by Edward Paice
The Belgians’ decision to help their beleaguered British neighbours marked a significant watershed in their attitude to the mounting tensions in eastern Africa. The Congo’s neutrality ‘in perpetuity’, enshrined in the 1885 Berlin Act and violated by the German attack on Lukuga, was becoming less maintainable by the day; and with the capture of Kwidjwi Island by German raiders on 24 September, an act which robbed Belgium of control of Lake Kivu, it became a dead letter. On 4 October Belgian troops launched their first overtly offensive action of the war, an unsuccessful attempt to oust German troops from Kissenyi, on the north shore of Lake Kivu.
These early battles in East Africa were described by Lewis Harcourt, the British Secretary of State for Colonies, as ‘all very thrilling’. It was still widely assumed – on both sides – that the war in Europe would be over by Christmas and that a process of a political horse-trading would then see Germany’s soon-to-be-invaded colonies handed back to their ‘rightful owner’. But beneath its Gilbertian veneer the fighting had assumed a seriousness which few would recognise until much later. Longstanding, and intense, imperial rivalries had been rekindled; colonial ambitions were being reappraised; and the insouciant atmosphere of the first weeks of August was fast evaporating. At an engagement at Ingito Hills, south-east of Nairobi, the volunteer East African Mounted Rifles suffered twelve casualties in defeating – and inflicting substantially higher casualties on – a German raiding party led by Captain Tafel; and at Karonga British and German settlers had killed men with whom they had formerly shared a drink on the shores of Lake Nyasa or exchanged opinions on the forthcoming harvest. This made what Harcourt called ‘the deadly work’15 of the conflict a great deal more intimate than was true of the fighting in Europe, even if it was not on a comparable scale. Furthermore, African troops ostensibly raised for peacekeeping duties (and an increasing number of African civilians) were rapidly finding themselves involved in a fray which flew in the face of lofty European claims to be ‘civilising’ and developing Africa – and about whose origins they knew nothing.
While the fighting intensified on land the crew of the Königsberg made the most of their arrival in the Rufiji delta. Fresh fruit and vegetables aplenty were brought to Salale by German settlers, and news of the war in Europe was digested and then discussed for hours by the crew as they were given opportunities to relax on land after their month-long cruise. Swimming, however, was not popular as the Rufiji was swarming with crocodiles and hippos.
After a few days coal from Dar-es-Salaam and other ports began to arrive in an assortment of small craft sent by Schnee. This not only illustrated the ongoing ‘flexibility’ of his ‘open port policy’ but also involved considerable risk: the coal might be seized by the Royal Navy or, worse still, the whereabouts of Looff’s cruiser might be detected. By the morning of 19 September, however, Looff had sufficient coal on board to enable him to put to sea again; and that same day he learnt that a lone British cruiser had put in to Zanzibar. It was just possible, he thought, that she had discovered the proximity of the Königsberg and was awaiting the arrival of other vessels before launching an attack. If that were the case, Looff decided that his best course of action would be to attack first.
The Königsberg was readied for battle in double-quick time, carefully navigated the shallow waters of the delta, and entered the open sea. Passing the Makatumbe lighthouse, at the entrance to Dar-es-Salaam harbour, Looff was able to fix his exact position one final time before darkness fell and was reminded of the indignity inflicted on the port by HMS Astraea and HMS Pegasus’s bombardment in August. He then checked the Königsberg’s speed to ensure that neither flames nor excessive smoke emanated from her funnels and set a course for Zanzibar.
The protection of Zanzibar’s harbour, and of the aged 2,135-ton cruiser HMS Pegasus, was entrusted to two small government steamers, Cupid and Khalifa (which had formerly provided a ferry service between Aberdeen, the Shetlands and Orkney). Four navigable channels led to the harbour and at sunset every day the steamers began a nocturnal vigil on the seaward side of the two channels that were buoyed. On the night of 19 September Cupid was occupied transporting the clove harvest from the neighbouring island of Pemba to Zanzibar and had been replaced by a recently captured German vessel, the Helmuth, commanded by Lieutenant C.J. Charlewood. A Cape Horner at the age of seventeen and in peacetime an officer with the British India Line, Charlewood had felt ‘some uneasiness’ ever since Pegasus’s sister ship, HMS Astraea, had departed for the Cape five weeks earlier. At the start of the war it had been ‘generally thought that the two cruisers in action together would prove more than a match for the Königsberg but that the enemy would not hesitate to engage either singly with a fair prospect of success’; yet now Pegasus was not only alone but undergoing repairs to her boilers.
