by Adam Cruise
Moore-Ritchie reckons that these manoeuvres ‘broke all known marching records’. He describes the initial march from Riet to Kaltenhausen, one that would be repeated over and again in the coming week:
Left [Riet] at 8 p.m., trekked by moonlight along the Swakop River for three hours, outspanned till an hour before dawn, and made Salem at 6.45 a.m. on April 29. At 9.30 that morning the column moved on again, reached outspan at twenty miles by 1.35 in the afternoon, rested for an hour and a half and pushed on again till a quarter before midnight, when we rode into Wilhelmsfeste. But the water was at Kaltenhausen, some miles further ahead of this military post. We reached it at 1.15 on the morning of the 30th. Animals took two hours to water in the bitterly cold morning air. The guards had not taken two steps on their beat before the sand was littered with sleepers that looked like dead men. These sleeping columns, some ninety to a hundred miles from the coast, were now half way to Windhuk [sic].7
The route along the river was mined in places and Botha’s column sustained some casualties – three killed and others severely wounded – but on the whole the South Africans were alert to the common spots for mines and accordingly avoided them.
Some of the other commandos did more than 320 kilometres in five days, causing Moore-Ritchie to exclaim: ‘It was some trekking!’8 Myburgh’s mounted brigades, especially Mentz’s 3rd, were pushed to the extreme of their endurance. After consulting with them at Kaltenhausen, Botha immediately dispatched Myburgh on to Otjimbingwe, some forty kilometres further on. The men and horses had barely rested before they set off. Luckily for the exhausted brigade, Otjimbingwe was quickly evacuated as the South Africans approached, yet Mentz’s men went beyond the call of duty and gave chase, capturing an officer and twenty-three men. The rest just managed to escape, thanks in part to the condition of the South African mounts, as well as a lack of local knowledge of the terrain, which created a gap for the galloping Germans to break through.
Otjimbingwe provided grazing and plenty of water, but the respite was to be short. A day later, Botha ordered Myburgh on another epic ride north to Wilhelmstal, a small station hamlet on the main railway line between Karibib and Okahandja. Here Myburgh blew up the line and destroyed the telegraph lines from Windhoek,9 realising Franke’s worst nightmare and effectively cutting off the Schütztruppe from their capital. The road to Windhoek was now open.
Botha’s multi-prong attack on the enemy positions in the week following 28 April 1915
The brigade’s feat was all the more impressive given that the commandos were on tight food and water rations. They were remarkably resilient and self-sufficient: they could survive on a meagre diet of rusks and biltong for weeks without needing vegetables or vitamins. Such capabilities were first seen during the Boer War, when the British thought their scorched-earth policy would render the guerrilla commandos inoperable. Rusks and biltong could last weeks and even months. The latter could be generated on the hoof by shooting any variety of wild game, cutting the meat into strips and salting it. The hard sticks were then stuffed into pockets, coats or saddlebags and were continuously chewed like tobacco.
While Botha was at Potmine, Smuts came up from the south via Swakopmund to discuss tactics with his commander-in-chief. It was here that the decision was taken to disband the Southern Army.
Smuts was appalled to learn of the prime minister’s continued disregard for his own personal safety. Botha was often at the front lines of the fighting so he could get a clearer picture and take charge of procedures. This had certainly been the case at Riet, when he had moved up to the front to reorganise Brits’s defence and protect his artillery. On hearing about Botha’s brush with the Germans on the road to Potmine, Smuts demanded that Major Trew, the commanding officer of the prime minister’s bodyguard, never allow Botha to unnecessarily endanger himself again, to which Trew replied, ‘That’s all very well sir, but will you tell me what to do when the Commander-in-Chief tells me to go to hell?’10
At Potmine, Botha and Smuts received intelligence that Colonel Wylie had arrived at Kubas unopposed. This prompted Botha to redirect Alberts further upriver to the defensive positions at Groot and Klein Barmen, where they discovered the Germans hastily retiring north to Karibib. The enemy no doubt appreciated the value of Botha’s outflanking move and made the precautionary dash for Karibib lest they be cut off from Franke. Botha was now in a position to concentrate all his forces, currently spread across a 320-kilometre arc, on Karibib.
