Of all the departments of War in German East Africa probably the most
romantic and interesting is the Intelligence Department. Far away ahead
of the fighting troops are the Intelligence officers with their native
scouts. These officers, for the most part, are men who have lived long
in the country, who know the native languages, and are familiar with the
lie of the land from experience gained in past hunting trips. Often
behind the enemy, creeping along the lines of communication, these
officers carry their lives in their hands, and run the risk of betrayal
by any native who happens across them. Sleeping in the bush at night,
unable to light fires to cook their food, lest the light should attract
the questing patrol, that, learning of their presence in the country,
has been out after them for days. Hiding in the bush, short of rations,
the little luxuries of civilisation long since finished, forced to smoke
the reeking pungent native tobacco, living off wild game (that must be
trapped, not shot), and native meal, at the mercy of the natives whom
both sides employ to get information of the other, these men are in
constant danger. Nor are the amenities of civilised warfare theirs when
capture is their lot.
Fortunately for the British Empire there has never been any lack of
those restless beings whose wandering spirits lead them to the confines
of civilisation and beyond. To this type of man the African continent
has offered a particular attraction, and we should have fared badly in
the East African campaign, if we could not have relied upon the services
of many of them. They are for the most part men who have abandoned at an
early age the prosaic existence previously mapped out for them, and
plunging into the wilds of Africa have found a more attractive
livelihood in big game shooting and prospecting. By far the most
exhilarating calling is that of the elephant hunter, who finds in the
profits he derives from it all the compensation he requires for the
hardships, the long marches, and the grave personal dangers. In the most
inaccessible parts of the continent he plies his trade, knowing that his
life may depend upon the quickness of his eye and intellect and the
accuracy of his aim. Nor are his troubles over when his quarry has been
secured. The ivory has still to be disposed of, and it is not always
safe to attempt to sell in the territory where the game has been shot.
The area of no man's land in Africa has long since been a diminishing
quantity, and the promiscuous shooting of elephants is not encouraged.
It becomes necessary, therefore, to study the question of markets, and
the successful hunter finds it convenient to vary the spheres of his
activities continually.
Not the least of the assets of these men is the knowledge they have of
the native and the hold they have obtained over them. That man will go
farthest who relies on the respect rather than on the fear he inspires.
The latter may go a long way, but unless it has the former to support
it, the chances are against it sooner or later. One man I know of owed
his life more than once to his devotion to a small stick that walking,
sitting or lying he never allowed out of his hand. The native mind came
to attach magical powers to the stick, and consequently to the man
himself. On one eventful journey when he had gone farther afield than
his wont, and farther than his native porters cared to accompany him,
symptoms of mutiny made their appearance. A council was held as to
whether he should be murdered or not; he was fortunate enough to
overhear it. The only possible deterrent seemed to be a dread of the
magical stick, but the two ringleaders affected to make light of it.
Realising that the time had come for decisive action, the white man
summoned the company, told them that his stick had revealed the plot to
him and warned them of the danger they ran. To clinch his argument he
offered to allow the ringleaders to return home, taking the stick with
them; but told them that they would be dead within twenty-four hours,
and the stick would come back to him. To his dismay they accepted the
challenge, and for him there could be no retreat. In desperation he
poisoned the food they were to take with them, and awaited developments.
The two natives set off early in the morning. By the afternoon they were
back again, and with them the stick. In the solitude of their homeward
trek their courage had oozed out; they feared the magic, and fortunately
had not touched the poisoned provisions. In the feasting that had to
celebrate this satisfactory denouement it was possible to substitute
other food for that which had been taken on the abortive journey. Magic
or the fear of it had saved the situation; but the instincts of loyalty
had been fired previously by a character that had many attractive
features and never allowed firmness to dispossess justice.
At the outbreak of the war two of our Nimrods--whom I shall call Hallam
and Best--were camped by the Rovuma river. Hearing that there were
British ships at Lindi, they made for the coast to offer their services
in the sterner hunt, after much more dangerous game, that they knew had
now begun. The native runner that brought them the news from Mozambique
also warned them of the German force that was hot foot in pursuit of
them. So they tarried not in the order of their going, and made for the
shelter of the fleet. But Best would read his weekly _Times_ by the
light of the lamp at their camp table for all the Huns in Christendom,
he said, and derided Hallam's surer sense of danger near at hand. So in
the early hours their pickets came running in, all mixed up with German
Askaris, and the ring of rifle and machine-gun fire told them that their
time had come. Capsizing the tell-tale lamp, they scattered in the
undergrowth like a covey of partridges, Hallam badly wounded in the leg
and only able to crawl. The friendly shelter of the papyrus leaves
beside the river-bank was his refuge; and as he plunged into the river
the scattered volley of rifle shots tore the reeds above him. All night
they remained there. Hallam up to his neck in water, and the ready prey
of any searching crocodile that the blood that oozed from his wounded
leg should inevitably have attracted; the Germans on the bank. Next
morning the trail of blood towards the river assured the enemy that
Hallam was no more, for who could live in these dangerous waters all
night, wounded as he was? But if Hallam could hunt like a leopard, he
could also swim like a fish. Next day brought a native fishing canoe
into sight, and to it he swam, still clutching the rifle that second
nature had caused him to grab as he plunged into the reeds. With a wet
rifle and nine cartridges he persuaded the natives not only to ferry him
across to the Portuguese side, but also to carry him in a "machela," a
hammock slung between native porters, from which he shot "impala" for
his food. But somehow word had got across the river that Hallam had
eluded death, and the German Governor stormed and threatened till the
Portuguese sent police to arrest the fugitive. But the native runner who
brought him news of his discovery also brought word of the approaching
police. So with his rifle and three cartridges to sustain him, often
delirious with fever, and the inflammation in his leg, he commandeered
the men of a native village and persuaded them, such was the prestige of
his name, to carry him twenty-eight days in the "machela" to a friendly
mission station on Lake Nyasa. Here the kindly English sisters nursed
him back to life and health again.
