The Autobiography of Eugen Mansfeld

by Eugen Mansfeld

  14 January 1904

  Advancing at six o’clock on foot, One Company soon came on a Herero patrol which we finished off. After two hours’ march we had to turn back, because we were suddenly fired on from behind, and it was dangerous for us to be cut off. Back along the track embankment and turning left to scan along the hills, we got back to Waldau at half-past ten. As it would not be easy to continue advancing without being attacked, it was decided to armour the train. Each waggon—simple, open cargo trucks with wooden sides—was provided with a stack of ten sheets of corrugated iron on the sides, and behind them sacks full of rice and flour. The stocks came from Waldau, we built them up to chest height, and behind this armour the men were positioned, half sitting on the left, half on the right to the direction of travel, ready to fire. The train consisted of three sections:

  1. A vanguard, i.e. a double locomotive with armoured car and a waggon with rail repair materials.

  2. The main train: a locomotive, four armoured waggons and two goods waggons.

  3. The rear guard: consisting of a double locomotive.

  All three sections went along with fifty to sixty metres distance between each one. I was in the second waggon of the main train with my company of sixteen men. Building this train took all afternoon to complete, and was frequently interrupted when our sentries took heavy fire from the enemy, and we had to provide reinforcements. Towards evening, when the firing from the hills became intense, my train moved in front of the rocks and was able to shoot several Hereros. At night each section slept next to their waggon, and although we were roused several times, the Hereros did not dare to mount a proper attack.

  15 January 1904

  At 5.30am we set the trains moving. In less than half an hour we had a train crash, the rear guard locomotive drove into the main train, overturning the last carriage, which contained only kaffirs from Waldau (Waldau of course was evacuated), and derailed the baggage car into the middle of the tracks. We had an hour of hard work using winches to raise the car back onto the rails, the last waggon had simply been unhooked and thrown from the track. We went on with great care, because from here on the track had been destroyed in many places; short lengths of rail ripped out and dragged away, railway cuttings blown up, and all these obstacles had to be cleared again. For this reason our One Company troops immediately swarmed out to the left and right and provided cover, and we were able to rout a much larger Herero patrol in Okakango. About twenty minutes before Okahandja was one final, much more extensive patch where the tracks had been destroyed and required repair. As soon as the train stopped we came under heavy fire from both sides of the railway tracks.

  As always I jumped out with my company, on the left hand side, and we were barely ready to aim before we sustained a murderous barrage of shooting. As we were in open country, we had to traverse about sixty metres before we found cover in the trees. The black devils of the Okahandja field force came towards us in tight groups, and were stopped by a few well-aimed volleys that I directed. They carried on advancing, however they shot over our heads, wasting their ammunition. When the repairs to the track were finished, and we had to move back to the train, this was only possible by each man retreating backwards under covering fire from the right and left flanks, until we got back to the train. We carried on under covering fire from the waggons, getting to Okahandja at about 11.30am. The station was empty, occupied by neither us nor the Hereros—not by us because there was not enough manpower in the garrison to control it. The latter was lucky for us, since we would not otherwise have been able to remain at the station, and to storm it would have cost us heavy losses. As soon as the train stopped, some of the teams went out of the station building, while we occupied the embankment to the right of the tracks with two trains, and returned fire against droves of invading Herero. The enemy’s fire was always heavy, and came at us from all four directions; but we gradually worked our way up the embankment by leaps and bounds until we were at the same height as Okahandja Fort.

  After preliminary rapid fire and two salvoes came the command “Everyone to the fort, quickly!” Man after man, we had about one hundred metres to cover, over entirely open, clear terrain with bullets flying like a swarm of locusts. The main gate was barricaded, we had to dive through a narrow side gate, which was barricaded up to chest height, and two soldiers inside the gate pulled each man inside. During this entry we lost three men killed and two wounded. Okahandja Fort is a square building built of mud bricks, about sixty metres square, with a tower at each corner and designed to be easily defended. The fort had been besieged for three days; there were about one hundred people, men, women and children in it, and of course there was great joy because without our reinforcements of 120 men the garrison itself would not have been able to hold out much longer, especially since the command of the former Distriktschef and Oberleutnant[24] was questionable. This was not a sudden uprising: is proved by the simple fact that the very same night, from 12 to 13 January, farms were attacked everywhere in the country and the owners murdered. The rebellion was planned and organised for months, and so secretly that no whites, not even the missionaries, suspected anything. Okahandja looked devastated, all the private houses and stores looted and partly burned. A number of residents were murdered, and those who escaped to the fort owned only what they wore.

