Chapter 2

Last, and most important, the army of South Africans, whose coming spelt for us the big advance and the swift move that made us master of the whole country from Kilimanjaro to the Rufigi. A great political experiment and a most wonderfully successful one was this Africander army, English and Boers, under a Boer General. For the first time since the Great War in South Africa, the Boers made common cause with us, definitely aligned themselves with us in a joint campaign and provided the greatest object lesson of this World War. If the campaign of German East Africa was worth while, its value has been abundantly proved in this welding of the races that, despite local disagreements, has occurred. The South African troops have found the country ill adapted to their peculiar genius in war, and the blind bush has robbed the mounted arm of much of its efficiency. Not here the wide distances to favour their enveloping tactics. Much have they suffered from fever, hardships and privation, and to their credit lies the greatest of all marches in this campaign, the 250 mile march to Kondoa Irangi in the height of the rainy season. The South African Infantry arrived in Kondoa starved and worn and bootless after this forced march to extricate the mounted troops, whose impetuous ardour had thrust them far beyond the possibility of supplies, into the heart of the enemy's country. We cannot sufficiently praise the apparently reckless tactics that made this wonderful march towards the Central Railway, or the uncomplaining fortitude of troops who lived in this fever-stricken country, on hippopotamus meat, wild game and native meal. To the Boer, as to all of us, this campaign must have taught a wonderful lesson, for many prejudices have been modified, and it has been learnt that "coolies" (as only too often the ignorant style all natives of India) and "Kaffirs," can fight with the best.

This campaign would have been largely impossible, were it not for the Cape Boys and other natives from the Union, who have come to run our mule and ox transport. Their peculiar genius is the management of horses, mules and cattle. Different from other primitive and negro people, they are very kind to animals, infinitely knowledgeable in the lore of mule and ox, they can be depended upon to exact the most from animal transport with the least cruelty. Wonderful riders these; I have seen them sit bucking horses in a way that a Texas cowboy or a Mexican might envy.

One should not leave the subject of this army without reference to the Cape Corps--that experiment in military recruiting which many of us were at first inclined to condemn. But from the moment the Cape Boy enlisted in the ranks of the Cape Corps his status was raised, and he adopted, together with his regulation khaki uniform and helmet, a higher responsibility towards the army than did his brother who helped to run the transport. They have been well officered, they have been a lesson to all of us in the essential matters of discipline and smartness, they have done much of the dirty work entailed by guarding lines of communication, and now, when given their longed-for chance of actual fighting on the Rufigi, they have covered themselves with distinction. For my part, as a doctor, I found they had too much ego in their cosmos, as is commonly the fault of half-bred races, and a sick Cape Corps soldier seemed always very sick indeed; yet, as the campaign progressed, we came to like and to admire these troops the more, so that their distinction won in the Rufigi fighting was welcomed very gladly by all of us.

Later in the campaign arrived the Gold Coast Regiment; and now the Nigerian Brigade are here. Very, very smart and soldier-like these Hausa and Fulani troops; Mohammedan, largely, in religion, and bearded where the East Coast native is smooth-faced, they will stay to finish this guerilla fighting, for which their experience in the Cameroon has so well fitted them. The Gold Coast Regiment has always been where there has been the hardest fighting, their green woollen caps and leather sandals marking them out from other negroid soldiers. And their impetuous courage has won them many captured enemy guns, and, alas! a very long list of casualties. But in hospital they are the merriest of happy people, always joking and smiling, and are quite a contrast to our much more serious East Coast native; they have earned from their white sergeants and officers very great admiration and devotion. By far the best equipped of any unit in the field, they had, as a regiment, no less than eight machine-guns and a regimental mountain battery.

THE NAVY AND ITS WORK

To the Navy that alone has made this campaign possible, we soldiers owe our grateful thanks. But there have been times when, in our blindness, we have failed to realise how great the task was to blockade 400 miles of this coast and to keep a watchful eye on Mozambique. For before the Portuguese made common cause with us, there was a great deal of gun-running along the southern border of German East Africa, which our present Allies found impossible to watch. Two factors materially aided the Germans in making the fight they have. First, there was the lucky "coincidence" of the Dar-es-Salaam Exhibition. This exhibition, which was to bring the whole world to German East Africa in August, 1914, provided the military authorities with great supplies of machinery, stores and exhibits from all the big industrial centres; and these were swiftly adapted to the making of rifles and munitions of war. To this must be added the most important factor of all, the _Königsberg_, lying on the mud flats far up the Rufigi, destroyed by us, it is true, but not before the ship's company of 700, officers and men, and most of the guns had been transported ashore, the latter mounted on gun carriages and dragged by weary oxen or thousands of black porters to dispute our advance. In due course, however, these were abandoned, one by one, as we pressed the enemy back from the Northern Railway south to the Rufigi. Last, but by no means least, was the moral support their wireless stations gave them. These, though unable, since the destruction of the main stations, to transmit messages, continued for some time to receive the news from Nauen in Germany. By the air from Germany the officers received the Iron Cross, promotion, and the Emperor's grateful thanks.

