by Edward Paice
On 19 July the three British columns from Kilwa attacked.* Beves’s force outnumbered von Lieberman’s by a factor of two and had twice as many machine-guns, but von Lettow-Vorbeck was known to be approaching Narungombe with at least four companies. The main attack was frontal, led by the Gold Coast Regiment, a detachment of the 33rd Punjabis and 1/3 KAR, and the battle raged over appalling terrain from just after dawn until dusk. Visibility was seldom more than thirty yards and often less as the bush ignited into a colossal inferno. ‘The day got hotter and hotter,’ wrote one KAR officer, ‘while the smoke from the grass fires, until they burnt themselves out, caused considerable discomfort; water was running short in the waterbottles, while the troops were getting tired.’ ‘By 3 p.m.,’ he continued, ‘it was obvious we were getting nowhere, while a strong rumour was going round that von Lettow was only a few miles away with his fresh troops and we were in for a heavy knock.’4 Four German counter-attacks on the British flanks were beaten off during the day, one of them mauling the inexperienced askari of 3/3KAR on the British left, but when 1/3KAR on the right fought its way into the German trenches von Lieberman, thinking that he was being attacked by an enemy many times larger than it actually was, ordered his commanders to retire on Mihambia, a dozen miles to the south, as they were running short of ammunition. The withdrawal came as something of a surprise to many British officers. ‘We were badly beaten,’ was the general prognosis, ‘all the Germans had to do was to press home their attack and he could have taken prisoner what was left of the British forces’.
British and South African troops cross the Ruaha River at the end of 1916, while British airmen celebrate Christmas in the hope that the campaign will soon be over
The Allied offensive grinds to a halt in early 1917, frustrated by the worst rains in living memory and von Lettow-Vorbeck’s elusive tactics. General Hoskins paid the price
Askari of 15 Feldkompanie in camp
One of von Lettow-Vorbeck’s indomitable NCOs
Max Wintgens, though increasingly sick, remained on the loose until mid 1917
Belgian troops capture Mahenge in September 1917
L59, the airship sent by Berlin with supplies for the beleaguered German troops
Indian troopers of the 25th Cavalry cross the Rovuma River after von Lettow-Vorbeck’s escape into Portuguese East Africa, November 1917
The German High Command on the run in Portuguese East Africa in 1918: von Lettow-Vorbeck and Kraut, Governor Schnee, and Wahle and Boell
The Allied officers charged with the final pursuit of von Lettow-Vorbeck: (left to right) Northey, van Devenber, Sheppard and Errol MacDonnell
Askari of 2/4 KAR in Portuguese East Africa
Schnee (centre right) with the remaining German officers after surrender
Schnee, von Lettow-Vorbeck and their men receive a heroes’ welcome at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, March 1919
M’Ithiria Mukaria, the oldest surviving veteran of the King’s African Rifles, in Isiolo (photographed by the author, February 2002)
The memorial at the spot near the Chambezi River where von Lettow-Vorbeck was informed that the war in Europe was over
Unveiling of the War Memorial in Nairobi, 1927
After the German troops had disappeared ‘an uncanny silence fell over the battlefield’.5 Some of the most battle-hardened German company commanders had been in the fray – including Walter Spangenburg, Franz Kempner, Walter Büchsel and Leopold Steinhaüser – and British casualties were severe. Among the 800 men of the Gold Coast Regiment one in five lay dead or wounded; six of the officers of 1/3KAR were killed and 200 of its askari killed or wounded; and 8/SAI, which had supported the Gold Coast Regiment, sustained casualties of one third and lost three of its machine-guns to the enemy.
In the immediate aftermath of the battle von Lettow-Vorbeck was livid with von Lieberman for disregarding an order to hold Narungombe until he arrived to ‘seal the doom of the enemy’s main body’. But when he found out that von Lieberman had only received the order when his withdrawal was already well under way he relented; and when the full extent of the casualties inflicted on Beves’s force became apparent von Lieberman was fulsomely praised for his ‘brilliant leadership’ in dealing such a ‘heavy blow’6 to the enemy. Had von Lettow-Vorbeck arrived on the scene twenty-four hours earlier, the battle at Narungombe would have completely put paid to the Kilwa offensive. As it was, no further advance could be contemplated for almost two months while a scorched earth and blockhouse strategy was adopted to clear a route south.
