My Reminiscences of East Africa

by Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck

At this time, in the dense forest, all units, and in many instances friend and foe, were mixed up together, everybody was shouting at once in all sorts of languages, darkness was rapidly setting in; it is only necessary to conjure up this scene in imagination in order to understand how it was that the pursuit which I set in motion failed completely. I had been stationed on the right wing, and had quickly despatched such units as were within reach at the moment to push with energy towards Ras-Kasone. Then I had gone to the left wing. There I found hardly any of our people at all; it was not till some time afterwards, in the night, that I heard the sound of the nailed boots of a party of Askari. I was glad at last to have a force in hand, but was somewhat disappointed to find it was a detachment of the right wing, under 2nd Lieutenant Langen, who had missed the way to Ras-Kasone and had thus got on to our left wing. But even these difficulties were not all. In some inexplicable way the troops imagined a Headquarter order had been issued that they were to return to their old camp west of Tanga. Only during the course of the night, at Tanga Railway Station, did it become clear to me that nearly all the companies had marched off for that destination. Of course they were ordered to return at once. But unfortunately this caused so much delay that it was impossible to bring Hering’s Battery, which had arrived later, into action by moonlight against the ships.

The troops, whose great exhaustion was quite comprehensible, did not get back to Tanga until the morning of the 5th November, and occupied essentially the same position as the day before. It was not now advisable to advance with all our forces against the enemy, who was re-embarking at Ras-Kasone, as the country there was entirely open, and commanded by the cruisers lying in its immediate vicinity. All the same, the strong patrols and individual companies, who advanced towards Ras-Kasone, in order to harass the enemy, succeeded in surprising him by machine-gun fire directed on various detachments, a few boats, and even the decks of the cruiser lying close to the hospital. During the day, the impression that the enemy had suffered a tremendous defeat grew stronger and stronger. It is true, the full extent of his losses did not become known to us all at once; but the many places where hundreds and hundreds of dead were piled up in heaps, and the smell of putrefaction which the tropical sun brought out all over the district, gave us some indication. Very cautiously we estimated the killed at about 800, but I believe this number to be far too low. A senior English officer, who had accurate knowledge of the details, told me later, on the occasion of an action in which he stated the English casualties to have been 1,500, that the losses at Tanga had been considerably greater. I now think that even 2,000 is too low an estimate. Even greater was the enemy’s loss in moral. He almost began to believe in spirits and spooks; years afterwards I was asked by English officers whether we had used trained bees at Tanga, but I may now perhaps betray the fact that at the decisive moment all the machine-guns of one of our companies were put out of action by these same “trained bees,” so that we suffered from this new “training” quite as much as the English.

The enemy felt himself completely defeated, and he was. His troops had fled in wild confusion and thrown themselves head over heels into the lighters. The possibility of renewing the attack was not even considered. From prisoners’ statements and captured official English documents it was ascertained that the whole Anglo-Indian Expeditionary Force of 8,000 men had been thus decisively beaten by our force of little more than 1,000 men. Not till the evening did we realize the magnitude of this victory, when an English officer, Captain Meinertshagen, came under a flag of truce to negotiate with Captain von Hammerstein, my representative, for the handing over of the wounded. Captain von Hammerstein proceeded to the hospital, which was full of severely wounded English officers, and in my name agreed to their being removed by the English on giving their word of honour not to fight against us again in this war.

The booty in arms enabled us to re-arm more than three companies with modern weapons, for which the sixteen machine-guns were particularly welcome. The moral of the force and its confidence in its leaders had enormously increased, and at one blow I was delivered from a great part of the difficulties which so greatly impeded the conduct of operations. The continuous fire of the ships’ guns, which the closeness of the country had rendered ineffective, had lost its terrors for our brave blacks. The quantity of stores captured was also considerable; besides 600,000 rounds of small-arm ammunition the enemy had left behind the whole of his telephone gear and such quantities of clothing and equipment that we were able to meet all our requirements, especially in warm coats and blankets, for at least a year. Our own losses, painful though they were, were numerically insignificant. About fifteen (?) Europeans, among them the splendid Captain von Prince, and fifty-four (?) Askari and machine-gun carriers, had fallen. The Europeans were buried in a worthy warriors’ grave in the shade of a fine Buyu tree, where a simple memorial tablet is inscribed with their names. The work of clearing up the battlefield and burying the dead meant several days of most strenuous work for the whole force, as the streets were literally strewn with dead and badly wounded. In unknown tongues they begged for help which, with the best will in the world, could not always be accorded at once.

