Tip & Run

by Edward Paice

  Meanwhile the task of pursuing von Lettow-Vorbeck’s main force was undertaken by the Indian 25th Cavalry, a KAR Mounted Infantry detachment, and the Nigerian Brigade, while the Gold Coast Regiment and two battalions of KAR occupied Negomano. Their trail led the mounted troops through ‘a more desolate and depressing tract of bush [than] . . . it would be hard to conceive’ for ‘hard and laborious days’ on end. Rations were ‘continually running out’; sickness reached epidemic proportions; and although a motor road was rapidly opened from the Rovuma to Negomano there was an ever-present fear that the river would soon start to rise and turn thousands of square miles into a ‘huge sweltering swamp’.18 Within days of the sacking of Negomano Major Cohen’s scouts also discovered how futile further pursuit would be: von Lettow-Vorbeck and Wahle had decided that ‘two generals at the head of our tiny band was excessive’† and that the search for food would be easier if they split up. With that, the main force divided and any vestigial hopes of surrounding it evaporated.

  Wahle led his detachment in a westerly direction along the Chiulesi River towards the Mkula Hills, where von Stuemer’s troops had sojourned between April and August, and after three days of fighting overran a Portuguese post at Puchapucha which yielded a further 300 rifles. For once genuine resistance was put up by the Portuguese troops – half of whom died on the battlefield – and officers Francisco Curado and Viriato de Lacerda became heroes at home; but Portuguese accounts of ‘the most brilliant action of the campaign’ were characteristically exaggerated and, in claiming that it ‘compensated honourably for the disaster at Negomano’,19 deluded. Meanwhile Oizulo also fell to Stemmermann’s 3/SchK on the night of 26/27 November, and von Lettow-Vorbeck marched his companies up the Lujenda River at a rate of twenty miles per day. On 2 December Kempner’s 11/FK were sent forward to Nanguar and its well-fortified boma was captured without encountering resistance. Here, at last, 850 packs of ‘native’ food fell into von Lettow-Vorbeck’s hands, as well as 300,000 rounds of ammunition.

  An embarras de richesses followed the fall of Nanguar. Three days later Köhl’s five companies,* with Schnee in tow, were ordered east towards Montepuez and Medo district; and from there raiding parties set out for the coast (thereby transforming Sousa Rosa’s panic-stricken reports of the previous month into prophecies). Another detachment, led by Otto von Scherbening, a planter from Lindi, disappeared south and was away for months, eventually reaching the Lurio River via Mtenda and Mahua before continuing on up the Malema River and capturing Malema boma itself, fifty miles south of the Lurio, in mid February 1918; and in time shopkeeper Ernst Wolfram’s patrol reached the coast well to the south of Porto Amelia. As Köhl’s troops foraged far and wide, Köhl himself stayed in contact with the main German force through a relay system of couriers despite the fact that by Christmas von Lettow-Vorbeck had marched as far as Matarica, a station of the Portuguese Companhia do Niassa.

  In just three weeks von Lettow-Vorbeck and Wahle had seized eighteen tons of foodstuffs from Portuguese garrisons, averting what Schnee feared ‘might well have been a catastrophe’,20 and were well out of reach of any British troops when torrential downpours heralded the start of the rains. Furthermore, all of the troops in the north-west had reached suitable destinations in which to sit out the rains. Von Lettow-Vorbeck was at Matarica which, with its massive buildings, gardens, fruit and vegetables, and ample supply of pigs and ‘native’ food, provided everything he could have wished for; Wahle was equally comfortable at the prosperous Companhia do Niassa station at Mwembe in the Mkula Hills; and five companies led by Otto and Göring were settled near the confluence of the Lujenda and Luambala Rivers. They were not destined to spend the New Year in German East Africa, as many had boasted they would to captured Portuguese officers at Negomano; but all the troops were well provisioned, and a million rounds of ammunition and eleven machine-guns had been captured in Portuguese East Africa – even more booty than had been captured from the British at Tanga in November 1914.

