As soon as the troops in the camp on Nambunjo Hill had been watered and fed, three sections of B Company, under Captain Methven, were sent to reinforce Captain Wray, who was being heavily attacked. His men had been without water for more than twenty-four hours and were terribly exhausted, but they none the less put up a stout fight, in the course of which Captain Wray was severely wounded, and Corporal Issaka Kipalsi showed great pluck and coolness while in command of a party of bombers. On the arrival of Captain Methven’s reinforcements the enemy withdrew.
Meanwhile, the advance of No. 1 Column, with which was Major Shaw and his detachment, had met with considerable resistance, and the position was reported to be “very serious all round.” A telegram was also received from the column stating that though rations were being sent out, it was not possible to dispatch any more water to the camp at Liwinda Ravine. Later in the day it was learned that No. 1 Column had succeeded in advancing as far along the road as Mpingo, but that there was no chance of the water-holes at Mnitshi being captured that day; and Captain Methven also found it impossible to seize the water-holes near Mbombomya before dark. No. 1 Column could supply itself with water from the captured holes at Mihambia, but the position of the Gold Coast Regiment was rapidly becoming desperate. Officers and men alike were agonized by thirst, which was intensified by the heat in this dried-up, arid waste of dust-smothered vegetation, and those of them who had been fighting and patrolling all day were reduced to a state of pitiable exhaustion. If a supply of water could not be obtained early on the morrow a considerable portion of the force would almost inevitably perish of drought in that weary wilderness.
At 6 a.m. on the 21st September, the Pioneer Company with a supply of rations and of water left Mpingo and reached the camp at Nambunjo Hill at 11 a.m., the Battery having simultaneously been sent back to join up with No. 1 Column. Of the 15 pakhals which the Pioneers had brought with them six were one-third full only and eight were only half full. The ration did not amount to half the supply of one hundred and sixty gallons which had been promised, and though it relieved the immediate distress in some slight extent, the whole force was still in a pitiable state of thirst.
As soon as the men had been watered, the Gold Coast Regiment quitted its camp, and moved out to join Captain Methven’s force on some high ground north of Mbombomya village; and Captain Methven with B Company then moved south, cleared the village, and reached the water-holes which lay one and a half miles to the west of it, occupying both places. The water-holes at the village itself were all dry, and those beyond were found, to the intense disappointment of the men, only to contain sufficient water to supply the needs of one company. Fresh holes were dug, but the evening of the 21st September found the Regiment almost as severely racked by thirst as ever, and during the day numbers of the men had completely collapsed. During the night the Mbombomya water-holes only yielded a pitiful supply of ten gallons.
The Regiment on the 22nd September had no alternative but to remain inactive at Mbombomya awaiting water which No. 1 Column reported it had forwarded to it; but B Company sent out patrols towards Kihindo Juu and Ndessa, and to the main road between Mnitshi and Marenjende, some ten miles south of Mihambia. Information was also sent to Colonel Rose that the Nigerian Brigade had been at a point four and a half miles west-south-west of Mawerenye—a place some seven miles down the road from Marenjende—at 9.30 that morning; and that No. 2 Column was at Kitandi to the east of them, based upon Ndessa Juu for its water supply, The Gold Coast Regiment was ordered to move upon Ndessa Chini as soon as possible after it had received the supply of water which had been dispatched to it, and to reach that place by travelling viâ Marenjende on the main road.
During the afternoon two officers’ patrols from No. 2 Column came into the camp of the Gold Coast Regiment at Mbombomya[Mbombomya].
Before nightfall some 800 to 1000 gallons of water reached the Gold Coast Regiment from Mihambia, and the long agony which the men had so patiently endured was at last sensibly relieved. There is no physical privation which human beings in the tropics can experience that is in any way comparable in the intensity of suffering which it occasions to lack of water. Such a shortage can only occur in the hot weather, at a season when the atmosphere is so abnormally dry that a man may feel his very eyebrows lift and stiffen as the last, least drop of moisture is sucked from out of them. All about lies a parched and arid wilderness, here and there blackened by bush-fires, where the leafless trees provide no shade, an environment the very dustiness of which alone occasions an abnormal sensation of thirst; and the air is charged with ashes and with minute particles of dust, that seem to penetrate and dry up every pore of the skin. Perspiration evaporates almost before it has time to form upon your rough and cracking skin; and your whole body is subjected to a desiccative process that sets nature clamouring for constant artificial irrigation. If water be available men swill it in unimaginable quantities, and repeat the operation at frequent intervals; but if there be no water, the thought of it—the dream and vision of it—presently absorb the whole of your mental faculties. You may nail your attention to other things, may be deeply occupied by work that ordinarily would engross your whole mind, but throughout, at the back of it all, you are conscious of an insistent need that dwarfs all other things, and for the moment is the one agonizing reality. For you now thirst no longer only with parched mouth, swollen tongue, cracking lips and throat that is dry as a lime-kiln, for each individual pore is gaping and aching with drought which every passing minute renders more acute and unendurable. Such trifles as the discomfort of accumulating dirt which cannot be washed away hardly affect you; the craving to drink has blotted out all other physical sensations. You realize that you are treading a road along which, perilously close ahead, madness lies in ambush.
It says much for the discipline of the men, and for the trust which they repose in their officers that, during those appalling days between the morning of the 19th and the afternoon of the 22nd September, none deserted, straying away from the force on an insane quest for water.
On the 23rd September the Regiment left Mbombomya, and on its arrival at Ndessa Juu, which place was reached without incident, it learned that the Nigerian Brigade, which was working its way southward cutting a path through the bush by means of which its mechanical transport could follow it, had on the preceding day been very heavily engaged with the enemy at a place called Bweho Chini, which lies ten miles away from Riale and to the west of the main road. The Nigerians, it was subsequently ascertained, had here come into collision with the main German forces, under von Lettow-Vorbeck, which had attacked their camp in great strength at about 4.30 p.m., and had continued the assault upon it at intervals until midnight. The enemy suffered very heavy losses and drew off just as the Nigerians’ supply of ammunition threatened to give out. His defeat did much to shatter his morale, and though he subsequently put up some good fights before he crossed the Rovuma River into Portuguese territory, the severe handling which he received at Bweho Chini may be said to have definitely started him “on the run.”
At Ndessa Juu large water-holes were found, and the men of the Regiment were able properly to satisfy their thirst at last. Here also some Indian troops belonging to “Hanforce” were met, and touch was resumed with the mechanical transport, which meant that the men and the carriers, who had been on very short commons ever since the 19th September, once more received full rations.