by Edward Paice
Some of the South African troops were immediately despatched to rescue Rodger from Wintgens’s clutches and the remainder prepared to oppose Major von Langenn-Steinkeller’s attack from the north, but the likelihood of Iringa being held appeared remote. Freeth’s ‘Fighting Seventh’ had completed the last seventy-two miles of its forced march in just seventy-four hours, Walker’s ‘mounted’ troops arrived with only ten horses after a 170-mile trek, there were just twenty-one fit men among the town’s existing garrison, and there was no reserve. However Walker’s troopers succeeded in inflicting more than 100 casualties on von Langenn-Steinkeller’s column and Wahle was forced to admit that his attack on Iringa ‘didn’t work’.6 Had Wintgens not dallied at Ngominyi the outcome might have been very different; and even as it was the South African troops which had saved Iringa were in no state to remain in the field for much longer. Given their sorry state, the arrival of van Deventer to take command of operations in the vicinity of Iringa was not quite the boon that Northey had envisaged.
Although Kraut’s appearance on the Ruhudje River, which required Northey to deploy Hawthorn and Murray against him, had not facilitated the capture of Iringa by Wahle, it did enhance the Westtruppen’s freedom of movement. After the failure to take Iringa Wahle and von Langenn-Steinkeller made straight for Malangali, vacated by Braunschweig in July, and on 8 November bombarded its defences with one of the 12-pdr British naval guns captured by Wintgens at Ngominyi. Over the next four days three attempts to storm Malangali, manned by only 100 askari of Colonel Tomlinson’s newly formed Rhodesia Native Regiment, were beaten off; and only on 12 November did Wahle reluctantly withdraw when Murray’s ‘ubiquitous Rhodesians’ arrived on the scene, having been rushed 120 miles by lorry and car from Mkapira. Wahle’s rearguard was routed by Murray, and a plane was used to break up his force as it retired east towards Lupembe. Two MCs, a DSO and six DCMs were awarded on the spot to Murray’s men, while Captain Marriott of 2/SAR also won the DSO for his handling of the Rhodesia Native Regiment’s recruits in the trenches.
Wahle knew that he had stirred up a hornet’s nest, and that breaking through Northey’s lines would be all the more difficult now that the enemy’s mobility had been greatly enhanced by the ability to use vehicles in the hot, dry November conditions. He was even more worried, however, by his supply situation. Still unaware of Kraut’s proximity the other side of the Ruhudje River, Wahle recognised that he had to settle somewhere with abundant provisions before the rains began. The Mahenge plateau was his destination of choice, but his stocks of food were so depleted that he needed more supplies in order to reach it. With that in mind he had sent Wintgens ahead to Lupembe Mission to see if its rice-growing district was in British or German hands while he invested Malangali. As a result, Northey had been forced by the appearance of Wahle’s troops amid his lines (and their regular attacks on his convoys) to order Hawthorn to the relief of Lupembe and Murray to the relief of Malangali. It was therefore Wahle’s appearance that explained ‘the riddle’ perplexing Kraut: it was not his 25/FK which was under attack, but Lupembe that was being shelled by Wintgens, prompting the withdrawal of many of the British who had so successfully thwarted his attack on Mkapira.
At Malangali Wahle had given strict orders to Wintgens, whom he considered to be ‘an excellent soldier and leader’ but ‘always ambitious’,7 not to attack Lupembe before the arrival of the Westtruppen main force. But once again the opportunistic Wintgens could not (or would not) resist the temptation. Lupembe Mission was on a high plateau, 5,000 feet above sea level, and to the east the ground dropped away sharply to swampy ‘buffalo and elephant country’ which extended sixty miles to the escarpment leading to the Mahenge plateau. It was defended by sixty Europeans and 250 new Awemba recruits to 1/KAR led by Captain Wyatt; and the garrison possessed just four machine-guns and two old muzzle-loading 7-pdrs (which belched black powder when fired). No attack had been expected – eighty German prisoners and the families of the Awemba recruits were living in and around the grounds of the mission – but morale was high and Lupembe’s defences had been carefully constructed.
