THE ADVANCE ON THE DAR-ES-SALAAM—LAKE
TANGANYIKA RAILWAY
The military situation, at the moment when the Gold Coast Regiment
received its orders to take the field, was approximately as follows.
Tanga, the coast terminus of the more northerly of the two German
railways, had fallen some time before, and the whole line from Moschi to
the sea was now in the hands of the British. A column of Indian troops
was moving down the coast with Sandani at the mouth of the Wami river,
Bagamoyo at the mouth of the Kingani, and Dar-es-Salaam, the terminus of
the principal railway, as its successive objectives. The enemy had been
driven, not only away from the Tanga-Moschi railway, but to the south of
the Pangani-Handeni-Kondoa-Irangi road; and General Smuts had
established General Headquarters on the left bank of the Lukigura River,
which falls into the Wami on its left bank at a point distant some sixty
miles from its mouth.
The Commander-in-Chief had with him here the First Division under
Major-General Hoskyns, consisting of the 1st and 2nd East African
Brigades under the command respectively of Brigadier-General Sheppard
and Brigadier-General Hannyngton. With the exception of a machine-gun
detachment of the Loyal North Lancashire Regiment, which was attached to
the 2nd East African Infantry Brigade, both these brigades were composed
of Indian troops. The Gold Coast Regiment was about to join up with the
25th Royal Fusiliers, and with it to form the Divisional Reserve.
On the right, the Second Division, which was composed of South African
Infantry and mounted troops, under Major-General Van der Venter, had its
advanced base at Kondoa-Irangi and for its objective Dadoma, on the main
railway which runs from Dar-es-Salaam to Kigome, near Ujiji, on Lake
Tanganyika.
Between the Second Division and General Smuts’ troops, a force composed
of South African mounted men, under the command of Brigadier-General
Brits, was operating independently, with Kilossa on the railway as its
objective. It was General Smuts’ intention to attack the railway with
the First Division at Morogoro, a mission station, which lies not quite
fifty miles due east of Kilossa.
It had not yet been found possible to establish a main base at Tanga;
and at the moment all supplies were being landed at Kilindini, and were
conveyed thence, by the railway route which the Regiment had followed,
to Korogwe on the Tanga-Moschi line. An advanced base had been formed at
Handeni, five-and-thirty miles to the south-east of Korogwe; and for six
weeks General Smuts had been compelled to remain inactive in his camp on
the Lukigura River, while sufficient stores, etc., were being
accumulated to render a further and continuous advance possible.
His plan, as will be seen by the disposition of his forces, was to
attack the main German railway line, as nearly as possible
simultaneously, at Dar-es-Salaam on the coast, at Morogoro, at Kilossa
and at Dadoma. This would have the effect of depriving the enemy of the
use of the line and of driving him to the south of it; after which an
attempt would be made to expel him from the country north of the Rufiji
River.
* * * * *
The Regiment had been inspected by General Edwards on the 30th July, and
on the 4th August, leaving the Depôt Company to establish itself at
Korogwe, they left their temporary camp at Ngombezi and began their
march to Msiha, the headquarters of the First Division on the banks of
the Lukigura. It was now that their troubles began, and the nine days of
that march live in the memory of officers and men as perhaps the most
trying period of the whole campaign.
Though the altitude was not great, the climate was cool even at midday;
but while the Europeans belonging to the force found it wonderfully
bracing, the men missed the genial warmth of their native land, and at
night suffered greatly from the cold.
The line of march led along an unmetalled track, over which
motor-lorries had been ploughing their way for weeks, and the surface
had been reduced to a fine powder some six to eight inches in depth. The
constant passage of lorries, and now the first-line transport of the
Regiment—which consisted of mule-carts and of the carriers who had
accompanied the force from the Gold Coast—and the plodding feet of the
men on the march stirred up this loose deposit into a dense fog of a
dull-red hue. As the day advanced, each man became plastered with
particles of this fine red dust, which seemed to possess peculiarly
penetrating properties, till one and all resembled so many figures
fashioned from _terra cotta_. Eyes, nostrils and mouths became filled
with this stuff, occasioning acute thirst; but the way was waterless,
save for a few foul holes half filled with brackish water.