But if you would see what work the Navy has done, you must first begin at Lindi in the south. There you will see the _Präsident_ of the D.O.A. line lying on her side with her propellers blown off and waiting for our tugs to drag her to Durban for repair. And in the Rufigi lying on the mudbanks, fourteen miles from the mouth, you will see the _Königsberg_, once the pride of German cruisers, half sunk and completely dismantled. The hippopotami scratch their tick-infested flanks upon her rusted sides, crocodiles crawl across her decks, fish swim through the open ports. In Dar-es-Salaam you will see the _König_ stranded at the harbour mouth, the _Tabora_ lying on her side behind the ineffectual shelter of the land; the side uppermost innocent of the Red Cross and green line that adorned her seaward side. For she was a mysterious craft. She flew the Red Cross and was tricked out as a hospital ship on one side, the other painted grey. True, she had patients and a doctor on board when a pinnace from one of our cruisers examined her, but she also had machine-guns mounted and gun emplacements screwed to her deck, and all the adaptations required for a commerce raider. So our admiral decided that, after due notice, so suspicious a craft were better sunk. A few shots flooded her compartments and she heeled over, burying the lying Cross of Geneva beneath the waters of the harbour. Further up the creek you will see the _Feldmarschall_ afloat and uninjured, save for the engines that our naval party had destroyed, and ready, to our amazement, at the capture of the town, to be towed to Durban and to carry British freight to British ports, and maybe meet a destroying German submarine upon the way. Further up still you will find the Governor's yacht and a gunboat, sunk this time by the Germans; but easy to raise and to adapt for our service. Strange that so methodical a people should have bungled so badly the simple task of rendering a valuable ship useless for the enemy. But they have blundered in the execution of their plans everywhere. The attempt to obstruct the harbour mouth at Dar-es-Salaam was typical of their naval ineptitude. Barely two hundred yards across this bottle-neck, it should have been an easy job to block. So they sank the floating dock in the southern portion of the channel and moored the _König_ by bow and stern hawsers, to the shores on either side in position for sinking. Instead of flooding her they prepared an explosive bomb and timed it to go off at the fall of the tide. But the bomb failed to explode, and an ebb tide setting in, broke the stern moorings and drove her sideways on the shore. Here she lies now and the channel is still free to all our ships to come and go. We found, at the occupation, the record of the court-martial on the German naval officer responsible for the failure of the plan. He seems to have pleaded, with success, the fact that his dynamite was fifteen years old. After that no further attempt was made, and for nearly a year before we occupied the town our naval whalers and small cruisers sailed, the white ensign proudly flying, into the harbour to anchor and to watch the interned shipping. It must have been a humiliating spectacle to the Hun; but he was helpless. Woe betide him, if he placed a mine or trained a gun upon this ship of ours. The town would have suffered, and this they could not risk.

Yet further up the coast, near Tanga, the _Markgraf_ lies beached in shallow water, and the _Reubens_ a wreck in Mansa Bay.

In most of our naval operations our intelligence has been excellent, and Fortune has been kind. It seemed to the Germans that we employed some special witchcraft to provide the knowledge that we possessed. So they panicked ingloriously, and sought spies everywhere, and hanged inoffensive natives by the dozen to the mango trees. One day one of our whalers entered Tanga harbour the very day the German mines were lifted for the periodical overhaul. The Germans ascribed such knowledge to the Prince of Evil. The whaler proceeded to destroy a ship lying there, and, on its way out, fired a shell into a lighter that was lying near. In this lighter were the mines, as the resulting explosion testified. This completed the German belief in our possession of supernatural powers of obtaining information.

Again at the bombardment and capture of Bagamoyo by the Fleet, it seemed to the Hun that wherever the German commander went, to this trench or to that observation post, our 6-inch shells would follow him. All day long they pursued his footsteps, till he also panicked and searched the bush for a hidden wireless. He it was who shot our gallant Marine officer, as our men stormed the trenches, and paid the penalty for his rashness shortly after.