Best was not so lucky, for he was taken prisoner. But there was no
German gaol that could hold so resourceful a prisoner as this. In due
time he made his escape, and was to be found later looping the loop
above Turkish camps in the Sinai Peninsula.
One German, of whom our information had been that "his company did
little else but rape women and loot goats," fell into my hands when we
took the English Universities Mission at Korogwe. Could this be he, I
thought, as I saw an officer of mild appearance and benevolent aspect
speaking English so perfectly and peering at me through big spectacles?
Badly wounded and with a fracture of the thigh, he had begged me to look
after him, saying the most disloyal things about the character and
surgical capacity of the German doctor whom we had left behind to look
after German wounded. Not that the _Oberstabsarzt_ did not deserve them,
but it was so gratuitously beastly to say them to me, an enemy. He
deplored, too, with such unctuous phrases, the fact that war should ever
have occurred in East Africa. How it would spoil the years of toil,
toward Christianity, of many mission stations! How the simple native had
been taught in this war to kill white men; hitherto, of course, the
vilest of crimes. How the march of civilisation had been put back for
twenty-five years. How the prestige of the white man had fallen, for had
not natives seen white men, on both sides, run away before them? Many
such pious expressions issued from his lips. But the true Hun character
came out when he asked whether the hated Boers were coming? The most
vindictive expression, that even the benevolent spectacles could only
partly modify, clouded his face, and he complained to me most bitterly
of the black ingratitude of the Boers toward Germany. "All my life, from
boyhood," he complained, "have I not subscribed my pfennigs to provide
Christmas presents for the poor Boers suffering under the heel of
England. Did not German girls," he whined, "knit stockings for the women
of that nation that was so akin to the Germans in blood, and that lay so
pitifully prostrate beneath the feet of England?" Nor would he be
appeased until I assured him that the Boers were far away.
Another, whose reputation was that of "a hard case, and addicted to
drink," I found also in hospital in Korogwe, recovered from an operation
for abscess of the liver, and living in hospital with his wife. Spruce
and rather jumpy he insisted on exhibiting his operation wound to me,
paying heavy compliments to English skill in surgery; not, mark you,
that he had any but the greatest contempt that all German doctors, too,
profess for British medicine and surgery. But he hoped, by specious
praise, to be sent to Wilhelmstal and not to join the other prisoners in
Ahmednagar. Bottles of soda-water ostentatiously displayed upon his
table might have suggested what his bleary eye and shaky hands belied.
So I contented myself with removing the pass key to the wine cellar,
that lay upon the sideboard, and duly marked him down on the list for
transfer to Wilhelmstal.
That the spirit of Baron Munchausen still lives in German East Africa is
attested to by Intelligence reports. It says a great deal for Lettow's
belief in the accuracy of our information that he very promptly put a
stop to the notoriety and reputation for valour that two German officers
enjoyed. One had made an unsuccessful attempt to bomb the Uganda Railway
on two occasions; but neither time did he do any damage, though, on each
occasion, he claimed to have cut the line. The other, possessed of
greater imagination, reported to his German commander that he had
attacked one of our posts along the railway, completely destroying it
and all in it. The painful truth he learnt afterwards from German
headquarters was that the English suffered no casualties, and the post
was comparatively undamaged.
The sad fate of one enterprising German officer who set out to make an
attack upon one of our posts was, at the time, the cause, of endless
jesting at the expense of the Survey and Topographical Department of
British East Africa. He was relying upon an old English map of the
country, but owing to its extreme inaccuracy, he lost his way, ran out
of water, and made an inglorious surrender. This, of course, was
attributed by the Germans to the low cunning employed by our
Intelligence Department that allowed the German authorities to get
possession of a misleading map.
That retribution follows in the wake of an unpopular German officer, as
shown by extracts from captured German diaries, is attested to by the
record of two grim tragedies in the African bush, one of an officer who
"lost his way," the other of an officer who was shot by his own men.