Tip & Run
Page 25
Some dismissed Chilembwe’s rebellion as an ‘insane project’,22 a suicidal grand gesture on the part of a man who had become unhinged. On the other hand, Lieutenant Masters of the KAR was one of many who thought that ‘[Chilembwe’s] plans, if they had been carried out, were good, and if his leaders had had a little more enterprise it would have been a sad affair for the white men in this country’.23 Whether the colonial government might conceivably have been overthrown was a moot point; what really unnerved even the sceptics was that – as had been true of the 1896 Ndebele Rebellion in Southern Rhodesia – ‘there was not the smallest doubt that most [local Africans] knew about [the rebellion]’24 beforehand and had not warned about it. This brought the strength of the British administration, or lack of it, into very stark relief and was proof positive that the defence of just 800 Europeans in a country of one million Africans was all but impossible against an opponent determined to target supposedly ‘innocent’ civilians rather than government bomas.
Such conduct was deemed ‘unsporting’, especially by a missionary, during wartime: ‘this attempt to stick us in the back came at a rather disconcerting moment’, wrote one official, ‘and it caused us a great deal of trouble’.25 Everyone was familiar with John Buchan’s Prester John, published in 1910, and the book suddenly seemed alarmingly prescient. Chilembwe did not come close to realising missionary ‘Prester John’ Laputa’s vision of a liberated ‘Africa for the Africans’, but he had done enough to earn himself in later years the soubriquet of ‘the first Malawian martyr in the cause of African freedom’.26
Chilembwe did not succeed in securing the support from German East Africa that he had hoped for, and a German officer by the name of Weltheim, who had been captured at Karonga in August 1914 and was a POW at Mlanje, even played a major role in preparing the boma for defence against the rebels. Given Captain Wintgens’s unrestrained efforts to promote anti-British insurrection in Ruanda and Kigezi, Weltheim’s conduct may seem anomalous. But it was Wintgens’s conduct that was the exception, not the rule. The ‘rule’ among the colonial powers in East Africa was ‘if you are rash enough to start “frightfulness” among black men it may recoil on yourself in the end’.27 Schnee was extremely concerned about the possibility of ‘unrest’ in his own colony and was as chary as the British of the consequences of Africans coming ‘to realise the physical disabilities of the Europeans and their vulnerability’.28 He was also dedicated to re-establishing Germany’s fitness to rule in Africa in the aftermath of the extraordinarily brutal suppression of large rebellions in South-West Africa and German East Africa during the first decade of the century.
In German East Africa it was claimed that ‘not a single tribe rose against our rule [during the war] . . . nowhere was it necessary to divert a single squad to keep down rebellions’.29 In fact this was manifestly untrue. There was a good deal more trouble than would ever be admitted by Schnee and von Lettow-Vorbeck, and their fears even prompted them to allow the small Boer population, concentrated in the north-east of the colony, to retain arms in spite of the fact that their own loyalty was considered suspect. Rebellion simmered in the Makonde Highlands in the south-east of the colony right through to 1917; and unrest in many other parts of the colony, although usually dismissed in terms such as ‘the usual cattle-raiding exploits on the part of the Ruanda’, was more or less continuous. No rising had occurred on a scale that the German administration had initially feared for good reason. German rule had been established and consolidated with a degree of brutality that was unthinkable to British soldiers and colonial officials, and only exceeded by King Leopold’s regime in the Belgian Congo in the final decades of the previous century. In other words, if von Lettow-Vorbeck and Schnee were able to conduct the military campaign relatively untroubled by such unrest as sporadically occurred in British East Africa and Nyasaland, it was only because German colonial forces had, in suppressing the 1905–7 Maji-Maji rebellion, imposed what has appositely been called ‘the peace of the graveyard’.30 More than twenty tribes had taken part in the revolt, which had spread over an area of more than 100,000 square miles; and more than 200,000 Africans had perished in battle and as a consequence of the ‘scorched earth’ tactics employed by the Germans. Furthermore, even six years after the rebellion had petered out German police askari were still pursuing survivors of the rebel forces and hanging them, and in so doing sent a stark reminder of the dangers of non-compliance with the German administration to Africans all over the colony. It was a message that was not forgotten during what became known as the ‘War of Fourteen–Eighteen’.