  Now a terrible life began; a mass of people crammed together, while rain fell continuously day and night, so that mud stood a foot deep in the courtyard of the fort. The pump in the fort gave only a grey, muddy liquid that was unsuitable for consumption, and all available containers were prepared to collect rain for drinking water. Oberleutnant von Zülow[25] immediately took over command of the fort. The whole group was immediately allocated into three garrison companies and three field companies, the latter as an expeditionary corps which was set up to undertake sorties from the fort and attacks on the enemy. I was in One Field Company under our previous commander, Oberveterinär Rickmann, and commanded Two Section. I and my twenty men had one room as quarters; we were man to man next to one another on the stone floor, with only one blanket each, and for the first ten days did not take off our uniforms or boots. All the rooms were infested with bed-bugs, so that you were attacked by the delightful creatures, and even if you pulled one off there was another to take its place. Food was cooked in a large kitchen and each man collected it in his field mess-tin. Existing stocks were very scarce and not adequate for about two hundred people; the menu was very varied: rice, beans, peas and flour made from dried peas. Fresh meat did not exist; except in the first few days when we shot a couple of pigs which were still running around as well as an ancient, emaciated horse which was too unappealing even for the Hereros. The last of the pigs was especially tasty, because it was shot just as it was devouring the corpse of one of the Hereros who had been dead for several days.

  The shooting went on day and night; the guard towers and embrasures were constantly double-manned. Every other day our section was on guard duty; and even though I did not have to stand guard myself I still had to inspect the positions, arrange the detachments and monitor all the operations. Anyone who was not on guard duty had work to do: the courtyard had to be drained, ditches dug, and windows and towers reinforced etc etc.

  17 January 1904

  On 17 and 18 January I had my section of the armoured train dismantled. We used the sacks to build a new redoubt, always under enemy fire. On 17 January I met Frau Lange, from Klein-Barmen, with two children. Her husband had been beaten to death by the Hereros before her eyes, and she received four blows to the head from a club and was left for dead. When she regained consciousness she was with the two children, girls of four and five years. They had escaped from the house into the bush and the Hereros did not find them; it took them five days to get to Okahandja, travelling only at night, barefoot and only partly dressed. All three were half-starved and in a terrible state, and we immediately took them into our care. Frau Lang’s third child, a little girl of just over two years, was also b
eaten with a club by the Hereros. They thought she was dead, but an old Herero woman who had been one of the Lang’s servants found the little girl sitting on her father’s corpse and brought her to a missionary in Barmen, where a patrol later found her.

  18 January 1904

  At night, when I was at one of the turrets inspecting the guard, I heard movements outside the main gates and a voice called out, “Open up, open up.”

  “Who is there?” I called down.

  “Meester Schulze,” came the reply.

  “I reckon I do know you,” I shouted back, grabbed my rifle, and I and the turret crew opened heavy fire on Mr Schulze. The next morning we found six Hereros shot dead, lying in front of the gate, and the footprints of at least another twelve men. It appeared to be an enemy party trying to get into the fort.

  19 January 1904

  The three field companies went by armoured train in the direction of Osona, lying south of Windhoek, to explore whether and how far an advance was possible, and whether the railway line to Windhoek was destroyed. About a kilometre from the fort we came under heavy fire from the rocks to the right of the railway line; there, on top of a little hill, rings of small rocks. It was therefore an ideal defensive position. The house of the Herero headman, Barnabas, was there, and the previous day we had suffered heavy gun fire from there. Shortly before the train stopped there I was ordered by my commander to attack and capture the house. We stormed the house with bayonets fixed, the Hereros fled through the rear, and I deployed my men in the hillocks around the house. The train went on; I was to hold the ground overnight until it returned the next morning. The location was very good; we were indeed fired upon furiously from the hills lying opposite, but the position was such that with my sixteen men I could have lasted very well against an enemy force of two hundred rushing against us. The pleasure did not last long: after two hours the train returned, as the tracks had been destroyed so that travel any further was impossible.

  20 January 1904

  We had contact with neither Windhoek nor Swakopmund because the telegraph wires were destroyed. In order to get information about our fate and to find out more about conditions further down the line, a group of forty men under two reserve officers was sent by armoured train to break through in the direction of Karibib. The group went as far as Kawaturasane; there they came under fire from a superior Herero force, so that they had to retreat with the loss of four dead and four seriously wounded.

  21 January 1904

  Since this expedition was unsuccessful, but it was necessary for us to get despatches to Karibib, in the evening two Bergdamas (officers’ servants) were cajoled and persuaded to make their way there on foot. These fellows sneaked by very smoothly and arrived in Karibib after four days, thereby relaying the first news of our fate to Swakopmund.

  22 January 1904

  We were busy fortifying another house (Gelhar)[26] near the station, to store a train there. About 4am we heard from the direction of Windhoek the repeated thundering of guns, and suspected the arrival of reinforcements. Work stopped immediately and after quarter of an hour the first two field companies moved out to occupy outposts on the hills overlooking the routes out of Okahandja to cover the advancing troops. In the pouring rain, under constant fire, we marched up to the Barnabas house to reoccupy it, with some of the soldiers going to the home of Paramount Chief Samuel Maherero[27] on the other side of the railway line. I and my team advanced two kilometres further to a rocky ridge from where I was able to cover the river crossing. Since the reinforcements failed to appear, we retreated back to the fort again under cover of darkness.