Skinner moved up the line from the west, Wylie and Brits from the south-west, Botha from the south and Myburgh down the tracks from the east.11 Franke’s only option was to retire north along the Otavi line towards Omaruru, allowing Botha’s forces to enter Karibib unopposed on 5 May. The town was the cherry of the campaign. As Collyer neatly puts it:
Botha held a small portion of German territory on 28 April 1915
On April the 28th the German commander held by far the greater part of the protectorate and held and covered the capital, Windhoek, and the railway, which gave him power to concentrate and take the initiative. His opponent controlled merely that small portion of the country that lay behind their outposts. A week later General Botha’s movements had deprived the enemy of the capital, of his power of concentration for attack, of the initiative and of two-thirds of the settled portion of the Protectorate.12
A week later and a much altered picture. On 5 May, Botha is in control of two-thirds of the territory
On 6 May Botha himself rode triumphantly into Karibib. Here the South Africans came into contact with the German civilian population for the first time during the campaign. Botha was met by a nervous delegation headed by the mayor, who formally handed over the town and asked if the people could remain in their homes and not be deported. Of more importance, he asked if they could keep their own food supplies. There was a desperate shortage of food among the large bodies of troops moving into Karibib from all directions. Many of the soldiers were on their last rations and were doubtless expecting the population to provide. Botha, however, agreed to the request and issued a directive forbidding any member of his hungry army from looting food from the civilians.
Much has been made of the ‘stoical grit’ of the starving soldiers at Karibib.13 Lieutenant Commander Whittall describes the weeks following the initial occupation: ‘To say that a virtual famine existed does not exceed the truth. Everyone was on the shortest of short rations. Even the hospitals were living from hand to mouth.’14
The food shortage was not unexpected. The lines of communication stretched some 250 kilometres from Swakopmund, up the Swakop River, to Karibib. The wagon mules were completely worn out and for the next three weeks only driblets of food made it through. The repairs to the Khan–Jakkalswater railway were still 100 kilometres short of Karibib. Communications were eventually switched back to the main line through Usakos, but that took a further two weeks to repair. Considering the dire supply circumstances, Collyer makes special mention of Lieutenant Colonel Collins, whose indefatigable energy in charge of the South African railway engineers helped to finish the line by mid-May, relieving Botha of a persisting logistical headache.15
Still, it was five weeks before rations and supplies began to arrive in sufficient quantities. The conduct of the South African troops during this time could not be faulted. Moore-Ritchie writes:
The very confidence of these German townspeople that they had nothing to fear from the hated troops of the Union of South Africa was eloquent … The news of the Lusitania massacre on the high seas reached Karibib just after occupation. Did one Teuton in the place have to suffer as a consequence even the insult of a word? No … General Botha’s forces had crossed a desert through which it was the open boast of the enemy that it was strewn with mines and with every well poisoned. Was a single defenseless citizen of Karibib the worse for it after the occupation? Not one. The greater part of General Botha’s forces were on a half – a quarter – an eighth rations when they made Karibib … they lived until all supplies
could come up on less than one biscuit a day, a pinch or two of meal, and fresh meat. How much looting occurred in these towns? There was none worthy the name.16
Even the Germans acknowledged the behaviour of their captors. A local newspaper reported that the South Africans behaved ‘properly and courteously’ and ‘in such a way as becomes civilised soldiers’.17 Indeed, the civilian population benefited from the occupation by selling their own food rations at ridiculously high prices, and the soldiers paid without so much as a mutter, such was their respect for their commander-in-chief’s orders.18
Karibib was a strategic centre as it commanded the main railway line from Swakopmund all the way to Windhoek, as well as the junction of the narrow-gauge track north to Tsumeb, up which the Schütztruppe and Seitz’s governmental entourage had hastily retreated as far as Omaruru.
