My Reminiscences of East Africa

by Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck

Although the attack carried out at Jassini with nine companies had been completely successful, it showed that such heavy losses as we also had suffered could only be borne in exceptional cases. We had to economize our forces in order to last out a long war. Of the regular officers, Major Kepler, Lieuts. Spalding and Gerlich, Second-Lieuts. Kaufmann and Erdmann were killed; Captain von Hammerstein had died of his wound. The loss of these professional soldiers—about one seventh of the regular officers present—could not be replaced.

The expenditure of 200,000 rounds also proved that with the means at my disposal I could at the most fight three more actions of this nature. The need to strike great blows only quite exceptionally, and to restrict myself principally to guerilla warfare, was evidently imperative.

The guiding principle of constantly operating against the Uganda Railway could, however, be resumed, as here it was in any case impossible to act with larger forces. For it was necessary to make marches of several days’ duration through the great, waterless and thinly populated desert, which provided little sustenance beyond occasional game. Not only food, but water had to be carried. This alone limited the size of the force to be employed. Such expeditions through districts providing neither water nor food require a degree of experience on the part of the troops which could not possibly exist at that stage of the war. A company even was too large a force to send across this desert, and if, after several days of marching, it really had reached some point on the railway, it would have had to come back again, because it could not be supplied. However, these conditions improved as the troops became better trained, and as our knowledge of the country, which was at first mainly terra incognita, increased.

So there was nothing for it but to seek to attain our object by means of small detachments, or patrols. To these patrols we afterwards attached the greatest importance. Starting from the Engare-Nairobi, small detachments of eight to ten men, Europeans and Askaris, rode round the rear of the enemy’s camps, which had been pushed up as far as the Longido, and attacked their communications. They made use of telephones we had captured at Tanga, tapping in on the English telephone-lines; then they waited for large or small hostile detachments or columns of ox-wagons to pass. From their ambush they opened fire on the enemy at thirty yards’ range, captured prisoners and booty, and then disappeared again in the boundless desert. Thus, at that time, we captured rifles, ammunition, and war material of all kinds. One of these patrols had observed near Erok Mountain that the enemy sent his riding-horses to water at a certain time. Ten of our horsemen at once started out, and, after a two days’ ride through the desert, camped close to the enemy. Six men went back with the horses; the four others each took a saddle, and crept at a distance of a few paces past the enemy’s sentries close up to the watering-place, which lay behind the camp. An English soldier was driving the horses, when suddenly two men of our patrol confronted him out of the bush and covering him with their rifles ordered “Hands up!” In his surprise he dropped his clay pipe out of his mouth. At once he was asked: “Where are the missing four horses?” for our conscientious patrol had noticed that there were only fifty-seven, whereas the day before they had counted sixty-one! These four needed light treatment and had been left in camp. The leading horse and a few others were quickly saddled, mounted, and off they went at a gallop round the enemy’s camp towards the German lines. Even in the captured Englishman, who had to take part in this safari on a bare horse, without much comfort, the innate sporting instinct of his nation came out. With great humour he shouted: “I should just like to see my Captain’s face now!” and when the animals had arrived safely in the German camp he remarked: “It was a damned good piece of work.”

This capture, increased by a number of other horses and mules we had picked up, enabled us to form a second mounted company. We now had two mounted companies, composed of Askari and Europeans mixed, an organization which proved successful. They provided us with the means of sweeping the extensive desert north of Kilima Njaro with strong patrols who went out for several days at a time; they penetrated even as far as the Uganda and Magad Railways, destroyed bridges, surprised guards posted on the railways, mined the permanent way and carried out raids of all kinds on the land communications between the railways and the enemy’s camps. In these enterprises our own people did not get off scot free. One patrol had brilliantly surprised two companies of Indians by rifle fire, but had then lost their horses, which had been left behind in hiding, by the fire of the enemy; they had to make their way back across the desert on foot, which took four days, and they had no food. Luckily they found milk and cattle in a Masai kraal, and later on saved themselves from starvation by killing an elephant. But success whetted the spirit of adventure, and the requests to be sent on patrol, mounted or on foot, increased.

The patrols that went out from the Kilima Njaro in a more easterly direction were of a different character. They had to work on foot through the dense bush for days on end. The patrols sent out to destroy the railway were mostly weak: one or two Europeans, two to four Askari, and five to seven carriers. They had to worm their way through the enemy’s pickets and were often betrayed by native scouts. In spite of this they mostly reached their objective and were sometimes away for more than a fortnight. For such a small party a bit of game or a small quantity of booty afforded a considerable reserve of rations. But the fatigue and thirst in the burning sun were so great that several men died of thirst, and even Europeans drank urine. It was a bad business when anyone fell ill or was wounded, with the best will in the world it was often impossible to bring him along. To carry a severely wounded man from the Uganda Railway right across the desert to the German camps, as was occasionally done, is a tremendous performance. Even the blacks understood that, and cases did occur in which a wounded Askari, well knowing that he was lost without hope, and a prey to the numerous lions, did not complain when he had to be left in the bush, but of his own accord gave his comrades his rifle and ammunition, so that they at least might be saved.

The working of these patrols became more and more perfect. Knowledge of the desert improved, and in addition to patrols for destruction and intelligence work, we developed a system of fighting patrols. The latter, consisting of twenty to thirty Askari, or even more, and sometimes equipped with one or two machine-guns, went out to look for the enemy and inflict losses upon him. In the thick bush the combatants came upon each other at such close quarters and so unexpectedly, that our Askari sometimes literally jumped over their prone adversaries and so got behind them again. The influence of these expeditions on the self-reliance and enterprise of both Europeans and natives was so great that it would be difficult to find a force imbued with a better spirit. Some disadvantages were, however, unavoidable. In particular, our small supply of ammunition did not enable us to attain such a degree of marksmanship as to enable us, when we did get the enemy in an unfavourable situation, completely to destroy him. In technical matters we were also busy. Skilled artificers and armourers were constantly engaged with the factory engineers in the manufacture of suitable apparatus for blowing up the railways. Some of these appliances fired according as they were set, either at once, or after a certain number of wheels had passed over them. With the latter arrangement we hoped to destroy the engines, even if the English tried to protect them by pushing one or two trucks filled with sand in front of them. There was abundance of dynamite to be had on the plantations, but the demolition charges captured at Tanga were much more effective.

We occasionally got German newspapers, but we had had no private mails for a long time. On the 12th February, 1915, I was sitting at dinner in the Railway Station at New Moshi, when I got a letter from Germany. It was from my sister, who wrote to say she had already repeatedly informed me of the death of my brother, who had been killed on the Western Front at Libramont on the 22nd August, 1914.