Tip & Run

by Edward Paice

  † The Königsberg was entered in naval lists as a minelayer but, according to Looff, carried no mines at the time of the attack.

  * RH/Bremner, letter of 11 November 1914: ‘to land a large force without reconnaissance to see whether any of the enemy were about appears the action of a lunatic’.

  * Caulfeild had caused some concern to Brigadier-General Stewart when IEF ‘C’ had landed in East Africa in September. ‘He was a rather strange fellow’, wrote Stewart, ‘[who] assured me that he was fully acquainted with the situation, that there was no urgency about our arrival . . . His appreciation of the situation proved very incorrect for a landing at Mombasa on Sept 1st: I found affairs were in a critical position and our Intelligence service, though rapidly improving, was rather vague.’ (See Gurkha Museum/Stewart/5RGR/Appx1/14,p. 54.)

  * It is a curious anomaly that while Aitken was told to expect no resistance the Governor of Nyasaland was being told that he need not fear another German invasion as all von Lettow-Vorbeck’s troops were concentrated in the north-east of German East Africa (see IWM/Aitken report and TNA/WO/106/573).

  † The consequences of observing the truce were to be greatly exaggerated by Aitken later. He already knew that the arrival of IEF ‘B’ was no secret in East Africa and had everything else gone according to plan one hour’s notice was not going to make any difference. Hordern, the official historian of the campaign, was misled by Aitken’s ‘propaganda’ when recording that it was ‘a factor vitally affecting his plans’ (p. 73). Besides, Aitken was not expecting any resistance and if he had been he could have ordered a landing at some other spot not covered by the truce, such as Mansa Bay to the north.

  * The house had still been occupied earlier that night. According to Colonel Macpherson, commanding the Kashmiris, lamps were still burning, dinner was still on the table and there was an ice chest with cold beer and other drinks in it as well as parcels of ‘comforts’ ready for despatch to German troops in the north-east. These were ‘promptly commandeered’ (see NAM/Macpherson).

  * NAM/17/FK Field Report. By ‘dead ground’ Adler meant the cover afforded by the rubber plantation, the African village and the deep ditch on its western boundary which ran parallel to the railway cutting 200 yards distant.

  * 13th Rajputs’ casualties – five out of twelve officers, and forty-nine out of 690 other ranks; 61st Pioneers’ casualties – two officers, and ninety-one out of 400 other ranks. Three other attached officers were killed, including Lieutenant Ismael the previous night. Hordern remarks: ‘the casualties had not been excessive’ (p. 82).

  * To add to the misery of over a month on board ship, the 63rd Palamcottahs had spent the whole of the previous evening awaiting embarkation. Finally they were put in lighters at 11 p.m., only to be ordered back on board shortly after with orders to land by 7 a.m. the following morning. As a result they had ‘had little sleep or food before landing to take part in the action’ (Hordern, p. 83, note 3).

  † In his report of 9 November (TNA/CO/533/146) Aitken also mentions that the 98th Infantry were ordered by him to fill the gap left by 63rd Palamcottahs and support the 101st Grenadiers. The 98th Infantry War Diary records the orders it received, but makes no mention of this one (which would have been contrary to its initial order to support the Loyal North Lancs). It isdistinctly possible that Aitken invented this order, as he did other details in his reports, to protect himself from the question why one of his best regiments was sent out with only the ‘untrusted’ 63rd Palamcottahs alongside them, the flight of the latter leaving the Grenadiers to sustain the worst casualties of the whole battle.

  * When the guns of the 28th Mountain Battery fired their shells into Tanga from the transport Bharata, 1,000 yards offshore in the harbour, they could not see the effect or on whom they were firing. Hordern points out that ‘at this date forward observing officers had hardly been instituted’ (p. 88 note 1), and spotting, such as it was, was done by Major Forestier-Walker up the mast. HMS Fox was also firing blind, and one shell even hit the German hospital, halfway between its position off Beach ‘C’ and the town.

  * See Lettow-Vorbeck (1), p. 43: ‘In some inexplicable way the troops imagined a Headquarters order had been issued that they were to return to their old camp west of Tanga.’

  * Total casualties among the 2nd Loyal North Lancs – 115; 101st Grenadiers – 222; 2nd Kashmir Rifles and half-battalion 3rd Kashmir Rifles – sixty-two. As late as 7 November Aitken still believed that he had lost 417 Grenadiers; there was no senior officer left alive or not in hospital to correct him.