  As the level of the Rovuma rose, the only British troops left in Portuguese territory were those sent with Colonel Rose to strengthen Porto Amelia (the Gold Coast Regiment, 4/4 KAR and an Indian Mountain Battery), and Colonel Clayton’s 2nd Cape Corps, which had been raised in mid 1917 for service in Nyasaland and was moved forward by Northey to M’tengula to guard against any move by von Lettow-Vorbeck towards the eastern shores of Lake Nyasa. Portuguese troops still garrisoned Chomba and Mocímboa da Rovuma as well, but they were under strict instructions not to venture out. It was no wonder, given this state of inaction among the Allies, that one German soldier recorded in his diary that ‘never have we fared so well during the last four years’.21

  As if to compound van Deventer’s dilemma another revolution took place in Lisbon in December 1917. Not only did this have the effect of paralysing both the civilian and military authorities in Portuguese East Africa, but the new premier, Sidónio Pais, a former Portuguese Ambassador to Berlin, was rumoured to be pro-German. Ominous chatter in the Portuguese ranks suggested the possibility of an early cessation of hostilities through the conclusion of a separate peace with Germany by Pais; and at the same time van Deventer was forced by the War Office to release all Indian troops with the exception of two mountain batteries.* The end of the Indian Army’s three-year involvement in the campaign – prompted by ‘considerable anxiety’22 in India, revolution in Afghanistan, and Germany’s peace agreement with the Bolsheviks – could not have come at a worse time; and it was accompanied by the departure of the Nigerian Brigade, who had by universal acclaim ‘made for themselves in East Africa a reputation second to none’.23 None of this would become evident to von Lettow-Vorbeck for months. But he was right in concluding that his invasion of Portuguese territory ‘had put [van Deventer] at his wits’ end’;24 and as he had just received news that the oakleaves had been added to his Pour le Mérite, won in 1916, he saw no reason to answer van Deventer’s optimistic invitation to surrender.

  Van Deventer attracted sharp criticism in certain quarters for allowing von Lettow-Vorbeck to escape, and Sergeant Castle, the senior typist at Allied GHQ, was well placed to assess the prevailing mood. On 1 December he wrote in his diary ‘Von Splosh wired [the War Office] that all Germans were out of GEA and that the show was over – bar, of course, the shouting. We (who do not believe everything we are told) have ideas of our own.’ The similarities with Smuts’s declaration of ‘victory’ at the start of 1917 were ‘somewhat startling’. The only difference this time was that van Deventer had to stay to face the consequences – a decision on the part of the War Office which attracted further criticism. On 10 December, having heard that van Deventer had been awarded the KCMG, Castle wrote ‘Sir Von Splosh – to our great disgust and disappointment – stays on. No doubt he is averse to losing the huge salary he gets (£3,500 per year). Thus we again see the evil of Political Influence. Here is a man of no education and no knowledge of upto-date military matters controlling a force of all parts of the empire and not being in sympathy nor understanding with more than one contingent i.e. his own countrymen from South Africa. He hardly speaks English and has to guide him Lt Col van Velden (an awful shit).’25 For his part, van Deventer’s view of British Staff officers was evidenced by his instructions to George Brink and all the other ADCs who served him during the war: ‘Oppas dat hulle my nie vernenk nie’ – ‘make sure they do not cheat me’.26

  Castle’s forthright opinions were typical of many of the Staff originally selected by Smith-Dorrien who had found themselves required to serve successive South African ‘masters’ instead; and among van Deventer’s field commanders there were also many who had wished ‘for such a man as Hoskins or Northey to be in charge’27 of the operations in 1917, and considered that ‘it should have been a bobby’s job to pick off ’28 the enemy’s troops after they crossed the Rovuma. But a majority of field officers recognised that without any meaningful effort on the part of the Portuguese to defend their border, or even their garrisons, van De
venter’s attempt to encircle von Lettow-Vorbeck on the Makonde plateau had been doomed from the outset. Van Deventer’s gruff, no-nonsense manner also made him popular in the ranks, whereas a new commander would have to earn a similar level of respect and would almost certainly take time to appraise the situation, and the War Office gave barely a second thought to the possibility of replacing him. Time was of the essence, and the campaign was entering what looked likely to be as taxing a phase as any that had preceded it.

