While daylight lasted the way led mostly through open grass country apparently very sparsely inhabited, which was succeeded later by what looked like dense thorn-jungle, and the junction at Voi was reached by the first train at about midnight. From this point the military authorities had constructed a loop-line, which runs in a south-westerly direction through the mountain range, of which on the north-west Kilima-Njaro is the stupendous[stupendous] culmination, until it effects a junction with the German railway from Tanga to Moschi at a point some twenty miles south of the last-named place. At dawn, therefore, the men of the Regiment, shivering for their skins, looked out upon wide expanses of mountain scenery—a vast sweep of hillsides, rounded summits and undulations, covered with short grass, and strewn with gigantic boulders of rock. In the distance Kilima-Njaro was frequently visible, with its crest covered by perpetual snow. The line ran from Voi to the junction with the Tanga-Moschi railway at heights varying from 6000 to 9000 feet; and the men of the Gold Coast Regiment, who are accustomed to regard 60° F. as registering a temperature which is almost unbearably cold, and who were still damp from the drenching they had received at Kilindini, suffered seriously from the low temperature. The fact that nearly half of them were accommodated in trucks, which though roofed had only half walls, rendered the exposure all the more severe. A few halts were allowed in order to enable the men to stretch their legs; but time did not admit of much cooking being done, and for the most part the, to them, unnatural foods of bully beef and biscuit, and draughts of ice-cold water, were all that they had to restore the natural heat of their bodies. It was an extremely trying experience for troops recruited in the Tropics, and many cases of pneumonia subsequently resulted, not a few of which proved fatal.
From the junction the trains bearing the Regiment proceeded eastward down the captured German railway, in the direction of the sea and Tanga, to Ngombezi, which is distant some forty miles from that terminus. Here they arrived on the 29th July, having been joined on the preceding day by Captain H. C. C. de la Poer, as special service officer. Captain de la Poer had long been resident in East Africa, possessed much local knowledge, and spoke Swahili fluently. Ngombezi is situated at a height of some 2000 feet above sea-level; and on detraining, the Regiment went into temporary camp, the officers and men bivouacking under shelters fashioned from blankets and water-proof sheets.
On the 30th July the Regiment was inspected by General Edwards, the Inspector-General of Communications. The service kit of the Force consists of a green knitted forage cap, a khaki blouse, shorts and putties of the same material, with the leather sandals which are known in West Africa as chuplies. The men of the Regiment, all of whom at this period were recruited from the people of the far interior which lies to the northward of Ashanti, are for the most part sturdy, thick-set fellows, with rather blunt but not pronouncedly negroid features, which show traces in some instances of a slight admixture of Arab blood. They are at once strong and active. They possess great pluck and endurance and are very amenable to discipline; and their fidelity to, and confidence in, their officers have become a by-word. For the rest they are as tough and business-like looking a body of men as any judge of good fighting material need desire to see.
General Edwards, at the end of his inspection, expressed himself very much struck by the physique of the men, and by their smart and soldierlike appearance. He emphasized the fact that no other unit which he had inspected had arrived in the country so well and efficiently equipped—a fact which caused great satisfaction on the “Home Front” in the Gold Coast when his opinion was duly repeated to the Colonial Government; and he forthwith wired to the Commander-in-Chief reporting that the Regiment was fit to take the field immediately.
This was the first sprig of laurel won by the Corps after its arrival in East Africa. It was destined in the course of the long campaign upon which it was about to embark to garner others wherefrom to fashion the substantial crown which it eventually brought back in triumph to the Gold Coast.
CHAPTER II
THE ADVANCE ON THE DAR-ES-SALAAM—LAKE
TANGANYIKA RAILWAY
The military situation, at the moment when the Gold Coast Regiment received its orders to take the field, was approximately as follows. Tanga, the coast terminus of the more northerly of the two German railways, had fallen some time before, and the whole line from Moschi to the sea was now in the hands of the British. A column of Indian troops was moving down the coast with Sandani at the mouth of the Wami river, Bagamoyo at the mouth of the Kingani, and Dar-es-Salaam, the terminus of the principal railway, as its successive objectives. The enemy had been driven, not only away from the Tanga-Moschi railway, but to the south of the Pangani-Handeni-Kondoa-Irangi road; and General Smuts had established General Headquarters on the left bank of the Lukigura River, which falls into the Wami on its left bank at a point distant some sixty miles from its mouth.
The Commander-in-Chief had with him here the First Division under Major-General Hoskyns, consisting of the 1st and 2nd East African Brigades under the command respectively of Brigadier-General Sheppard and Brigadier-General Hannyngton. With the exception of a machine-gun detachment of the Loyal North Lancashire Regiment, which was attached to the 2nd East African Infantry Brigade, both these brigades were composed of Indian troops. The Gold Coast Regiment was about to join up with the 25th Royal Fusiliers, and with it to form the Divisional Reserve.
On the right, the Second Division, which was composed of South African Infantry and mounted troops, under Major-General Van der Venter, had its advanced base at Kondoa-Irangi and for its objective Dadoma, on the main railway which runs from Dar-es-Salaam to Kigome, near Ujiji, on Lake Tanganyika.
Between the Second Division and General Smuts’ troops, a force composed of South African mounted men, under the command of Brigadier-General Brits, was operating independently, with Kilossa on the railway as its objective. It was General Smuts’ intention to attack the railway with the First Division at Morogoro, a mission station, which lies not quite fifty miles due east of Kilossa.