Scultetus rode with one of the companies to see if Rössing was occupied, I had orders to take all the loose animals and waggons to Arandis (near the sixty-kilometre point on the Otavi railway). We saw signs of enemy troops in the river bed, so we went out into the bush, but there were enemy soldiers there as well; so we compromised by staying within twenty kilometres of the river bed.
The horses became weak; as soon as we stopped, the animals lay down, and the only way to make them stand again was to ride in between them. I had only six men with me. It was an appallingly hot day, and we had been riding since two o’clock in the morning. At five o’clock in the afternoon we finally met at Arandis railway station, quite broken and half-dead from thirst, and gradually the other sections and squads of the company trickled in.
A train from Usakos brought us food and water, for we had brought no provisions with us, and had had nothing to eat or drink since two o’clock that morning. All of us were on high alert, and twice the alarm was raised overnight, just as we had wrapped ourselves in horse-blankets and fallen asleep in a corner. False alarm both times.
23 February 1915
We occupied the Arandiskuppe. Railway engineers from Usakos began to dismantle the line, and we moved the camp three kilometres east of the Arandiskuppe.
25 February 1915
During his inspection of the camp, Major Wehle ordered us to move it twelve kilometres east, beyond railway kilometre seventy-four. A mounted train must always go ahead to cover the dismantling of the railway. As we learned later, on 23 February we had been attacked by a hostile force of 5,000 men, under the personal direction of General Botha, and thrown out of our camp near Felseneck. We, on the other hand, were only a company of 112 rifles, and we lost only a patrol of three men, who were captured unharmed.
1 March 1915
I received news of a transfer to Major Wehle’s staff in Kubas as ordnance officer.
2 March 1915
I rode with a few men to Arandis and from there by railway trolley to Khangrube (which was abandoned) to bring provisions and other useful kit. At 6 o’clock in the evening I was back again in the camp with some loot.
4 March 1915
Leutnant von Könitz[70] arrived to replace me, with whom I had been exchanged from the staff.
5 March 1915
At three o’clock I rode out with my natives and my belongings, which formed just a small bundle on the second horse, and arrived at Treckkoppje railway station at seven that night. I ate with the local stationmaster and stayed there overnight.
6 March 1915
At six in the morning I carried on through Stinkbank and Old Tsawisis to Ubib. Got to Dixon’s farm at ten, off-saddled and as it was such a hot day, stayed until three o’clock in the afternoon. Reached Kubas at five.
7 and 8 March 1915
Introduction to staff officer’s duties.
9 March 1915
Left at five o’clock in the morning, just me and my natives on a long patrol, seeking out water and pasture conditions in the local countryside and checking whether enemy troops are close by. I rode over Ubib, then turned north from the crossroads towards Old Tsawisis, (Farmer Dietz), from there southwards to New Tsawisis, from there across the railway at the 124-kilometer point to Aukas station. From there across the river and past the Henderson copper mine to Klein-Aukas. There I met my old friend and former colleague at the DKG, Richard Schettler, and stayed with him overnight.
10 March 1915
At five o’clock in the morning I rode back from there and arrived at Kubas at 11am. A total of 137 kilometers.
12 March 1915
Went with Major Wehle by train to Karibib. We were there all afternoon and the following day.
13 March 1915
Many errands for the staff, reports and telegrams to headquarters, supplies for the troops, and at four o’clock in the afternoon back again by train to Kubas. I am to be in charge of railways, looking after all traffic and transportation.
14 and 15 March 1915
Signficant troop movements taking place to new positions, and all of them are passing through Kubas, so there has to be a regular service from early morning to late.
15 March 1915
Orders from headquarters that the staff has to move to Jakalswater. At two o’clock in the afternoon we departed by train, and finally got to Jakalswater at seven o’clock in the in the evening after all the usual incidents, a carriage derailment, etc.