The battle at Narungombe seemed to demonstrate that van Deventer had acted too precipitously, and more carelessly than Hoskins would ever have done, in trying to appease the War Office’s desire for a swift end to the campaign. But had he not ordered the offensive the Kilwa troops would probably have been robbed of any offensive capability within weeks. Half the men of 7/SAI, which had returned from South Africa at the end of June with a ration strength of 966 all ranks, had contracted malaria within a month of their arrival at Kilwa (and by November their effective strength would be 158). The only hope of combating such massive sickness rates was to reach higher ground inland; and within weeks O’Grady was also ordered forward from Lindi to Mingoyo. But there too the advance of O’Grady’s three columns soon encountered vigorous opposition from Wahle’s nine companies,* and British casualties were severe, particularly among the 30th Punjabis (seven of whose eight British officers were wounded, to add to the 250 other ranks killed or wounded). No further move could be attempted until October, and in the meantime there were many among the British ranks who began to wonder if the campaign would only end when they were fighting in the streets of Cape Town.
In October, van Deventer was ready to order a resumption of the advance. General Hannyngton, who had returned from hospital, took charge of the Kilwa force, Beves moved south to assume command of the Lindi force, and this time the pressure exerted on the enemy was better co-ordinated. From the north Hannyngton ordered the Nigerian Brigade and Colonel Orr’s column, backed by three new battalions of Indian troops,*to converge on Bweho Chini, forcing the enemy to retire south from Mihambia and Ndessa towards Nahungu, leaving behind more than 100 dead. On 27 September Nahungu, von Lettow-Vorbeck’s HQ, was surrounded but he had already fled and Franz Köhl succeeded in eluding the British encirclement with six companies which now constituted the rearguard of the main German force. It soon became clear that the general line of the German retreat was towards the Lukuledi River, and not inland towards Liwale, so the Nigerian Brigade were sent still further south to the Lukuledi to sandwich Wahle and von Lettow-Vorbeck between Mahiwa and Lindi while Hannyngton cleared Captain Köhl’s detachment from the area around Ruponda. (See Appendix Seven.)
In the south, Beves divided the Lindi force into two columns, led by O’Grady and Tytler, which began to advance up the Lukuledi River towards Nyangao in early October.†As Wahle’s troops retreated inland he suddenly found that two of the three Nigerian battalions sent south by Hannyngton had arrived at Mahiwa cotton plantation to cut off his line of retreat, but his concerns were soon dispelled by the simultaneous appearance of von Lettow-Vorbeck’s reserve near Mahiwa. Over the next four days the battle that ensued around Mahiwa and Nyangao, three or four miles apart, proved to be the most costly – to both sides – of the campaign. Repeated efforts by O’Grady and Tytler to relieve the Nigerian troops around Mahiwa were thwarted by Wahle while behind his positions detachments led by Göring, Köhl, and Walther von Ruckteschell (an artist of some repute who had been visiting the colony on a painting trip when war broke out) launched attack after attack against the Nigerian defences. On 17 October, the third day of the battle, Tytler ordered 3/4KAR to attack Wahle’s positions on a ridge two miles south-west of Nyangao while O’Grady moved the Bharatpur Infantry and 1/2KAR up on his right. Bit by bit the British troops began to dislodge the German askari from their entrenchments, but in the late afternoon a ferocious counter-attack was launched which pushed the who
le British line back. An hour later O’Grady attacked again, and at nightfall there was still no let-up in the intensity of the fighting.
Soon after dawn on 18 October O’Grady finally broke through to the beleaguered Nigerians, 3/2KAR in the vanguard, but when Tytler was again counter-attacked Beves was forced to throw in his reserve while the remnants of the ‘Frontiersmen’, now in their third year of campaigning, endeavoured to fill the gaps which had emerged between Tytler’s and O’Grady’s columns. It was the battalion’s last action of the war, one which saw their strength reduced from 120 men to fewer than fifty as Wahle kept up the pressure on the Lindi columns until nightfall. Meanwhile, as the battle neared its climax, Colonel Orr’s column arrived from Ruponda and marched against the two or three German companies, part of Kraut’s force, which held the Lukuledi Mission. A ‘sharp fight’ took place, forcing Kraut to abandon the mission and, after the appearance of this new force thirty miles west of Mahiwa and Nyangao, von Lettow-Vorbeck’s and Wahle’s troops finally began to abandon their positions. On 19 October the battlefield was quiet.