At 5 a.m. the following morning Helmuth was on her way back to Zanzibar when a ‘large vessel’ was spotted approaching from the south. In the gloom Charlewood reckoned it must be the Union Castle liner he was expecting, although all merchant shipping had been instructed to use the northern approach to Zanzibar, and he changed course to meet the new arrival. As he did so dawn turned to daylight and he realised, to his horror, that the vessel had three funnels. He knew immediately, even before ‘the German colours were broken from the foremast head and the peak of her gaff’,16 that he was staring straight at the rapidly approaching Königsberg.
The Königsberg’s crew had spent a tense night, even passing close by an unidentifiable British ship just after midnight. Looff did not think he had been spotted; at any rate no wireless message was sent from the ship to Zanzibar. By dawn the palm trees of his destination were visible to the naked eye, as was Tchumbe lighthouse, and then finally the port. The whole panorama was described to him by Walter Herm, the skipper of the Somali, who had volunteered to pilot the Königsberg on her mission through waters he knew well. To Looff’s slight consternation a second large ship was docked near Pegasus, one of whose identity he was uncertain. But there was no time to dwell on it: he was now committed to his attack and a fraction of a second after his command – ‘Salve! Feuer!’ – his five starboard 4.1-inch guns opened fire from a distance of about six miles. Looff had no way of knowing that the Pegasus was immobilised while undergoing repairs, but when no answering fire came until he had loosed his seventh salvo it was clear that ‘the surprise was total’. Under the command of Gunnery Officer Apel salvo after salvo was directed at the static target, the starboard gun-barrels ‘reddening little by little’ until Looff commenced a turn to bring his port guns to bear.
Less than half an hour after the commencement of the one-sided engagement Apel reported that he thought he saw a white flag being hoisted from Pegasus, now enveloped in smoke and with flames shooting skywards from her deck. Apel’s observation was received with incredulity by Looff who, convinced that ‘Jack Tar’ would not contemplate such ‘ignominy’, gave no quarter. White flag or no white flag,* after loosing off some fifty shells Pegasus’s fifteen-year-old guns fell silent, and Looff finally realised that victory in the first duel of the war between British and German cruisers was his. He was ecstatic, subsequently invoking the words of Baron Börries von Münchhausen in his diary: ‘The most powerful of all things is war! The most magnificent of all good things is victory!’17
The destruction of the Pegasus placed the Helmuth, and Charlewood, ‘in a very unenviable position’ as Looff surveyed Zanzibar harbour for other targets. Apel’s first shell fell short of the Helmuth and the second went high. Charle-wood ‘did not wait for the third’, and ordered all hands overboard. It struck him as ‘humorous that I should be swimming in the sea while a naval battle was being waged in my immediate neighbourhood’, but the deafening noise of Königsberg’s exhaust and guns, the death of his Indian engineer for refusing to jump ship, and the fact that he was two miles from shore were anything but ‘humorous’. His predicament worsened still further when the German cruiser turned and headed straight towards the floundering cr
ew. It passed within feet, but just as Charlewood contemplated his imminent demise he heard a voice call out ‘are you all right?’18 – and a lifebuoy landed in the water nearby.
Looff stuck to his task for a few more minutes, shelling Zanzibar’s wireless mast and other onshore targets and lobbing sand-filled petrol drums overboard to create the impression that he was laying mines.† For some inexplicable reason he left alone the 4,000-ton collier Banffshire, the vessel he had been unable to identify at dawn; and, had he but known of their existence, 30,000 cases of kerosene in a warehouse right on the harbour front presented another excellent target. Time was Looff’s great concern: he knew he could not afford to linger a moment longer than necessary within Zanzibar’s inner waters, especially with one engine having broken down and smoke suddenly visible on the horizon. The approaching vessel, it later transpired, was only the Gascon, a Union Castle liner, and she fled back to Mombasa immediately after receiving a warning signal from Zanzibar.
