Almost all the Europeans in our camp were attacked by it, and it was very sad that in addition to Captain Spangenberg, nine other Europeans, in all, therefore, ten per cent. of our strength, succumbed. Numbers of our Askari interned at Tabora also died.
My comings and goings often took me to the Administration Staff (corresponding more or less to our Commandant on the Lines of Communication). After much questioning I had found it in my old house which I had occupied before the war. Among intelligent Englishmen I found the view prevailing that Germany must have colonies on economic grounds, as well as on account of her over-populousness. England was considered to have too many colonies. For the time being, at any rate, she had not sufficient suitable personnel to manage them.
If the English, when telling us of the armistice, insisted on our coming to Dar-es-Salaam at once, in order that we should be transported punctually—that is, by the 12th December—they showed no haste on their own part to carry out the terms of that armistice. Our embarkation was continually postponed, and, finally, it did not take place until the 17th January, 1919, five years to the day after I had landed at Dar-es-Salaam.
To describe my return home in detail would furnish material for a whole book and could hardly be excelled for tragi-comic events. In addition to 114 German soldiers, we had 107 women and 87 children on board, and an escort of 200 British soldiers.
Voyaging by Cape Town, we reached Rotterdam at the end of February. The large crowd of Germans who turned up to meet us at the quay showed me, to my surprise, that our East African war had been watched very closely in the homeland. Many Dutch also gave us proofs of goodwill.
In cold truth our small band, which at the most comprised some 300 Europeans and about 11,000 Askari, had occupied a very superior enemy force for the whole war. According to what English officers told me, 137 Generals had been in the field, and in all about 300,000 men had been employed against us. The enemy’s losses in dead would not be put too high at 60,000, for an English Press notice stated that about 20,000 Europeans and Indians alone had died or been killed, and to that must be added the large number of black soldiers who fell. The enemy had left 140,000 horses and mules behind in the battle area. Yet in spite of the enormously superior numbers at the disposal of the enemy, our small force, the rifle strength of which was only about 1,400 at the time of the armistice, had remained in the field always ready for action and possessed of the highest determination.
I believe it was the transparency of our aims, the love of our Fatherland, the strong sense of duty and the spirit of self-sacrifice which animated each of our few Europeans and communicated themselves, consciously or unconsciously, to our brave black soldiers that gave our operations that impetus which they possessed to the end. In addition there was a soldierly pride, a feeling of firm mutual co-operation and a spirit of enterprise without which military success is impossible in the long run. We East Africans know only too well that our achievements cannot be compared with the military deeds and devotion of those in the homeland. No people in history has ever done more.
If we East Africans received so kindly a reception in the homeland it was because everyone seemed to think that we had preserved some part of Germany’s soldierly traditions, had come back home unsullied, and that the Teutonic sense of loyalty peculiar to us Germans had kept its head high even under the conditions of war in the tropics.
It is true that that feeling has suffered eclipse in many of our people under the impression of the present tribulations of our Fatherland. But it is part of the flesh and blood of us all, and it is just that enthusiastic welcome which hundreds of thousands of our countrymen gave us that strengthens our conviction that, in spite of the momentary distractions and perplexities, the healthy spirit of our German people will prevail again and once more tread the upward path.