At Mahiwa and Nyangao the ranks of the Nigerian battalions and Beves’s columns, 5,000 troops in all, were decimated: total casualties were estimated at between one third and a half. At Nyangao, on 17 October, Colonel Giffard’s 1/2KAR lost half its British officers and NCOs and a third of its askari; at Mahiwa, on 16 October alone, the surrounded 1st, 2nd and 4th Nigerians lost more than 300 killed and wounded; and, when Kraut launched a counterattack against Orr’s column at Lukuledi Mission on 21 October, 1/3KAR incurred equally severe casualties before Kraut called off the attack and led his six companies off to join von Lettow-Vorbeck in the vicinity of Ndanda, twenty miles to the east of the mission. As the German troops moved to new positions south of the Lukuledi River it was far from certain what the substantial loss of life had achieved. On the one hand, the timely appearance of Orr’s column at Lukuledi Mission had undoubtedly robbed von Lettow-Vorbeck of the option of retiring on Masasi, a dozen miles south of the mission; and Beves’s assault on Wahle’s positions had forced the enemy to abandon the Lukuledi River altogether. On the other hand, Orr’s advance had made him reliant on supply lines almost 400 miles long – a situation which forced him to return to Ruponda, whence he had started, while arrangements were made for his troops to be supplied from Lindi rather than Kilwa; and Beves’s determination had seemingly robbed O’Grady and Tytler’s troops of any offensive capability whatsoever. Beves, who had arrived in East Africa for the ‘First Salaita Show’ with a reputation as a ‘cautious’ soldier (and avid butterfly collector), broke down under the strain and was relieved of his command for repeatedly pressing the attack from the east in spite of the mounting casualties. This was arguably just the strategy that Smuts should have used more often; but it ended with the near-annihilation of his force, a price that van Deventer was no more prepared to pay than Smuts before him.
Although the British troops had been badly mauled, and needed rest and recuperation before van Deventer could contemplate attempting to finish the enemy between the Lukuledi River and the Makonde plateau before the rains, the fighting around Mahiwa and Nyangao could not be described as a decisive victory for von Lettow-Vorbeck. Nine machine-guns, a field gun and 200,000 rounds of ammunition had been captured – but at a considerable cost in irreplaceable men and materiel. More than 500 German troops lay dead or wounded, including a third of Wahle’s complement, and over 850,000 rounds of ammunition were expended during the four days’ fighting; desertion was also rampant, and those supply dumps that had not fallen into the hands of the marauding 25th Cavalry or other British troops would only support the remaining troops for a maximum of six weeks. Von Lettow-Vorbeck’s problems did not end there. All German troops (with the exception of those retreating from the Mahenge plateau with Tafel) were now boxed up in 100 square miles of the south-eastern corner of the colony; there was no information about the whereabouts of Tafel, who – so it was thought – had most probably been cut off by British and Belgian troops from Liwale or British troops from Tunduru and Songea; and van Deventer’s troops, though severely battered, were likely to resume their offensive as soon as practicable. This was the situation when, on 24 October 1917, von Lettow-Vorbeck called a conference with Schnee. The prognosis of the Governor of German East Africa, whom von Lettow-Vorbeck now referred to ironically as ‘the Governor of Chiwata’, was bleak; but his commander-in-chief, who was rumoured to have donned his full regimental dress for the first time in the campaign at Nyangao, made it quite clear that the war ‘could and must be carried on’.7 After all, Major Schulz and two German companies held the boma at Newala on the Makonde plateau, recaptured from the Portuguese in December 1916, and from Newala it was but a short hop into territory where further pursuit by the British might be thwarted: von Lettow-Vorbeck had begun to set his sights on Portuguese East Africa.
