THE RECORD TREK TO WINDHUK
On the 27th of March General Botha left Northern Force Headquarters at
Swakopmund for Luderitzbucht, the landing-place of the Central Force
under the commands of Brigadier-General Mackenzie.
The whole plan of campaign was very much this. The Protectorate was to
be invaded from several angles, the route of these various forces being
quite clear, I hope, in the diagram given. Roughly speaking there were
three forces: the Northern (General Botha, Commander-in-Chief), working
inland from Swakopmund; the Central (Brigadier-General Mackenzie)
working inland from Luderitzbucht; and the Southern and South-Eastern
converging on Keetmanshoop from Raman's Drift-Warmbad-Kalkfontein
(Hartigan's Horse), from Upington (Brigadier-General van Deventer and
Colonel Celliers) and from Kimberley-Hasuur (Colonel Berrange's
column). As a result of this great concentration on Keetmanshoop and
northwards from all sides, the Germans would be forced to decisive
action, to retreat northwards, or be cut off. Upon these forces
reaching a certain distance inland a general move would be made in the
direction of Windhuk--and again the enemy would have to fight or
retreat to the limits of his railway system.
[Illustration: Typical captured German Infantry]
[Illustration: The Great Trek. Otjimbingwe: its Palms and Wells]
[Illustration: The Great Trek. Otjimbingwe: the Commander-in-Chief at
the old German capital]
[Illustration: The Great Trek. Getting Milk from a Goat. Milk was
priced beyond Silver]
On the 30th of March the Commander-in-Chief returned to Swakopmund, and
the same day news came of the occupation of Aus by the Central Force.
It was now that we heard definitely that General Smuts was in the field
with the forces south of us.
With the Central and Southern advances, General Mackenzie, from
Luderitzbucht, occupied Garub on the 22nd of February, and Aus on March
31. Colonel Berrange's column, having left Hasuur on the 3rd of March,
reached Kabus, by Keetmanshoop, on the 19th. Leaving Raman's Drift on
the 2nd of April, Colonel Hartigan's column occupied Kalkfontein on the
14th of April, and reached Keetmanshoop on the 20th of April. Seeheim
was occupied on the 18th of April. The advance to these towns was
achieved by a series of fast treks in which frightful conditions of
thirst and fatigue were encountered. General Mackenzie's troops in
their advance north occupied Bethany on the 13th of April, and
continued northward to Berseba, Gibeon, etc., on the way to Windhuk.
We now come to the feat that broke all known marching records and
caused two hemispheres to talk. On Sunday and Monday, the 25th and 26th
of April, General Botha's forces left the coast: on the 5th of May they
were outside Windhuk. Striking right across the desert through every
kind of country, General Botha's army marched night and day, and in
five of those days covered a minimum distance of a hundred and ninety
miles. Many units did much more than two hundred miles--over forty
miles per day.
It was some trekking.
Swakopmund was left on the 26th of April at dawn. Haigkamchab was
reached by I on the same afternoon, and Husab supply base at 6.30 p.m.
Next day Husab was left at 2.15 p.m.; the column halted for a few
minutes at 5 p.m., and pushed right through to Riet, which was made at
10.20 that evening. Headquarters rested all day on the 28th at Riet,
left it 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 March 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 it 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.
[Illustration: The Great Trek. An extempore bath towards the end of the
Trek]
Two hours after daylight General Headquarters moved to a camping ground
two miles back towards Wilhelmsfeste (Tsaobis), and rested during the
day in the shade of the scant trees with which the veld was covered as
the desert was left behind. The rest of the Northern Army had trekked on
with scarcely any pause. Shortly before sunset, the Commander-in-Chief
set out on a night march of twenty odd miles to Otjimbingwe. The trek
was done at a fierce pace till midnight, when an outspan was ordered;
the party slept for four hours, and made Otjimbingwe just as the dawn of
the 1st of May was breaking. As General Botha rode into this old mission
settlement the rear of the German forces, closely pursued, was galloping
in retreat over the kopjes to the east. Many prisoners were taken here.
General Botha spent the day at Otjimbingwe, left at dawn on the 2nd, and
trekked north-west seventeen miles to Pot Mine, which he reached at 12.45
p.m. Here the Commander-in-Chief awaited the arrival of General Smuts,
had a conference with him, and moved in force on Karibib at 2 a.m. on the
5th of May. He trekked the whole of that day, with two halts of an hour
each, and entered Karibib on the heels of the enemy at five o'clock in
the afternoon. At the same time the rest of the Northern Force had
entered Okasise, Okahandja, Waldau, and other stations on the railway,
had captured the whole system practically up to Omaruru, and were at the
gates of Windhuk. The German forces were in full retreat to the north and
north-east. Their civilian populations, left behind in the towns, seemed
dumfoundered at the appearance of the Union troops. Meantime the Southern
and Central Armies had approached the German capital on the southern
flank.
