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The First World War
The campaign in German South West Africa
The Great War of 1914–1918, as it was once known, was essentially a European conflict whose origins remain a subject for debate. It caused unprecedented destruction and loss of life for the main protagonists, Britain, Germany and France. But in an age when imperial relations and possessions were very much a reality, many other countries became involved – hence the later description of the conflict as a world war.
At the outbreak of war, in August 1914, Britain requested the Union government under Prime Minister General Louis Botha to render “urgent imperial service” and seize control of German South West Africa, thereby denying Germany access to the colony’s harbours. This was achieved in a remarkable campaign in hostile terrain by Botha, a most skilful soldier/politician, who at the same time also had to put down a rebellion by bitter men who had been his Boer comrades-in-arms just a dozen years before, during the 1899–1902 war against the British Empire.
Botha’s campaign was the first fought by the newly created Union Defence Force (UDF). It also saw the genesis of the South African Air Force (SAAF) – the second oldest air force in the world – the first use of armoured vehicles in Africa, and one of the last cavalry operations (using horses and camels). The effect of the campaign on South African politics was also profound, preserving the emotional fault line within Afrikaner politics that eventually led to the accession to power of the anti-British “purified” National Party in 1948.
The success of Botha’s military campaign led to South Africa being mandated by the League of Nations after the war to administer this territory of some 815 000sq km (larger than the United Kingdom, Italy and Germany combined) once it had been taken from Germany in 1919. South Africa did so for the next 70 years, with major strategic and military implications that dominated the thinking of the Nationalist government in Pretoria until the fall of apartheid.
Gerald L’Ange, in his excellent book, Urgent Imperial Service, noted that the force that embarked on the South West Africa campaign was an extraordinary army:
It was not only that every man was a volunteer that made it remarkable, nor that it was led by the Prime Minister himself – sometimes riding a large white horse at the battlefront – or even that it was setting out on the only campaign planned, conducted and completed by the armed forces of any dominion of the British Empire entirely on its own in the First World War. What was remarkable about this army was the nature of the men in it.
Nearly half of the army consisted of Dutch-speaking commandos, the same commandos that only 12 years earlier had defied the might of Victorian Britain in the Anglo-Boer War.
These were the men who, with little more than their horses and rifles, had kept the most powerful army in the world at bay for four years … the fighting farmers whose successful tactics had changed the nature of warfare; the men who had seen the British generals, unable to defeat them in the field, resort in frustration to burning their farms and locking up their women and children in concentration camps, where many died long before their time.
Some of the Afrikaners, as they came to be called, had volunteered out of personal loyalty to Botha, perhaps also because they agreed with him that they were honour-bound, following the Treaty of Vereeniging that ended the Anglo-Boer War, to help Britain in war. Some seemed to be in it simply for the love of a fight. General Coen Britz, when asked by Botha to join the war, responded: “My men are ready. Who do we fight, the English or the Germans?”
The campaign established a theme in South African military practice and culture: the combination of the Boer commandos’ mobility, social cohesion and initiative with the more orthodox and disciplined approach of the infantry regiments, which were made up almost entirely of English-speaking South Africans.
London gave Botha’s force two main objectives in South West Africa: to capture the wireless mast at Windhoek, which enabled communication with Berlin, as well as two other wireless stations at Lüderitz and Swakopmund, and to secure the ports of the territory.
Before Botha’s campaign could properly begin, his government had to deal with a rebellion led by several senior officers in the fledgling UDF, formed only two years earlier. They included no less a figure than the Commandant General of the UDF, General Christiaan Beyers. Others were General Koos de la Rey and Manie Maritz. The rebellion was put down, but not before some bitter encounters.
Commanded by Brigadier General Henry Timson Lukin, the 2 420-strong South African force consisted of five Permanent Force (PF) regiments of the South African Mounted Riflemen and two PF artillery batteries; a Citizen Force infantry regiment (the Witwatersrand Rifles); an artillery regiment (the Transvaal Horse Artillery); a section of engineers and an ammunition column.
