LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Lukigura River[Frontispiece]
FACING PAGE
Kilimanjaro[34]
The Neck at “German Bridge”[92]
German Paper Rupee[106]
Native Kraal[144]
A Good Bag: 268½ lb. of Ivory[160]
Tandamuti[188]
Ostriches[202]
LIST OF MAPS
From the Frontier to Morogoro[86]
Morogoro to Rufiji River[124]
Lindi Area[172]

THREE YEARS OF WAR
IN EAST AFRICA

CHAPTER I
OUTWARD BOUND

It was raining in London. It had been raining all day, and for many days previous, and to-night the atmosphere of damp and greyness pervaded the very soul of the city outdoors.

FRONTIERSMEN AT WATERLOO

Number Seven platform, at Waterloo Station, was crowded with troops and baggage, about to depart for service with the B.E.F. in East Africa. They had arrived at the station at 6 p.m. At 11 p.m. they were still there grouped about in talkative jollying clusters, apparently indifferent to the delay in entraining.

Everyone knows this type of crowd nowadays, but in this case, and as commonly with men garbed in identical uniform, no one could tell with any accuracy the remarkable variety of character of the men, or the extent of their notability. Joe Robson, who was standing apart—a quiet onlooker—thought: “It is almost a pity that the individual loses his individuality in the army and becomes a stranger in a strange crowd.” What would that group of schoolboys say, and the inquisitive idle crowd in general, if they knew that here in the ranks, beneath the guise of homogeneous khaki, were gathered many men from all the world over? Men who had come to fight for their native land from Honolulu, Hong-Kong, China, Ceylon, Malay States, India, New Zealand, Australia, South and East Africa, Egypt, South America, Mexico, United States of America, and Canada? Men from the very outer edges of the world; in Ogilvie’s words: