by Edward Paice
As Murray’s force set out he predicted that it ‘would be back in Abercorn in two weeks’.1 But Namema was the most formidable of all the forts in Northey’s sights. Built on a rise, with 15-foot-high walls, it resembled an impregnable medieval castle with extensive exterior earthworks. One Rhodesian soldier ruefully described it as possessing a ‘beautiful, beautiful situation’. 2 The bush had been cleared for 2,000 yards on all sides by reservist Lieutenant Gotthold Franken and his askari of 29/FK, creating a perfect field of fire (which was also thought to have been mined). Murray’s field guns, among them an 8-pdr named the ‘May Jackson’ (after one of Salisbury’s most beautiful barmaids), made little impression on the defences or the defenders. Two advanced posts were captured, however, and Franken was fatally wounded during a sortie to probe Murray’s encirclement on the bitterly cold night of 28 May.* But during the night of 2 June the garrison managed to slip between Murray’s lines on a ‘pitch-dark night’3 and escape. It was an unfortunate start to the offensive. Murray was ‘very, very angry’,4 and set off in pursuit of his enemy towards Lake Tanganyika – which was not at all what Northey wanted. He sent a message to Murray telling him ‘Bismarckburg [on Lake Tanganyika] is merely a place which naturally falls’, and that he would be ‘very disappointed indeed if you lose touch with the [main body of the] enemy’.5 But Murray never received the telegram and not only ‘lost touch with the enemy’ but also decided to capture Bismarckburg.
Murray’s luck worsened the further he advanced. He arrived in striking distance of Bismarckburg a day earlier than he had told Spicer-Simson he would, so there was no support from the lake for an attack on the port; and Lieutenant Hasslacher’s small garrison and some of the fugitives from Namema – the majority of whom had fled north-east towards Lake Rungwe – escaped from the boma in boats. It was a chaotic situation. Many of Murray’s men accused their commander of dashing to Bismarckburg ‘without any orders at all’ which, strictly speaking, was true; and Northey was ‘very disappointed’6 that two German contingents had been allowed to escape.
It was somehow appropriate that it was amid such controversy that the Lake Tanganyika Naval Expedition was finally disbanded. Spicer-Simson had told Northey that his ‘naval ratings [were] impossible to replace’ and that he would not ‘dare [to] expose them more than necessary’7 in supporting Nor-they’s offensive. Landing a detachment of NRP at Mpimpwe, north of Kirando, was therefore the flotilla’s swan-song. There, Spicer-Simson handed over Mimi, Toutou and Fifi to Commander Thornley, and his force dispersed, their ‘naval action in miniature’8 at an end. Spicer-Simson was invalided home suffering from ‘acute nervous debility’. But he could draw some satisfaction from the fact that even the Belgians credited him in public with a feat ‘unique in British history’, and complimented him with the observation that ‘rarely indeed have officers and men of the Royal Navy worked in an environment so foreign or met conditions of greater difficulty with more complete ultimate success’.9 In London, The Illustrated London News had already splashed the story across its covers, Magee filed his scoop with The Daily Mirror, and his more detailed account would merit thirty-one pages in National Geographic in 1922. Spicer-Simson, after recovering from his ordeal, returned to work as Assistant Director of Naval Intelligence, was awarded the DSO, and made a Commander of the Order of the Crown by King Albert; while Lieutenant Wainwright, Lieutenant Dudley and Dr Hanschell won the DSC, and twelve members of the expedition won the DSM. Such was the official recognition given to this extraordinary expedition, and in 1918 Spicer-Simson’s first lecture on the campaign was endorsed by the First Sea Lord, Sir Henry Jackson. Soon afterwards he was invited to be one of the Admiralty’s delegates at the Peace Conference at Versailles.*
On Northey’s right wing his commanders fared little better than Murray after crossing the Songwe River into the district known as ‘the Switzerland of German East Africa’. Captain Aumann’s ‘L’ police company escaped from Colonel Rodger’s clutches at Luwiwa, after Rodger fluffed what Northey termed ‘a chance such as a commander seldom gets in war’;10 Flindt, a former 17th Lancer who was now a planter in Zululand, was held up by his guns and found the sugar-loaf mountain position of Igamba deserted; and Hawthorn found Ipiana also deserted and sped forward to the German mission station at Utengule without a fight. Not a single German detachment had been brought to battle on Northey’s right, and when his troops approached Neu Langenburg Falkenstein and Aumann were both found to have slipped away over the Poroto Mountains.