The distances were huge, the land unforgiving. Movement was on foot or on horseback, with supplies transported by rail. “The long treks across this God-forsaken country are like a hideous nightmare,” reported the magazine of the South African Police. “The country now is simply rock and sand, rock and sand … Some parts are absolutely devoid of vegetation, while here and there one sees a few cacti. A few of the horses give in occasionally, but none of the men. The latter sometimes fall off their horses while asleep.”
The first major encounter with the Germans occurred on 26 September, at Sandfontein, a desolate locality mainly important for its water supply. According to one survivor of the battle, WS Rayner, “it seemed like hell let loose. There was an infernal din of shrieking, splitting, sickening shells, an interminable rat-a-tat of machine-guns, a cracking of rifles that rose in waves but never died down completely.” Poor intelligence had led to the South African force being surrounded and pinned down by heavy artillery fire, not least on the mounted infantry’s horse lines: “The poor, helpless creatures stood in rows having their guts blown out, and it looked as if their riders would soon be treated in a like manner.”
Eventually the commander, Colonel JM Grant, had no alternative but to surrender. Wounded by shrapnel, he was taken prisoner. His men, he said later, “had displayed great fortitude for ten hours under most trying conditions, and I felt that to commit them the a hand-to-hand struggle in the dark against overwhelming numbers would mean their certain annihilation and a useless sacrifice of life, as no military objective was to be gained by further resistance”.
Grant had lost a third of his force, and it would have been worse but for the accurate rifle fire of the infantry defenders and gunners at the koppie at Sandfontein. The German commander, Von Heydebreck, was so impressed by the bravery of the South Africans that he ordered their dead to be buried before his own.
However, Botha’s force slowly gained the initiative – in conditions almost prohibitive of military activity. “If it were not for the thousands of sheep wandering around the countryside,” wrote one soldier in the Natal Carbineers, “we would die of starvation … Some days we get half a biscuit and other days nothing, not even salt … All this living along the rocks, sand and thorn bushes and sleeping on the bare ground under the stars behind our saddles has reduced our clothing to shreds. Nobody shaves, we have no soap; our clothes are with dried animal blood … the soles of my boots completely came off, so I got a piece of wet bull’s hide, wrapped it round each boot, laced it up with wire and let the hide dry on my boots, hair outward.”
Repeatedly the Germans were taken by surprise by the speed at which the South Africans advanced, and by their tactic of outflanking the enemy. Botha’s advance on Windhuk (later spelled Windhoek) was a good illustration of how he approached his tactical options. Windhuk was an important objective because it was the colonial capital, and possession of it would bring control of the railway upon which the German defence strategy was based. The Union forces had to advance inland from Walvis Bay across a territory, wrote WW O’Shaughnessy, “unparallelled in any part of the globe. It is an unqualified waste of sand and granite rocks and kipjoes [koppies], without a drop of water or a vestige of life. Across this wilderness all the food and water had to be transported … The Germans were themselves fully convinced that an advance in force into the interior was an undertaking beyond human power.”
Botha had to choose whether to move slowly along the railway line, which had to be repaired after being torn up by the retreating Germans, or more rapidly along the dry bed of the Swakop River. He chose the latter. He had 4 850 mounted riflemen and eight guns. All his senior officers had served with him in the Anglo-Boer War. The German force ahead of them was entrenched in strong defensive positions on high ground – about 2 000 men with four artillery pieces. The landscape where the fighting was expected to take place was a place of “utter desolation”, wrote O’Shaughnessy, “not a drop of water, nor a sign of life – a truly forsaken wilderness”.
