About 2 p.m. aeroplanes from the eastern forces were sighted coming out from Taveta, and they flew over our front. They were trying to locate the enemy’s position ahead, and the direction of their retirement. All the afternoon heavy big-gun firing was heard, seemingly from somewhere west of Kitowo Mountains. The eastern column is evidently in action to-day, while we, too, are at last in touch with the main enemy forces. Camped for the night at Store—an open space with a few long-limbed cocoa-nut palms therein, and enclosed on all sides by thick forest, with the Defu River immediately on our right. No blankets to-night, and no fires possible on account of the proximity of the enemy. Camp fired on on three occasions overnight, but disturbances were short-lived. These alarms were at 2 a.m., 4 a.m., and at daylight.
The following day we remained in camp. No rations until noon, for owing to bad river-drifts, and wagon accidents in the darkness, the toiling transport had been outpaced, and left far behind, on the past two days of trekking. Much rejoicing among the breakfastless men when rations turned up. Aeroplanes scouting south of us in forenoon. The enemy, under the command of Kraut, is said to be holding the entire front on the Ruwu River, between Kahe Station (extreme west of line) and the marshes west of Mokinni Mountain (extreme east of line).
ATTACKED IN THE DARK
About 5 p.m. an enemy patrol crept up to the river where our troops were bathing and watering their animals, and opened fire on them. Confusion ensued on the river-bank. Unarmed bathers beat a precipitous retreat; mules and horses broke away in all directions. One of our men, stark naked, rushing back to our trench line for his arms, was amusingly confronted by the General and the Colonel of our battalion, who stopped him to inquire the cause of the disturbance. The poor fellow felt much abashed, and, no doubt, wished the ground would open up and swallow him. The firing soon ceased, and the excitement it had caused gradually quietened down. But peace was doomed to be short-lived, for at 8 a.m. at a suddenly given signal, tremendous fire swept the camp and startled everyone to frightful wakefulness. Bugle calls of the enemy rang out immediately after the first burst of firing, and thenceforward a deafening, close-grappling, vicious battle held forth. Time after time the enemy came on at our trench line, always to be held up and driven back. In all they made about twenty charges in frontal attack, and were once almost into our line. The engagement raged without pause for about four hours. The frontal attack, which could be rapidly reinforced from the road from the south, was the heaviest, but both flanks, at the same time, underwent considerable pressure, though from a farther range. German bugles sounded the advance from time to time, whenever there was a lull in the firing, as if the moment’s pause had been to take in breath for a fresh effort; and when one bugle sounded, the call would be caught up and repeated all around us in the darkness of the bush. The enemy fire, fortunately for us, was bad, for it was mostly too high, also many bullets were obstructed in their flight through the dense forest. Otherwise, our casualties must have been extremely heavy, for many of the column were without any trench cover, and lay exposed on the open ground. As it was our casualty return, eventually, was only three killed and seventeen wounded, and a number of horses destroyed, while, next day, the enemy were reported to have had fully one hundred casualties.
Next day—the memorable 21st of March, 1916—in the early morning, our column was reinforced from the eastern command with two battalions of South African Infantry, armoured cars, and some field guns. Orders had been received to attack Kahe. Our right was to be on the main road, when we advanced into battle. It transpired that General Van Deventer’s mounted brigade had passed through Moschi last night, and was to advance on the right flank and attack west and south of Kahe Station, while, at the same time, the eastern column was to operate along the line of the Himo River on the left flank.
HARD FIGHTING AT KAHE
Our column moved out at 9 a.m. Contact with the enemy was very soon found thereafter. At 11 a.m. our artillery opened fire on the enemy positions, while meantime our fighting line had formed and advanced slowly until about 400 to 800 yards off the enemy’s entrenched and prepared positions in the bottle-neck formed by the Soko-Nassai River at its junction with the Defu River. Here our forces were held, and the battle raged bitterly for some hours. Some of the enemy machine-guns were faultlessly handled, and inflicted heavy casualties. The fight was across a dead-level open grass space, terminating in bush at either fighting line. It was in the bush, on the enemy’s side, that their death-dealing machine-guns were concealed, and throughout the day our artillery failed to search them out. I saw those machine-gun emplacements later—there were two outstanding ones—and one proved to be on a raised platform, eight feet above ground, and skilfully concealed amongst the trees; the other was in a dug-out pit, with a fire-directing observation post in a tall tree standing just behind it. Where each gun had stood lay a huge stack of empty cartridge-cases, telling clearly that their gunners had found a big target. But where the raised gun had been, blood in all directions, and torn garments, and dead natives, told that not without payment had they held their post. But I digress. The battle raged unceasingly until dusk, with all its grime, and thirst, and heart-aching bloodshed. With darkness the firing ceased, as if by mutual consent, and immediately we commenced to strengthen our hastily dug trenches—dug during the action with bayonets, knives, hands—anything. And there they laboured, those grim, dirt- and blood-bespattered men of the firing lines while movement became general on all occupations. Ambulances and doctors were being sought on all sides, while many men passed along looking for water, in desperate need of quenching their thirst. In that bush forest, after dark, wandering parties, unfamiliar with the encampment as it lay after battle, seemed to be looking for every regiment, and water-cart, and doctor in creation. Late into the night the labours of readjustment and of organisation went on, while in the trenches dog-tired men, one by one, dropped off to sleep. About midnight peace settled over the camp, and the remainder of the night passed without further disturbance. At dawn, patrols went out and found the enemy had evacuated the entire front of prepared entrenchments, and had retired rapidly south under cover of the bush and the darkness. At the same time, news came in that General Van Deventer’s mounted troops had occupied Kahe Station, and the two commanding kopjes to the south.
So, for the time being, the storm of arms was over, and the enemy had staved off defeat by evading a prolonged battle.
GERMANS USE GUNS FROM BATTLESHIP
At 9 a.m. our battalion moved forward and took up a new defensive line, facing the south, across the Ruwu River. South of the Ruwu River, on the left flank of the enemy’s position, lay the ruins of a 4·1 naval gun, laboriously transported inland from the Koenigsberg battleship, which, in the early days of the war, our naval forces had crippled and rendered unseaworthy after chasing it to its lair in the mouth of the Rufiji River. About 7 o’clock on the previous night all had heard a terrific explosion, and there now lay the wreckage of it. The gun had been set up completely and with ingenious labour. Iron girders carried the heavy plank platform which received the deck mountings of the gun. Tools, and ironmongery, and rope, of ship-board nature, lay about the gun in profusion. In all construction the equipment and labour were thorough and workmanlike. The labour of carrying the material from Kahe Station, and the labour of erection, must have been colossal, one would think almost impossible. The observation post for the gun—a crow’s-nest platform with a rude ladder access—was in a high thorn tree towering above all its neighbours; and during the late battle, from this look-out, they had been able to direct the fire of the gun on to both Van Deventer’s column and our own. Close to the gun were the many grass huts of an encampment of some weeks’ standing, while all about those dwellings were native stores of mealie-meal, peas and beans, and calabashes and empty bottles, the leavings of a settled camp suddenly unsettled.