By 3 p.m., having expended more than 270 irreplaceable shells from a magazine of 1,500, Looff had returned the Königsberg and his jubilant crew to their lair in the Rufiji delta. In his wake he left a scene of utter chaos. More than fifty of the crew of the Pegasus had been killed or wounded, the Admiralty wanted to know why Captain Ingles had not obeyed the order to ensure that his ship was never without steam ‘on at least one engine’,19 and when smoke was seen off Mombasa a few days later one member of the Town Guard was heard to remark to another, ‘now we’re for it at last, old boy’.20 Worse still for the Royal Navy, the news of Pegasus’s fate reached the Cape Station on the very same day as that of the sinking of the cruisers Aboukir, Cressy and Hogue by a German U-boat in the North Sea.
At the end of the first week in October German incursions into neighbouring territories all but ceased. The most obvious reason for this was that von Lettow-Vorbeck’s strategy was, for the time being at least, a busted flush. Not one of the Schutztruppe company commanders had succeeded in routing their opponents, and half a dozen of his most senior officers had been seriously wounded during September – Schulz and Rothert at Tsavo, Tafel (at Ingito Hills), Wintgens (at Kissenyi), von Langenn-Steinkeller (at Karonga) and Bock von Wülfingen (at Kisii). Many of their attacks were simply badly planned and badly executed, and running battles tended to preclude taking advantage of the Schutztruppe’s overwhelmingly superior number of machine-guns. A further factor, however, was destined to be largely overshadowed by a myth of invincibility that later surrounded the German askari : namely that the well-trained askari of the King’s African Rifles excelled themselves on countless occasions in these early battles. Sergeant Gizau Woldemariam of the Abyssinian company of 3/KAR won a bar for his DCM at Upper Rombo in August 1914; Sergeant Miyoiyou of 4/KAR was awarded the DCM at Kisii; Colour Sergeant-Major Sumani assumed command of his company of 1/KAR at Gazi after its two British officers were wounded, and was recommended for the same award; as was Sergeant George Williams for his reconnaissance work at Tsavo. At Campi Ya Marabu the conduct of Hagenas Abdul Ferag and Mohammed Fadulla was mentioned in despatches; and Lance-Corporal Ismail Takir proved himself a lethal force on a Maxim gun at Mzima. The list of examples of outstanding bravery was extensive. Man for man the King’s African Rifles, and the European volunteers who had taken to the field, had proved themselves the equals of their German opponents.
Von Lettow-Vorbeck also needed a pause in the hostilities while completing the complex process of concentrating troops in the north-east. General Wahle was appointed to establish the lines of communication from Morogoro, on the Central Railway, to Handeni; the light railway, or trolley-line, connecting Handeni to the Usambara Railway at Mombo had to be completed; Major Kraut, who knew the Kilimanjaro borderlands as well as anyone, having worked on the pre-war Anglo-German boundary commission, had to organise and redeploy the five field companies and 500 or so reservists in the Kilimanjaro area; and Captain Baumstark needed to regroup after the bruising experience of his thwarted advance towards Mombasa. Meanwhile von Lettow-Vorbeck established his headquarters at Moshi and set about reconnoitring Tanga district, with Captain Otto Adler, a retired officer of the 33rd Fusilier Regiment managing a sisal plantation near Tanga, and the District Commissioner, Dr Auracher. So certain was he that the imminently expected British invasion would occur there that only one company, Inspector of Police von Kornatzki’s newly raised 18/FK, was left watching Dar-es-Salaam.
Although communications with the outside world had ‘to all intents and purposes been cut off’,21 and the September battles had proved a harsh initiation for many a German reservist, morale in the colony rose considerably as von Lettow-Vorbeck’s preparations neared completion. The sinking of the Pegasus was a further boon, as was the absence of ‘unrest’ which Schnee had feared the war might trigger among the Wahehe in the centre of the country or the Wachagga in Kilimanjaro district. ‘Our troops have behaved courageously throughout’, read a despatch of Schnee’s which attested to the mood among the European population,
[and] the supply of provisions and medical stores has worked well. A Red Cross Committee under the direction of Frau Schnee has collected considerable sums and have shown themselves very active. The health of the troops and population are on the whole favourable. The natives with the exception of the usual cattle looting expeditions from Warundi, which are being dealt with, have remained quiet. Their attitude has been with a few exceptions loyal; the Mohammedan population have shown themselves enthusiastic for German victory and have prayed for victory in the mosques. The supply of recruits from all parts of the colony was greater than could have been anticipated.22
Across the border in British East Africa no attempt was made to exploit the relative inactivity of the enemy. Both Belfield and Captain Cadell, an Intelligence officer with IEF ‘C’, were so convinced that the imminent invasion of German East Africa would not encounter strong resistance that they made little effort to ascertain what, if anything, might be happening behind the German front lines around Taveta and on the coast; and government officials continued to conduct their business as if the war was no affair of theirs. News that the main expeditionary force was about to leave India was finally received in the second week in October and by the 12th even the manager of the Gazi Rubber Plantation Company knew that invasion of German East Africa was about to begin. It looked as if the ‘East Africa Affair’ would be over in a matter of weeks.