16 March 1915
The various troops came to the new positions. In the afternoon, the commander arrived and inspected our new location with Major Wende, departing in the evening.
17 March 1915
Alarm sounded at three in the morning, but nothing to see from the enemy.
19 March 1915
Great alarm, an enemy squadron attacked our outposts and one of our patrols, Major Wehle rode away alone into the bush, and no one knows where he is. Reports from scouts from which we believe the enemy is planning a major attack for tomorrow.
Wehle’s positions:
At Jakalswater: the staff and artillery staff under Hauptmann Trainer;[71]
At Modderfontein: an artillery battery under Hauptmann von Münstermann, and a mounted company.
At Riet: a mounted company under Hauptmann von Watter,[72] an infantry company under Reserve Hauptmann Ohlenschlager,[73] and an artillery battery under Hauptmann Haüding.
At Pforte: a mounted company under Hauptmann Weiss and half an artillery battery under Oberleutnant von Weiher.[74]
In the absence of orders, I immediately had the railway trains in Jakalswater loaded with all supplies and provisions, munitions, and reserve ammunition, so as to be able to evacuate the trains immediately after a sudden attack. Major Wehle was finally back at noon, claiming that there was no prospect of a further attack from the enemy. He was dissatisfied with my actions, and ordered everything to be unloaded again. Since we, the other officers, did not share his view, I had a quiet word with Hauptmann Trainer; I then gave the impression of carrying out the orders, but surreptitiously allowed the most heavily loaded train to leave.
20 March 1915
At half-past four in the morning a platoon arrived by train, 30 men, the last of the Landwehr Corps, under Reserve Oberleutnant Steffen. After a short halt, our sentries joined them and they were sent as reinforcements for the command post against further attacks. The Major’s adjutant, Oberleutnant Neuhaus, went with them to deploy the troops into the correct positions.
At six o’clock in the morning, two companies of enemy troops attacked the station building from about two hundred metres away. They occupied a rocky outcrop which lay like a whale’s back, about sixty metres high and 150 metres long, and opened fire. At Jakalswater we had only thirty-seven men in total, including seven officers and the railway staff. We immediately opened fire from the railway embankment, which was at right angles to the railway buildings and lay opposite the enemy’s position, and as the enemy was very well pinned down, a mutual deadly fire began. To our right on a piece of higher ground, about eight hundred metres away, appeared thirteen enemy squads simultaneously. Two of them rode out straight away, and destroyed the railway line and telegraph to our rear; we had to expect an assault from the rest at any second, of course, but as they seemed to be unclear about our strength, no attack took place.
In order to have a better view, I crawled further to the right along the railway embankment, but as soon as I raised my head to look out, a bullet grazed the left side of my head. For a moment it knocked me senseless, then I went back to my former position and heard Major Wehle call for me. Of course, I could not understand what he wanted over the noise of gunfire, and after two repeated queries he shouted ‘Well, come over here, then.’
This was a pretty ticklish call, because he was standing at the station building and I had about to traverse about sixty metres under enemy fire across an entirely open area. I told myself: if you run, you become a battle casualty. If you don’t run, you en
d up being court-martialled for disobedience or maybe even cowardice. You might as well run.
I had gone barely ten steps when I got a shot through the left buttock, a decent, deep flesh-wound, about eight centimetres long, and I bled like a stuck pig. The order I received from Wehle was so unnecessary and was so definitely not worth the wound I had received, that in a fury I retreated back to safety, threw myself down at the top of the railway embankment and smoked a cigarette before I started shooting again. Now came von Münstermann’s battery galloping up into position immediately, and opened fire on the whale’s back. I crawled to the battery, pointed out the squads deployed on our right and the two behind us, whereupon two guns fired shrapnel shells at them and all thirteen squads rode off at the gallop.