PART THREE
1916
THE LAST SURVIVOR: ‘Oh, where is the great fleet of my Fatherland?’
[Of all Germany’s overseas possessions, German East Africa only remains under the German flag.]
A Recitation (German East)
A well damned land is German East,
Accursed alike by man and beast,
A land of rain – till comes a spell
When nights and days are hot as hell;
From Base to Base in quest of foe,
We blooming ‘fed-ups’ come and go,
With scrubby cheeks and blistered knees,
Our toe-nails food for jigger fleas.
In dirty huts the lizards crawl,
With other vermin, great and small,
While ‘croc’ infest the streams of mud,
And while mosquitoes suck our blood,
Till fever gnaws at throat and spine,
Instead of rum we get quinine.
Let poets sing, but not for me,
That ‘Hell’s pup’ of a country.
Private Sam Naishtad
FOURTEEN
The Build-up
The four ‘regiments’ comprising the 1st South African Mounted Brigade, commanded by Colonel Jakobus ‘Jaap’ van Deventer,* arrived in East Africa on 30 December 1915. A great bear of a man, van Deventer had been Smuts’s second-in-command during the Anglo-South African War, and he inspired respect bordering on devotion among his Boer mounted troops. Indeed many of them would have refused to fight for the Engelse had it not been for van Deventer’s presence. When his father had been killed in action in South Africa trooper Eugene Duplesis, for example, had sworn that he ‘would fight against the verdomde rooineks whenever I got the chance’; now, a dozen years later, he had decided that if Botha and Smuts believed that South Africa’s interests were best served by supporting the British Empire, that was ‘good enough’1 for him. On the other hand ‘A’ squadron of the 1st South African Horse was entirely British in composition, and a majority of the troopers of Colonel Eliott’s 4th South African Horse were British. For some Indian Army officers the mixture of former adversaries in van Deventer’s brigade was a source of concern, the more so as their commander insisted on conversing, very gruffly, only in the Afrikaans taal (though he understood English perfectly well); but whatever their reservations, there could be no denying that the arrival of fresh, healthy troops provided a much-needed boost to morale.
The South African mounted troops were sent straight to Kajiado on the Longido front, where the open ground was considered more appropriate for cavalry manoeuvres than the thick bush and forest around Taveta. As they only numbered 2,500 Tighe was still far short of the 10,000 men that he had requested in order to execute an ‘offensive defensive’ to clear all enemy troops from the border between German and British East Africa. But ‘Von Splosh’ – as van Deventer was soon nicknamed in the British ranks – was only the vanguard. With each passing week the news of the progress of the recruiting campaign in South Africa became more encouraging, and before the end of January the War Office knew that six infantry battalions and five batteries of regular artillery had also been promised by Botha. When the number of infantry battalions was subsequently increased to nine it appeared that Botha and Smuts had worked a miracle in the space of just two months, and the size of the force amassing in East Africa was further bolstered by the arrival of th
e 40th Pathans (the ‘Forty Thieves’) and the 129th Baluchis from France.*Although both regiments were somewhat depleted in strength by their experiences on the Western Front, the fact that they were battle-hardened ‘regulars’ was thought likely to balance the relative inexperience of most of the South African troops, and in Colonel Hannyngton, the commanding officer of the 129th Baluchis, the East Africa force was gaining a veteran of colonial warfare in Africa with a fine reputation.
At the end of January the troops already in, or en route to, British East Africa exceeded 27,000 in number; and with the realisation that he would soon have at his disposal a meaningful ‘combatant force’, equipped with eighty machine-guns and fifty field guns, Tighe’s despatches began to adopt a more optimistic tone. The decisive ‘scrap’ with von Lettow-Vorbeck that he had so desperately hoped for since the disappointments of Tanga and Jasin at last seemed to be in the offing. The occupation of Longido without a fight on 21 January 1916 appeared to confirm his optimism, as did a foray twenty-five miles into German territory by a squadron of the 17th Cavalry from Longido and the increasingly effective patrol work undertaken by no fewer than eight battalions endeavouring to protect the Uganda Railway either side of Voi and the new branch line extending from Voi towards Taveta.