The lot of the rear-guard was the hardest, for the second-line
transport, locally supplied to the Regiment, consisted of South African
ox-wagons, each of which was drawn by a team of sixteen oxen driven by
Cape boys. The imported cattle had many of them become infected by
_trypanosomæ_, and not a few were literally on their last legs. The
exigencies of the situation, however, rendered it necessary for these
luckless brutes to be driven as long as they could stand; but progress
was incredibly slow, and frequent halts were occasioned to unyoke some
miserable ox, which had fallen never to rise again, and thereafter to
rearrange his yoke-fellows. At the best, as they crept forward, the
floundering wagons with their straining teams churned the dust into
impenetrable, ruddy clouds, which, mingling with the fog already caused
by the passage of the infantry, well-nigh smothered the men who formed
the rear-guard. Though the actual length of each day’s march was fairly
short, the last man rarely reached the camping-place until long after
dark.
The physical trials to which the rank and file were exposed—the choking
dust, the raging thirst which it occasioned, the inadequate supply of
brackish water, met with at long intervals, which seemed powerless to
appease even when it did not aggravate their sufferings, the nauseating
stench arising from the putrifying carcases of dead horses, mules and
oxen, with which the line of march was thickly strewn, the bitterly cold
nights, and the ominous way in which man after man succumbed to
pneumonia—were rendered almost unbearable by reason of the superstitious
fears by which the men were haunted. The memory of that long railway
journey, which half of them had made in open trucks, through the
freezing cold of the nights and early mornings high up in the mountains,
was still fresh in their minds. They had seen many of their comrades
suddenly stricken by pneumonia—to them a by no means familiar
disease—and killed thereby after a few days or hours of painful struggle
for life. Now they found themselves in an unknown land, separated from
their homes by immeasurable distances, with wide expanses of sour scrub
spreading around them, and holding for them no promise of finality;
while day after day, they plodded, parched and choking, along that
interminable road, saw their fellows succumb at every halting-place, and
learned presently to believe that the water with its salt-taste, which
was alone available to allay their thirst, and of which they could never
obtain enough, was a poisoned draught that was killing them. This was a
devil’s country to which their officers had brought them—a land of evil
spirits out of which they could never hope again to win their way. The
Europeans—officers and non-commissioned officers alike—sought
ceaselessly to cheer and hearten-up their men; but for the first time in
the memory of any of them, their efforts met with no response. The men
had become unrecognizable. Usually the most cheerful and light-hearted
of mankind, they wore now a sullen, hang-dog air. They were sulky,
suspicious and resentful. For the first time in the history of the
Regiment their confidence in their officers—which to these men has
become a religion—had been strained almost to the breaking-point. And
their officers knew it. “You could not get a grin out of them at any
price,” said one who had seen his men in many a tight place, and had
never known them to show even a passing sign of discouragement or
depression; and when you cannot conjure a grin out of the gnarled
features of a man of the Gold Coast Regiment, something very like the
Trump of Doom has sounded for him.
The Regiment, after resting on the 8th August at Handeni, and drawing a
fresh supply of rations, pushed on for another four days to Mahazi,
where it duly reported its arrival to the headquarters of the First
Division.
The front had now been reached, the enemy was close at hand, and there
was a river of running water to delight the hearts of the parched and
dust-coated men. The reaction was immediate. There was no lack of grins
now; and these found their reflections in the faces of a band of anxious
officers, as they listened to the cheerful babble resounding from their
new encampment. It is a music that is discordant enough at times, but
now it was more than welcome after the sullen silence of suspicion and
distrust that had brooded over the camp and the line of march for more
than a week.