The little German tug _Adjutant_, which in times of peace plied across the bar at Chinde to bring off passengers and mails to the ships that lay outside, has had a chequered career in this war. Slipping out from Chinde at the outbreak of war, she made her way to Dar-es-Salaam. From there she essayed another escapade only to fall into our hands. Transformed into a gunboat, she harried the Germans in the Delta of the Rufigi, until, greatly daring, one day she ran ashore on a mudbank in the river. Captured with her crew she was taken to pieces by the Germans and transported by rail to Ujiji on Lake Tanganyika. And there the Belgians found her, partly reconstructed, as they entered the harbour. A little longer delay, and the resurrected _Adjutant_ would have played havoc with our small craft and the Belgians', which had driven the German ships off the vast waters of this lake.

LETTOW AND HIS ARMY

Lettow, the one-eyed, or to give him his full title, Colonel von Lettow-Vorbeck, is the heart and soul of the German resistance in East Africa. Indomitable and ubiquitous, he has kept up the drooping spirits of his men by encouragement, by the example of great personal courage, and by threats that he can and will carry out. Wounded three times, he has never left his army, but has been carried about on a "machela" to prevent the half-resistance that leads to surrender. And now we hear he has had blackwater, and, recovering, has resumed his elusive journeys from one discouraged company to another all over the narrowing area of operations that alone is left to the Hun of his favourite colonial possessions. For to the fat shipping clerk of Tanga, whose soul lives only for beer and the leave that comes to reward two years of effort, the temptation to go sick or to get lost in the bush in front of our advancing armies is very great. He is not of the stuff that heroes are made of, and surrender is so safe and easy. A prison camp in Bombay is clearly preferable to this unending retreat. He has done enough for honour, he argues, he has proved his worth after two and a half years of resistance! This colony has put up the best fight of all, "and the _Schwein Engländer_ holds the seas, so further resistance is hopeless." "We are not barbarians, are we Fritz?" But Fritz has ceased to care. "Ahmednagar for mine," says he, reverting to the language he learnt in the brewery at Milwaukee, in days that now seem to belong to some antenatal life. Soon he will look for some white face beneath the strange sun helmet the English wear, up will go his hands, and "Kamerad"--that magic word--will open the doors to sumptuous ease behind the prison bars.

But Lettow is going "all out." His black Askaris are not discouraged, and, in this war, the black man is keeping up the courage of the white. Had the native soldiers got their tails down the game was up as far as the Germans were concerned. But these faithful fellows see the "Bwona Kuba," as they call Lettow, here encouraging, everywhere inspiring them by his example, and they will stay with him until the end. Like many great soldiers, Lettow is singularly careless in his dress; and the tale is told at Moschi of a young German officer who stole a day's leave and discussed with a stranger at a shop window the chances of the ubiquitous Lettow arriving to spoil his afternoon. Nor did he know until he found the reprimand awaiting him in camp that he had been discussing the ethics of breaking out of camp with the "terror" himself.

A soldier of fortune is Lettow. His name is stained with the hideous massacres of the Hereros in South-West Africa. His was the order, transmitted through the German Governor's mouth, that thrust the Herero women and children into the deserts of Damaraland to die. Before the war in South Africa, rumour says, he was instructor to the "Staats Artillerie," which Kruger raised to stay the storm that he knew inevitably would overwhelm him. Serving, with Smuts and Botha themselves in the early months of the Boer war, he joined the inglorious procession of foreigners that fled across the bridge at Komati Poort after Pretoria fell, and left the Boer to fight it out unaided for two long and weary years more. No wonder that Lettow has sworn never to surrender to that "damned Dutchman Jan Smuts." Chary of giving praise for work well done, he yet is inexorable to failure. The tale is told that Lettow was furious when Fischer, the major in command at Moschi, was bluffed out of his impregnable position there by Vandeventer, evacuated the northern lines, and retired on Kahe, thus saving us the expense of taking a natural fortress that would have taxed all our energies. White with rage, he sent for Fischer and handed him one of his own revolvers. "Let me hear some interesting news about you in a day or two." And Fischer took the pistol and walked away to consider his death warrant. He looked at that grim message for two days before he could summon up his courage: then he shot himself, well below the heart, in a spot that he thought was fairly safe. But poor Fischer's knowledge of anatomy was as unsound as his strategy, for the bullet perforated his stomach. And it took him three days to die.

A tribe which has contributed largely to the German military forces is the Wanyamwezi. Of excellent physique, they long resisted German domination, but now they are entirely subdued. Hardy, brave and willing, they are the best fighters and porters, probably, in the whole of East Africa. Immigrant Wanyamwezi, enlisted in British East Africa into our King's African Rifles, do not hesitate to fight against their blood brothers. There is no stint to the faithful service they have given to the Germans. But for them our task would have been much easier. For drilling and parade the native mind shows great keenness and aptitude; little squads of men are drilled voluntarily by their own N.C.O.'s in their spare time; and often, just after an official drill is over, they drill one another again. Smart and well-disciplined they are most punctilious in all military services.

INTELLIGENCE

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.