Tip & Run

by Edward Paice

  The Barue revolt shared with the rebellions in British East Africa in the early part of the war the durability of ancient traditions, the vital role played by spirit mediums, and the belief in ‘medicine’ that would turn Portuguese bullets to water. But there the similarities largely ended. It was on an altogether larger and unprecedented scale and, like the Maji-Maji Rebellion in German East Africa a decade earlier, it succeeded in uniting as co-combatants an impressive array of ethnic groups. Two rivals for the title of Makombe of the Wabarue fought independently – Nongwenongwe in the north and Makosa in the south – and their influence increasingly secured support from neighbouring leaders and chicundas – bandits – in the Zambezi Valley after the start of hostilities in March 1917; it was even claimed by one loyalist chief that two Portuguese officials joined the rebellion.10 By the end of April the rebels had thrashed a Portuguese force sent to restore order and reached the outskirts of Tete, the provincial capital; and the British in Nyasaland were forced to play host to Senhor Lino, the Portuguese Administrator at Zumbo, who fled across the Luangwa River to the British post at Feira accompanied by sundry followers and his portable commode. By early May several thousand rebels were on the rampage, ‘happy as ever’, as Captain Molyneux at Feira put it, ‘to capture (and probably murder) any loyalists they can’,11 and extinguish any trace of Portuguese overlordship in Zambezia Province.

  MacDonell judged the situation in Zambezia to be ‘critical’, not least because the fighting forced more than 100,000 refugees to flee over the border into Nyasaland and the Rhodesias. But British sympathy for their ally was limited. There was a strong sense that the Portuguese were getting no more than they deserved and, despite the fact that the Portuguese had provided the British with troops during the Chilembwe Rebellion in Nyasaland, the British refused to reciprocate (although arms and ammunition were sent). To the huge disgust of the Portuguese, the British also refused to close their borders to refugees and rebel leaders; and such limited co-operation as was offered was thought to be motivated solely by a concern for the safety of the railway to Beira from Southern Rhodesia and other routes to the coast.

  Portuguese troops tackled the rebellion in a rather more determined fashion than they had ever opposed German troops. When forced to provide a refuge for Senhor Lino, Captain Molyneux cynically predicted that ‘when the Portuguese Expeditionary Force turns up from Tete (perhaps next year) we may see some excitement’12 – and ‘excitement’ was exactly what followed. In May Captain de Melo and a force of Angoni levies began the suppression of the rebellion in earnest, and the consequences were horrific: thousands were killed, women were enslaved by the Angoni and the whole territory was plundered. By November, what has been described as ‘the last of the great rebellions of Central and Southern Africa’, and ‘the most important African reaction against the demands of the Great War’13 was broken, and both claimants to the Makombeship fled to Southern Rhodesia. Portuguese celebrations were muted for the simple reason that the Barue revolt, which witnessed that last deployment of a traditional Angoni impi, was not an isolated incident. In June Major Neutel d’Abreu led thousands of Portuguese troops and 2,000 Makua levies against the Makonde on the Mvua plateau. Here too the weakness of Portuguese rule had been exposed by the war and the Companhia do Niassa, the company administering the district, had long been infamous for ‘[committing] every variety of irregularity and illegality imaginable’.14

  The forceful manner with which both these rebellions were suppressed was evidence that the Portuguese, though not prepared to admit as much, were panic-stricken that their status as a colonial power in Africa would be severely compromised if hostilities in Europe suddenly halted at a time when they were not even in control of their colonies. Such fears explained Portugal’s insistence on sending troops to France as well as three expeditionary forces to East Africa; and during 1917 they were exacerbated by increasingly public expressions of German territorial ambitions in Africa. ‘The role of Portugal will end; we are the natural inheritors in Africa’15 had become the mantra of the Kolonische Zeitung, which proposed that ‘in the South, leaving the frontier in the middle of Mozambique, [Germany] should drive through Rhodesia to German West Africa, including Angola’ and, worse still for the Portuguese, that ‘this dominion should be joined to the [Portuguese] islands of the west – Azores, Madeira, Cabo Verde, Principe, São Tome’. South African ambitions – in particular the desire to annex Delagoa Bay – were equally feared, and Smuts’s presence in London guaranteed that his country’s objectives would be forcefully pressed. All in all, Portugal was caught between a rock and a hard place, fearing its ‘enemies’ and its ‘allies’ alike, and as a result the campaign in East Africa had, no matter how great the objections of a majority of the Portuguese population to their country’s involvement in the war, ‘assumed a major importance for our nation in order to save its colonies’.16