There was ‘legitimate disappointment’11 at the failure to finish off the campaign in the south within a couple of weeks. The enemy, whose numbers were only half those estimated by Northey’s intelligence service at the outset, had simply taken advantage of the vast spaces available to retreat until such time as they chose to fight; and in the meantime Northey’s troops were introduced to campaign conditions that had proved more onerous than any of them had imagined. The terrain over which they had advanced was, as one BSAP private wrote in his diary, ‘all up hill and down dale over the mountains. Sometimes ascending many thousands of feet and descending into the valleys beyond – only to again commence climbing. Struggling through deep dongas with the guns. Everyone dead beat. The tenga boys [carriers] dropping out all along the line. Many of them made their last journey this time.’12 An inspection of the German defences at Neu Langenburg also gave an indication of what lay ahead as and when the enemy decided to stand and fight: one gunner with the South African Mounted Rifles was unnerved to discover that ‘in front of the perimeter large hollows had been excavated and these then filled with sharpened sticks hardened by fire, some about waist high, with shorter ones in front, and graded down to those of an inch or so high, to catch the barefooted askari. There were thousands of these sticks closely planted, like a garden.’13 Range discs had also been set up in the bush, cleared to make a field of fire.
Although Northey’s opponents remained as elusive as ever, communications between his units were proving hopelessly unreliable, and the toll on soldiers and carriers mounted daily, he was able to draw some consolation from the fact that his advance had brought 20,000 square miles of German East Africa under British control. Furthermore, his troops had been ‘blooded’, and the enemy were seemingly caught between them and the Central Railway, towards which van Deventer would soon begin to advance. Northey therefore remained optimistic, announcing that ‘everything has so far gone very well’ and, after consulting with Smuts, he ordered his commanders to ‘press on for all you are worth’ to Iringa ‘and strike as long as there is anything left [of the enemy]’.14 Murray’s column, by now thoroughly inured to campaign conditions, covered the 250 mostly mountainous miles from Bismarckburg back to Neu Langenburg and the centre of operations in just seventeen days.
By early July Hawthorn and Flindt, the latter described by his men as a ‘weird old man’15 on account of his habit of talking incessantly, had converged at the dazzling white fort of Njombe, at the junction of the routes to Lupembe and Iringa. Progress remained difficult. A rapid movement by Hawthorn’s 1/KAR to Iringa was thwarted by continuing rainfall and supply problems; and Flindt’s guns had had to be hauled right over the Livingstone Mountains, harried all the way by German stragglers. But at least Northey’s two wings were now forty miles from each other to the south of Malangali; and news began to filter back that the enemy meant to make a stand on a line between Malangali and Madibira, these two posts commanding the main route to Iringa. Two hundred Germans, half of whom were Königsberg men rushed south from Iringa by Captain Braunschweig, were thought to hold Malangali; while 700–800 askari of 2/FK, 5/FK 10/FK and at least one Königsberg gun were thought to be at Madibira.
On 24 July, while Murray executed a feint to tie down the garrison at Madibira, Rodger attacked the long rocky ridge of Malangali and a further ridge to the right of the road which covered it. When his troops were just 2,000 yards away a huge explosion, soon followed by another and two thunderous crashes, confirmed the pr
esence of a ‘big gun’, scaring witless the column’s porters and many of the rank and file. At about 11 a.m. Hawthorn’s 1/KAR had worked around the rear of the ridge, however, and repelled a determined counter-attack at the point of bayonets. The German gun was then shifted from its emplacement in the boma, opening fire on Hawthorn’s men from a range of just 900 yards. The action became even more ferocious on this eastern side of Malangali and Rodger moved to the west side of the hill and began to advance up the rocky spurs. In the afternoon four of the South African Mounted Rifles’s mountain guns, 75mm QF guns captured in German South-West Africa, were unlimbered and a duel between two well-drilled artillery teams commenced. At one point a shell from the German gun fell right next to a mountain gun but failed to explode, another wiped out a Maxim team, and the SAMR guns had constantly to shift their positions to avoid being obliterated during the three-hour engagement.
