By noon on the following day, which was a Sunday, everyone had been packed on to the small lake steamship craft which lay at the wharf in readiness, and the expedition sailed thenceforth, out through the Kavirondo Gulf into the great lake.
The ships had been filled to their utmost capacity, above deck and below, and it was a motley crowd that occupied every yard of deck space, while pack-mules and store cattle stood roped to the ship’s rails on the upper deck. Forward, each vessel had a gun mounted, and a space roped off and cleared for action.
Thus we sailed from Kisumu to raid the town of Bukoba on the 22nd and 23rd June; a prosperous trade town within the German colony, on the south-west shores of the lake, which was the base of enemy activities against the Uganda Frontier in the vicinity of the Kagera River, and which contained a powerful wireless plant, by which the enemy were able to obtain, and send, important communications.
All night, and all the next day, we sailed the great lake, Victoria Nyanza, and we had been some thirty hours on board when, at sundown on the second day, we drew near to the enemy’s territory and slowed down, awaiting the fall of darkness.
RAID ON LAKE VICTORIA NYANZA
It was thought to effect a night landing and make a surprise attack on the town, and plans were all prepared for this. In this connection three privates were voluntarily selected for a novel undertaking: it was arranged that an Australian bushman, a Canadian from the Yukon, and self (I was then a private) were to go ahead at landing and try to overpower, and kill if necessary, a certain sentry whose post was known to our command. But all plans were changed in the end, for, about midnight, when our lightless phantom ships were drawing in to Bukoba, wakeful watchers on a high island, that lay out in the bay before the town, detected our approach in the light of the half-full moon, and five great rockets shot in warning into the sky. The alarm was out! Soldiers in the town would be rushing to arms and our landing on the beach would now be in the face of enemy waiting to receive us. Thus, plans were changed, and the ships drew away from shore, beyond the vision of the enemy, and stood to, waiting for dawn.
When dawn approached we again moved toward land. A force was to threaten a landing away south of the town, while the main forces drew in behind a long promontory north of Bukoba Bay.
Close on dawn our ship dropped anchor and boats were lowered; and, one by one, they were filled with troops, and left the ship’s side for shore; while the ship trembled from stem to stern beneath the shock of her gun-fire, which was now rapidly shelling the heights before us, and the hidden positions beyond. Beneath the steep hill-face of the promontory each boat ran aground on the beach, and the troops scrambled overboard and waded ashore.
ATTACKING BUKOBA
It was breaking daylight when we began filing up the steep mountain-side, which was cliff-like in places, and the climb to the top proved a stiff one, of close on a mile in distance, and very breathless were we when the summit was reached, while we judged it our great good fortune that this awkward ground had been covered unopposed by enemy. Advancing across the summit, south toward Bukoba, some resistance was encountered there in the banana plantations and forest, but the real fighting did not begin until we reached the southern slopes and looked out on the town of Bukoba, some two miles distant, situated on low land that swept back from the shores of the lake to the foot of the hills, and over the intervening bouldered, rocky hill country, and on to the commanding heights, above the town, on the west and south. It was then that serious fighting began, and all day—while the ships shelled from the lake—we fought in attack against the enemy, who, to begin with, held out amongst the rocks and clumps of trees in the broken hills before us, and who, latterly, defended the commanding hills north-west of the town.