When War was declared on August 4th, Brentham found himself in the dilemma of many of his able-bodied, disengaged fellow-countrymen: what service could he render to the British Empire at this crisis of its fate? Like most of us he had a strong predilection as to the kind of service he might best render. In his case it was to proceed as quickly as possible to East Africa and watch over the fortunes of the Happy Valley. John was already in India with his regiment; Ambrose had best remain at Cambridge unless there was anything like Universal service; Maud would take up hospital work and her nieces could help her.
He therefore proceeded to offer his services to the Secretary of State for the Colonies. If Africa could not be kept out of the War area—as he had at first hoped—then, if we did not occupy German East Africa, the Germans would soon proceed to invade our adjacent possessions: in short, a terrible struggle was about to take place for supremacy in the Dark Continent between Britain, France, and Belgium on the one side and Germany on the other. In such a struggle, surely his qualities as geographer, linguist, and a person of great local influence ought to be of value in the East African campaign?
The Colonial Office replied coldly that it had handed over the whole question of attack and defence in East Africa to the War Office. To the War Office he therefore repaired one very warm day at the end of August. With the greatest difficulty he obtained access to the Secretary of State for War, then the most powerful person in the kingdom. He faced those "desert eyes" like the optics of a harpy eagle, and made a stammering, voluble proffer of his services, which gradually slackened under the stare and the silence. When he paused to invite a reply, the great man interjected: "How old are you?"
"Fifty-six, Sir."
"Much too old.... Couldn't stand ... strain of campaign.... Besides ... all arranged with Indian War Department.... They mightn't like their Intelligence Division ... interfered with.... No doubt contingency long foreseen ... plan of campaign cut-and-dried.... Sorry.... We must make use of you elsewhere.... Send you America ... or recruiting, p'raps.... Scotland, Ireland, Canada. Let you know later.... Good morning...."
Roger, fearful of being caught in the machine as some little wheel or cog of no importance, lay low, considered, inquired and made his plans, thinking of nothing but how to reach and save the Happy Valley. Passports and visas were still matters of trifling importance. The direct route to East Africa was closed to him; fighting had already begun, rather disastrously for the British. But the Belgians were preparing for a great war-effort against German East Africa. Roger made, his way to Antwerp ... saw the Belgian Minister for the Congo, saw the grave and courteous young King ... was given permission to accompany the Belgian forces assembling on Tanganyika....
Then: picture him having reached the mouth of the Congo, late on in 1914 ... a little rusty for this adventure in Equatorial Africa. No one with him as assistant, servant, valet. His son John had been as far back as the preceding July marked down for service with the first Indian contingent which would in case of war be dispatched across the Indian Ocean to take part in the mismanaged attack on Tanga. Can you picture Brentham in those dreary weeks of waiting at Boma, the Congo capital—hothouse heat, mosquitoes, sand, dense forest, rancid smell of palm oil—unutterably lonely, asking himself torturingly "whether he had done the right thing"? Ought he not to have stayed at home, fought in Flanders? Looked after Ambrose, waited for orders from Lord Kitchener? Was he absolutely single-minded in his attachment to the Happy Valley? Had he chosen the right way to get there quickest?
At last they were off up-river to take the train to Stanley Pool. The Belgian officers with whom he travelled were one and all nice fellows, bons compagnons, intelligent, respectful of this grave English colonel's knowledge of Africa; but a little puzzled quand même at his Quixotry, a little reserved. "Il parait qu'il a vécu longtemps avec les Boches," he overheard one of them saying in the mess, as he was sauntering in. It seemed to convey a doubt as to his good faith.... At Leopoldville, he encountered a stately-looking Negro in a familiar costume—long white kanzu, small white open-work skull-cap—speaking in Swahili. With what joy he recognized that once familiar tongue can only be appreciated by those who have known the nostalgia of East Africa. He addressed the man in Kiswahili and was greeted with respect and interest. A bargain was struck with his employer, and the man, Omari bin Brahimu, originally a boy recruit for Stanley, entered Brentham's service, to accompany him to East Africa. Half the misery of the adventure was now over. Here was a potential nurse in sickness, an efficient valet, a packer, steward, if-need-be cook, gun-bearer, counsellor, interpreter, and ever present help in trouble....
Colonel Brentham soon showed the Belgians he was not there as an encumbrance, as a tiresome elderly guest. His knowledge of Bantu tongues enabled him to pick up a smattering of Bangala, the lingua franca of the Congolese soldiery. He worked in his shirtsleeves and in football shorts at every emergency, knew something about steamer engines, shot for the pot, drilled recruits, and evidently knew the Germans' position and resources thoroughly. By the time the swelling contingent of reinforcements had reached Stanley Falls he, was voted the nicest Englishman—point de morgue, simple et instruit, ban garçon jusqu'au bout des angles—they had ever met. Between Stanley Falls and Tanganyika he was very ill and nearly died of black-water fever; but pulled through, thanks to Omari's nursing, and reached Ujiji a yellow spectre, after the Belgians had in several actions on the lake and on shore gained possession of Tanganyika. They had been marvellously helped by a naval contingent sent out by the British Admiralty through Nyasaland. It was a joy which conduced to Brentham's recovery to meet the brave, jolly, resourceful British naval officers and picked seamen. In some way it righted his own position. He felt less a lonely Don Quixote, a solitary specimen of the British allies of Belgium.
The year 1915 had been the nadir of his life. Cut off from all news—he was not to know for another year that his sons were both dead, John, shot through the head in a maize plantation outside Tanga, and Ambrose, who had enlisted a month after his father's departure, blown to pieces by a shell at Ypres; not to know how his sister and his daughters were faring; whether the British Empire still stood firm, and what people said or thought about his own disappearance. He was often sick, tired, lonely, with little to read, and his thoughts a torture to him; for they dwelt on the remembering of happier things. He wished at times he might have in humdrum daily life the delusions that came to him in dreams or in attacks of fever; that Lucy was once more by his side, that Sibyl had sat by him, that Maud or Maurice or Mrs. Stott had come into his wretched palm-leaf hut.