Botha’s men advanced before daybreak on 30 March 1915, after a 48km march through arid desert the day before. The first frontal attack was pinned down by heavy machine-gun fire. The gunners of the Transvaal Horse Artillery needed to relieve the pressure on the infantry. In his book With Botha in the Field, Eric Moore Ritchie captured what it was like for men lying flat on the ground avoiding bullets, or doing the heavy work manning the guns: “All afternoon the heat strikes up at you, overpowering, like the breath of a wild animal. Then the wind rises and the sand shifts in eddies. Veils and goggles are useless. They can’t keep out that spinning curtain of grit. The horses rattle the dry bits in their mouths, trying to get some moisture.”
The Germans, outnumbered and outgunned, withdrew from their positions during the night. Then the men of the Ermelo and Standerton commandos, riding fast to avoid machine-gun fire, were able to outflank the retreating Germans and occupy a tactically vital position above a gap in the hills through which the railway ran. Gerald L’Ange tells the amazing story of what happened when Botha saw guns firing from this high ground:
Botha decided that the only way to find out whose guns they were was to go down and have a closer look. Leaving his men, he climbed down the hillside through the dust and suddenly found, to his consternation, that he was in the midst of a German artillery battery.
Realising that they were more surprised than he was, Botha coolly demanded to see the battery commander and to him announced, ‘I have come to discuss the terms of your surrender.’ Looking from the solitary South African to his sweating gun crews and back again, the astonished German replied: ‘On the contrary, I think it is you who must surrender to us.’
Botha’s bluff might have ended in disaster, but a shell from one of his own guns exploded nearby and in the confusion he managed to escape back to his own position.
The South African force continued to advance in the same fashion, outflanking the slower Germans in retreat, pounding them with artillery, taking ground and seizing the railway, and forcing more and more of the enemy to surrender. The official history of the campaign summed up this phase of the campaign: “The result of the day’s operations was that the pick of the German troops had, with considerable loss, in one day been turned out of strong and carefully prepared positions which topographically were ideal for their purpose. They had every advantage: interior lines, local knowledge of the intricate terrain, water and railways transport nearly to their fire positions.”
By May 1915, Botha had effectively cut the German colony in half, and he then divided his forces into four contingents. The first, under General Britz, went north to Otjiwarongo, Outjo and Etosha Pan, so cutting off the German forces in the interior from the coastal regions. The others spread across the northeast, with General Lukin moving along the railway line running from Swakopmund to Tsumeb. Meanwhile, another South African force under General Jan Smuts landed by sea at Lüderitz and then moved inland to capture Keetmanshoop, where they linked up with two other columns that had moved up from Port Nolloth and Kimberley. The Germans eventually surrendered in July.
Botha returned home a hero. The British Minister of War, Lord Kitchener, who had been largely responsible for the “scorched earth” policy of laying waste to Boer homesteads little more than a decade before, cabled congratulations and expressed his “sincere admiration of the masterly conduct” of the campaign. One German observer noted sourly that “the first British victory in the war was won by a Boer general”.
Delville Wood
Many of the soldiers who served in South West Africa went on to fight in France, where massive British and French armies had settled into static attritional trench warfare, following the early war of manoeuvre after the declaration of war in August 1914.
South Africa, as part of the British Empire, offered to send a contingent of soldiers to fight in Europe, an offer that was accepted by Britain in July 1915, with a request for an infantry formation. Four battalions made up the 1st South African Infantry Brigade, one each from the Cape; Natal, the Border region (Kaffrarian Rifles) and the Free State; the Transvaal and Rhodesia; and a composite battalion drawn from all the South African Scottish regiments. The Permanent Force of the UDF was kept in South Africa to ensure stability following the Rebellion by some former Boer officers and men. All the 2 000 men who went to France were volunteers.
The battle of Delville Wood is etched in South African history as a display of extraordinary valour in the face of unimaginable horror. It was one of many “sub-battles” in the massive Somme offensive, which was intended to break through the German defences once and for all and win the war. The 1st South African Infantry Brigade was ordered to take Delville “at all costs” as a means of breaking the impasse that set in soon after the launch of the offensive on 1 July 1916.
