George Hilliard Shields was at the outbreak of war a member of the Education Department of the Gold Coast, and held the post of headmaster of the Government Boys’ School at Accra. He had earlier filled a scholastic post in Raffles’ Institute at Singapore: and in the Gold Coast he distinguished himself by passing the very difficult interpreter’s examination in the Ga language. Like so many Gold Coast civilians, Mr. Shields early volunteered for active service, but it was not found possible to release him from civil employment until the Regiment was ordered to East Africa in the middle of 1916. He will long be remembered in Accra for the excellent and manly influence which he exerted over the boys who were under his tutelage.
At 1.30 p.m. a standing patrol was sent forward to the Kibega River on the Unguara road, where it entrenched itself. Shortly afterwards a small enemy patrol appeared on the road to the south of this post and was fired upon. The men composing it bolted into the bush, their porters dropping their loads, which turned out to be part of the small-arms ammunition lost by Lieutenant Shields earlier in the day. Later in the afternoon the enemy returned and, supported by three maxims, attacked the post. The patrol of the Regiment held on for a while, but finding itself outnumbered, retired through the bush to the camp at Njimbwe, losing one man.
On the 4th February, the Regiment left the camp at Kiyombo and moved forward to Njimbwe, which lies about five miles to the north, where the 40th Pathans presently joined them; and from here, as usual, small patrols were daily sent out along the roads in the neighbourhood.
On the 5th February the Pioneer Company and the Battery left Njimbwe at 5.30 a.m., in the midst of a terrific[terrific] thunderstorm, for the purpose of supporting the 2nd Battalion of the 2nd Regiment of the King’s African Rifles, who were about to deliver an attack upon two German camps, both of which overlooked the Ngarambi-Utete road. They came in contact with an enemy post, which was quickly dislodged, and they subsequently joined up with the King’s African Rifles, only to learn that the elusive enemy had abandoned his camps.
The detachment camped for the night with the King’s African Rifles at the junction of the road to Utete with another track; and as a token that the dry season was now fairly over, heavy rain fell with melancholy persistency during all the hours of darkness. The men, of course, had no shelter save such as they had been able to improvise for themselves on the preceding evening; and there are, perhaps, few more dreary or depressing experiences than that of lying out all night under the relentless beat of a steady tropical downpour. The cold felt has little in common with the brisk, keen cold of a frosty day or that met with at a high altitude; but it has certain raw and penetrating properties, and the discomfort becomes hourly more acute, while at every moment the puddles suck and squelch beneath you, and fresh streams of colder water flow in from unexpected directions to chill you to the bone.
At 8 a.m. on the following morning—February 6th—the detachment left its comfortless bivouac, and marched and waded back to Njimbwe over a shockingly bad track, which the heavy rain of the night before had reduced to a quagmire and in places had flooded to a depth of two feet. The detachment had hardly got into camp when some carriers, who had been out searching for fuel, ran in with the news that the enemy was approaching. An attack quickly followed, the enemy taking up a line from south-east to west, and approaching in places to within 200 yards of the camp. The surprise was complete, and some of the men of the 40th Pathans, who were outside the perimeter when the attack began, were unfortunately injured by their own machine-gun fire. The enemy, however, was not in any great strength, and he had evidently not realized that he was attacking so large a force. When he discovered the situation he drew off somewhat hastily, and was hotly pursued for over a mile. Only a few of the attacking force were seen, but among them an European was observed wearing a King’s African Rifles hat and flash, and two Askari, one with a turban and one with the green knitted cap which is part of the service kit of the men of the Gold Coast Regiment. The casualties sustained by the latter were 1 man killed, 3 wounded, 1 gun-carrier and 5 transport-carriers wounded, and 1 Gold Coast Volunteer missing, of whom nothing was ever subsequently heard. The 40th Pathans lost 6 men killed and 18 wounded, while the known enemy losses were 10 men wounded, including 1 European. Immediately after this incident, Captain Harman took out a patrol to repair the telephone-line, which had been cut, while for some time previously it had been frequently tapped by the enemy.
The next few days were occupied in patrolling the roads in the neighbourhood of the camp; and on the 9th February the bodies of Lieutenant Shields, Colour-Sergeant Nelson, and of eight soldiers, who had been killed on the Utete road on the 3rd February, were discovered. A burial party was sent out, and the bodies of Lieutenant Shields and Colour-Sergeant Nelson were brought back to the camp, where the burial service was read by the Rev. Captain Nicholl, and Holy Communion was celebrated.
For some weeks past the men of the Regiment had been suffering very acutely from lack of sufficient food. Not only was the supply inadequate, but much of the stuff sent up had to be condemned as quite unfit for human consumption. Many of the men were terribly emaciated, and some eighty of them were subsequently sent to hospital suffering from starvation. Had the Regiment not had the good fortune to find a few food plots planted with cassava, things would have been even worse than they were. The officers would have fared no better had not some of them chanced to possess a slender stock of European provisions, which they shared in common; but the officers of a neighbouring mess had to live for weeks upon nothing but mealie porridge, which they consumed at frequent intervals throughout the day, as they found it impossible to eat at a sitting enough of this filling but unsatisfying stuff to allay their hunger for more than a few hours.
The discipline of the men of the Gold Coast Regiment under this prolonged and trying ordeal was beyond all praise. They had followed their white officers across the sea to this unknown land, where they had endured cold such as they had never dreamed of, where they had been grilled by the sun and parched by unappeasable thirst. They had plodded manfully up hill and down dale, across barren, arid flats, and had waded through a water-logged country. Whenever and wherever they had met the enemy they had fought him like the fine soldiers they are, until the saying, “The green caps never go back,” had passed into a proverb in the German camp. Now in the heart of a dismal swamp, they were slowly but surely starving. Yet never once did they murmur or blame their officers.
During the next fortnight the Regiment remained in the camp at Njimbwe, sending out patrols, some of which had difficulty in preventing themselves from being cut off by the suddenly deepening swamps, when a more than usually heavy downpour flooded the low-lying land; squabbling with enemy forage-parties for possession of the rare patches of cassava; taking an occasional prisoner; and sustaining a few attacks upon its outposts. During one of the latter incidents, on Valentine’s Day, Machine-gun Corporal Tinbela Busanga behaved with great gallantry, working his gun, after he had been badly wounded in the arm, until he was too faint with loss of blood to carry on. On this day, though the enemy was driven off without difficulty, two men of B Company were wounded. On another occasion, a patrol of six men, under Corporal Amandu Fulani 4, was ambushed and killed to a man, though not until they had made a hard fight of it. Amandu Fulani, who was a very smart and gallant young soldier, had been orderly to the Governor at Accra, but when D Company was ordered to East Africa, he insisted upon accompanying “his brothers.” When his body was found, it had been stripped of his uniform, but a gunshot wound in the abdomen had been bound up with his kamar-band. Though the enemy had removed his casualties, there were abundant signs that the little patrol had sold their lives dearly.