The protection of the railways, in particular, was of critical importance to the military build-up. When responsibility for their management had been assumed by the military authorities in November 1915 it was found that thirty-five locomotives – double the number that serviced German East Africa’s Northern Railway – were awaiting repairs to damage wrought by von Lettow-Vorbeck’s saboteurs; and every locomotive in the country would be required if the vast tonnage of supplies and new troops arriving at Mombasa were to be deployed in a timely and orderly fashion. The dearth of water between Voi and Taveta created a further logistical strain. A pipeline built from Bura to Mbuyuni to supply the British troops on the Taveta front with 40,000 gallons the build-up of water per day was repeatedly sabotaged by German patrols; and even a tripling of the number of train miles run on the line between November and February had failed to eliminate the water supply problem. For the Indian troops arriving from France the lack of water was just one unfamiliar feature of their new surroundings. As the 129th Baluchis’ official historian pointed out, it was hard to imagine a ‘greater contrast . . . than that between Flanders and East Africa’: in the former ‘the men had suffered from too much rain and mud’ while conditions in the latter seemed to be characterised ‘by an excess of drought and dust’.2
Despite the palpable sense of relief that something positive was being achieved after the interminable and debilitating months on the defensive, many of Tighe’s senior officers were wary of the unbridled confidence displayed by the newly arrived South African troops, the more so when it began to spread through the ranks of their own battalions. Such over-confidence had preceded Tanga, and after reading the intelligence reports for January one veteran of that disaster – Colonel Jourdain of the 2nd Loyal North Lancs – expressed his surprise that they created ‘the impression . . . that the German askaris want to give in’. ‘This may be so’, he noted in his diary, ‘but it is not the impression that should be allowed to get about.’ At the beginning of February Jourdain and other battalion commanders met to remind themselves – and the South Africans – that it was quite possible that 3,500 Europeans and 21,500 askari were under arms in German East Africa, of whom no fewer than 15,000 could be rapidly moved to oppose the Allied advance on the Taveta front; and that it was ‘stupid to think that the Germans cannot look after their own men or that they will not do their best to prolong the war in East Africa’.3
The estimates of German troop strength were higher than those subsequently admitted to by von Lettow-Vorbeck, who would claim that a shortage of NCOs precluded him from expanding his force beyond the sixty companies, comprising 2,998 Europeans and 11,300 askari, raised by the end of 1915. However the official German account of the campaign put the maximum strength of the Schutztruppe at a figure fully one quarter higher than that given by their commander-in-chief; and a plethora of other German sources indicate that in early 1916 von Lettow-Vorbeck was able to muster 15,000–20,000 trained troops. Jourdain’s misgivings were therefore well founded: von Lettow-Vorbeck was not outnumbered by as great a factor as the British optimists or the German commander-in-chief wanted – for very different reasons – to believe, and he was most certainly not entertaining any ideas of ‘giving in’. Tanga had been just the opener; now, with the arrival of the South Africans and even regiments from France, his strategy of creating a costly diversion in East Africa could begin in earnest. As one German official in Washington remarked at the time: ‘nothing more to our liking could have been done if we had had the ordering of the Allies’ military movements ourselves. They – and especially Britain – are expending men and money and shipping . . . to conquer regions which can give them nothing they do not already have in abundance, and which we will take from them – in Paris, or wherever the Peace Treaty chances to be signed – by a stroke of a pen.’4
Von Lettow-Vorbeck’s principal concern was not that he was outnumbered, but that the 6,000 troops he claimed were stationed in the north-east would probably have to counter more than one British advance at the same time. If that were to happen he considered it ‘very doubtful’ that he could inflict defeats ‘in succession’, but he was determined to cause as much chaos as he could in the attempt and his force was backed by thirty-seven machine-guns and sixteen field guns. The key would be his ability to move his companies ‘with lightning rapidity’ on interior lines; and with that as his goal ‘the necessary preparations were made’.