At our main dressing station, in Tanga itself, our male and female nursing personnel had conscientiously cared for friend and foe even under the fire of the heavy guns of the ships. As recently as the evening of the 4th November I had been to see the wounded. I little thought that Lieutenant Schottstaedt, who was sitting there on a chair with a severe wound in the chest, had but a few minutes to live. The English Lieutenant Cook, of the 101st Indian Grenadiers, lay there with a bad gun-shot wound in the leg. This bright young officer, who had fallen into our hands in the hottest part of the fight on the Indian left wing, maintained his cheerfulness in spite of his wound. With the bulk of the other wounded, he was treated for nine months in the Field Hospital at Korogwe by our best surgeon, Stabsarzt Dr. Müller. He was already walking about once more, when an unfortunate fall on the stairs caused his death.

The fighting at Tanga was the first occasion on which heavy demands were made on our arrangements for the care of the wounded. For this purpose, hospitals had been established at Korogwe and at various other points on the Northern Railway, to which the sick could be taken by rail without being transferred from one method of transport to another. No special hospital arrangements of a permanent nature had been made for transport, but we never had any difficulty in improvising what was necessary.

In spite of their undoubted defeat at Tanga it was probable that British determination would not accept this decision as final. Even after his defeat the enemy was still several times as strong as we were, and would not improbably attempt another landing elsewhere. But a cycle ride on the 6th November to Mansa Bay, in the North, convinced me that the hostile ships had run in there only for the purpose of attending to their wounded and burying their dead and had no intention of landing. And the ships actually did steam off towards Zanzibar soon after. At that time it was interesting to me to visit our Government Hospital near Ras-Kasone, which had in the meantime been evacuated by the English wounded released on parole. Among others I saw here two German officers who had been wounded at Tanga on the 3rd November, and others who had been wounded in an earlier action; from the hospital they had been able to observe events behind the English front on the 4th November, the day when the principal fighting took place. With the greatest excitement they had watched the landing at Ras-Kasone and the advance on Tanga; in the afternoon they had heard the opening of our decisive machine-gun fire and the bombardment by the ships’ guns, and had then witnessed the wild flight of the enemy close by the hospital. The numerous shells that had fallen near the hospital had fortunately done no damage. Quite early on the 5th November they had suddenly heard guns firing again, this time from the direction of Tanga; they realized that they must be German guns. They were in fact our two 1873 pattern field-guns, which, though too late to deal with the English transports by moonlight, had at least managed to secure a few hits after daybreak. A prolonged fire for effect was now unfortunately impossible, as the smoke disclosed the positions of the guns at once and drew the fire of the ships.

In the meantime it had become evident that the attack at Tanga was not an isolated enterprise, but had been intended to form part of a simultaneous operation on a large scale. Suddenly in the morning mist, on the 3rd November, English troops appeared north-west of Kilima Njaro, at Longido Mountain, which was held by Captain Kraut with three Companies of Askari and a Mounted Company of Europeans. Just as orders reached Longido Mountain by heliograph directing Captain Kraut to move off to Moshi, the first shell arrived. The enemy, about 1,000 strong, had ascended the great mountain, which lies by itself in the open plain, at several points, being guided by Masai, who called out to the outposts: “We belong to Captain Kraut’s men.” But our three Field Companies deployed rapidly and succeeded in working round the enemy detachment in the rocky ground and quickly repelled them. A hostile detachment of mounted Europeans who became visible in the plain at the foot of the mountain, and apparently intended to ascend it from the south, or to act against our communications, was fired upon with effect and quickly driven off.

Probably in connection with these events on the Northern Railway, hostile enterprises took place on Lake Victoria. At the end of October numerous Waganda warriors had penetrated from the North into the Bukoba district. To meet this menace, a force of 570 rifles, 4 machine-guns, and 2 guns left Muanza on the 31st October on board the small steamer Muanza, with 2 tugs and 10 dhows (boats). Soon after the landing these transports were attacked by English steamers, but got back to Muanza without damage. An English attempt to land at Kayense, north of Muanza, broke down under the fire of our detachment posted there.