On the 13th August the Regiment moved forward on the road to Turiani. The country in which they found themselves was no longer grey or powdered red with dust, but actually green, though it was still, for the most part, covered by waist-high scrub and grass, and the folds of the undulating plain rendered any extended view impossible. The proximity of the enemy, as is usual in warfare of this type, was more certain than his whereabouts, and all military precautions were henceforth taken during the day’s march to Turiani, and during the subsequent advance.
On the 15th August the Regiment moved to Chasi, and on the 16th August, after working all day at the construction of two bridges, the camp was advanced to Kwevi Lombo, near the Makindu River, and established at about 11 p.m.
On the 17th August the Regiment received orders to move forward in the early afternoon to Dakawa, where fighting had been in progress all day. The men, resting in camp after their hard day and late night, had listened all the morning, like a pack of terriers quivering with excitement, to the familiar sounds of machine-gun and rifle-fire; and after a march of four and a half hours they reached Dakawa at 7 p.m. Here General Smuts had established his headquarters, and Colonel Rose personally reported to him the arrival of the Regiment. General Smuts ordered the Regiment to sit down and rest until the rising of the moon, and then to proceed to a ford two and a half miles west of the main road. At dawn, if the enemy was still in position, they were to cross the river and join General Enslin’s Brigade, which belonged to the force operating independently under Major-General Brits.
These orders were duly carried out, the Regiment being guided to the ford by the celebrated scout, Lieutenant Pretorius, a way for the infantry having been beaten down through the tough high grass by a body of South African mounted men. This movement was carried out by the Regiment with the least avoidable noise. The enemy, however, becoming aware that the ford was occupied, drew off during the night; and next morning, therefore, the Regiment returned to its own division, and camped near a broken bridge over the Mkundi River, a left affluent of the Wami. Here it remained until the 23rd August, when it moved forward eight and a half miles to Kimamba, and thence, on the 24th August, to a camp on the banks of the Ngere-Ngere, a small stream which falls into the Ruwu on its left bank a few miles above Mafisa.
This latter day’s march calls for a word of description. The Regiment, which was now acting as part of the reserve to the 2nd East African Brigade, marched last of the fighting troops, with the heavy transport and the actual rear-guard still further behind it. The country traversed was a flat plain broken by frequent undulations, and grown upon by shortish grass, brittle and wilted by the sun. Mean-looking trees were spattered all over the plain, but were usually wide enough apart to permit of the easy passage of armoured motor-cars. Of these a number, under the charge of naval officers, accompanied the marching men, scudding up and down the column and searching the country in the immediate neighbourhood of the line of march, much as a dog hunts on all sides of a path along which its owner is walking. Occasionally, a deep donga would be met with, which could not be negotiated by a motor-car; and then the marching men would turn to with their picks and shovels, fill in a section of the dried-up watercourse, and so fashion a temporary road across it which enabled the cars to pass. This was accomplished over and over again with great ease and rapidity; and for the rest, the country presented no serious obstacle to the use of these armoured vehicles.
August, in East Africa, is of course the height of the dry season, and in all tropical regions of this continent the dry season means a fierce heat, beating down during all the hours of daylight upon a parched and thirsty earth, and refracted from the wilted vegetation with an almost equal intensity. It means that every stream has run dry, and that even many of the larger rivers have shrunken into mere runnels. It means that sun-dried grass and scrub and the very leaves upon the trees have become brittle and inflammable as tinder; and that the bush fires, for the most part self-generated,—such as those which of old so greatly affrighted Hanno and his Carthaginian mariners on the West Coast of Africa—are ubiquitous,—are columns of smoke by day and pillars of fire by night. Any sudden change of wind at this season of the year may cause the traveller to be unexpectedly confronted by a wall of flame, raging almost colourless in the fierce sunlight, advancing on a wide front with innumerable explosions like the rattle of musketry, and with a rapidity which is apt to prove highly embarrassing.
During this day’s march the natural heat was intensified by these constant conflagrations, above which the agitated air danced in a visible haze, and from which there came a breath like that from a furnace, bearing in all directions innumerable charred and blackened fragments of vegetation. Through this heated atmosphere the marching troops plodded doggedly onward, parched with thirst, and playing an eternal game of hide and seek with the attacking bush-fires. Many narrow escapes occurred, and the first-line transport of the Gold Coast Regiment was once fairly caught, the casualties including 6 oxen, an army transport cart, 2 wagons, 10,800 rounds of small arm ammunition, 20 picks, 42 shovels, one rifle, some private kit, and a quantity of rations, all of which were burned to a cinder. Eighteen other oxen were so badly burned that they had to be slaughtered, their meat being issued as rations to the Divisional Reserve.
Another element besides fire, however, seemed to conspire this day against the advancing force; for the exact position of the Ngere-Ngere could not be located, and when the Regiment arrived at the place where it was to bivouac for the night, there was no water to be found in its vicinity. Water had, however, been discovered some miles further on, and carts were dispatched to fetch it. Darkness had already fallen, and the outlook was sufficiently depressing; but an officer of the Gold Coast Regiment, who happened to push his way into a patch of thick bush adjoining the camping-place, quite accidentally discovered the river by the simple process of pitching headlong into it. The Ngere-Ngere is a very winding stream, and though its neighbourhood was indicated by a belt of thick bush, the greenness of which could only be due to the proximity of water, the leading troops had missed this point on the road, to which the river happened to approach to within a distance of a few yards, and owing to an abrupt bend, which the bed of the stream takes at this place, the nearest point at which its banks were again struck was about a mile distant.
At once the glad tidings were given, and the men speedily obtained all the water they required. The Gold Coast Regiment had bivouacked for the night near the scene of its discovery; but though a start had been made that morning at 5.30 a.m., it was a late hour before the last troops struggled into camp.
Shortly after the Dar-es-Salaam railway had been crossed at Massambassi by the main force, B Company was placed at the disposal of Colonel O’Grady—an officer of the Indian Army, who had won for himself in the Himalayas a great reputation as an Alpine climber—and proceeded with him and a remnant of the East African Mounted Rifles into a clump of fertile, well-watered and hilly country, which was comparatively thickly populated, and where a number of German foraging-parties were believed to be at work. The tracks leading through these hills were wide enough for two to march abreast, but after the manner of native paths all the tropics over, they took no account of gradients, but led straight up each precipitous ascent till the summit was reached, and thence plunged down the opposite slope to encounter a fresh rise when the valley level was reached. It is inevitable that all paths in hilly country, which are made by folk who habitually go bare-footed, should deal with ascents and declivities in this switchback fashion; for roads scarped out of the hill’s face, unless they are constructed on scientific engineering principles, are speedily worn away by the annual torrential rains. This renders them agonising to men who do not use boots, for though the act of walking on the side of the foot is uncomfortable enough even for men who are well shod, it is excruciating to those who go bare-footed; and in their estimation any strain on the lungs and on the back-sinews, which the constant climbing and descent of hills entail, is preferable to this much more painful means of progression.