The Gold Coast Regiment in the East African Campaign

by Sir Hugh Charles Clifford

On the 18th September Major-General Dobell, who had been appointed to command the British and French troops which were about to undertake the invasion of the German Kameruns, arrived off Lome; and the bulk of the Gold Coast Regiment, leaving two companies to occupy the conquered territory in Togoland, and a small garrison in the Gold Coast and Ashanti, joined this Expeditionary Force.

In the Kameruns stiff fighting was experienced, and it was not until the 11th April, 1916, that the Gold Coast Regiment returned to its cantonments at Kumasi, after having been continuously upon active service for a period of twenty months.

In Togoland and in the Kameruns alike the Regiment had won for itself a high reputation for courage and endurance; and the fine spirit animating all ranks was strikingly displayed by the enthusiasm with which the news that the force was again required for active service overseas was received, though at that time the men had enjoyed only a very few weeks’ rest in their cantonments at Kumasi. Nor was this due to the courage born of ignorance, for the Regiment had learned from bitter experience the dangers and difficulties of the type of fighting in which it was about once more to take a part. The pursuit through bush and scrub, or through wide expanses of high grass, of a stubborn and crafty enemy is a task which, as many British regiments have learned in places spattered all up and down the tropics, imposes a peculiar strain upon the nerves and upon the endurance of the forces which engage in it. The enemy, who alone knows his plans and his objectives, and whose movements are designed to avoid rather than to seek contact with his pursuers, unless he can attack or sustain attack in circumstances specially favourable to himself, possesses throughout the immense advantage of the initiative. If he elect to retreat, the pursuer must plod after him, whither he knows not, through country which is not of his choice, and with the character of which he has had no opportunity of rendering himself familiar. If the enemy resolves to make a stand, it is almost invariably in a position which he has selected on account of the advantages which it affords to him; and when in due course he has been ejected from it, the pursuit through the Unknown of an elusive and usually invisible enemy begins ab novo, in circumstances which the apparent success has done nothing material to improve. These facts combine to render a campaign in the bush a heart-breaking and nerve-racking experience, even when the enemy is an undisciplined native levy armed with more or less primitive weapons. In the Kameruns, however, and to a much greater degree in East Africa, the enemy was composed of well-trained native soldiers, with a good stiffening of Europeans; he was armed with machine-guns and magazine-rifles; he was supplied with native guides intimately acquainted with every yard of the country; and he was led with extraordinary skill and energy by German officers. It was bush-fighting on a scale never hitherto experienced, with all the advantages which such fighting confers upon the pursued, and the corresponding disadvantages inherent to the pursuit, exaggerated to an unprecedented degree. Yet the men of the Gold Coast Regiment, who in the Kameruns had already had more than a taste of its quality, celebrated the fact that they were once more to engage in such a campaign with war dances and clamorous rejoicings.

By the evening of the 5th July, 1916, the Gold Coast Expeditionary Force had assembled at the port of Sekondi. It consisted of four Double Companies—A, B, G, and I—with a Pioneer Company, and a Battery of two 2·95 guns, and 12 machine guns, and a number of carriers. Its strength was 36 British officers, 15 British non-commissioned officers, 11 native clerks, 980 native rank and file, 177 specially trained carriers attached to the battery and to the machine guns, 1 store-man, 204 other carriers, and 4 officers of the Royal Army Medical Corps—in all 1428 men—under the Commanding Officer of the Gold Coast Regiment, Lieutenant-Colonel R. A. de B. Rose, D.S.O.

The present writer, who at that time was Governor of the Gold Coast Colony and its Dependencies—Ashanti and the Northern Territories—had come round by sea from Accra to wish the Regiment God-speed. On the evening of 5th July, Colonel Rose and all the officers who could be spared from duty, were entertained by me at a banquet, given in the Court House, at which all the leading officials and the most prominent members of the European and African unofficial community of Sekondi were present.

Officers and men, who at that time had been fighting almost continuously since the 4th August, 1914, save for the brief rest which they had recently enjoyed at Kumasi, presented on this occasion a very smart and workmanlike appearance. They were thoroughly well-equipped and thoroughly seasoned troops, with achievements already to their credit of a kind that had filled the Colony to which they belonged with pride.

By midday on the 6th July the embarkation of this force with all its stores and equipment, on board the transport Æneas, was completed. The men were transported in lighters to the ship’s side, and thence were slung inboard in batches of half-a-dozen or more in the sag of a canvas sail—a rough and ready, but very effective, expedient, which delighted the struggling groups of men as the sling bore them aloft and deposited them, screaming with laughter, in inextricable knots upon the deck. At about 2 p.m. the transport got under way, taking a southerly course at right angles to the coast, which here runs east and west. The phenomenon was witnessed by excited groups of natives from the beach at Sekondi, for never within living memory had any ship bearing their countrymen steered a course that was not parallel to the shore; and when the vessel at last disappeared below the skyline something like consternation prevailed. It was as though she, and all aboard her, had dropped suddenly into the depths of some unknown abyss. Superstitious fears were further stimulated by the fact that an eclipse of the sun occurred on that day, and much discussion arose among the men as to whether the omen should be regarded as of favourable or of evil portent.

The voyage round the southern extremity of the African continent, and up the east coast to the neighbourhood of Mombassa, was uneventful. The Æneas called at the Cape and at Durban. At the latter place the whole of the Regiment was allowed ashore, and was taken en masse to see the “movies,” a new experience which astonished and delighted them. They were also paraded, inspected, and addressed by the Mayor—a stimulating ordeal which, however, in the popular estimation took a second place when compared with the miracles beheld at the cinematograph. Cold weather was met with when rounding the Cape, but the men appeared to feel it very little; and the force was in fine fettle when, on the 26th July, the Æneas arrived at Kilindini, the port of Mombassa, after a journey that had occupied exactly three weeks.

Kilindini is a land-locked harbour, and the town, which is a somewhat incongruous modern adjunct to ancient and picturesque Mombassa, consists mainly of sheds, warehouses, and wharfs.

Disembarkation was effected by lighters, which were towed alongside a jetty, and here a stroke of ill-luck greeted the Regiment at the outset of its career in East Africa. For weeks not a drop of rain had fallen at Kilindini, but now, when the disembarkation was in full swing, a sudden tornado blew up from the sea, bringing a downpour by which officers and men were speedily soaked to the skin. There was no alternative, however, but to carry on, and drenched and rather woe-begone, the force was presently landed. Two trains were awaiting the Regiment at a point distant about a couple of hundred yards from the jetty; but the day being a Sunday, the Sabbatarian principles of the local porters, which may have owed their inspiration either to indolence or to piety, forbade the natives of Kilindini to engage in servile work. In pouring rain, therefore, the men set to, and in a creditably short time all the baggage, stores, and equipment had been transferred from the lighters to the railway waggons; and at 4 p.m. the first train started upon its journey up-country. This train consisted of passenger carriages, but that which followed it some six hours later was mainly made up of covered trucks. The men, with the steam rising in clouds from their brown knitted jerseys, were packed in batches of ten into the carriages and trucks; and in this fashion the journey up the main line toward Nairobi was begun.