The initial Somme plan had envisaged the British Fourth Army, under Sir Henry Rawlinson, breaking the first and second German lines of fortifications, first from Serre to Montauban, and then through Thiepval, Guillemont and Pozières, with the French army focusing on the southern sector around Peronne from Maurepas to Flaucourt. It soon became clear that the “big push” had met with only limited success especially in the southern sector, and the limited advances soon came under determined German counterattacks. It soon became a battle of attrition. The attacks became concentrated after 1 July on the horseshoe of woods north of Montauban and, after 14 July, Delville, High and Trônes woods, and Waterlot Farm.
Delville Wood derived its name from Bois de la Ville (“wood of the town”), a small forest near the village of Longueval. The wood was slightly less than a square mile in area. Advancing for the attack, Private Geoffrey Lawrence (1st Battalion, C Company, 1st South African Infantry Regiment) wrote that “it was a most fearsome sight to see the wood a mass of flames rising to the full height of the trees, a perfect hell, and this was our objective for the following day. I felt terribly afraid. I think all of us before battle were jolted into facing the facts of fear and death and knew they must be fully dealt with.”
The British high command had decided on a night advance and dawn attack on Longueval. The attacking force was to consist of two British brigades, with the South African brigade in reserve. At dawn the attack began and soon developed into hand-to-hand fighting. Private Sidney Carey (D Company, 1st South African Infantry Regiment) recalled the fighting on that day:
We all knew that we were going against a pretty tough enemy – but we didn’t expect anything like what actually happened. While going up to Longueval, my friend next to me (Private Greenwood) said: ‘Man, but there’re a damn lot of bees around here!’ I said, ‘Bees be blowed! Those are bullets flying around.’ Unfortunately about four minutes afterwards a bullet caught him and killed him right out.
Then I began to see that things were getting bad. Then another went over, then another. Then I thought, ‘It’s my turn next’. There were machine-gun posts at the flour mill at Longueval and we got it very heavy from there. I got hit at the beginning of the wood. The lower part of my jaw was shot away, they reckon by a ricochet. It felt like a mule-kick.
On 15 July, the 1st South African Regiment and the 27th Brigade were ordered to capture the town of Longueval near Delville Wood, but were unable to do so. The remainder of the South African Brigade under the command of Lieutenant Colonel William Tanner was ordered into the fray to capture the wood. Tanner was popular and respected; one of his men wrote that “Tanner took us in and he stayed with us there. His headquarters was Longueval, right on the edge of the wood. He was a man’s officer. You could go to him, or the corporal could, or the lieutenant, and he’d listen. He was our friend. We’d have followed him through any fire, anywhere. He was a trim, wiry man, and a great smiler: I never think of him but I think of his smile.”
The South African force, 3 153 strong, entered the wood at 06h00 on 15 July 1916. Although several attempts were made to unseat the Germans, these failed, and the attacking troops had to endure considerable shelling and counterattacks. Private Charles Dunn (1st Battalion, A Company) recalled that “the following day we happened to walk through the same part of the wood as the night before … Dead men were lying all about. At some parts one was obliged to step over the dead bodies of Germans, Britishers, South Africans and Highlanders. And some awful sights they were. Some men with half bodies, heads of some were in a really awful state.”
Private Frank Marillier (2nd Battalion, C Company) described the fighting:
Absolute hell turned inside out. I never expected to get out whole. Shells dropping everywhere. We get orders to return in the afternoon late. I think, in fact I am almost sure, that our lives were saved when a very brave officer, Captain Hoptroff, made his way to our position. He wasted no time. ‘Get out!’ he said, and was almost immediately hit by a bullet and killed outright. It is strange how, in the most urgent and tragic circumstances, one notices things of minor importance. For as Captain Hoptroff dropped, my eye caught sight of his very beautiful gold wristlet watch; and I have never ceased to regret that I did not take it off, and send it to his family. I am sure that they would have appreciated it. Hoptroff lives on in my memory – a fine officer and a most gallant man.
