats were built from shore to ship and all around the steamer while carriers cut a path inland so that the cargo could be spirited away. One crew member, Knud Knudsen, marvelled at the scene as everyone ‘set about hauling the guns one after another, the boxes one after the other, off board and onto the rafts; the Africans, some of them incredibly large and strong people, set to work and dragged everything via the connecting float onto land, where others took over from them and brought the loads to Sudi village via the newly constructed pa
th’. Work continued for eight days and nights, and only when it was completed did everyone become aware just how much vital materiel the Marie carried. By the time she was fully emptied, ten days later, the excitement among crew, German officers and askari was almost uncontainable. In the village were four of the most modern 10.5cm howitzers, two 7.5cm mountain guns, 2,000 modern rifles, three million rounds of ammunition and some 50,000 porter loads prepacked with medicine, uniforms, food and equipment of every conceivable description (including 200kgs of precious quinine). ‘One old African black NCO from a machine-gun regiment’, Knudsen noticed, ‘kept on going up to the beautiful, shining, new machine guns and stroking the barrels and laying himself down aiming with all of them. Others stood by the heavy howitzers and looked down the barrel to admire the interior.’ ‘It was certainly worth all the fuss,’ was his resounding verdict; ‘and if our brave brothers remain undefeated, and Smuts and his people gradually find less and less pleasure in this war in Africa, then my heart will laugh with joy and I’ll say to myself: “We too contributed to that. We from the Marie !”.’