Fierce fighting continued after dark, but when Rodger reached the summit the Germans had gone, leaving on the Iringa road the ‘big gun’ which had shed a wheel. It was not from the Königsberg but one of the modern Krupp quick-firing howitzers that had been landed by the Marie at Sudi Bay in April. Firing 44-pdr high-explosive shrapnel with a range of six miles, the gun should have enabled Braunschweig to hold Malangali, but the unflinching opposition of Hawthorn’s column and his fear, once Rodger’s force started to move to the west, that he might be surrounded, decided him otherwise. His force had also sustained 150 casualties, thirty Germans being found dead on the battlefield, and Braunschweig was unnerved to hear in the midst of the baffle that the Wahehe chief in the territory over which he would have to retreat had declared his support for the British. With Malangali captured, the German troops at Madibira hastily abandoned their exposed positions to Murray, and Northey issued orders to all his column commanders ‘to pursue and annihilate’.16
The victory at Malangali confirmed the fighting ability of Northey’s force but his intelligence scouts, thrown out across a vast area, now started to report unsettling ‘goings-on’. Forty miles to the north-west Captain ‘Jock’ Fair observed a German soldier organising supplies at a crossing of the Great Ruaha River at Kiganga; and scouts from Hawthorn’s column sent 100 miles to the east to check on the large mission station at Lupembe found that a detachment of 1/KAR that had successfully seized the mission station from the Germans – killing Dr Stier, the former Governor of Neu Langenburg in the process – was now itself surrounded by Captain Falkenstein and some 600 askari. On 19 August Hawthorn’s column arrived at Lupembe and forced Falkenstein to retreat back across the Ruhudje River, where the column experienced one of the occasional wondrous, as opposed to murderous, spectacles that war in the African bush could offer. ‘As we approached the river, just about dawn,’ Sergeant Maker of the SAMR recalled, ‘something caused me to stop dead still, which also brought the patrol to a halt. There was no talking allowed so everything was done by signs. Nothing happened. The signal was given to advance and, at that moment the whole countryside appeared to move! As far as one could see there were eland: males, females and calves. They slowly moved off up the river . . . I often wonder, with the advance of civilization, if a sight like this will ever be seen again.’17 Hawthorn’s column crossed the river and drove Falkenstein off hills with commanding views over the river towards Songea. In his new position astride the Ruhudje River, he looked to have outflanked any German troops intent on retreating from Iringa down the river to the southern end of the Mahenge plateau.
Northey’s position at the end of August was a difficult one. He could either stay put and be drawn into a debilitating game of ‘ring-a-roses’ with German detachments, many of which were not what he called the ‘original enemy’; or he could press on now that his supply situation was improved by the cessation of the rains and attack Iringa. He chose, at Smuts’s behest, the more decisive option. Whatever the dangers of this strategy, to link up with van Deventer at Iringa and threaten von Lettow-Vorbeck’s left flank might just force a German surrender.
Northey’s advance on Iringa was rapid, but once again the ‘annihilation’ of the enemy proved an elusive goal. The terrain south of Iringa was thickly wooded, with steep hills and narrow valleys providing perfect cover for ambushes. Snipers seemed to be everywhere, further stretching the nerves of the British troops. On one afternoon a bathing parade of the SAMR was taken by surprise and had to man their guns naked. But on 29 August ‘Murray’s Rhodesians’ entered Iringa. After the unfortunate start to his campaign, Murray’s men had warmed to their commander, developing a ‘sneaking regard for him as a fighter’18 as they scrapped their way north through so many encounters that they were remembered only by names like ‘Bamboos’ or ‘Blue Gums’. The cool of the highlands was also welcome relief after the furnace-like temperatures down at Madibira and Malangali and the men enjoyed being in something that resembled a proper town. There were gardens galore, Indian traders, even – to everyone’s great surprise – 100 Chinese labourers. In the German officers’ mess, however, a life-sized portrait of an askari reminded them that their task was probably not over. To the east of Iringa Rodger’s column, despite harrying Braunschweig’s retreating troops for days, were unable to stop them retiring out of reach onto the Mahenge plateau.