Marillier remembered the fear instilled by knowledge of the German snipers:
Return to the trenches and managed to hold on to first line, but oh! what a death-trap. We made our way back, joining Colonel Thackeray and about 70 survivors in a reserve trench. Here we set up our Lewis gun with tragic results. In succession ten of my mates were killed and it looked as if my own turn was next. Whilst at the gun, one bullet grazed the side of my face, near the eye. Another hit the stock. But the bullets were not coming from the direction our gun was facing.
After our tenth comrade had been killed, one of our chaps thought he saw a slight movement in a tree, some distance to our rear. We gave the tree a burst, and out dropped a German sniper. A brave man, he must have crept into the wood in the darkness of the previous night, and set himself up, well hidden, in the branches. I am sure he would have known that his chances of survival were very slight. He had a telescope on his rifle, which I retrieved and presented recently to the Queenstown Museum. I was indeed lucky not to be his next victim.
On 18 July, the German 76 Brigade launched a major counterattack resulting in the recapture of much of the town of Longueval, with the South Africans only holding onto a small corner of the wood on its southeastern edge. By this time Colonel Tanner, who had been wounded, had handed over command to Lieutenant Colonel Edward Thackeray, who recalled that “things got worse as the day advanced and we were driven back and I actually found myself holding only the southwest corner of the wood. The trenches were full of wounded. All the stretcher-bearers were casualties so the poor fellows just had to lie there.”
That fourth day of the battle began with one of the most violent artillery bombardments known up to this time. Private Dudley Meredith (3rd Battalion, C Company) recalled that:
… hour after hour the wood was a-fire from end to end with bursting shells. Mingled with the shriek and roar were the crashes of falling trees and the rending of branches. Every now and again a heavy shell would land in the wood and not explode, with the result that the whole wood shook as if in an earthquake. All the while, cowering and dazed, we crouched in our little trenches while mud, leaves twigs and shell splinters rained down on us … Gradually I felt my nerves going and began to pray for one to hit me and end it all …
A German appeared from behind a bush and instantaneously, it seemed, we fired at one another. His bullet hit our parapet about four inches from my left eye and shot some gravel into my face. When I cleared my eyes I saw him reeling and suddenly fall.
In a letter smuggled out of prisoner-of-war camp, Captain Richard Medlicott (3rd Battalion, C Company) recounted the dramatic events that led to the capture of the survivors of his company:
Dawn 19th. Exhausted machine-gun ammunition. Drove off attack from wood but had to chuck it soon after 08h00. Many of our buried were exhumed by our heavy artillery, which hindered us at the wrong moment – at my trench east of wood. Damn those artillery garrisons.
Handed back, sorry to say, all German prisoners captured during the day. I got not a wink of sleep for four nights. Could not sleep in the night of the 18th. Got Lieutenants Guard and Thomas in a safe place (both wounded) with German prisoners – Irony. I was satisfied at our marksmanship, so many dead Germans round us in the wood. Notes: Germans useless as rifle shots, bar trained snipers, at over 300 yards. Their bombers trained to throw. They do not fancy coming on with bayonet, even knowing we had run out of ammunition. I could judge by their eyes. I was too busy waiting for the moment of attack which was maturing during the day.