On the 13th August the Regiment moved forward on the road to Turiani.
The country in which they found themselves was no longer grey or
powdered red with dust, but actually green, though it was still, for the
most part, covered by waist-high scrub and grass, and the folds of the
undulating plain rendered any extended view impossible. The proximity of
the enemy, as is usual in warfare of this type, was more certain than
his whereabouts, and all military precautions were henceforth taken
during the day’s march to Turiani, and during the subsequent advance.
On the 15th August the Regiment moved to Chasi, and on the 16th August,
after working all day at the construction of two bridges, the camp was
advanced to Kwevi Lombo, near the Makindu River, and established at
about 11 p.m.
On the 17th August the Regiment received orders to move forward in the
early afternoon to Dakawa, where fighting had been in progress all day.
The men, resting in camp after their hard day and late night, had
listened all the morning, like a pack of terriers quivering with
excitement, to the familiar sounds of machine-gun and rifle-fire; and
after a march of four and a half hours they reached Dakawa at 7 p.m.
Here General Smuts had established his headquarters, and Colonel Rose
personally reported to him the arrival of the Regiment. General Smuts
ordered the Regiment to sit down and rest until the rising of the moon,
and then to proceed to a ford two and a half miles west of the main
road. At dawn, if the enemy was still in position, they were to cross
the river and join General Enslin’s Brigade, which belonged to the force
operating independently under Major-General Brits.
These orders were duly carried out, the Regiment being guided to the
ford by the celebrated scout, Lieutenant Pretorius, a way for the
infantry having been beaten down through the tough high grass by a body
of South African mounted men. This movement was carried out by the
Regiment with the least avoidable noise. The enemy, however, becoming
aware that the ford was occupied, drew off during the night; and next
morning, therefore, the Regiment returned to its own division, and
camped near a broken bridge over the Mkundi River, a left affluent of
the Wami. Here it remained until the 23rd August, when it moved forward
eight and a half miles to Kimamba, and thence, on the 24th August, to a
camp on the banks of the Ngere-Ngere, a small stream which falls into
the Ruwu on its left bank a few miles above Mafisa.
This latter day’s march calls for a word of description. The Regiment,
which was now acting as part of the reserve to the 2nd East African
Brigade, marched last of the fighting troops, with the heavy transport
and the actual rear-guard still further behind it. The country traversed
was a flat plain broken by frequent undulations, and grown upon by
shortish grass, brittle and wilted by the sun. Mean-looking trees were
spattered all over the plain, but were usually wide enough apart to
permit of the easy passage of armoured motor-cars. Of these a number,
under the charge of naval officers, accompanied the marching men,
scudding up and down the column and searching the country in the
immediate neighbourhood of the line of march, much as a dog hunts on all
sides of a path along which its owner is walking. Occasionally, a deep
donga would be met with, which could not be negotiated by a motor-car;
and then the marching men would turn to with their picks and shovels,
fill in a section of the dried-up watercourse, and so fashion a
temporary road across it which enabled the cars to pass. This was
accomplished over and over again with great ease and rapidity; and for
the rest, the country presented no serious obstacle to the use of these
armoured vehicles.
August, in East Africa, is of course the height of the dry season, and
in all tropical regions of this continent the dry season means a fierce
heat, beating down during all the hours of daylight upon a parched and
thirsty earth, and refracted from the wilted vegetation with an almost
equal intensity. It means that every stream has run dry, and that even
many of the larger rivers have shrunken into mere runnels. It means that
sun-dried grass and scrub and the very leaves upon the trees have become
brittle and inflammable as tinder; and that the bush fires, for the most
part self-generated,—such as those which of old so greatly affrighted
Hanno and his Carthaginian mariners on the West Coast of Africa—are
ubiquitous,—are columns of smoke by day and pillars of fire by night.
