The strength of the Gold Coast Regiment at this time was as follows. There were actually present in the field 19 British officers, including 2 doctors and 2 officers attached to the transport; 8 British non-commissioned officers, of whom 3 belonged to the transport; 850 rank and file, including 18 signallers and 84 Gold Coast Volunteers, the majority of the latter being employed as orderlies; 106 gun and ammunition-carriers; 35 stretcher-bearers, 21 servants, 5 clerks, and 1305 carriers. The potential strength of the Regiment, however, largely exceeded these figures, for 11 British and 2 British non-commissioned officers were now available at Mpara, Mingonyo or Lindi, some of whom had returned from leave, while others were newly posted for service with the corps; and new drafts having arrived from the Gold Coast, 510 rank and file and 106 gun and ammunition-carriers were in readiness to join the Regiment. The total available force, therefore, at this time, numbered 1360 rank and file and 212 gun and ammunition-carriers, and it was once again very fairly well officered. The Regiment also possessed, in addition to its machine-guns, 2 Lewis and 4 Stokes guns.
On the other hand, the quality of the rank and file was not quite up to the standard of the original force which the Gold Coast had put into the field in July, 1916. The men at that time composing the Regiment were seasoned soldiers, all, or nearly all, of whom had recently seen active service. They were “made” soldiers to a man, and had every one of them been subjected to a long process of training and discipline. Gaps in their ranks, after the arrival of the first fully-trained draft which had joined the Regiment in December, 1916, had been filled, in the first instance, by hastily collected levies of greatly inferior quality, and as early as the fight at Nahungu, at the end of September, 1917, it had not been thought expedient to make use of all of them in the firing-line. Subsequent drafts were far superior to these, and had also undergone a more prolonged training, but they, of course, lacked the experience of the men belonging to the original Expeditionary[Expeditionary] Force and of those who formed the first draft of reinforcements. On the whole they acquitted themselves very well; but the Gold Coast Regiment at the end of December, 1917, though numerically stronger than it had been at any period during the whole campaign, was not, perhaps, such a homogeneous and thoroughly efficient force as it had been on its first arrival in East Africa.
On the 3rd December, the Pioneer Company of the Gold Coast Regiment, under Captain Arnold, was sent to Wangoni, on the banks of the Rovuma, to relieve the 1st Battalion of the 3rd King’s African Rifles, and the rest of the Regiment was employed during the next few days in road-making, in cleaning up old camping grounds, and on other fatigues. On the 5th December a draft consisting of 5 British officers, 2 British non-commissioned officers, and 401 men, nearly all of whom were new drafts from the Gold Coast, reached the Regiment from Mpara.
On the 9th December, Colonel Rose, who had been summoned by General Van der Venter to General Headquarters, which were established at that time at the mission station at Ndanda, handed over the command to Major Goodwin, and set off for his destination by motor-car; and it was announced that the Gold Coast Regiment was about to be sent by sea from Lindi to Port Amelia in Portuguese East Africa. It also leaked out that von Lettow-Vorbeck, having reached a point on the left bank of the Rovuma near Ngomano, had waded across the river, his men having at that time barely fifty rounds of small-arms ammunition per head, and being to all intents and purposes at the end of their resources. He had then surprised the Portuguese camp at Ngomano so effectively that he succeeded in capturing inter alia a million rounds of small-arms ammunition, several guns, and a supply of canned European provisions sufficient to meet the requirements of his force for at least three months. Having thus secured to himself a new lease of life, he was now proceeding to make things as unpleasant as possible for the Government of Portuguese East Africa.
On the 9th December the Gold Coast Regiment marched to Bangalla—not the place where the river of that name debouches into the Rovuma, but the spot where that stream is bridged by the road which leads through Massassi from Makochera, on the Rovuma, to Lindi on the sea. From this point the Regiment marched up the main road, reached Massassi Mission Station on the 12th December, picking up at that place a signal section of Royal Engineers, and pushing on to Chigugu the same day. Marching distances which varied from nine to sixteen miles daily, the Regiment, on the 15th December, reached Mahiwa, where General O’Grady’s Column from Lindi had fought one of its big battles. On the morrow at Mtama, nine miles further up the road, it was learned that Major Shaw, with Captains Harris and Watts, and Lieutenants Pike, Smith and Biltcliffe and 250 men of the Gold Coast Regiment, had already sailed from Lindi for Port Amelia. On the 17th December Mtua was reached, and Lieutenant Withers, Colour-Sergeant Thornton, and A Company, with two machine-guns and their teams, were then dispatched to Lindi by motor-car to embark for Port Amelia. The authorities were evidently in a hurry, and von Lettow-Vorbeck was reported already to have two companies of his Askari within ten hours’ march of Port Amelia.
Next day, the Regiment moved on two miles to Mingoya, where it held itself in readiness to embark at Arab House, the landing-stage at Lindi, which lay some six miles further up the road.
Meanwhile Colonel Rose had reported himself to General Van der Venter, the Commander-in-Chief, and to General Sheppard, the Chief of Staff, at Ndanda Mission on the Lindi main road. He was here informed that it had been decided to send a column forthwith to assist the Portuguese at Port Amelia, where much consternation had been caused by the approach of von Lettow-Vorbeck’s forces: that the column would be composed mainly of the Gold Coast Regiment; and that the command would be entrusted to Colonel Rose.
The Gold Coast Regiment had now been serving continuously in East Africa since its arrival at Kilindini on the 26th July, 1916. During the seventeen months that had thereafter elapsed the Regiment had been constantly on the march or in action, save when it had been camped, as for instance at Njimbwe, at Mnasi, at Rumbo or again at Narungombe, in close proximity to the enemy, with whom its patrols and outposts had been in almost daily collision. Thanks to the efforts of the Government of the Gold Coast, and to the highly efficient work performed by Lieutenant-Colonel Potter, D.S.O., who had assumed command of the training depôts in that colony, the Regiment had been constantly and regularly reinforced: but after the remainder of the regular force, originally left behind in the Gold Coast, had been sent to East Africa, the quality of some of the drafts had by no means equalled the high standard at which the Regiment had always hitherto aimed. The Nigerian Brigade, which had reached East Africa some months after the arrival of the Gold Coast Regiment, was about to be sent back to Lagos: but the Gold Coast Regiment, which had enjoyed less than three months’ rest at Kumasi after the conclusion of the campaign in the Kameruns, was still to be kept in the field.