The enemy shell fire was too intense to think of retiring. The Germans were rattled with our gun fire. Our men, who at that time owing to want of water and sleep were cold and stiff, were calm and had a ‘don’t care a damn’ appearance. Many Germans wanted to surrender but were afraid owing to a watch kept on them by comrades and machine-guns turned on them …
On 19 July, Thackeray was desperate for relief for his troops and appealed to British headquarters:
Our heavy artillery shelled our Buchanan trench some two hours and ground on either side east and west – injured several our men and buried several. This in addition to enemy’s fire which already killed two officers and many men … five days continuous work and fighting is becoming beyond endurance and as I have now only Lt Phillips and one or two NCOs. I do not feel that we can hope to hold the trench in the face of any determined attack …
The enemy attacked last night and this morning snipers and artillery casualties are continuing. I cannot evacuate my critically wounded or bury my dead on account of snipers. Four men have been hit helping one casualty. If the wounded cannot be moved, could not some medical assistance be sent up. My Medical Officer is far too busy at station and is completely exhausted. Will you manage his relief together with ours as soon as possible. So far the brigade have held on but I feel the strain is becoming too much so trust some special effort may be made …
On 20 July, the 9th Division, of which the South Africans formed part, was relieved by soldiers of the 3rd Division following another desperate note from Thackeray to Brigadier General Henry Timson Lukin, the commanding officer of the South African Brigade. Private Harry Cooper (3rd Battalion, C Company) had been detailed to take the written order to brigade headquarters. By now Delville Wood was looking like a ploughed-up field: “Off I went like a rabbit,” recalled Cooper, “through the village … dead everywhere looking at you with sightless eyes and the smell made me feel bad. I found my way. I faced the general, gave him the compliments of Colonel Thackeray and gave him the note. He looked at me with tears in his eyes and asked me to tell him something about his men in the wood. All the time he was exclaiming: ‘My men, my poor men’.”
The note he had taken to General Lukin read: “Urgent. My men are on their last legs. I cannot keep some of them awake. They drop with their rifles in their hands and sleep in spite of heavy shelling. We are expecting an attack. Even that cannot keep some of them from dropping down. Food and water has not reached us for two days. Please relieve these men today without fail, as I fear they have come to the end of their endurance.”
When the South African units were relieved, at 16h15 on 20 July, only 143 men walked out of Delville Wood unscathed. The South Africans had hung on in the face of the German attacks, but at a tremendous cost. Major Frank Heal (1st Battalion HQ) wrote in a letter home that “it has been an awful time, but by heaven we’re proud of them all. South Africa will never know what those men did for her; no one who was not there can ever realise it; no imagination under the sun can ever grasp that awful hell.” Major Heal was later promoted to lieutenant colonel, and was killed at Marrieres Wood in March 1918.
The South Africans suffered over 2 000 casualties at Delville Wood. Of these, 662 men had been killed and 104 more were to die of their wounds. Thackeray led just 140 men and two remaining officers, Lieutenant Edward Phillips and Second Lieutenant Garnet Green, out of “Devil’s Wood”, both of whom, like him, had been wounded. The South African Brigade had entered the wood with 121 officers and 3 032 other ranks. On 21 July, the survivors paraded before General Lukin, a tough veteran of the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879. He looked at his shattered brigade, bared his head and the tears trickled down his cheeks. “You see,” he said afterwards, “I know the fathers and mothers of those lads. I feel responsible for them to their parents.”
Enemy artillery fire, which had reached rates exceeding 400 shells per minute, coupled with incessant rain, had reduced the landscape to mud, water, shell holes and broken tree stumps. The remains of 538 South Africans lie in unmarked graves in the wood and are commemorated along with 72 089 others on the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing.
Delville Wood eluded capture until 27 August, but not until it had been a killing field for both the Allies and Germans. It was only secured from German counterattacks and shelling by 3 September. The 9th (Scottish) Division (part of XIII Corps, commanded by Lieutenant General Walter Congreve VC) suffered casualties of 314 officers and 7 203 other ranks in the first three weeks of July. On the other side, the German defending unit numbered just 10 officers and 250 other ranks out of 2 700 all ranks.