  * Wynn, p. 67. Wynn added: ‘Defeat had carried him to unexpected heights. He was cheery, calm, and courteous, winning the affection and sympathy of all. Lack of soldiership rather than of character was what had brought about his downfall.’

  * TNA/CO/533/147. Kitchener refused to grant an audience to Aitken on his arrival in London, and the latter was not employed again for the duration of the war. After the war he was eventually exonerated in Parliament of personal blame for Tanga but compensation for damage to his career was refused. He died of a ‘seizure’ in 1924 at the age of sixty-three, on a train in Italy.

  * Kraut’s force: 10/FK, 11/FK, 21/FK and 9/SchK – a total of eighty-six Germans and 583 askari with six machine-guns.

  † 29th Punjabis less two companies (475 men), half-battalion Kapurthala Infantry (378 men), and five squadrons EAMR (360 men); 27/MB less one section, two machine-guns of the Volunteer Maxim Company, Masai Scouts.

  * TNA/CAB/45/43 (Routh, An Ordnance Officer in East Africa, 1914–1918,p. 69). Kraut realised the difficulties of holding Longido for any prolonged period of time and made Ngare Nairobi, between Mt Meru and the border with British East Africa, his forward position for the 1,200 troops on this front.

  * On the other hand the German survey ship Möwe had rather fortuitously completed a survey just months before the outbreak of war.

  † CHAR/13/38/21. Churchill wondered whether HMS Fox’s 6-inch guns might reach the Königsberg. But Fox drew five feet more than Chatham, the range of her guns was some 400 yards less than those of Weymouth, and he was told that she was ‘unavailable’. He had seemingly not been informed that she was the escort ship to IEF ‘B’.

  * CHAR/13/38/80. Experiments were carried out at Whale Island by Sir Boverton Redwood. Churchill minuted reports of the findings with a simple ‘I like it’.

  * See Jones, p. 5: ‘there may be more striking incidents in the history of naval aircraft in the war; there are few which, for quiet gallantry, can beat this story of an under-powered flying boat, patched and repatched . . . operating in monsoon weather, from the beach of a tropical island over jungle swamp’.

  * German accounts alleged that Paterson’s men were ‘getting drunk in the saloon’ when captured by Lieutenant Soethe (see Ada Schnee, p. 24).

  * Tighe’s force: 2nd Kashmir Rifles, 101st Grenadiers, two companies of 3/KAR, four companies of 3rd Gwalior Infantry, 100 Wavell’s ‘Arab’ Scouts, the 28th Mountain Battery and six machine-guns.

  * See TNA/WO/106/573. The ‘reliable’ troops were listed as: 600 2nd Loyal North Lancs, 600 29th Punjabis, 520 101st Grenadiers, 660 Kashmiris and 1,000 KAR. The 98th Infantry and 63rd Palamcottahs were regarded as ‘useless’, and the 61st Pioneers were dismissively referred to as being ‘only fit as labourers’.

  * TNA/CAB/45/10 (Gerlach). One German officer was moved to write that ‘there was no one left among all of us, who, when the message reached us, did not solemnly repeat to himself the oath to preserve faithfully, and to give the last drop of blood and breath to help what is German land to remain German so that the confidence which the Kaiser has put in his people here will not be misplaced’.

  † The German attack force comprised 244 Europeans, 1,350 askari and 400 ‘Arab’ levies, armed with twenty-three machine-guns and four field guns. The British garrison at Jasin fort comprised one company of 101st Grenadiers (138 rifles), one and a half companies of Kashmiris (144 rifles) and a KAR machine-gun detach
ment. The sisal factory was held by forty-four men of the 2nd Kashmir Rifles.

  * Williams was recommended for the VC but was eventually awarded a bar to his DCM. For an explanation of why, as an African soldier, he was not given the former see Keith Steward, ‘An African Hero Who Deserved the Victoria Cross’, The Orders and Medals Research Society Journal (March 2005), pp. 19–26.

  * See Hordern, p. 183: ‘in the interests of British prestige among the warlike tribes on the northern border . . . it was imperative that the Germans should not be permitted to penetrate into Rhodesian territory’.