Any sudden change of wind at this season of the year may cause the
traveller to be unexpectedly confronted by a wall of flame, raging
almost colourless in the fierce sunlight, advancing on a wide front with
innumerable explosions like the rattle of musketry, and with a rapidity
which is apt to prove highly embarrassing.
During this day’s march the natural heat was intensified by these
constant conflagrations, above which the agitated air danced in a
visible haze, and from which there came a breath like that from a
furnace, bearing in all directions innumerable charred and blackened
fragments of vegetation. Through this heated atmosphere the marching
troops plodded doggedly onward, parched with thirst, and playing an
eternal game of hide and seek with the attacking bush-fires. Many narrow
escapes occurred, and the first-line transport of the Gold Coast
Regiment was once fairly caught, the casualties including 6 oxen, an
army transport cart, 2 wagons, 10,800 rounds of small arm ammunition, 20
picks, 42 shovels, one rifle, some private kit, and a quantity of
rations, all of which were burned to a cinder. Eighteen other oxen were
so badly burned that they had to be slaughtered, their meat being issued
as rations to the Divisional Reserve.
Another element besides fire, however, seemed to conspire this day
against the advancing force; for the exact position of the Ngere-Ngere
could not be located, and when the Regiment arrived at the place where
it was to bivouac for the night, there was no water to be found in its
vicinity. Water had, however, been discovered some miles further on, and
carts were dispatched to fetch it. Darkness had already fallen, and the
outlook was sufficiently depressing; but an officer of the Gold Coast
Regiment, who happened to push his way into a patch of thick bush
adjoining the camping-place, quite accidentally discovered the river by
the simple process of pitching headlong into it. The Ngere-Ngere is a
very winding stream, and though its neighbourhood was indicated by a
belt of thick bush, the greenness of which could only be due to the
proximity of water, the leading troops had missed this point on the
road, to which the river happened to approach to within a distance of a
few yards, and owing to an abrupt bend, which the bed of the stream
takes at this place, the nearest point at which its banks were again
struck was about a mile distant.
At once the glad tidings were given, and the men speedily obtained all
the water they required. The Gold Coast Regiment had bivouacked for the
night near the scene of its discovery; but though a start had been made
that morning at 5.30 a.m., it was a late hour before the last troops
struggled into camp.
Shortly after the Dar-es-Salaam railway had been crossed at Massambassi
by the main force, B Company was placed at the disposal of Colonel
O’Grady—an officer of the Indian Army, who had won for himself in the
Himalayas a great reputation as an Alpine climber—and proceeded with him
and a remnant of the East African Mounted Rifles into a clump of
fertile, well-watered and hilly country, which was comparatively thickly
populated, and where a number of German foraging-parties were believed
to be at work. The tracks leading through these hills were wide enough
for two to march abreast, but after the manner of native paths all the
tropics over, they took no account of gradients, but led straight up
each precipitous ascent till the summit was reached, and thence plunged
down the opposite slope to encounter a fresh rise when the valley level
was reached. It is inevitable that all paths in hilly country, which are
made by folk who habitually go bare-footed, should deal with ascents and
declivities in this switchback fashion; for roads scarped out of the
hill’s face, unless they are constructed on scientific engineering
principles, are speedily worn away by the annual torrential rains. This
renders them agonising to men who do not use boots, for though the act
of walking on the side of the foot is uncomfortable enough even for men
who are well shod, it is excruciating to those who go bare-footed; and
in their estimation any strain on the lungs and on the back-sinews,
which the constant climbing and descent of hills entail, is preferable
to this much more painful means of progression.