After countless delays and substantial last-minute alterations to its composition, the bulk of IEF ‘B’ sailed from Bombay in sweltering heat on 16 October. Their fourteen transports constituted only one third of the whole convoy which, escorted by HMSs Goliath, Swiftsure and Dufferin, was continuing the process of denuding India of troops; and yet more ships joined from Karachi two days later, creating ‘a most impressive sight, the whole ocean being dotted with ships as far as the eye could see’.23 Neither the War Office nor the Imperial General Staff were involved in the planning for the invasion of German East Africa. The principal responsibility lay with the Committee of Imperial Defence, the India Office and the Colonial Office; and the plan to seize Tanga before operating later against Dar-es-Salaam and the Central Railway was, in the words of one senior staff officer with IEF ‘B’, ‘extremely ambitious’.24 Above all, success would depend a great deal on the intelligence provided by Belfield, Captain Cadell, and Norman King – the former British Consul in Dar-es-Salaam; and that, as would soon be revealed, was far from comprehensive.
As the transports carrying IEF ‘B’ made their way towards East Africa, von Lettow-Vorbeck completed his troop deployments in the north-east. Two companies of European volunteers, the 7th and 8th Schutzkompanie (SchK), were based at Taveta; Major Kepler’s Abteilung, or detachment – consisting of 4/FK, 8/FK, 9/FK and 13/FK – was based at Rombo, on the slopes of Mt Kilimanjaro; and at headquarters in New Moshi were Lieutenant Merensky’s 1/FK, 6/FK and 6/SchK. A hundred miles north-west of Kilimanjaro Major Kraut held the mountain stronghold of Longido with 10/FK,
11/FK, 21/FK and 9/SchK; on the coast Captain Baumstark kept watch on the border and Tanga with 15/FK, 16/FK and 17/FK; 4/SchK and 5/SchK patrolled and protected the Usambara Railway, which ran through the north-east connecting the port of Tanga with Moshi, 190 miles distant. With these 3,500 men, all of whom could be rushed to the defence of others by the railway, von Lettow-Vorbeck awaited the arrival of up to 10,000 Indian troops.
THREE
‘The Action of a Lunatic’*
The fourteen transports carrying Indian Expeditionary Force ‘B’ to East Africa peeled off from the rest of the convoy on 19 October and, with Goliath and Hardinge as escorts, shaped a course for Mombasa. (See Appendix Two.) The invasion force was over 8,000-strong and commanded by Major-General Arthur Aitken, who was wont to describe himself as a ‘Red Hot Imperialist’. A cavalryman since 1882, Aitken had no experience of joint operations or of campaigning in Africa. Nor had he even met one of his two brigade generals, Brigadier-General Richard Wapshare, until just prior to departure; and Wapshare had never seen two of the four battalions in the 27th Bangalore Brigade under his command until the day before embarkation. The other half of the force comprised an Imperial Service Brigade, commanded by Brigadier-General Michael Tighe, who also had little previous knowledge of any his battalions. Four and a half of the expeditionary force’s eight infantry battalions were deemed to have good reputations; but the 63rd Palamcottahs, 98th Infantry and 61st Pioneers were regarded as ‘suspect’ for being drawn from less ‘martial’ peoples of India. Whatever truth underlay these judgements, there was no escaping the fact that the force was very much a ‘scissors and paste’ affair whose agglomeration resulted from higher priorities in Europe and the Middle East. One senior officer, surveying it prior to embarkation, remarked that ‘this campaign will either be a walk-over or a tragedy’.1