Wintgens’s 400 askari were mostly Baganda and Nubians who had served with him for years, and his column had eight machine-guns and three field guns with which to launch his attack in mid November. But for six days the defences held firm, as the Awemba recruits sang and made ‘not particularly polite remarks’ about the German askari to bolster their morale. In one of three major assaults Wintgens’s askari drove cattle ahead of them into the British trenches, on another occasion they attacked in the failing light at dusk, and just before dawn on 14 November they charged the east side of the mission (an assault which was said to be ‘the worst of the lot’). Like the previous attacks it was repulsed and this time, despite having lost two of their machine-gun officers, the British troops ‘had the idea that we had given the Germans such a knock that they would probably not try it again’. In daylight, while Wintgens collected his dead and wounded under a flag of truce, a message arrived to say that Hawthorn was approaching with the relief force from Mkapira; but that night was ‘as sleepless as ever’ as a final assault by Wintgens was anticipated. At 9 a.m. on 15 November, however, Wintgens’s field hospital could be seen withdrawing under ‘an immense Red Cross flag’.8 The siege was over, and at 5 p.m. Hawthorn’s first troops arrived at Lupembe from the east while Murray’s men, rushed in cars from Malangali, attacked Wintgens’s rearguard to the west.
Père Paradis, one of two missionaries of the White Fathers attached to the British forces at Lupembe, had baptised ninety-four Awemba recruits during the week’s fighting;* and he had buried six Germans and forty-one askari. In fact Wintgens’s column had suffered more than 300 casualties, half of whom lay in the mission’s tiny hospital; and the naval gun seized by Wintgens at Ngominyi was recaptured. Captain Wyatt and machine-gunner Lieutenant Slattery were both recommended for instant awards; but all the European troops at Lupembe recognised that it was to the Awemba recruits that the victory really belonged.
Wintgens may have intended to attack again on the night of 14 November, but when Wahle arrived from Malangali with Murray hard on his heels the possibility of a further assault was immediately dismissed. Wahle was once again livid that his orders had been ignored by Wintgens, and that as a result the whole area around Lupembe was swarming with British troops blocking his path towards the Mahenge plateau. Worse still, when Wahle attempted to reorganise the Westtruppen at M’frika, a few miles east of Lupembe, he discovered that Colonel Franz Hübener’s column, with its 10.5cm howitzer from the blockade-runner Marie, was missing. Wahle had ordered Wintgens never to leave Hübener, but the order had seemingly not been received and Wintgens had assumed that after the abortive attack on Iringa Hübener must have linked up with Wahle. In fact Hübener was still west of Malangali, and on 18 November Wahle sent a runner to him with a message informing him ‘Break through Malangali now impossible. Ubena Lupembe strongly fortified and garrisoned. Try to march south-eastwards via Mufindi to Mpanga Kiganga where I shall try to effect a junction with Kraut.’9
It did not take Northey long to discover Hübener’s whereabouts and a mixed force of NRP, RNR and BSAP led by Murray took to vehicles for a dash to Ilembule, forty miles north-west of Lupembe. So great was the importance attached to preventing Hübener from rejoining Wahle that this relatively small force possessed no fewer than fifteen machine-guns, and when Hübener’s column appeared on 26 November he realised that his path eastwards was well and truly blocked by a determined and well-armed enemy. After loosing off more than 250 howitzer rounds at Murray’s entrenchments around the mission station, Hübener surrendered on the condition that he could blow up the howitzer, that his askari were to be taken to Nyasaland and not used as carriers, and that his carriers were to be paid what was owed to them and sent home. Northey agreed to the terms and sixty-eight Germans and 249 askari were taken prisoner, among them Captain Albrecht Hering, who had commanded von Lettow-Vorbeck’s artillery at
Tanga and in the north-east in the first year of the war. The capture of the German column was deemed a ‘very satisfactory enterprise’10 by Northey, and compensated in part for the disasters that had overtaken Baxendale and Clarke in recent months.
Despite the loss of Hübener and the failure of Wintgens’s attack on Lupembe, Wahle’s Westtruppen were not beaten. One hundred and twenty-nine Germans and 619 askari had been killed, captured or wounded since the first engagements with Northey’s troops at the end of October, but Wahle remained as determined as ever to break through with the 750 survivors to the Mahenge plateau. From M’frika he sent out patrols to the east and within days one returned with the news that there were German troops – Kraut’s force – on the Ruhudje River. In the fourth week of November Kraut, who had heard nothing from Wahle since July, and Wahle finally linked up. It was an astonishing feat of ‘determination and aptitude’11 by the elderly general and, even though his trek from Tabora ‘had cost [the Westtruppen] dear’,* Northey was bitterly disappointed when he learnt that Kraut and Wahle had succeeded in joining forces.