This account of the advance through the desert of General Botha's
Northern Force is purposely bald. The process of a vast flooding of
water over a country is in essence bald and direct. And that is as near
as I can get for comparison. General Botha's advance was like a
well-ordered flood: which, I take it, was exactly the idea. At a fixed
time organised bodies of men, mounted, dismounted and with artillery,
were systematically poured over the German territory. I am sure most of
the fellows who took part in that advance and recall it in detail will in
the future look back and wonder. For it is a subject for wonder, even
if history does contain some marches more eventful. It has been stated
since that all transport was left behind. But that is not strictly
true: a large quantity of transport was brought on by the Union Forces;
passed through the deepest sand in waterless desert, between gorges,
over big kopjes, into almost trackless bushveld--and was never more
than a day and a half behind. At one place out of a convoy of
twenty-seven wagons, seventeen capsized.
It is hackneyed, I know, but there is only one way to describe the
great trek to Windhuk. It was absolutely "a chequer-board of nights and
days." Looking at my diary just now, that I have had ten years'
practice at keeping, I see a confusion got into the dates. You didn't
know anything about the date or the day of the week. Existence was just
a dateless alternation of light and darkness, of saddle-up and
off-saddle, of cossack-post, of thinking about water--and of yearning
with every fibre of one's being for the ineffable boon of a long sleep.
It will be seen that the key to the advance over the Namib Desert was
the Swakop River. The water-holes of the Swakop River are very
singular; they form the nucleus of a kind of settlement (even if it be
only a couple of small huts) right in the dry river bed. At
Kaltenhausen, to take but one example, there is a splendid
shooting-lodge slapbang in the centre of the river; it has a fine
courtyard walled and railed in. It seemed extraordinary. At these
water-holes you suddenly leave the stony sand of the desert and come on
to finest soft sand. It is quite pleasant at night, but day tells another
story. Just after sunrise a wind starts blowing down the river valley and
raises this superfine, mineralised sand. To lie exposed to this for a day
is an awful experience; the fine dust will penetrate anywhere. I am sure
it must lead to positive blindness in time.
I mentioned the water-holes of the Swakop River for the particular
reason that their situation in most cases adds immensely to the merit
of the Northern Army's great trek. The trek-road from Swakopmund
follows the river only in a broad sense; the Haigamkhab, Husab and
Gawieb water-holes are really three to four and five miles from the
road and the camping grounds. That is to say, the columns, after a
twenty mile trek in the sand and sun had another quarter of the
distance to go--_to water_. And to water usually means across the yard
to the troughs, so to speak. We shall remember the water-holes of
South-West Africa. There is many a fellow now back in civilisation who
can recall vividly the tramp over stony, loose gravel through those
great echoing rocks down to the water-holes at Haigamkhab, Husab and
Gawieb. Hour after hour the processions of weary riders passed each
other in a cloud of dust that rose five hundred yards and filled the
choking canyon. The invariable question from him going wearily to water
to him coming refreshed and smothered in water-bottles and with a
livelier horse from it: "Is it far, boy?" And the stereotyped answer of
encouragement was as always: "No, no; just round the corner." All these
water-holes are almost duplicates of each other. I suppose not the echo
of a bird now hurts their pristine and awful quietude.
[Illustration: A Beauty Spot passed during the last Trek]
[Illustration: The Last Phase. Conference at Omaruru. German Staff
lunching]
[Illustration: The General receives his Bodyguard at a Garden Party
after return]
The marvellous series of changes as one advances constitutes the most
striking feature of the advance to Windhuk from the coast. By rail it
is not so striking; but taking the marching route via the Swakop River
water-holes--Swakopmund, Nonidas, Haigamkhab, Husab, Riet, Salem,
Wilhelmsfeste (Tsaobis), Otjimbingwe, Windhuk--the changes in the
country and the stages that show them are as palpable as if marked by a
system of parallel walls. I have never seen this feature of the veld so
marked elsewhere in South Africa.
Swakopmund is the limit in the down-grade--deep sand; brak water; a
treacherous, dreary climate, with visitations of furnace-heat desert
winds; a huge cemetery; moths and flies. From Nonidas to Haigamkhab and
Husab the sand lightens and hardens, the atmosphere improves, rocks,
barren kopjes begin to appear; the little water you get is fairly good.
