The advance of our main body on Ili was contested by considerable hostile patrols which were approaching the Alto-Moloque-Ili road from the north. One of these patrols was immediately pursued energetically and attacked in its camp, but I gained the impression that larger enemy forces were advancing on us from the north of Ili and Alto-Moloque. I had no intention of delaying, but wished rather to join up as soon as possible with Müller’s detachment, which was on its way to Lugella. Accordingly I marched south, skirting Ili and occupied the Portuguese post of Nampepo. In this district, at about a day’s march from each other, the Portuguese companies had established a number of clean, well-arranged stations around which lay the fields, which they cultivated. A whole series of these posts and their field-depots fell into our hands during the march. Nampepo was one of them, only larger than usual, and the centre of an extraordinarily fertile district. A special feature of the Nampepo camp was our chase after domestic pigs. Large numbers of these were running loose in the bush, so that we had excellent sausages to eat, as well as roast pork and brawn. A German planter named Hauter, from the district of Morogoro, who had delivered large supplies of sausages to Morogoro during the war, had acquired expert skill in preparing them, and this now came in very useful. He now had the insides of pigs to practise on instead of the insides of cows, and our enjoyment of this unwonted luxury was so great that we did not allow ourselves to be disturbed even by the shots that fell into our camp.
For as a matter of fact a considerable enemy column from the north was approaching the station of Nampepo, which was held by Captain Spangenberg with our outposts. From the commanding ground the approach of a large enemy column could be noted quite easily. As a particularly favourable opportunity for attacking it presented itself we did not disturb the enemy in his approach. However, contrary to expectation, he did not attack us. Pillars of smoke arising from the bush about 1,500 yards away showed us that he had encamped there. Our patrols which went round the enemy crawled up to his camp at night and fired into it. Koehl’s detachment had come up meanwhile and I marched off with the main body to follow Müller’s detachment in the direction of Lugella. Captain Spangenberg remained with our rearguard in touch with the enemy, and then followed us at a distance of a day’s march.
Meanwhile Captain Müller’s detachment had succeeded in crossing the Likungo river, near the confluence of the Lugella, at a ford. It had been able to give an apparently severe drubbing to a Portuguese battalion which had rushed up from the south to protect it. Several machine guns were captured. The great depot of the Lugella Company fell into our hands. It was possible to distribute a large amount of food and clothing. The buildings themselves, which had been adapted for defence, and about 300,000 kilograms of food were burnt.
As no other remunerative objective presented itself Captain Müller considered he had fulfilled his mission for the time being, retired to the southern bank of the Likungo and there awaited my arrival.
I was afraid that our wonderful captures of the last few weeks would tempt some of our Europeans to help themselves to things improperly, and I took advantage of the occasion to point out the evils of such behaviour. It must not be forgotten that war booty belongs to the State, and that the individual soldier has to notify to his superiors if he happens to want any particular object he has captured. An estimate is then made of the value of the object and he has to pay the amount. It was important for me to maintain the moral of our troops unconditionally if I was to be able to appeal to their sense of honour and make calls on their endurance.
A certain amount of ammunition was captured here and there, and, further, a small Portuguese gun had fallen into our hands, but the great haul of cartridges for which we had hoped and striven had not materialized. I thought it extremely doubtful whether there ever had been such large stocks at Alto-Moloque and Ili, and suspected that the whole thing was a case of exaggeration of the approved native type. That did not imply evil intentions on the part of those concerned. On the contrary, the natives were well-disposed towards us. For example, they brought back of their own accord one of our captured Portuguese officers who had escaped. They also brought us some German black boys who had been enjoying themselves looting, and had been caught and well beaten by the natives, excusing themselves on the ground that they had taken them for Portuguese!
It is an extremely difficult matter even for a European to estimate, for example, the numerical strength of a detachment on the march. The native finds it much more difficult, especially when it comes to larger numbers. The words he so frequently uses, mingi (much) or kama majani (as thick as grass) can mean 50 just as well as 5,000.