While Northey was fighting Wahle and Kraut in the south during October and November, Smuts’s plan for a final push against the main German force was thwarted by the rain and von Lettow-Vorbeck in equal measure. After Schnee and von Lettow-Vorbeck had refused his invitation to surrender he hoped that the enemy might stand and fight north of the Rufiji River, and with that in mind he made enquiries of the War Office about the feasibility of using gas against the Schutztruppe.12 This was an extraordinary initiative, quite out of keeping with the impression both sides sought to maintain of a ‘chivalrous campaign’,† and showed how desperate to end the campaign Smuts had become. The idea came to naught. Smuts was advised that the scrub and long grass would render gas ineffective at a range of over 200 yards, but that if he still wanted to proceed 3,000 50lb cylinders – sufficient to attack a single 1,400-yard front – could be made available in two months’ time. Time, however, was a luxury Smuts felt he could ill afford; he declined the offer.
By the end of October von Lettow-Vorbeck had withdrawn half his troops over the Rufiji, and instead of forcing him to fight north of the river Smuts had to consider the best means of preventing his retreat further southwards. In order to do so he needed to reinforce the units holding Kilwa, on the coast, and Kibata, a huge white boma north-west of Kilwa on a plain encircled by the Matumbi Hills – and this required a further reorganisation of his forces. A new 1st Division, commanded by General Hoskins and comprising Hannyngton’s and O’Grady’s brigades, was despatched to Kilwa; while only Sheppard’s brigade remained north of the Rufiji facing the eight companies under Captain Otto’s command that von Lettow-Vorbeck had left as his new rearguard.*
Within days of the withdrawal of half of his force from north of the Rufiji, it became apparent that von Lettow-Vorbeck had anticipated that Smuts might seek to cut him off to the south when two companies commanded by Captain Schulz probed the defences of Kibata on 7 November. But it took weeks for von Lettow-Vorbeck to transfer nine companies from the Rufiji to Kibata as well, and by early December Hannyngton’s brigade had reinforced the British defences there and O’Grady’s brigade occupied the Matandu Valley to the west of the Matumbi Hills. On 6 December the battle that Smuts had hoped would occur north of the Rufiji commenced around Kibata, but with the roles reversed: it was the British troops, not von Lettow-Vorbeck’s, who found themselves in danger of encirclement as Lieutenant Apel of the Königsberg began a ferocious bombardment of the boma with one of his former ship’s guns, a howitzer and two mountain guns. In getting artillery up into the Matumbi Hills undetected von Lettow-Vorbeck had once again done ‘the impossible’;13 and as Hoskins despatched reinforcements from Kilwa to Kibata and ordered O’Grady’s brigade into the Matumbi Hills Smuts’s plans for an advance inland to Liwale lay in tatters.
The battle around Kibata raged more or less continuously throughout December 1916, and rapidly dispelled any impression in the British ranks that von Lettow-Vorbeck’s resolve might be diminishing. On a single day the recently arrived Gold Coast Regiment sustained casualties of fifteen per cent in its ranks, and fifty per cent among its officers; and von Lettow-Vorbeck estimated total British casualties at about 400. On Boxing Day 1916 Major Harold Lewis of the 129th Baluchis wrote to his mother with the following account of his experiences at Kibata:
We have had a very hard time, and really for some days it was touch and go whether we should be able to hold our own against the Huns. However, thanks to our men, we did it. My double Company has had two great stunts. The first was when the Boche first appeared against us and we (less than half the regiment) and [1/2 KAR], were in an isolated post. My men were in the place most violently attacked; all day long my left picquet was subjected to desultory bombardment from several guns, and also from heavy machine-gun fire. An hour before dark, this developed into an intense bombardment, and except for the size of the shells, I never experienced such a hot one, even in France . . . We lost heavily in the redoubt . . . however our men stuck it like heroes, though there was little left of the trenches.