  A shortage of fit and experienced troops was one problem. At the beginning of December the ration strength of van Deventer’s force still exceeded fiftyfive thousand,* but after the withdrawal of the Indian and Nigerian battalions, the need to garrison German East Africa, and the prevalence of sickness were taken into account this number was reduced by two-thirds. Equally serious was the shortage of carriers, without whom the troops would be unable to move. ‘Many carriers fall and die, exhausted by the weight of their pack, and the excessive rain’, wrote one officer on the supply lines in Nyasaland at the end of November; ‘they lie on a bed of withered ferns by the roadside where the jackal and vulture devour them – each one a hero, though unknown to them.’29 By the end of 1917 more than a million Africans from the British colonies and German East Africa had been recruited for carrier duty with the British forces since the start of the war, and the mass levy commenced earlier in the year had had to be suspended when officials everywhere warned that the indigenous population had been squeezed dry. Yet if British troops were to advance into northern Portuguese East Africa after the rains a further 75,000 carriers would have to be found to man the supply lines. Finally, the terrain and the Portuguese (whom van Deventer considered to be ‘so incompetent as to be positively dangerous’)30 were every bit as worrying as his manpower shortage; and his only option under such challenging circumstances was to try and keep Portuguese involvement to an absolute minimum, to make his strategy and supply arrangements as flexible and adaptable as those of the enemy, and to hope that the luck for which he was famed had not deserted him altogether.

  At the end of 1917 the Allies were in a position ‘more dangerous than at any time since the first weeks of the war’, and continuing to fight the campaign in eastern Africa seemed to many to be a futile waste of resources. But Lloyd George made it clear that the retention of Germany’s African colonies remained a fundamental war aim, even if such a policy invited criticism of Britain for harbouring ‘imperialistic designs’.31 The message was clear: the outcome of the campaign in Portuguese East Africa mattered; and, even though it had proved ‘impossible to round up a mobile enemy’ during the previous two years, van Deventer was authorised to pursue a strategy of ‘virtual extinction’ in the hope of inducing von Lettow-Vorbeck to surrender. ‘I ordered my commanders to miss no chance of fighting’, he wrote, ‘and thus cause the enemy casualties, whatever the risk.’32

  THIRTY-ONE

  The ‘China Affair’

  As von Lettow-Vorbeck retreated from the Lukuledi River towards the Makonde plateau persistent rumours about a German submarine operating off the East African coast began to circulate in the British ranks. The rumour was prompted by the havoc wreaked off Cape Town by U-155, which sank nineteen British vessels in 1917, but in East Africa it was through the air, not beneath the waves, that Berlin planned to send assistance to von Lettow-Vorbeck’s beleaguered troops.

  This astonishingly audacious plan was the brainchild of Max Zupitza, who had been repatriated from Togo in a prisoner exchange in 1916. Zupitza was a former head of the medical corps in German South-West Africa who also knew German East Africa well; and when he read an article in the Wilnaer Zeitung in June 1917 that stated that the wartime development of airship technology had been so rapid that a transatlantic flight might soon be possible, his mind turned to the possibility of using that technology to help his stranded compatriots in East Africa. Several weeks later airship LZ120 spent 101 hours aloft over the Baltic, and for Zupitza this amounted to conclusive ‘proof that an airship could remain aloft to accomplish the voyage to Africa’. Without further delay he then set himself up as champion of what was destined to become ‘one of the most daring feats of the whole war’.1

  The streng geheim– ‘Top Secret’ – mission to airlift vital arms, ammunition and medical supplies for von Lettow-Vorbeck to the Makonde plateau was codenamed the ‘China Affair’; and the high-level support that Zupitza attracted without difficulty was evidence of the extent to which the outcome of the war in East Africa mattered to Berlin. Every available airship was being used for bombing raids on Britain at the time. Yet Zupitza managed to secure the use of L57, as well as the unstinting support and co-operation of Dr Walter Förster (Germany’s leading meteorologist), Hugo Eckener (who had assumed responsibility for Germany’s airship programme after Count Zeppelin’s death), and Admiral von Capelle (the Navy Minister). Captain Peter Strasser, Germany’s commander of airship operations, was equally effusive in his praise for the project, writing that ‘completion of the operation will not only provide immediate assistance for the brave Protectorate troops, but will be an event that will once more enthuse the German people and arouse admiration throughout the world’.2 The ultimate stamp of approval was provided by the Kaiser himself.