  * One member of the expedition claimed that the names ‘Dog’ and ‘Cat’ were rejected by the Admiralty as being ‘rotten names’ for gunboats so Spicer-Simson, having had ‘a vision of the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris, and a child playing with a cat and dog and calling out to them by their names’, proposed the French alternative. See ‘Leviathan’, p. 176.

  * A total of thirty-six officers and 1,006 rank and file would serve in the ranks of the 2nd Rhodesia Regiment during its twenty-one months in East Africa; during that period the regimental records showed 2,272 admissions to hospital and 10,626 sick cases (of which malaria accounted for about one third).

  * NAM/Davidson. The racist reference was prompted by Driscoll’s dark appearance, thought to be attributable to mixed parentage.

  * The approximate strengths of the British infantry battalions were as follows: 2nd Loyal North Lancs – 300 rifles; 25th Royal Fusiliers – 400 rifles; 3/KAR – 450 rifles; 29th Punjabis – 200 rifles.

  † Anon (2), p. 297; among the diverse armaments on board the ships were a 12-pdr 12cwt gun from an armoured train in India (on Winifred); and four guns from the ill-fated Pegasus (on Usoga, Nyanza and Winifred).

  * Liddle/Shaw. The Field Diary of the 2nd Loyal North Lancs also recorded that ‘there was a regrettable amount of looting and thoughtless destruction of property in which the North Lancs took no part’ (see TNA/WO/95/5339).

  * Spicer-Simson (1), p. 758; Magee (p. 337) observed that ‘the work in this country is [all] done by women . . . sad yet true’.

  * Following his resignation from the Cabinet, Churchill offered to take command of a squadron of armoured cars in East Africa. The offer was declined by the War Office.

  * CHAR/13/38/295. On 12 October Churchill replied that he did not consider ‘the use of the expression “very grave” to be warranted’. On 22 October King-Hall reiterated that it was ‘undoubtedly grave’.

  * The 1st South African Infantry Brigade was recruited in August and September 1915 and comprised four battalions: 1st South African Infantry (Cape of Good Hope) Regiment; 2nd South African (Natal and Orange Free State) Regiment; 3rd South African (Transvaal and Rhodesia) Regiment; and 4th South African (South African Scottish) Regiment. Brigadier-General Lukin was appointed commander-in-chief of the 160 officers and 5,648 other ranks.

  * TNA/FO/371/2105, December 1912. ‘Nor’, the memo continued, ‘could the use of Portuguese Colonies facilitate the operations of our forces under any reasonably probable contingencies.’

  * Portugal’s fear of Spanish aggression in the event of the former’s entry into the war on the side of Britain was acute. The British were sceptical about such an eventuality and judged Spain to be ‘quite incapable of absorbing Portugal, nor could she even temporarily administer it without recourse to those Spanish methods of government which have lost Spain her own colonies’ (TNA/FO/371/2105, August 1914, Crowe to Churchill).

  † Vincent-Smith, p. 210. See also TNA/FO/371/2105: ‘it must be borne in mind that if Portugal assumes the status of our active ally in war, all her Dominions and interest become objects of possible attack by the enemy . . . and Portugal would be unable to defend her Dominions against the attacks of any but a minor adversary’.

  * See, for example, Rider Haggard, p. 253: ‘Their domestic arrangements seem to be of a peculiar description.’ He was referring in particular to the widespread practice of taking African mistresses.

  * The First Expeditionary Force consisted of 3rd Battalion 15th Infantry (based in Tomar); 4th Battery Mountain Artillery; 4th Squadron 10th Cavalry; and engineering, medical and administrative staff. Total strength: 1,527 men. Before this force arrived the colony’s garrison consisted of twelve African companies of 282 men each (nine of which were stationed in Mozambique province), an artillery battery, the 460-strong Republican Guard, one companhia disciplinar, and various support units; total strength: 3,250–3,750 men. The Companhia de Moçambique and Companhia do Niassa also maintained private police forces. Source: Anuario de Moçambique, 1917.

  * Amorim’s insistence that the division should include ten companies of African troops, each 180-strong, illustrates that it had not taken him long to realise the absolute necessity of involving indigenous troops.

  † The Second Expeditionary Force comprised 5th Mountain Battery, 4th Squadron of the 3rd Cavalry, 3rd Battalion of the 21st Infantry (based in Penmacor), 2nd Battery of 7th Group QF. Total strength: 1,543 men.