In taking Iringa Northey had achieved his objective with a hard-fought advance of over 200 miles. But his men were spread very thin on the ground and dependent on extraordinarily long supply lines. At Iringa, they were once again on quarter rations – ¼ tin of bully beef and one biscuit per day. Most were ‘hardened colonials’ who, as one of their number put it, ‘would have vandalised Valhalla [or] smoked strong Boer tobacco in the corridors of the Vatican’.19 But soon it would become apparent just how exposed they were. Northey would have to fight tooth and nail for the territory he had captured, and the very survival of his columns.
TWENTY-TWO
‘Abso-Damn-Lutely Fed Up’
At Kondoa, 200 miles north of Iringa, a ‘long period of enforced inactivity’ had followed von Lettow-Vorbeck’s unsuccessful attack in May. Conditions had remained almost as appalling as before for van Deventer’s force. ‘Food was scarce and sometimes lacking altogether,’ wrote one South African officer, ‘and cold, biting rains, varied by oppressive heat, prevailed much of the time. The Germans were before us in the ravines and gorges, but in such rough country it was difficult to know exactly where their front line ran. Often bullets whipped around our ears from some unexpected quarter, and it was but rarely that we caught more than a fleeting glimpse of the enemy’.1 There were some improvements. By mid June the South Africans, all of whom were ‘abso-damn-lutely fed up’, were able to change their shirts for the first time in two months, and small quantities of delicacies like jam, bacon and currants trickled in. ‘The shock nearly killed us,’ wrote one private in 9/SAI, particularly grateful that a dependence on locally grown tobacco – ‘one draw for sixteen coughs’2 – was briefly mitigated by the arrival of a small consignment of real tobacco.
On 24 June the ‘Daily Hate’ – bombardment by the German guns from the heights to the south of the town – suddenly ceased, and two days later the German troops simply disappeared. Von Lettow-Vorbeck could ‘not abide situations where you sit about and pot at each other for days on end’3 and he had decided to withdraw the majority of his troops from Kondoa district eastwards to cover Kraut’s retreat from the Northern Railway. By the end of the month the first troops from Kondoa reached Morogoro, and the German rearguard was instructed to pull back towards the Central Railway and then to the fertile district around Mahenge. Unfortunately, van Deventer’s Division was in no position to mount an effective pursuit of the rearguard until almost a month later: sickness was rife among his men, with 12/SAI alone having lost forty per cent of its effective strength in May.
By the time van Deventer’s columns had crossed 100 waterless miles to capture Dodoma and get astride the Central Railway at the end of July, his lines of communication were in a highly precarious state
. ‘Since we left Kondoa-Irangi,’ wrote one mounted trooper, ‘we have been out in the blue, chasing the Huns over kopjes and deserts. A glance at the map will give you some idea of the country through which we have passed – wild, uninhabited, barren, and God-Forsaken. How we managed it we cannot remember, but we did . . . General van Deventer has taken huge risks, but all along our fellows have obeyed his orders with willingness and alacrity, never questioning the wisdom of the move, although at times it seemed suicidal.’4 A two-week pause was necessary before van Deventer could press on eastwards along the railway to effect a junction with Smuts. When he did so his advance met almost daily opposition from Captain Otto, a bespectacled maestro of rearguard actions, who stood between van Deventer and Smuts with five companies. But Mpapua was taken on 12 August, Kilossa (and its rum distillery) ten days later, and van Deventer’s troops – after five months – were within fifty miles of Smuts’s. (See Appendix Five.)
Smuts’s simultaneous advance through the Nguru Mountains was equally torrid. Although the eleven infantry battalions and four mounted regiments in his two divisions outnumbered the detachments of Kraut, Schulz, Stem-mermann and von Heyden-Linden by a factor of two, they proved woefully inadequate for the task of encircling the enemy. Like Otto to the west, the German detachments all successfully extricated themselves from the mountains and in one action in particular – at the Wami River on 17 August 1916 – inflicted 120 casualties on General Sheppard’s 1st Brigade. On 26 August, after three weeks of vicious scrapping Smuts’s advance guard lay awake ‘in pouring rain about six miles from [Morogoro] and heard the crashes and saw the flames as the Germans ran their engines and rolling stock from both sides of a destroyed bridge over a deep gorge’. The next day Morogoro, with its broad avenues, Sailer’s Hotel, and acre upon acre of mango and palm trees, was taken. It was, as one British officer put it, ‘really an insignificant little town, but it was the first we had seen for three hundred miles and so most exciting’.5