  The message sent from Lisbon to the Portuguese High Command in East Africa was clear: something had to de done. And as most of its members were political, as opposed to military, appointees –Álvaro de Castro, the Governor-General who had succeeded Gil as commander-in-chief, was a lawyer from Coimbra who had held ministerial positions in Portugal, and Major Cabrito, his Chief of Staff, was regarded by the British as nothing more than a political ‘thug’ – the political ramifications of failure were not underestimated. This explained the ruthless fashion in which the Barue and Makonde revolts were suppressed, and the feverish activity which followed a conference with the British military authorities in mid 1917. The main Portuguese base was moved from Palma to Mocímboa da Praia, tracks leading to the posts on the Rovuma were greatly improved, permission was even granted for ‘Cohen’s Scouts’ to operate in Portuguese territory (though recruitment of carriers by the British was expressly forbidden), and MacDonell was informed that landing facilities for a new force of 10,000 soldiers and 10,000–15,000 tons of material were being built at Mocímboa da Praia, together with two large hospitals.

  The flurry of activity in Portuguese East Africa was certainly welcomed by van Deventer, but he remained sceptical about the outlook for Anglo-Portuguese military co-operation. All the European troops in Portuguese East Africa were known to be suffering from malaria, dysentery, blackwater or syphilis; the Portuguese askari went unpaid for months at a time; the carriers were beset by pneumonia and chills as they slept in the open and were seldom given blankets or greatcoats; and few of the Portuguese camps even had proper latrines. By the time the 5,000 troops of a Fourth Expeditionary Force started to arrive it was obvious that few of Castro’s initiatives had led to any lasting improvements in the situation; and most of the new troops felt doomed from the moment they set foot on shore. ‘The same fate awaits them as the former expedition,’ MacDonell warned the War Office, ‘that is to say those who do not die of fever or dysentery will return with their health permanently shattered’;17 and as he tried valiantly to assess whether the new force would be of greater use to the British than any of its predecessors his misgivings increased. Its leader, Colonel Tómas de Sousa Rosa, was reputed to be ‘one of the most unpopular officers in the army’ who had ‘the utmost difficulty in getting officers to serve under him’. Furthermore, Sousa Rosa was, like Castro, a staunch republican and MacDonell’s interpreter was a royalist – a situation which did little to foster harmonious relations between the British and Portuguese staffs. But Portugal remained ‘convinced that in military and all other matters they are as experienced as any other nation’18 and, as Sir Edward Grey had predicted, was prepared to ‘cling to [her colonies] as Tacitus says the love of dissimulation clung to Tiberius at his last gasp’.19

  TWENTY-NINE

  Into ‘The Unknown’

  On Northey’s front, it was the remnants of ‘Murray’s Rhodesians’ who were given the task of spearheading an advance onto the Mahenge plateau in July (although Murray himself was no longer fit to take to the field with his men). Two companies of NRP led by Major Dickinson were ordered
to advance across the Ruhudje River from Lupembe against Aumann’s three companies, while Lincke’s troops were pushed back from the Likuyu district to Mpondas by a combined force of KAR, 5/SAI, 1/SAR and 2/SAR led by Hawthorn. Aumann did not give up his ground easily: the operation to dislodge him took almost three weeks and it was not until mid August 1917 that Dickinson and Colonel Fair, who had advanced north from Kitanda with 1/RNR and a company of NRP, were able to link up west of Mpepo – where Aumann’s 400 men held a heavily entrenched ridge.* On 19 August a three-pronged assault attack on his positions was launched, and after ten days of heavy fighting Aumann withdrew to the north-east. Near Litete he turned and fought again, but when almost a third of his troops were killed, wounded or captured, he began a series of forced marches towards Mahenge. Fair chased him to within twenty-five miles of the town, and called on Aumann to surrender. Aumann refused, knowing that Fair could not defeat him with a frontal attack and that his enemy’s supply lines must be stretched to breaking-point. The German commander then struck south, having heard that Colonel Huyghé, the Belgian commander-in-chief, had begun his advance from the north towards Mahenge.