  * Captain Doering’s 3/FK formed the peacetime garrison at Lindi but had been ordered to Morogoro, on the Central Railway, as part of von Lettow-Vorbeck’s concentration of troops in the north-east of the colony. 20/FK was also supported by ‘W’ Company, a unit of African levies.

  * B. Ogot and W. Ochieng, ‘Mumboism – an anti-colonial movement’, in Bethwell Ogot (ed.), p. 175. It was paradoxical that the Luo, among whom Mumboism is thought to have originated, offered no armed resistance to the advent of European colonial rule.

  * Lewis Greenstein (2), p. v; about ten per cent of the adult male Nandi population, 1,197 men, served in the KAR and a further 500 worked in some other ‘war-related occupation’

  * Author’s interview with M’Ithiria Mukaria, formerly of 3/3KAR, in Isiolo (February 2003).

  * Bandawe was the first Malawian to receive the MBE. His observations about the prisoners is poignant: it was in Nyasaland that one of the most concerted anti-slavery campaigns had been fought by the British.

  * Nyasaland Times,No. 48, 26 November 1914. This edition of an organ whose circulation was less than 200 was suppressed by the authorities. Lewis Bandawe, a contemporary observer whose family knew Chilembwe well, later recalled that ‘some measure of planning had already taken place . . . as early as November, 1914’ (Bandawe, p. 62).

  † Maker, p. 31. The hangman subsequently commanded a unit of carriers and was described as ‘short, ugly and a gorilla of a man . . . [who] used the sjambok unsparingly’ (Haussmann, p. 47).

  * ‘Jaap’ or ‘Jaapie’ was a familiar name for Jakobus, but it was also used as a term equivalent to ‘hick’ or ‘country boy’; the latter would soon represent the opinion of many a British Staff officer about van Deventer.

  * The 129th Baluchis, closely followed by the 57th Rifles (who would also see action in East Africa), was the first unit of the Indian Corps to be engaged on the Western Front in 1914 and the first unit to attack German troops (at Hollebeke). To Sepoy Khudadad Khan of this battalion belonged the distinction of receiving the first Victoria Cross of the war

  * According to Hordern (p. 400 note 4), Tombeur’s troop dispositions after withdrawing his Katanga troops from the Northern Rhodesia front were as follows: Brigade Nord (Colonel Molitor), north of Lake Kivu (5,200 men); Brigade Sud (Major Olsen) on the Rusisi front, south of Lake Kivu (2,500 men); Lake Tanganyika (Colonel Moulaert) (2,200 men); Kigezi front (Major Bataille) (450 men); River Congo Reserve (800 men). Total including support services 11,150 men with sixty-four guns and sixty-five machine-guns. Armaments shipped from Le Havre between August 1914 and December 1916 for the advance included four batteries each of four 70mm howitzers, eight 75mm guns, 16,500 rifles, 27,000 Mills bombs, 115,000 rounds of howitzer and field gun ammunition and 118 machine-guns. The Belgian Official History gives a figure of 11,698 troops and 719 European officers and NCOs.

  * The 1st East African Brigade comprised the 2nd Loyal North Lancs, 2nd Rhodesia Regiment and the 130th Baluchis. The 2nd S
outh African Brigade comprised 5/SAI, 6/SAI, 7/SAI. Divisional troops: 2nd Loyal North Lancs Mounted Infantry; Belfield’s Scouts; 28th Mountain Battery; No. 1 Light Battery (two 12-pdrs); Calcutta Volunteer Battery (six 12-pdrs); No. 3 Heavy Battery (two 4-inch naval guns from HMS Pegasus); No. 4 Heavy Battery (two 5-inch howitzers); four RNAS armoured cars; Volunteer Maxim Company; and the 61st Pioneers.

  * See Lettow-Vorbeck (1), pp. 103–4: ‘The troops at New Steglitz advanced to Taveta, where some fantastic reports came in about hostile armoured cars, which were alleged to be moving through the thorn-bush desert. The imagination of the natives, to whom these armoured cars were something altogether new and surprising, had made them see ghosts

  * Rather unusually, the number of awards presented to South African troops in the German South-West Africa campaign (496) exceeded the number of casualties (424); the number of DSOs (112) alone equalled the number killed (113). See D.R. Forsyth, ‘Rewards For War Services: German South-West Africa Campaign 1914–1915’, in Journal of the Military Medal Society of South Africa, Vol. 29, August 1987.