The artillery on the whale’s back did not seem to be well-judged, and we saw how it was gradually abandoned. The troops had to run because for the most part we had shot down their horses, which were tied up at the foot of the rock. When only a faint fire came from that direction, Hauptmann Vorbeck and I advanced with two men towards the whale’s back. As we approached the rock, a great number of enemy soldiers with raised hands suddenly appeared out of the outcrops and we captured forty-two, including two Boer officers. The group immediately had to throw down their rifles, ammunition belts and side-arms; Vorbeck left me and my two men alone them and went behind the rocks, and after a short time returned with a further six men, an army doctor, and fifty saddled horses. The whale’s back was cleared.
The fight was over and we brought the prisoners and horses to the station. It wasn’t until half-past eleven that I could get hold of our medical officer and get my wound dressed. My railway duties started again: everything that was still there had to be loaded, the prisoners put on a train, and the tracks behind us were soon repaired.
At Riet an attack had also been repulsed, and the enemy had retreated, but as another attack was expected the following morning, and our position there was too weak, the troops were ordered to return to Kubas. Some 4,000 to 5,000 enemy mounted troops had attacked Pforte, and the entire garrison was captured, with several killed or wounded including von Weiher, the dashing officer in charge of the artillery battery. At four o’clock in the afternoon, Major Wehle ordered a retreat from Jakalswater to Dorstrevier railway station. He gave me orders to escort the fifty captured horses, but at walking pace so that he could reach me at any moment. (Oberleutnant Neuhaus, the adjutant, had been taken prisoner at Pforte, so I was now adjutant and ordnance officer.) I only had two men to help with the transport of the horses, so I took six of the prisoners off the railway train and brought them along; each one was coupled to a string of eight horses, so they couldn’t make off from me.
My bandage did not stop me riding. The wound burned, and I was aching terribly; my leg gradually became so stiff that at every stop one of my men had to lift my leg over the saddle. Six hours riding at a walk is not one of my most beautiful war memories. At ten o’clock in the evening we reached Dorstrevier station, dead-tired, hungry, and parched. The captured, wounded and dead were immediately transported by train to Karibib. Finally by about half-past midnight I was done in. I found a spot on a pile of kitbags in a railway waggon, rolled myself in my coat and did not need a lullaby to fall asleep.
After approximately half an hour’s slumber I realised that the train was in motion. But I was in charge of the railway… so who had given the order to leave? I clambered from waggon to waggon until I reached the engine, and learned from the train driver that Major Wehle had ordered him to drive the train to Kubas immediately. Why and for what reason? Incomprehensible, but classic Wehle: do this one minute, do that the next!
In Kubas my former DKG colleague Otto Meyer fortified me with a bite to eat and some schnapps, and I took a locomotive back to Dorstrevier, where I arrived at five o’clock in the morning. I had been looking forward to some decent sleep, but it became sheer hell because there was so much to do. Reports and encrypted telegrams to headquarters; personnel re-assignments and so on. My wound, which was seriously inflamed by the long ride, had to be treated again and re-dressed and the doctor forbade me to ride any further. Scarcely ten minutes later, Wehle ordered me to ride to Kubas and to make sure that all the available railway locomotives were to go to Dorstrevier. When I told him the doctor had banned me from riding, Wehle said ‘Oh, you’ll be fine if you take it slowly.’ I was in agony, but what can you do? An order is an order, so I rode with my natives. I had gone barely three kilometres when a locomotive from Kubas appeared. I gave my boy my two horses to ride with slowly to Kubas, halted the locomotive and let it take me back to Kubas. In the afternoon the rest of the staff and the other troops gradually arrived in Kubas.
22 to 27 of March was very busy with railway transport, the various troops units being ordered to new positions, telephone and telegraph going incessantly, we cleared out Kubas and packed up; our staff quarters were constantly changing: retreating all the time. As a result I had to set out new transport routes; water had to be stored for the railway in huge tanks; I had to provide feed and water for the horses and sort out water for the individual companies and so on. All of these tasks now fell to me instead of the captured adjutant.
