The fidelity of the German native soldiers at this period, and the fact that so few of them voluntarily surrendered to the British, have been quoted in certain ill-informed quarters as providing a striking testimony to the affection which the Germans are alleged to have inspired in the native population of East Africa. Subscription to any such opinion argues a complete misunderstanding of the military system which the Germans erected in their African colonies. It had for its basic principle the establishment among the native population of an isolated caste, whose members were not only allowed, but were actively encouraged, to assert their superiority over the rest of the inhabitants of the country, who, where a soldier was concerned, ceased to have any rights of person or of property, and could look for no redress when it was an Askari who had maltreated them. It will be remembered that in the German mind, as it was revealed to a disgusted world in August and September, 1914, there existed a strange confusion of thought, which drew no distinction between fear of physical violence and the respect inspired by noble qualities. Thus it was openly declared by the German High Command that the organized bestialities practised in Belgium would cause the whole world “to respect the German soldier.” It was this characteristic confusion of ideas which led the Germans in their African colonies to seek to inspire the native population with a proper spirit of “respect” for their white rulers, by placing every ruffian who wore the Kaiser’s uniform above the law, and by bestowing upon him a free hand in so far as the treatment of the rest of the native population was concerned. An example may be cited, which is drawn from the personal knowledge of the present writer. In September, 1913, a German native soldier in the employment of the Togoland Government shot an old woman—a British subject—for an unwitting breach of quarantine regulations, and having shot her, proceeded to club her to death with the butt-end of his rifle Protests were duly made to the then Governor of Togoland, Duke Adolf Freidrich of Mecklenburg, and assurances were given that suitable notice had been taken of the incident. Yet when the British occupied Lome, the capital of Togoland, less than a year later, the culprit was found not even to have been sentenced to a term of imprisonment.
During the earlier part of the campaign, and as far as possible up to the very end, everything was done to mark the superiority of the Askari over the rest of African mankind. They were provided with carriers who were, to all intents and purposes, their bondsmen and body-servants, their very rifles being carried for the soldiers when on the line of march and at a secure distance from the enemy. For their use a commando of women, under military escort, was marched about the country—a luxury with which the German officers also were for the most part plentifully provided; and, in fact, no stone was left unturned to impress upon the men themselves and upon the rest of the native population that the Askari were a Chosen People in whose presence no dog must presume to bark.
The inevitable effect of this system was that the hand of every civilian native throughout the German colonies in Africa was against the Askari, and when war broke out these native soldiers were unable, even if they had been willing to risk so hazardous an experiment, to melt back into the native population from whom they had been completely differentiated and isolated, and whose undying hatred they had earned in good measure, shaken together, pressed down, and running over. Their only safety lay in holding together, and in maintaining as long as possible the tottering military system to which they owed alike their past privileges and their present imminent danger of death at the hands of an enemy, or of still worse things if they fell into the clutches of their outraged countrymen. Toward the end of 1916 a number of captured Askari were sent back to British East Africa, and were there incorporated in a battalion of the King’s African Rifles. The reputation which they there won for themselves is instructive—excellent on parade, but a most violent and undisciplined crew when off duty, who in their relations with the native population respected the laws neither of God nor of man.
It was due to the German system, it is true, that the Askari remained faithful to their white masters, but the reasons which inspired this fidelity are to the last degree discreditable to Germany and to her conception of the manner in which an European nation should “co-operate in the work of civilization”[[2]] among a primitive people in a distant land.
[2]. It was a British Prime Minister who declared, speaking during the early eighties of the nineteenth century, that if Germany desired colonies, “Great Britain would welcome her co-operation in the work of civilization.”
CHAPTER VI
IN THE KILWA AREA—MNASI AND RUMBO
During the month of March, 1917, the main body of the Regiment lay in camp at Mitole, undergoing company training, and sending out frequent small patrols along the roads in the neighbourhood. The Depôt Company still remained at Mpara, between Kilwa Kivinje and Kilwa Kisiwani, the latter being the port at which the Regiment had landed when it was transported south by sea from Dar-es-Salaam in the preceding November. B Company was dispatched to hold a post at a place variously called Kirongo and Nivanga, which lies almost due west from Mnasi a few miles up a track that leads from the main Kilwa Kivinje-Liwale road, to Njijo, whence the main road from Kilwa Kivinje runs northward to Kitambi. A post consisting of one officer and twenty men of the Pioneer Company was also established at Nigeri-geri, near the junction of the main roads from Kitambi and Liwale, and on March 26th the whole company was sent there. On the 25th March the post at Nivanga, which was protecting a party working on the Chemera road, was attacked by an enemy patrol, which was driven off without difficulty, but two men of A Company were wounded.
On the 3rd April, the Regiment left Mitole, and marching across country along a vile track till the main highway leading from Kilwa Kivinje to Liwale was encountered, reached Mnasi on the following day, and proceeded to establish a camp there. Mnasi lies on the main road above mentioned and is distant about three-and-twenty miles from Kilwa Kivinje. Here two wells, dug by the Germans and cased with brick, were found, but they contained no water. B Company was separated from the rest of the Regiment at this time, being still stationed at Kirongo.
Very early in the morning of April 11th, a bush native came into camp and reported that another native, who had come into Makangaga from the south on the preceding evening, had brought word that the enemy was at Likawage, rather more than thirty miles to the south of Mnasi, and that two companies, over two hundred strong, were marching down the road to that place. Makangaga lies south-east of Mnasi and is distant barely four miles from that place. Accordingly Lieutenant Kinley, with seventy-five rank and file and one machine-gun, was at once dispatched to make an attempt to ambush the advancing enemy.
This little band proceeded up the road to Makangaga, and passing through that village, sought some point of vantage from whence to attack the enemy as he marched down the road. For once men of the Gold Coast Regiment, whose patrols had so often been harassed by an elusive and invisible enemy, were to have a chance of subjecting a German force to a similarly unpalatable experience.