  The ‘China Affair’ did not start auspiciously. L57 accidentally blew up outside her shed at Jüterborg the day before setting out for Jamboli in Bulgaria, the intended launch point for the expedition. But a replacement was immediately made available by von Capelle and on 3 November L59 left Staaken for Jamboli, powered by five 240hp Maybach engines. Her voyage was also not without incident: in dense fog the steering cables of both the rudder and reserve rudder broke, but running repairs enabled her to reach Bulgaria in twenty-eight hours. By then the possibility of further technical problems was not the overriding concern of Zupitza’s team: news of van Deventer’s latest advance had reached Berlin, and everyone feared that the Makonde plateau might soon be occupied by British, rather than German, troops. Time was of the essence, and L59 needed substantial modification before setting off on her mission. At Staaken she had already been lengthened to 226.5m, making her the largest airship ever built, but other work had to be carried out to render her as useful as possible. By the time it was completed every component of L59 was earmarked for a specific purpose: the muslin envelope would be made into bandages, the duralumin ribs would be converted into wireless mast and stretchers, the canvas could be used for tents and clothing, and the catwalks were covered with leather for making boots. In addition, L59’s lifting capacity enabled her to carry fifteen tons of cargo including thirty machine-guns and more than 400,000 rounds of ammunition. If the voyage was successfully completed there was no doubt that it would greatly enhance von Lettow-Vorbeck’s offensive capability, and the arrival of a large consignment of mail from home – the first for more than two years – was thought likely to provide a further boost to the morale of the European soldiers.*

  On 13 November L59, Zupitza and the twenty-two hand-picked crew members were finally ready for their 3,600-mile journey and Captain Bockholt gave the command to cast off. Within hours, however, L59 was fired on by Turkish soldiers when passing over Smyrna and then ran into weather so atrocious that Bockholt was forced to jettison a ton of his precious cargo before reluctantly turning back to Jamboli. On 13 November the western reaches of the Makonde plateau were still in German hands; but a week later, when the weather cleared and Bockholt set off on his second attempt, von Lettow-Vorbeck was only clinging on to Newala district. As L59 passed Crete, reaching speeds as high as 65mph, Bockholt had no way of knowing this, and wound in his wireless antenna as he pressed on through another storm undeterred by the St Elmo’s fire crackling around the 2.5 million cubic feet of hydrogen keeping L59 aloft.

  At dawn on 21 November L59 passed over the Egyptian coast and Bockholt set a course for the Makonde plateau. By noon the following day Farafah oasis could be spotted far below, and that night Wadi Halfa and the Nile were just vis
ible through the darkness. Everything seemed to be going to plan, but unbeknownst to Bockholt his superiors had been making repeated attempts to contact him while L59’s wireless antenna was wound in. Soon after midnight the message was finally received, and to Bockholt’s astonishment it read: ‘Break off operation. Return. Enemy has seized greater part of Makonde Highlands, already holds Kitangari, Portuguese are attacking remainder of Protectorate forces in the south.’3 At 2.30 a.m. on 24 November, just as von Lettow-Vorbeck’s troops were making their way along the north bank of the Rovuma towards the Portuguese garrison at Negomano, Zupitza recorded that ‘with heavy heart the commander hove to for the return’.4 The buoyant spirits of the airmen plummeted as most of the cargo was thrown overboard; and during the night of 24/25 November L59 left Africa at Solûm, scene of the Allied defeat of the Sanusi in 1916.

  By the time L59 touched down at Jamboli the crew were in a terrible condition. Frozen to the core and exhausted, some were in the grips of a fever while others had chronic headaches caused by oxygen deprivation. As they set foot on land everyone ‘staggered as if they were still in the heaving gondolas of the airship’;5 and the knowledge that L59 was the first dirigible to cross the Tropic of Cancer, and had completed a record-breaking journey of 4,340 miles in ninety-five hours, was scant consolation. Bockholt was immediately awarded the Pour le Mérite, but his efforts to secure permission for another attempt to reach von Lettow-Vorbeck were unsuccessful. Just months later, he and his crew perished when L59 exploded and came down in the Mediterranean near Otranto. Only Zupitza and Hans Schedelmann, a crewman on leave, survived to see their feat praised for being not only ‘unique in the annals of aeronautics’ but for ‘[paving] the way for the intercontinental services to come’.6