  23 January 1904

  We moved early at 7.30am with three columns in the same direction, but advanced several kilometres further, to the high Barmen hills that are just opposite the large bridge lying over the Swakop River. There a company of Hereros, about sixty men, mounted and on foot, wanted to draw us over the river; they came under heavy fire from us and fled, leaving many dead. Suddenly from the right and from the hills behind us we came under such fire that we could hardly find cover, and when the enemy watching us received numerous reinforcements we had to withdraw again.

  25 and 26 January 1904

  Work duty for the occupation troops and a half-day off for the expedition corps. We spent it in the fort’s gardens, and requisitioned potatoes, vegetables and some magnificent grapes from the gardens of the company Wecke & Voigt, located on the Swakop River.

  27 January 1904

  The Emperor’s birthday.

  A field service was scheduled for 10am, where the missionary was to preach a sermon. At 8am we heard gunfire nearby again, and as we made the column ready to depart the Second Field Company under Hauptmann Franke[28] came up at the gallop, with a field gun and a mountain gun. We showed the guns off before the service, opening heavy fire on Kaiser Wilhelm Berg and the adjacent high ground, which lasted until 9am. At ten o’clock the missionary (who was nicknamed ‘the holy eunuch’ by the troops) arrived, but was quickly sent back home; because now we were celebrating the Emperor’s birthday in a different way.

  As I already mentioned, the entire Schutztruppe was mobilised for the fight against Bondelswarts in the south, and on the news of the outbreak of the Herero uprising Hauptmann Franke was immediately ordered with his company to turn back and stay at Omaruru.

  Here I would like to record something about the attitude of the missionaries, and especially the ones of the Rhenish Mission in Barmen. The missionaries played a singular role during the uprising: they remained sitting quietly in their houses, with Hereros going in and out. In Okahandja we came under the heaviest Herero fire from the church and the surrounding walled cemetery next to the missionary’s house. His cows grazed outside, and when one of his living milk bottles was shot (our little children had no milk during all these festivities) the old man came running under the white flag of truce and wanted to make a huge fuss about it, but was turned away rather abruptly by our commanders.

  Another day he came with a message from Samuel Maherero: give up all our women and children, and he would convey them to Swakopmund. We asked him if he was in his right mind, and gave him an answer. He and Samuel Mahahero were in it together as thick as thieves. In Otjisazu, two white settlers fled to the missionary’s house; that day he told a gang of Hereros who had followed the pair that he did not know whether they were in his house or in the garden. The missionary left the front door open; the Hereros went inside, pulled out the two poor settlers and slaughtered them.

  There is more to tell of these men, and the following little episode illustrates the rage and mood they provoked among the settlers: when I had to instruct my sentries in the lookouts about the different places in the town in the first days, I said to one old territorial soldier, “There is the mission house; you can only fire at it if someone shoots from it.” He noticed the word ‘if’, and added “if the old bastard pokes his head out.”

  The Catholic priests on the other hand proved to be very different; they immediately put themselves at the disposal of the troops, and some even rode with the vanguard.

  But enough of the holy spirits.

  27 January 1904

  After Franke’s company joined us we heard that a train from Windhoek carrying provisions and ammunition was standing at the bridge at Swakop, the bridge had been destroyed at both ends. A division of our railway staff was immediately sent to repair the bridge, and we followed with two trains in order to provide cover to the workers.

  28 January 1904

  Hauptmann Franke and his company and the two guns set off early for Kaiser Wilhelm Berg and had a heavy battle against a much larger force of the Hereros, lasting many hours; the Hereros were decisively beaten. We were on the bridge all day again under fairly intense gunfire.

  Two days before we arrived there, a detachment of 30 men with a machine gun had tried to come to Okahandja. One kilometre before the location where the railway line was destroyed, the detachment came under heavy fire from the
Hereros, leaving behind five dead (including Leutnant D.R. Boyssen[29]) and had to withdraw. We discovered these five bodies on our return in the morning, and I went back with six men at six o’clock in the evening before the unit returned to the fort, with instructions to bury the fallen men. It was a terrible job. The corpses of course had been completely stripped and robbed by the Hereros, as they always do; they had already lain for fourteen days in the rain and hot sun; they stank, and were so terribly decayed and partly eaten by jackals that four of my men passed out. Naturally, each body could only be lifted with two spades, and was placed in a grave dug next to where the corpse lay.

  29 January 1904

  After Hauptmann Franke had defeated the Hereros at Kaiser Wilhelm Berg the day before, we now began looking for the enemy on the other side of the mountain. At six in the morning, 85 men under the command of Leutnant von Zülow marched out, climbed the high mountain and the adjoining hills, and met only scattered small groups of the enemy. Those Herero who were not shot, fled; and we concluded that the mountain and the surrounding area could be considered to have been evacuated by the enemy. The troops returned to the fort in the afternoon.

  30 January 1904

  Troops were allocated to the various railway stations to protect the railway line.