Despite this repulse the German askari had gained a foothold on the end of the spur of Picquet Hill onto which the 129th Baluchis and KAR were clinging, and they were told ‘to retake it’. Lewis’s letter continued:
our fellows, as usual, got right up to the Hun trenches at night, and if they had been supported would have got through. But they were not supported. Poor little Bunny was killed right on their trenches . . . and they gave me the job with full powers to make any arrangement I liked. So I fixed up a stunt with bombs and various machine-guns in flanking positions to cooperate. We planned it so as to leave our trenches, and creep up to the Huns in the inky blackness, and to have moonlight as soon as we had taken the trenches. Accordingly at 11 p.m. the line of bombers crept over the parapet and formed up in line in the darkness. They were followed by the first line, also with bombs who formed up behind. Then the second line crept out and formed to the right to guard against counter-attacks. The third line took their place in our trenches, and waited to push up to help the first line. Ayub Khan, of course, led the bombing line and his first bomb, which hit the German sentry in the chest, was the signal. Bombs were thrown, the guns and machine-guns opened and the still black night became a pandemonium. The German machine-guns on the lodgement poured a stream of bullets on to our trenches over the heads of our men, who lay on their stomachs, throwing bombs and pulling up the Hun stakes and obstacles. After about ten minutes, the Hun machine-gun stopped and the third line left our trenches and rushed forward and, yelling wildly, got into the Hun trenches and killed the survivors. All the time the Sepoys were getting through the obstacles. They were cheering and shouting, and nothing could have stopped them, and once in the trenches nothing could live. They were like a crowd of furies, and I have never seen anything equal to their dash. This action relieved the situation enormously, and practically put an end to the Huns’ offensive and now no-one can speak too highly of the 129th DCO Baluchis . . . Ayub, during the night attack, was shot through his handsome face, but I am pretty sure he will live to fight another day. He is the bravest man I ever knew.*
Von Lettow-Vorbeck was as disappointed by the failure to inflict a resounding defeat on the enemy at Kibata as he had been at Kondoa, but he still regarded his situation as ‘remarkably favourable’. He was in no doubt that he could ‘contemplate the continuation of the war for a considerable time’,14 and was greatly encouraged in his task by the news that the Kaiser had awarded him the Pour le Mérite.†
While the main British and German forces fought around Kibata, Northey moved his HQ forward to Lupembe and prepared for an offensive against Kraut and Wahle. Smuts had visited the southern front at the end of November and he, Northey and van Deventer had decided that it would be impossible, given that only 2,000 troops were fit for combat on a front which was almost 300 miles long, to push across the Ruhudje and Ulanga Rivers and onto the Mahenge plat
eau; and that a much larger force would be required to clear the plateau after the rains. But in the meantime a ‘demonstration’ against Wahle and Kraut by van Deventer’s troops (at Iringa) and Northey’s (further south) was considered to be an attractive compromise. Even if it failed to persuade von Lettow-Vorbeck that his left flank was in danger of collapse, it would at least clear the enemy from the lowlands to the west of the plateau and cause considerable congestion on the plateau itself.
Wahle’s reappearance had swelled Kraut’s ranks by about a third, and forced Northey to withdraw the small garrison left at Mkapira for fear that it might fall victim to a joint attack by Wahle and Kraut, but it was something of a mixed blessing. When Wahle’s 3,000 carriers were included, the arrival of the Westtruppen meant 4,000 extra mouths to feed during the rainy season. A huge area, stretching as far south as Songea, was being planted by the local population but until the harvest the troops on the plateau would have to survive as best they could. There was no prospect of assistance from von Lettow-Vorbeck’s main force, with whom even the most rapid communication took anything up to a week.
By Christmas Eve 1916 Wahle had moved his headquarters from M’frika to a rubber plantation at Tanganika, about halfway between Lupembe and Mkapira, and closer to Kraut’s troops on the Ruhudje. The nightmare of the trek from Tabora was swiftly forgotten as his troops enjoyed luxuries from the Marie’s cargo sent to them by Kraut. The first news from home that any of Wahle’s officers or NCOs had received in many months was a further distraction from their recent travails, and he, Wintgens, von Langenn-Steinkeller and Zingel all learnt that they, like Kraut, had been awarded the Iron Cross 2nd Class in September. The German East Africa campaign had not been forgotten by Berlin.