  There was no panic in the German ranks as Northey and Huyghé began their encirclement of the Mahenge plateau. Tafel, who had been sent by von Lettow-Vorbeck to replace Wahle in May, was a skilful and experienced field commander, and he had able officers in Aumann, the explosives expert Schönfeld (who had organised the Rufiji delta defences and the raids against the Uganda Railway in 1915), and the former policeman Friedrich Lincke. Schönfeld had held the northern approaches to Mahenge through the rains, and Lincke the southern approach vacated by Kraut and Wintgens in February.* Furthermore, Tafel’s force had been strengthened by the arrival of Captain Otto with his five companies from the Rufiji front, which brought its strength to about 2,500 rifles in fourteen companies. After the rains supplies were also not a problem, and Tafel and von Brandis, his Chief of Staff who spoke English with a Scottish accent, having had a Scottish nanny, had organised a chain of dumps stretching far to the south-east that would feed their troops until December. The only slight concern was how new askari recruited during the rains, and carriers who had been ‘converted’ into askari, would fare in battle as Tafel sought to carry out von Lettow-Vorbeck’s order to hold the plateau as long as possible, and then hasten to the area between the Mbemkuru and Lukuledi Rivers to link up with his commander-in-chief.

  When Northey began his advance from the west Huyghé’s four battalions of Belgian troops – some 2,000 rifles – started south from the Central Railway in two groups. The main force of three battalions, led by Major Bataille, started from Kilossa and at the end of the third week of August had pushed Schönfeld out of Kidodi and Tope and crossed the Ruaha River. Bataille then marched on Ifakara and effected a junction with a British column, led by Colonel Tytler, Colonel Hubert’s Belgian 12th Bataillon (which had advanced from Iringa) and Major Gilly’s 10th Bataillon (which had started from Dodoma). By the second week in September the territory between the Ruaha and Kilombero Rivers had been cleared of German troops and, after a two-week halt to regroup and resupply, Bataille’s troops fought their way up the escarpment on to the Mahenge plateau. On 7 October Mahenge was attacked, and after three days of fierce fighting in pouring rain Tafel slipped away southwards, enabling Major Muller to hoist the Belgian and British flags over the town. Two hundred and fifty wounded Germans and askari were taken prisoner.

  It was almost exactly a year since Belgian troops had captured Tabora and once again, despite appalling supply difficulties and the desertion of one quarter of the 13,000 first-line carriers supplied by van Deventer, they had done exactly what had been asked of them at a speed that was positively disconcerting to their British allies. But when they entered Mahenge they were so short of supplies that only two battalions, Muller’s and Gilly’s, were able to pursue Tafel across land stripped bare by the retreating foe. Worse still, Colonel Fair seemingly made no effort to cut off Tafel’s retreat, and Murray relieved him of the command of the NRP for his failure. As Fair took up his new duties as garrison commander at Mahenge, Tafel’s force raced southwards in three columns commanded by Otto, Schönfeld and Tafel himself while Aumann was chased by two NRP companies towards Saidi. Northey’s chances of cornering Tafel appeared to have evaporated but Hawthorn was sent to shadow Otto’s column, which halted at an entrenched position on the Luwegu River; and Colonel Shorthose marched a detachment of 4/KAR all the way from Tunduru, on the border with Portuguese East Africa, to link up with Gilly at Liwale, 200 miles south-east of Mahenge, in the third week of October. These measures were, however, of dubious efficacy: Northey’s 3,000 troops were now spread over such a vast area that Tafel was sure to have ample opportunity to break across Northey’s lines of communication exactly as Wahle and Wintgens had done before him.

  In the east van Deventer, notwithstanding the parlous state of his troops and Naumann’s ‘stunt’ in the north-east, was under strict instructions from the War Office to defeat von Lettow-Vorbeck once and for all in the dry season. Too many British naval and merchant vessels were still employed in supporting the East Africa campaign and their value to the British war effort increased exponentially as German U-boats inflicted ever-increasing losses on British shipping. The revolution in Russia and mutinies among the French troops in Europe also exacerbated Britain’s plight, and underscored the importance of ending Germany’s resistance in Africa so that men and materiel could be released for service elsewhere (even if only garrison duty in India). But van Deventer’s task was far more challenging than he had been led to believe when he had been instructed by Botha and Smuts to ‘clear up’ in German East Africa.