Riet comes; the barren kopjes are more frequent; the atmosphere, hot in
the day, is beautiful by night; the water is perfect. Salem is a
duplicate Riet; a small settlement in the river bed; but the water is
more plentiful, the vegetation more profuse. Then comes the great trek
to Tsaobis.
It does not look far on the map; it is a huge stretch nevertheless. For
the first three hours it was Riet-Salem country with extensions and
additions. Vast gorges, black and brown kopjes, boulders, sand
stretches, clumps of bush, minute trees. And then, on Thursday the 29th
of April (memory holds the date like a vice), we saw grass. It was
grass. It was undoubtedly grass--the kind of grass that gave one the
feeling that this particular veld, like a man prematurely bald through
worry or riotous living, had been trying some hair restorer with
ludicrous results--grass whitish, feeble, attenuated, that to be seen
at all wanted an eye levelled along the ground.
Each half hour brought its surprise as we moved along, General Botha on
his white horse at the head of the column, just visible to the eye
through the thick curtain of white dust our horses' feet flung up into
the sun glare. We rode in great gorges between kopjes. We crossed dry
river courses. We clattered over the hard bosoms of rocks, switchbacked
up and down each hour working out of the desert. Trees began to
appear--caricatures of trees. Then game spoor was reported. And suddenly,
just after noon, rain fell--out of one cloud in a sky otherwise brazenly
clear five drops fell. I counted five on my bridle hand.
Rain on the edge of the Namib Desert. It was ludicrous, too bizarre; it
was the last straw. We gasped. A deep roar of ironical cheering went
up. The Commander-in-Chief looked round and laughed. When we outspanned
later the horses made a show of grazing for the first time for five
months. The sagacious animals showed plain amazement in their eyes. At
Wilhelmsfeste (Tsaobis) the bushveld begins. The water supply of
Otjimbingwe is the feature of that rather quaint settlement. One must
ever associate it with its fine aeromotor pumping the precious fluid
for parched man and beast to drink their full after the desert passage
in the shade of cool palms many years old.
[Illustration: German prisoners of war, imprisoned at Karibib]
[Illustration: Karibib]
[Illustration: Towards Windhuk. The first troops in Waldau]
[Illustration: The first South African Engineer Corps Staff at Windhuk]
During the great trek alarms regarding mines were most frequent. There
were many wonderful escapes. It seems a marvel that the enemy were not
more successful than they were with these deadly machines. Suffer
casualties we did; but if all the mines that were laid had blown up our
casualties would have been formidable indeed. But somehow those mines
seemed foreordained not to act. They were discovered by the merest
chance; or they failed to go off; or they exploded at the wrong time.
Making for Karibib in the forenoon of the 5th of May, the authorities
naturally showed the greatest caution for the safety of General Botha--
though a large body of Union mounted troops had passed over the same
ground before the Commander-in-Chief, Staff and Bodyguard traversed the
road.
In view of the fact that the South African Army was operating against
the forces of the same nation that has ravaged and despoiled Belgium, a
point should be made here. It must be remembered that the armed forces
of the Protectorate simply cleared bag and baggage out of all the
important inland towns in the face of Botha's overwhelming advances.
They left wife and child, the old and infirm, every stick of property
they could not carry, at our mercy. When we entered Karibib at five in
the evening the non-combatant population were moving about the streets,
or standing in best bib and tucker at their doors, calmly gazing at the
trek-stained horsemen that sought the nearest water tanks. They had not
the slightest fear of us. I spoke to a comrade who has seen war
aforetime. He said he had never seen a more orderly occupation of a
town.
[Illustration: Towards Windhuk. A quick railway repair after the
Germans' usual practice of blowing up railway bridges]
[Illustration: Towards Windhuk. The first train to Windhuk. The South
African Engineer Corps Construction Party aboard]
[Illustration: At Windhuk. How we treat the German women. Ten minutes
after occupation]
[Illustration: At Windhuk. The Commander-in-Chief addresses his massed
troops from the Rathaus ]
The conduct of the South African troops should assuredly be noted. The
very confidence of these German townspeople that they had nothing to
fear from the hated troops of the British Union of South Africa was
eloquent. The thing stood out, a piece of bitterest irony in connection
with a people whose kindred across the seas were making civilisation
shudder at their atrocities afloat and ashore. 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. What would the Germans have done?
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 defenceless citizen of Windhuk or 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, Okahandja, Okasise, Waldau and the capital;
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.
Everyone was guarded. A few hours after the places were entered the
orders were issued threatening severe and instant penalties should any
looting be done by the hungry troops; officers, etc., were quietly
billeted; and to the houses occupied by women and marged with a white
cross no one unauthorised was allowed any approach whatsoever.