On 6 November the British advance recommenced and van Deventer, mindful of the general direction of von Lettow-Vorbeck’s line of retreat, requested the Portuguese High Command to concentrate its troops at Mocímboa da Rovuma, Chomba and Negomano with a view to opposing any incursions to Portuguese territory by German troops being driven south. From the east General Cunliffe, who had succeeded Beves, and whose Lindi troops now included his own Nigerian Brigade, pushed Wahle’s seven companies further down the south bank of the Lukuledi River towards Nangoo and Ndanda; and Hannyngton’s Kilwa troops also converged on Ndanda from the north. On 10 November the two forces linked up, capturing nearly 200 Germans and askari in the process, while a detachment of Colonel Breytenbach’s mounted troops – 10/SAH, the 25th Cavalry and the KAR Mounted Infantry – swooped on Masasi, seizing a similar number of prisoners and making quite certain that the option of retreating south-west, as opposed to due south, remained closed to von Lettow-Vorbeck. To the great relief of the advancing columns Cunliffe’s men also captured a naval gun, and when another was found disabled at Masasi they continued on their way towards the Makonde plateau reassured by the knowledge that none of the Königsberg’s armaments remained in enemy hands to bombard them from the heights to the south. With the mounted troops proving increasingly effective, and with fresh troops like the Cape Corps now on the front, morale lifted still further and there was a widespread belief that an engagement around Chiwata might well prove decisive.
Despite Schnee’s doubts about the merits of continuing the fight, von Lettow-Vorbeck was certain that as the enemy completed ‘the concentric march of his columns’, those columns would become ‘helplessly crowded on a narrow area’, thereby presenting him with the opportunity either to counterattack or to ‘march where I liked’.8 Wahle’s remaining troops still had plenty of fight in them, having vigorously opposed Cunliffe’s advance until the capture of Ndanda Mission threatened them in the rear; and even then they had retreated in an orderly fashion up onto the Makonde plateau assisted by the equally assured troops of von Lieberman’s detachment. But von Lettow-Vorbeck was thwarted, on at least two occasions, by the fact that he only had ammunition sufficient to put one third of his troops into battle at any one time and by the need to ensure that his last remaining supply dump was safely withdrawn from Chiwata.
By 15 November it was obvious to van Deventer that his opponent would not, or could not, stand and fight at Chiwata, that he was falling back on Lutshemi; and when Chiwata was taken 100 Germans and more than 400 askari, all sick or too wounded to be moved, fell into British hands. Meanwhile the plight of those able to fight on worsened. Three days of fierce, and continual, fighting accompanied their retreat through the Lutshemi Valley towards Nambindinga; and as a further 300 Germans and 700 askari were captured one of the few remaining sources of hope for von Lettow-Vorbeck’s commanders lay in the possibility, remote though it seemed as no word had been heard from Tafel since early October, of the remnants of the Westtruppen appearing from the north-west to throw the British advance off-balance.
Although Tafel had initially shown no sign of urgency in h
is retreat from Mahenge, he had upped the pace considerably after British and Belgian troops captured Liwale in the third week in October: British and Belgian columns appeared to be in close pursuit, and a larger Belgian force was known to be marching inland from Kilwa to ensure that he could not break north-east across the lines of communication of Hannyngton’s Kilwa troops. On 12 November, Tafel’s three columns*– led by Otto, Schönfeld and Tafel himself – crossed the Liwale–Songea track, heading south-east, and he knew that he was at last within reach of a link-up with von Lettow-Vorbeck and Wahle. A patrol was sent ahead to ascertain the location of von Lettow-Vorbeck’s HQ and as darkness fell on 15 November Tafel arrived in the vicinity of Abdullah Kwa Nanga, fifty miles south-west of Liwale. The only British troops in his way were 250 askari of Major Hawkins’s 2/4KAR, but at dawn the following morning a further 200 of Colonel Shorthose’s 1/4KAR arrived from Tunduru to rescue Hawkins. Tafel could simply have sidestepped the British troops; but he chose to take them on, knowing that if they were resoundingly defeated they would be unable to pursue him as he marched on towards von Lettow-Vorbeck. Just two hours after its arrival on the high ground to the south of the village Shorthose’s relief column was set upon by Otto’s detachment, forcing it to withdraw after incurring heavy losses, and within hours Schönfeld’s column descended on Hawkins. The attack lasted all day, but at nightfall Tafel ordered his commanders to press on south-eastwards (with four serviceable machine-guns captured from the enemy). The Westtruppen, comprising some 1,750 officers and askari and equipped with as many as a dozen machine-guns and over half a million rounds of ammunition, had broken through.