Most German citizens realised they were fast losing their grip on the colony, but they hoped that the war in Europe would go in their favour. To deny the South Africans, Windhoek was abandoned by all military personnel, who joined Franke at Omaruru. The move paralleled that made by the Boers against the British over a decade earlier, when they abandoned the capitals of their two republics to fight a protracted guerrilla war.
Nevertheless, Windhoek remained a glittering prize. Botha sent Alberts from Barmen to join Mentz at Okahandja in order to secure his own route to the capital. Thanks to Smuts’s intelligence gathered after the battle at Gibeon, Botha knew von Kleist was moving somewhere to the east of Mentz, trying to link up with Franke. The prime minister set out to make that task more difficult and ordered some of Mentz’s commandos to go after von Kleist and push him wide of Omaruru, forcing him towards the Waterberg mountains. The commandos managed to capture 157 soldiers, although they were not part of von Kleist’s unit, belonging instead to a group retreating north after leaving Windhoek a couple of days earlier.
Without any German soldiers to defend it, Windhoek was ready for the taking. Botha ordered Alberts and the remainder of Mentz’s brigade to surround the capital and then took a motorcade to the outskirts of town. At 11 a.m. on 12 May, Botha met the mayor, who was ‘betraying symptoms of considerable nervousness’.19 Under the shade of an acacia tree, Windhoek was ceremoniously handed over. An hour later, it was swarming with South African troops.
The wireless station was intact, but the Germans had removed or destroyed the working parts before the South Africans arrived. That they had left the mast revealed the Germans were convinced the occupation was just temporary.20 They were sure their troops in Europe would defeat the Allies and the colony would be regained. Reitz, who was fluent in German, noted this sentiment when he and his motoring comrades entered Windhoek from the south a day after the occupation. The German newspapers ran daily articles hinting at the temporary nature of the situation. One reads:
The early occupation of Windhoek by the South African forces is unavoidable … The occupation can at most continue for a week or two as dire calamity has overtaken the Allies in Europe … we may say with confidence that the enemy’s banner will not long float over us.21
The civilians were polite yet aloof, says Reitz. They were seemingly confident that the South Africans would soon pay dearly for having challenged the might of imperial Germany. But Reitz knew from his own bitter experience in the Boer War that they were just trying to keep their chins up.22
By occupying Windhoek, Botha had achieved all the strategic objectives laid out by the subcommittee of the Committee of Imperial Defence. By all accounts, he had done his job and could now pack his bags and go home. But Botha had his own ideas. ‘Botha’s aims were patently South African rather than imperial,’ notes Hew Strachan.23 The prime minister could now focus on his own plans. But he worried that the Schütztruppe would resort to guerrilla warfare, just as he and the other Boer generals had done so successfully against the British. The land to the north, where the Germans had retreated, was conducive to a protracted guerrilla campaign, as the region was vast, included large, unexplored tracts of Portuguese territory, and provided better grazing and game than the south of the colony. Botha knew that hunting down small bands of Schütztruppe in this thickly bushed environment would be near impossible.
Yet for him it was essential that the Germans be completely defeated, and quickly. He did not want them to retain sufficient territory to uphold Germany’s claim to the colony if peace negotiations were to take place in Europe. He was also mindful of the effect of a drawn-out campaign on the South African public back home. When Reitz arrived in Windhoek, Botha expressed to him his concern that Hertzog and the nationalists were ‘conducting unceasing propaganda against the expedition’.24 He was keen to wrap things up as soon as possible.
Thus, with Mentz’s 3rd Mounted Brigade duly installed to mind the capital and its civilians, and Berrangé’s 5th Regiment of Mounted Riflemen policing the southern sector of the colony, Botha hurried back to Karibib to plan his final move.