It was magnanimous, it was magnificent. But I wonder if the chivalrous
Teuton would call it war!
Karibib, the practical junction of the railway running north to
Grootfontein, the enemy's new "capital," was made Army Headquarters.
General Botha hoisted the flag at Karibib and proclaimed it on the 6th
of May, spent a few days settling matters at Karibib, and on the
afternoon of the 11th set out for Windhuk by motor, formally to enter
the capital. With him the Commander-in-Chief took his Chief of Staff
(Colonel Collyer), Lieut.-Colonel de Waal (Provost Marshal), Major Bok
(Military Secretary), Major Trew (Officer Commanding Bodyguard), Major
Liepoldt (Chief Intelligence Officer), Major Esselen (Staff), an escort
from the 4th Battery South African Mounted Riflemen and Bodyguard.
Overnight the Headquarters party "outspanned" at Okasise on a beautiful
camping-ground, and, meeting the Burgomaster of Windhuk under some
trees outside the town, ran into the South-West capital towards noon.
Later in the day the ceremony of formal taking over was performed
before a big crowd at the Rathaus. It was in every way a historic
scene. The mounted troops lined all about the square that fronts the
Rathaus from the roadway, their weary horses and stained uniforms
showing up in the background, with the throng of civilians crowded
amongst the motor-cars and carts in the square itself. A
warrant-officer of the Commander-in-Chief's Bodyguard had the honour of
hoisting the Union Jack over the Rathaus at Windhuk, the capital of
Germany's erstwhile colonial possessions.
A cheer went up as the flag fluttered up in the noon sunlight. Windhuk
was naturally regarded as the Mecca, so to speak, of the invading army.
[Illustration: At the Gate of Windhuk. Headquarters Staff Motors
awaiting entry]
[Illustration: At the Gate of Windhuk. General Botha discusses matters
with the Governor of Windhuk]
[Illustration: At the Gate of Windhuk. The Interpreter]
[Illustration: At the Gate of Windhuk. General Botha emphasises]
With the interests of the civilised world fixed on the vast
slaughter-grounds of Europe, I shall not spend much time describing
Windhuk. It is a pretty, picturesque little town, built amongst brown and
purple hills. In most ways it is highly finished; reflects the spirit of
German thoroughness that is an admitted attribute of the race. As usual
in South-West Africa, it has nothing of the _colonial_ town about it;
it might be another suburb of Berlin. Many of the houses are thoroughly
built into the sides of the surrounding kopjes--perched like great
red-roofed cages on the hillsides. The place doesn't seem to have a
single industry of its own; but then, as I said elsewhere, there is
hardly an established industry in the Protectorate.
There is one thing about Windhuk that grips your attention--and holds
it in no uncertain manner, too. One of the great objectives of the
South-West campaign was to secure the Windhuk wireless station. When
you see this--catch a glimpse of it suddenly where it stands on the
veld outside the town--you get a thrill of sheer astonishment. The
thing seems monstrous there. It is foreign to our ideas--a wireless
colossus in such a place. Had I seen this vast piece of work in a
humming city that stands warden to the seas it would have fitted in.
But where it is--well, it just surprised. Fancy a pretty bijou veld
town, red roofs, neat church, pepper trees, aeromotors, sleepy people
and everything--and across the veld, a mile and a half away, darkening
the sky with great vertical lines, five terrific steel lattice pillars,
nearly four hundred feet high, tied by cables with stay bolts as big as
a man; their aerials sweep from pillar to pillar, answer to the wind
the deepest note of a giant 'cello, and eavesdrop and conjure amongst
the news markets of the world. Now there is no electric light in this
village of Windhuk, or Windy Corner, yet. What was the idea with this
stupendous thing? And there are not enough Germans in the place--or in
the whole territory, if it comes to that--to populate a good-sized
town. There is also the usual telegraphic communication to the coast,
etc. Yet--the wireless.
Its significance could be of one kind only: a military one.
Leaving the town in the hands of Colonel Mentz, Military Governor, and
Lieut.-Colonel de Waal, the Commander-in-Chief returned to Headquarters
at Karibib on the 14th of May.
[Illustration: The great Wireless Station at Windhuk]
[Illustration: Conference at Omaruru. General Staff lunching]
[Illustration: The Last Phase. The BE2 tuning up in shed before flight
over German positions]
[Illustration: At the Provost Marshal's office at Windhuk--all in Law
and order]
[Illustration: The Union Jack just hoisted at the Governor's office,
Windhuk]
[Illustration: The Great Military Barracks at Windhuk]