On 24 March I received a telegram from Windhoek to say that our son Heinz had been born. Emmy was transferred from Karibib to Windhoek before the birth, so as to be in the hands of our good Dr. Brenner. The following day news of the battle and our losses and injuries reached Windhoek, causing my poor wife the most awful worry until—two days later—she received my written report of the nature of my injury.
On 28 March, Major Ritter took command over the whole division. Major Wehle was transferred to Otjiwarongo district and later Tsumeb. That suited him better because he was really no strategist, and the battle at Jakalswater should not have ended as it did.
Wehle left on 29 March, and we were not sad to see him go. He had everything loaded onto his waggon including provisions that actually belonged to the staff, so Oberleutnant Fricke, and I secretly raided the waggon and took everything we needed, together with some special delicacies he had ordered and reserved for himself.
The whole Schutztruppe was now divided into two equal parts, one under the command of Major Ritter, the other under Major Bauszus.[75] I stayed on Ritter’s staff. I had known Ritter since 1901, when he was a lieutenant in the Schutztruppe, and I had spent some splendid days with him in Lüderitzbucht and on a trip to Keetmanshoop. In 1904 I was involved with him (then Oberleutnant) in two big battles in the Herero war, so we were very friendly. He was a magnificent officer and a real daredevil. I was no longer adjutant, thank God, as Ritter had Oberleutnant von Geldern as adjutant.
The main staff were based in Ababis, while three of us stayed at the front as orderly officers and did our daily duties. Every morning all units were on high alert until eight o’clock, as we expected an attack to come, but the enemy had probably suffered losses at Jakalswater and left us in peace. My injuries did not heal, since I did not have the rest I needed. A giant abscess had formed at the head-wound, which the doctor opened twice while I knelt under some trees (we had no field hospital). In addition, a length of about three centimetres on my thigh did not close up.
I refused to go to the hospital because I was afraid they would transfer me back to base and away from the front. At the doctor’s request, Major Ritter ordered me to go to Karibib hospital on 12 April, and promised me that I would definitely return to him afterwards. In Karibib, Dr. Friedrich removed the big abscess by cutting deeply into it, but he had to operate under anaesthetic on a second abscess, which had formed on my neck and was not inclined to heal. Since the other wound on my thigh did not want to close, Dr. Friedrich cut it open again at my request, and found in it a two-inch-long piece of my riding-trousers. The cloth had been embedded by the shot and was not discovered when the wound was first dressed. The wound healed within a few days.
As the British continued to advance, Karibib was partly evacuated and the wounded tra
nsported to the hospital at Otjiwarongo.
On 30 April I left with Oberleutnant (pilot) Fiedler,[76] who had crashed in Karibib and had a hole in his skull (we had only two very old planes, both of which were soon wrecks). We were sitting on the front platform of a railway carriage (the carriages were filled with sick and wounded men evacuated from Karibib), and after many interruptions, breakdowns of the locomotives, etc., we arrived at Otjiwarongo after travelling for a fortnight.
We were not admitted to the hospital because it was full, and I soon found myself under a tree, where the termites almost ate me alive at night. Sometimes on a bench on a stoep; sometimes in a workshop on cartridge boxes; and once in the opulent bed of the commander—he was not there—until Director Hörlein of the German Diamond Company built a small corrugated iron building about three hundred metres from the hospital. I went to the hospital every morning, and since there was a different doctor on duty each day, and each doctor always prescribed precisely the opposite of the treatment of his predecessor, there was no prospect of the wound healing.
On 5 May the British occupied Karibib, and on May 7, Okahandja.
Colonel Grant, who was taken prisoner at Sandfontein on 27 September 1914, was interned at Waterberg. He had to be sent to Tsumeb, and although I had no duties because I was on sick leave, the commander requested that I escort him. We went by train to Tsumeb on 10 May, and I was back in Otjiwarongo the following day.
The Autobiography of Eugen Mansfeld Page 12