The Gold Coast Regiment in the East African Campaign

by Sir Hugh Charles Clifford

Meanwhile the lines of communication were lengthening behind the columns, and now measured approximately one hundred and forty miles from Mtuge, which in its turn is twenty-eight miles by road from Port Amelia. Also the heavy and increasing traffic over the road had not tended to improve it; and though road corps, recruited from South Africa and East Africa, toiled ceaselessly at its repair, the difficulties of transport and supply were becoming daily more and more acute. At this time, the columns at the front had been on very short commons for a considerable period, and the company officers of the Gold Coast Regiment reported that their men were not getting enough food to keep them fit to take part in active operations of so trying and arduous a character as those at present in progress.

On the 9th May the Gold Coast Regiment took over the Milinch Hills from the 4th Battalion of the 4th King’s African Rifles; and on this day local natives reported to Colonel Rose that von Lettow-Vorbeck, with a large enemy force, was moving in a north-easterly direction toward Lusinje. This place lies about thirty-seven miles almost due north of Nanungu, on the main road from which the columns had branched off in a south-westerly direction at Makuku, as already noted. Accordingly the 4th Battalion of the 4th King’s African Rifles was dispatched across country to Msalu Boma, which is situated on that road at a point, as the crow flies, about twenty-three miles north-west of Koronje, and twenty-seven miles east by south of Lusinje. The orders issued to this battalion of the King’s African Rifles were that they should deal with any enemy parties weak enough to enable action to be taken with effect, but to avoid any serious engagement with his numerically superior forces.

It was believed that a fairly strong party of the enemy were occupying a hill on the right side of the road at a place called Jirimita, about five or six miles down the road from the pass through the Milinch Hills, and at dawn on this day two patrols were sent out, one under the command of Captain Leslie-Smith and the other under Lieutenant Bisshopp. Each patrol consisted of seventy-five rifles, drawn respectively from A and I Companies; and Captain Leslie-Smith, who went out on the right of the road, had orders to make a flanking movement and to come back to the highway at a point about four miles beyond Jirimita. Lieutenant Bisshopp, on the left, was instructed to make a wider and longer sweep, and to strike the road about three miles further on. It was hoped thus to outflank the enemy and to cut off his retreat. It was a difficult task in the broken country through which these two patrols had to work, at once to maintain a correct sense of direction, and accurately to estimate the distance traversed. However, both these small parties started off, expecting to be a night or two in the bush, and each in the end succeeded in exactly carrying out the orders issued to it.

Meanwhile, during the morning of the same day Lieutenant Wilson, with a patrol of twenty rifles drawn from the Pioneer Company, got touch with an enemy outpost of about the same strength at a point some two miles west of the Milinch Hills; and at 4.45 p.m. a second officer’s patrol, under Lieutenant Beech, was sent out down the road in the same direction for a distance of two and a half miles without coming into contact with the enemy, whose outpost had retired since the morning.

At 6 a.m. on the 10th May, Lieutenant Withers, with fifty rifles and one Lewis gun of A Company, was sent down the road with orders to brush aside any small party of the enemy that he might encounter, and thereafter to try and ascertain the real strength of the force which was opposing the advance of the column.

Three and a half miles from the Milinch Hill Lieutenant Withers met a small party of the enemy, which he drove back; and about five miles out he found an enemy camp, strongly entrenched, which had evidently been designed to accommodate some four companies, but which had been recently burned. As far as it was possible to judge, this camp had been destroyed and abandoned two days earlier; and though the tracks leading from it were at once confused and confusing, conveying at first the impression that the enemy had retired in a northerly direction, it was subsequently ascertained that he had retreated down the main road. Just beyond the burned camp this road was found to bifurcate, one fork leading west-north-west and the other west-south-west. It was the latter route which the enemy had taken.

The main patrol camped at a point where the road bifurcated, and sent out small parties to reconnoitre along each of the forks, but neither of them came into touch with the enemy.

On the 11th May the patrols under Captain Leslie-Smith and Lieutenant Bisshopp, which had been sent out on the 9th May, rejoined the Regiment. As has already been noted, they had achieved the difficult feat of striking the road at the points aimed at, but for the rest, though Lieutenant Bisshopp’s patrol had surprised and killed one enemy Askari, who had probably been left behind to watch the movements of the British, nothing more had been seen of the enemy, who must have passed down the road while these patrols were still making their way through the bush.

On the 12th May one of the battalions of the 2nd King’s African Rifles from “Kartucol” took over from the Gold Coast Regiment, which returned to the main camp occupied by “Rosecol.” On the following day the latter marched across country, in the wake of the 4th Battalion of the 4th King’s African Rifles, which had preceded them on the 9th May, in the direction of Msalu Boma. The way led along a native footpath which only admitted of men marching in single file, but in order to beat out a track for the transport through the high grass and standing crops of maize and millet, the column advanced four abreast—a hard task for troops who had been insufficiently fed for many days, and who were now required to cover between daybreak and dusk a distance of eighteen miles. The column camped in the bush, and on the following day it joined up with the 4th Battalion of the 4th King’s African Rifles at the boma at Msalu. This place, too, had once been a stronghold of a Portuguese revenue-farmer, and had been fortified against attack by the natives, but it had now been completely destroyed by fire.

At Msalu news was received that von Lettow-Vorbeck and the whole of his main force were at Nanungu, and that so far they had given no signs of any intention to move to the north toward the Rovuma River, or south to the Lurio, which divides the territory of the Nyassa Company from the Province of Mozambique. It was also learned that the King’s African Rifles Mounted Infantry were at Lusinje, some six-and-twenty miles along the main road west by north of Msalu, and about thirty-two miles almost due north of Nanungu.