12
In for the kill
GERMAN GOVERNOR THEODOR SEITZ was in no mood to adopt guerrilla tactics. Neither was his military commander. Unlike von Lettow-Vorbeck in East Africa, Franke, based on recent experience, believed that the South African commandos would easily overrun small isolated bands of German troops. Furthermore, he could not rely on African villages for supplies as his counterpart did in East Africa, because most tribes in the South West were unsympathetic to the German cause, especially after what had befallen the Herero and Nama. German-owned farms would not be able to supply all the troops, and even if they did, they would attract the wrath of the South African soldiers. As both Franke and Seitz were at pains to maintain the safety of civilians, they would not even consider this last option.1
The Germans’ air support had by now also ceased operations. Fiedler’s Aviatik had suffered permanent mechanical failure and Trück’s aeroplane was also damaged beyond repair. Von Scheele flew his last mission sometime in May, crashing into a thorn tree near Karibib. He survived, but his Roland did not. It was von Scheele’s eighth crash in the war and the fourth in which he sustained injuries.
Nevertheless, had Franke the inclination for guerrilla warfare, it may have lengthened the campaign considerably, a possibility that Botha could ill afford. It was arguably Franke’s best course of action and it certainly would have been Botha’s had he been in the German commander’s position. The Ovambo, for instance, had never liked the Herero and were relatively sympathetic to the colonialists, particularly after Franke routed the Portuguese in Ovamboland. A protracted guerrilla campaign using Ovambo bases in the north of the colony and in present-day southern Angola may have proved worthwhile. Franke did consider it, but a famine was raging across Ovamboland at the time and he may have felt it would be too much to test the fragile goodwill of starving villagers.2 He did not discount guerrilla warfare entirely, but he believed he still had one or two other options available to him.
With Botha busy mobilising the largest force of the campaign at Karibib, Seitz and Franke decided to sue for peace on terms that would favour continued German governance. The two men, like many of their compatriots, were convinced that Germany would succeed in Europe. Their objective in opening talks with Botha was twofold: firstly, they wanted to retain enough territory in the colony to uphold Germany’s claim to it when European peace negotiations commenced and, secondly, they hoped to sidestep their inexorable defeat.
Botha received Seitz’s written request for a ceasefire from a dispatch rider who intercepted his motorcade as he was travelling back from Windhoek. At midday on 20 May, at the base of a hill called Giftkop, roughly midway between Karibib and Omaruru, Botha, Seitz and their respective staff met under the umbrella-like shade of an acacia tree. Collyer, who sat next to his commander-in-chief, says the meeting was ‘conducted virtually entirely by the Governor who was vehement, and even aggressive, in his bearing’.3 He describes Seitz as a small man who ‘made up for his lack of inches by occasionally impressive utterances, and once or twice threate
ned his auditors with the displeasure of sixty millions of Germans’.4 According to Meintjes, Seitz actually said something like:
Mr Botha you are not an Englishman. Your people were robbed of their country by the English. We wish to be your friends. Are you now prepared, on behalf of your people, to incur the hatred of seventy million Germans?5
Botha responded that he was. Echoing Reitz’s earlier sentiments concerning the attitude of the German civilians in Windhoek, Collyer notes that the governor’s bolshie demeanour clearly indicated he was bluffing and that in reality his morale was low.6
In contrast to Seitz’s ‘aimless discussion’, Franke, in full uniform with sword, medals and tassels, hardly spoke.7 Perhaps it was in deference to his governor or, more likely, to Botha, whom he had not met before but must have admired as a soldier.
The gist of Seitz’s diatribe was to cease hostilities between the two armies and maintain a status quo. The South Africans could remain in occupation of their recently conquered territory, while the Schütztruppe would be in charge of their section to the north until the end of the war when a European peace treaty would decide the fate of the colony. Botha listened patiently for a long time, ‘due mainly to his own reluctance to wound the feelings of Dr. Seitz’, once again displaying his characteristic conciliatory nature through calm and attentive conduct.8 When Seitz eventually ran out of steam, Botha simply and politely replied that unconditional surrender was all he would accept. The meeting terminated amicably and the men went back to their respective lines, Botha to prepare for his advance and Seitz for his retreat.