Through these hills went Colonel O’Grady, the handful of white men
composing the detachment of the East African Mounted Rifles—some dozen
survivors of that gallant corps which had seen such hard times and had
done such splendid work during the earlier phases of the campaign—and B
Company of the Gold Coast Regiment. The valleys were thickly planted
with native food-stuffs of all descriptions, including such luxuries as
sugar-cane bananas, etc.; and eggs and fowls were also obtainable in
moderate quantities. Patrols were sent out in all directions at once, to
forage for the little force and thoroughly to search the surrounding
country for German forage-parties. One of these—a body of eleven
Germans, genially intoxicated to a man on native beer, and quite
incapable of resistance—was brought in by the East African Mounted
Rifles, and a few Askari,[1] who were also engaged in foraging, were
captured by B Company. When this group of hills had been thoroughly
searched, Colonel O’Grady released B Company, which at once rejoined the
Regiment. The latter, meanwhile, had been following in the track of B
Company, and at daybreak on the 3rd September, the whole corps entered
the mission station at Matombo.
Footnote 1:
Askari = Native soldier.
These mission stations are a feature of erstwhile German East Africa.
They are, for the most part, charmingly situated, generally upon the
crest of a hill, whence a magnificent view of the surrounding country
can be obtained. They consist, as a rule, of one or more substantially
built two-storeyed buildings constructed of mud, or of locally made
bricks, lime-washed, and roofed with red tiles, which are also
manufactured on the spot. The church, which usually flanks them, is
built of rough blocks of stone, as is that at Matombo, or of bricks or
mud, as the case may be; and it is often surmounted by a tapering,
red-tiled spire. The eminences upon which these stations have been
established, and the land around their feet, are set with gardens,
groves of fruit trees, and patches of cultivation, all of which
obviously owe their existence to European initiative and supervision.
The native congregations ordinarily occupy a number of scattered
hovels—built much further apart from one another than is the native
habit in West Africa—thatched with grass, and placed at a respectful
distance from the buildings occupied by the missionaries. The latter in
German East Africa, unlike their prototypes on the West Coast,
apparently did not welcome the too close proximity of their proselytes.
The mission buildings at Matombo were found to contain a number of
Germans, who were supposed to be too old for active service, and a good
many of their women and children. The church, which had been converted
into a hospital, was full of German sick and wounded, who had been left
in charge of a medical man of their own nationality. This interesting
individual was allowed to continue his ministrations, and it was always
believed—whether rightly or wrongly it is impossible to say—that he
subsequently made use of the liberty thus accorded to him to signal the
movements of the Regiment to his compatriots posted in the Uluguru
mountains, the entrances to which the British were now engaged in
forcing.
The whole of this hilly area was thickly populated by people clothed
only in a kind of kilt made of grass, who, though many of them had been
impressed by the Germans to serve as carriers, appeared to take no very
close interest in the movements of either of the opposed forces. The
Uluguru mountains were their home—the only world they knew; and these
hapless folk had no alternative, therefore, but to remain where they
were, watching with the philosophical resignation so characteristic of a
tropical population this strife of gods or devils which had temporarily
transformed the quiet countryside into an inferno. It was only
occasionally that their equanimity was ruffled for a space by the chance
explosion of a shell in close proximity to their dwellings.
General Smuts’ drive had so far proved successful, and the Germans,
fighting a more or less continuous rear-guard action, but offering no
very stubborn or prolonged resistance at any given point, had been
forced back, first on to the line of the Dar-es-Salaam-Lake Tanganyika
railway, and then across it into the mountainous country which lies
between the railway and the low-lying valley of the Rufiji River.
The Gold Coast Regiment had itself crossed the railway line at a point
some miles to the east of Morogoro, and had thence penetrated into the
hilly country to the south for a distance of some fifteen miles, camping
on Sunday, the 3rd September, in the neighbourhood of the mission
station at Matomba. This place is situated on the northern edge of the
Uluguru Mountains—highlands which occupy an area measuring approximately
a hundred miles square—out of which it was now the task of the First
Division to endeavour to drive the enemy, who had sought refuge in them.
It was on the 4th September, 1916—the day on which the mission station
at Matomba was quitted—that the Gold Coast Regiment was fated, for the
first time, to take a more active part in the East African campaign.