On the 9th of August we were back in Makindu, and on the 10th we proceeded along the road toward the Ruhungu position. Soon we found the road completely blocked by great trees that had been felled across it by the enemy, and in some places the road was also mined. Slowly we went forward throughout the day, investigating the level bush and the hill-sides as we went. Once about fifty enemy were sighted, and lost again in the bush. Once a mounted patrol of Sepoys fell in with the enemy, who surprised them when dismounted, and they lost their horses, and then their heads, while an advancing line of our men raked the bush with rifle-fire beyond them. Next day those horses, six of them, were found running free in the bush, and were caught and returned to their owners, one or two of them suffering from bullet wounds.
In the late afternoon we built a boma (bush fence) protection and camped for the night on the road; and again moved forward in the morning into the Ruhungu position. Progress was slow while the position, which was a very strong one in its systematic completeness, was carefully investigated, covered by machine-guns trained on the hill-slopes ahead. The position was completely occupied at 11 a.m. and all reported clear.
RUHUNGU STRONGHOLD
Going over the position I was astonished at the work that had been spent on it. For instance, on the low ground at the position defending the road, a wide carpet of sharply pointed, dangerous-looking, hand-cut pegs had been staked out in front of the whole trench line to protect it, apparently, from cavalry charge. This original and ingenious “entanglement” could not have been constructed without many, many days of labour by many men. Then, too, in the hills above, regular subterranean caves, and pits, had been excavated everywhere for protection from the attacks of our aeroplanes, some of them even hewn out of the solid rock by the industry of many hands.
In the afternoon we passed beyond Ruhungu, and in the evening camped by a small rivulet in low country east of the high Kanga mountain-top. Many small bush-log culverts on the road have here been destroyed by the enemy as they retired, and this has left the road impassable for transport until repairs are made.
The following day we advanced until the Russongo River was reached, and then camped, while working parties busily constructed a new bridge over the river.
At early dawn of the next day, which was Sunday the 13th of August, we trekked again onward through tree-covered hill country, and made a long march in a south-westerly direction, camping in the afternoon at Kinjumbi on the Luăle Liwăle River. The timber bridges destroyed, over streamlets and rivers, coursing numerously from the mountain watersheds, are now everywhere being roughly and speedily repaired, and the forces are hurrying forward in the wake of the escaping enemy. General Smuts is himself here to-day and hustling things forward.
Worked all through the night repairing the bridge over the deep-banked Luăle Liwăle River; then off over the river in the morning and onward, until again held up at Turiani, before which flows the large River Mwúhe, where two bridges had been blown up to block our passage. We have now descended into low, unhealthy marsh country, where the atmosphere is close and damp, and fly-ridden. For the remainder of the day and the next two days, swarms of us, like busy ants, laboured to and fro on the construction of the large timber-buttressed bridge being thrown across the high-banked river. At the end of the latter day fever laid hold of me, and left me with just enough energy doggedly to carry on. Toward evening, too, of the latter day the work drew to a close, and we marched out forthwith, at 7 p.m., to camp about midnight at Kwe d’Hombo.
Meantime the forces ahead had pushed on south to reach, on the 17th of August, the Wami River, there, at the bridge-head at the village of Dakawa, to enter into an all-day battle with the strongly entrenched enemy. The struggle was a fierce one, and again the enemy suffered severe punishment, but, nevertheless, they stubbornly defended their positions, on the opposite banks of the river, until night-fall, then to escape under cover of the screening darkness.