addition to South West Africa, Imperial Germany’s possessions in East Africa consisted of what is now Burundi, Rwanda and mainland Tanzania. German East Africa inevitably also became a theatre of operations. However, the campaign in East Africa extended into what is now Mozambique, Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda.
In 1916, General Jan Smuts was given the task of defeating the German colonial army, which was commanded by the able Colonel Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck. There was no prospect of the German forces achieving a victory, but Lettow-Vorbeck’s strategy was to tie down as many British or Allied forces as possible and prevent them being deployed to the major theatre of war in France. Smuts opened his dispatch on the East African campaign as follows: “At the commencement of 1916 the German forces in German East Africa were estimated at some 16 000 men, of whom 2 000 were white, with 60 guns and 80 machine guns. They were organised in companies varying from 150 to 200 strong, with 10 per cent of whites and an average of two machine guns per company. The enemy occupied a considerable tract of British territory.”
The terrain was difficult for both sides. It was covered in dense bush, wrote the historian Ross Anderson,
… that ranged from tropical jungle with swamps to forested mountain ranges to undulating parched scrubland. Physical communications were generally very primitive, apart from two unconnected railways and movement was usually limited to narrow and unsurfaced tracks. With virtually no roads, this forced the combatants to move in columns, most often in a single file that stretched out over many miles. Powerful, wide and unbridged rivers, rocky outcrops and swamps also caused time-consuming diversions while navigation itself was extremely problematic owing to the virtually non-existent state of survey and consequently inaccurate maps.
If these difficulties were not enough, dense vegetation often reduced visibility to a few metres or less, especially when moving through bamboo thickets or elephant grass. Climate played its part, as for much of the year there was insufficient precipitation to support grazing, while for the remainder there was a superabundance of water that impeded movement, made life generally miserable and promoted sickness. In the dry season, the dust raised by the marching columns or vehicles covered everything and enveloped the troops in a thick cloud, while in the wet, heavy continuous rain and mist made observation very difficult. The temperature ranged from very hot, with humid and arid extremes in the lowlands to cold and damp in the mountains.
Smuts had a large army (for the area), consisting of some 13 000 South Africans, British and Rhodesians, as well as 7 000 Indian and African troops. In addition, he could call on Belgian troops from the Belgian Congo and Portuguese forces from Mozambique. Lettow-Vorbeck had at his disposal just 1 800 Germans and some 12 000 African troops.
“Early in February the 2nd South African Infantry Brigade arrived,” Smuts wrote in his dispatch, “and on the 12th of that month General Tighe directed the 2nd Division to make a reconnaissance in force of Salaita, and if possible to occupy that position. General Malleson carried out this operation with three battalions 2nd South African Brigade and three battalions 1st East African Brigade, supported by 18 guns and howitzers. The Salaita position is one of considerable natural strength, and had been carefully entrenched. The enemy was found to be in force and counterattacked vigorously. General Malleson was compelled to withdraw to Serengeti, but much useful information had been gained, and the South African Infantry had learned some invaluable lessons in bush fighting, and also had opportunity to estimate the fighting qualities of their enemy.
“The original plan devised by General Tighe had been to occupy the Kilimanjaro area by making a converging advance from Longido and Mbuyuni with the 1st and 2nd Divisions respectively, with Kahe as the point towards which movement was to be directed. To this main plan I adhered, but I decided that some alteration of dispositions was necessary in order to avoid frontal attacks against entrenched positions of the enemy in the dense bush and to secure the rapidity of advance which appeared to me essential to the success of the operation in the short time at our disposal before the commencement of the rains …”
This summary by Smuts reflected the approach he took through the entire campaign: the emphasis on mobility and outflanking rather than actual holding of territory.
The plan of campaign called for a main attack from the north, from British East Africa. From the Belgian Congo in the west, two columns of the Force Publique crossed Lake Victoria on board British steamers, while another British contingent crossed Lake Nyasa from the southeast. However, these efforts failed to capture Lettow-Vorbeck. Smuts’s force was severely weakened by disease: one unit, the 9th South African Infantry, found itself reduced to just 116 fit soldiers by October (from 1 135 men in February), having seen virtually no combat.
Lettow-Vorbeck’s tactic was to retreat from the larger British troop concentrations. Smuts was able to gain territory but was unable to put his enemy out of action. By September 1916, the British controlled the German Central Railway from the coast at Dar es Salaam to Ujiji. This meant that Lettow-Vorbeck’s forces were now confined to the southern part of the colony. Smuts, doubtless influenced by the success of the Boers against the British on the vast, dry, open plains of South Africa (and by the more recent and successful campaign in German South West Africa), favoured a tactic of swift manoeuvre. “He was opposed to fighting heavy battles,” wrote Anderson, “and preferred to use limited frontal holding attacks supported by wide turning movements by highly mobile mounted columns aimed at hitting the enemy’s flanks and cutting off his escape … Above all, he wanted to conquer territory and, despite his pronouncements, he never appears to have been really interested in defeating the Germans in pitched battle … His emphasis on speed left little time for accurate reconnaissance.”
This did not mean that Smuts’s army lacked enterprise or courage. In his dispatch, he writes of an attack by Lieutenant Colonel Byron, commanding the 5th South African Infantry:
Shortly afterwards he decided that the best chance of quickly dislodging the enemy from their position on the nek was to send in the two South African Battalions with the bayonet by night. This operation was no doubt fraught with considerable risk as there was no opportunity of adequately reconnoitring the ground over which the attack must be made, nor was it by any means certain that the enemy was not present in large numbers. On the other hand the moon was in the first quarter, and so facilitated movement up to midnight; the bush along the line of the road to the nek did not appear to be very dense; and, moreover, the volume of fire developed by the enemy did not seem to indicate that he had a large force actually in his first line, though he had, as usual, a large proportion of machine guns in action … They advanced with great dash through the bush – which proved to be much thicker than anticipated – driving the enemy before them till the latter was on the crest, where he checked our advance. A certain amount of disintegration was inevitable in a night advance through the dense thorn bush in the face of stubborn opposition.
The map of the campaign seemed to indicate that Smuts had been very successful. He had captured much ground, the ports and railways, and large areas of good farmland. When Smuts left the East African theatre in the spring of 1917 to join the Imperial War Cabinet in London, his successor, Brigadier General Jacob van Deventer, commanding the 1st South African Mounted Brigade, continued to chase the Germans. In July 1917 he launched a major offensive, which pushed the Germans 160km to the south. However, they were still able to tie down large British forces and even defeat them on occasion. Over time, the composition of the British force was steadily transformed, with African troops of the King’s African Riflesbeing brought in to replace South African, Rhodesian and Indian formations. By the end of the war, the force opposing Lettow-Vorbeck was almost entirely African.
In mid-October 1917, Lettow-Vorbeck fought a pivotal and costly battle at Mahiwa, where he lost 519 men killed, wounded or missing. The British Nigerian brigade lost 2 700 killed, wounded or missing in the engagement. Smuts was to write of Van Deventer that he “commanded throughout the operations an independent column, and executed the turning movements to which the rapidity of our success