The Kilimanjaro front remained, as it had always been, the focus of von Lettow-Vorbeck’s attention. Having decided to make his stand in the northeast there was not a great deal he could do about the situation in the west and south other than encourage his local commanders to resist the simultaneous preparations for Allied advances in those regions. In the west, the resolve of the Belgian High Command to conduct its own independent campaign remained as firm as ever. Relations with their ally were still strained, as Tighe and Spicer-Simson could attest to, and British suspicions of Belgium’s ambitions in Africa were undiminished. But by January 1916 the Committee of Imperial Defence was prepared to put such differences aside, and even to admit that Britain had ‘[blown] hot and cold on the Belgians’. Belgian troops had proved instrumental in shoring up the British defences of Northern Rhodesia and Uganda; they had taken to the field against the Germans in the campaign in the Cameroons, in West Africa; and now they had succeeded in amassing a force that was sufficiently well armed and well supplied to take advantage of Spicer-Simson’s success on Lake Tanganyika and overrun German East Africa from the west. Simple expedience therefore determined that the froideur which had characterised Anglo-Belgian relations during the latter half of 1915 should be dispelled, and with that in mind the Committee of Imperial Defence called for the issue of renewed co-operation to be ‘thrashed out thoroughly’.5
The creation of Belgium’s colonial army in a single year was a remarkable feat of logistics. The askari were largely raised from the ranks of the 15,000-strong paramilitary Force Publique, and led by over 600 officers and NCOs most of whom had been sent from Europe. Recruitment, however, had been the easy part of the process. Supplying them had proved more problematic: 15,500 Gras rifles, 1,000 Mauser rifles, 112 machine-guns, 42 million cartridges and 115,000 artillery shells, field hospitals for each new battalion – all this was shipped easily enough to Mombasa or Boma, on the Atlantic coast. But from Boma to the Rutchuru Valley, where the Belgian Army was concentrating for its offensive, was a journey of over 2,000 miles. Rail and river routes could be used as far as Stanleyville but after that porters – 50,000 of them at any one time – were the only ‘vehicle’ capable of reaching the posts of the Brigade Nord, a journey of six weeks’ duration. Over 60,000 loads were transported by such means in 1915 and a similar
number in the first quarter of 1916 in order to ensure the battle-readiness of just 12,500 combat troops.*
The sheer scale of the operation attested to the ever-increasing importance placed on the campaign by Belgium. It was less than a decade since the Congo had been wrested from King Leopold’s grasp by international outcry and placed under direct control of the Belgian government. Criticism of the grisly conduct of Leopold’s regime still cast a long shadow over Belgium’s presence in Africa, fostering a determination to refute what were regarded as ‘the calumnies against the Belgian people of the traitor Casement and Morel’6 – the two men whose ‘Red Rubber’ campaign had caused the outcry – by demonstrating not only that Belgium’s African colonies were considered an integral part of the homeland but also that Belgium was as fit to rule in Africa as any other colonial power. As was true for Portugal, the war in Africa and the war in Europe were indivisible, and the longer the war continued the more the ‘African dog’ wagged the ‘European tail’ for the simple reason that both countries were aware that in any post-war negotiations between the European Powers their African possessions – including any territory seized from Germany – might be the only guarantee of their very survival as nation states.
There were many Britons for whom Belgium’s single-minded espousal of the war in Africa was puzzling, especially as Belgian participation in the war in Europe was widely regarded as having fallen far short of what had been expected after the loss of Belgium itself; and the reticence with which the suggestion of increased Anglo-Belgian co-operation was received fuelled the suspicions of those who accused Belgium of being excessively self-interested and liable at any time to conclude a separate peace with Germany. Charles Tombeur, the Belgian commander-in-chief in the Congo, remained adamant that he was leading an independent army acting in concert with, but not subordinate to, the British High Command; and that if the British wanted something he would not consider obliging if there was a hint of command in the request. Even before the equally headstrong Smuts had arrived to lead the British forces such obstinacy had caused myriad problems, and when Ewart Grogan was again entrusted with the job of acting as Liaison Officer with the Belgian troops in January 1916 he soon found that Belgian cooperation came at a price. At a conference at Lutobo, in Uganda, the Belgian High Command stated that they could – or would – only advance if the British supplied 5,000 porters, 100 ox-carts and a medical establishment to accompany the Brigade Nord into German East Africa. Their wish-list was not extensive, and it was granted; but to Grogan and many others it smacked of the most cynical opportunism. In effect Tombeur was saying that if his allies wanted him on German soil then they would have to provide all the logistical support. Congolese porters (more than a quarter of a million of whom would be employed before the end of the war), ox-carts and field hospitals were all available – but they were staying firmly on Belgian soil.