  As soon as the rains – the worst in living memory – had ended in April 1917, von Lettow-Vorbeck had started to withdraw all remaining troops on the Rufiji front to face the threat of British advances inland from Kilwa and Lindi. A new German headquarters was established at Nahungu, and from there von Lettow-Vorbeck directed his units facing the ports. Detachments led by Wahle, Kraut and Looff opposed Lindi, Göring and von Lieberman opposed Kilwa, and von Lettow-Vorbeck himself commanded a reserve of half a dozen companies which could be deployed on either front as and when required. The German forward troops made conditions as uncomfortable as possible for those in the British bridgeheads, vigorously opposing any patrols venturing too far inland and even, on occasion, mounting daring raids deep inside the British lines. Meanwhile a chain of supply dumps was set up stretching far to the south: von Lettow-Vorbeck knew that he would eventually be forced to retreat but he had no intention of doing so in a hurried or disorganised fashion – and he was certain that at some point the opportunity would arise to inflict a substantial defeat on the enemy. A message from the Kaiser reassuring von Lettow-Vorbeck that ‘The Heroes of East Africa’,1 who since the arrival of the Marie in April 1916 had been required to survive solely on captured and home-fashioned supplies, were not forgotten further stiffened his resolve and, in time, would encourage him to fight the two largest battles of the entire campaign.

  On the face of it, the odds were not in favour of prolonging the resistance much longer. The ration strength of British troops in German East Africa still exceeded 50,000 rifles, whereas von Lettow-Vorbeck could count on no more than 9,000 troops (a third of whom were with Tafel on the Mahenge plateau or with Naumann in the north); and the next phase of the campaign would be fought in districts which had played a prominent role in the Maji-Maji uprising a decade earlier (and whose ‘loyalty’ was therefore questionable). When sickness rates and van Deventer’s need to protect his lines of communication were taken into account, however, the disparity between the two sides narrowed dramatically; and the maximum number of troops available for the British advance inland from Kilwa and Lindi was no greater than 13,000. Furthermore, von Lettow-Vorbeck was familiar with the terrain and could move his troops with greater rapidity than the enemy.

  The British advance began in early July. (See Appendix Six.)
From Kilwa three columns, commanded by General Beves because Hannyngton was sick, were ordered to clear all German troops from the 100-mile front which extended inland from the port to Liwale. Further south, O’Grady, who was regarded by von Lettow-Vorbeck’s officers as ‘one of the better horses in the British stable’, was ordered to force his way inland from Lindi and cut off the German retreat from the Kilwa front. Five months of almost continual fighting in the unhealthiest area of the entire colony lay ahead, the heat intensifying by the week and every water hole – when they could be located – being vigorously defended by the enemy. In many areas the bush was so thick that, as the commander of one of the Kilwa columns put it, ‘large bodies of troops [could] pass each other within a mile distance without being aware of the passage of the other’;2 maps were rudimentary, with place names usually referring to an area of twenty square miles or more; violent bush fires frequently raged across the steppeland; and, as ever, it was the terrain and disease which were to prove even more formidable enemies than the German askari.

  The three columns from Kilwa succeeded in prising the enemy out of its positions overlooking the port within days, an achievement in itself considering the hilly terrain was covered in ‘miombo forest, miombo forest, thick bush and then more miombo forest’.3 But with each mile that the German commanders retired south, via Mnindi, their askari seemed to fight even more doggedly. By the middle of the month Captain von Lieberman had effected a concentration of a dozen companies – some 2,000 rifles with forty-eight machine-guns and a battery of captured Portuguese artillery – at Narungombe. There he determined to stand and fight: it was the last source of water north of the Mbemkuru River sufficient for a large body of troops, and he urgently needed to regroup after a week of almost constant fighting. Von Lieberman deployed across the track approaching Narungombe, his left flank in thick bush and his right on the swamp, and waited for his foe. His positions were well entrenched, with a cleared field of fire, and the German machine-guns were placed on rising ground either side of the track.