The South African Infantry Brigade continued to serve on the Western Front, suffering more than 4 000 fatal casualties and winning two Victoria Crosses: Private WF Faulds at Delville Wood, and Lance Corporal WH Hewitt at Ypres. Four South Africans earned recommendations for the VC at Delville Wood: Colonel Thackeray, Lieutenant Walter Hill, Sergeant John Naisby and Private William Frederick Faulds. All apart from Faulds were turned down, Thackeray receiving the Distinguished Service Order (DSO), Hill a “Mentioned in Dispatches”, and Naisby the Distinguished Conduct Medal (DCM). The citation for Faulds reads:
For most conspicuous bravery and devotion to duty. A bombing party under Lieutenant Craig attempted to rush over 40 yards of ground which lay between the British and enemy trenches. Coming under very heavy rifle- and machine-gun fire, the officer and the majority of the party were killed or wounded. Unable to move, Lt Craig lay midway between the two lines of trench, the ground being quite open. In full daylight Private Faulds, accompanied by two other men, climbed over the parapet, ran out, picked up the officer and carried him back, one man being severely wounded in so doing. Two days later Private Faulds again showed most conspicuous bravery in going out alone to bring in a wounded man, and carried him nearly half a mile to a dressing station, subsequently rejoining his platoon. The artillery fire was at the time so intense that stretcher bearers and others considered that any attempt to bring in the wounded man meant certain death. This risk Private Faulds faced unflinchingly, and his bravery was crowned with success.
The VC was gazetted on 9 September 1916. Faulds, who was promoted to lieutenant in May 1917, was taken prisoner in the battle for Marrieres Wood in March 1918. After the war, he returned to Kimberley but later moved to Bulawayo. He served in Abyssinia in the Second World War with the rank of captain, and died in Salisbury, Rhodesia, in August 1950. Private Bill Hewitt, who fought at Delville Wood, was wounded later at Warlencourt and at Ypres where, on 20 September 1917, he earned the VC. He returned to South African to farm in Natal and Kenya, and served as a major in the Second World War.
Only one tree in Delville Wood survived the battle. Ian Uys writes that “when a metal detector is placed against its gnarled and twisted trunk, it indicates that the tree is riddled with shrapnel, shell splinter and bullets.”
Private Frank Marillier (2nd Battalion, C Company) was one of the last four men to leave the wood, and made notes at the time:
Heavy hand to hand fighting still continues. SA boys, though only a handful left, still hold enemy back. Royal Welsh Fusiliers retire … Col Thackeray splendid. Orders them to return and hold the line or he would shoot [those who retired]. We have been without rations and water for two and a half days and no sleep for six days and nights … after getting a good way back from the battle, we number off and find only 52 of 2nd Regiment have come out whole and all other SA regiments about the same. Colonel Thackeray thanks us and tells how very valuable our services have been in a few words … Oh! It’s been a terrible week and it is to be marvelled at that anyone at all came out safe and sound. Thanks to God for my safe return …
Colonel Edward Thackeray’s report to General Lukin summed up the South African achievement: “I am glad to report that the troops under my command carried out your instructions to hold Delville Wood at all costs and that not a single detachment of this regiment retired from their position, either on the perimeter of the Wood or from the support trenches.” Amazingly, Thackeray was hit several times by shrapnel and spent bullets but emerged from Delville Wood unhurt. He went on to become a general officer and the head of Witwatersrand Command. He retired in 1926 and died in Johannesburg in 1956, aged 86. Colonel Tanner recovered from his wounds, was also awarded a DSO, and returned to command the 1st Brigade. He retired in 1942 as a major general and died in 1943, aged 67.
Was the great sacrifice by the South African volunteers worth the price, and did it make a difference? Sir Basil Liddell Hart’s massive History of the First World War, first published in 1930, devotes just five lines to Delville Wood. He describes it as “the bloodiest battle-hell of 1916”. The 1st South African Infantry Brigade, outnumbered and attacked from three sides, lost three-quarters of its strength, but obeyed the order to hold the wood. There has been no convincing suggestion that, if they had failed, the Allied strategic position would have been undermined – or that it was improved through their success. The South African losses were small in relation to those suffered by Britain and France. The British, for instance, sustained 60 000 casualties on the first day of the Battle of the Somme alone. But for a new country, with an army that had not existed half a dozen years before, Delville Wood was a devastating blow.
German East Africa
In addition to South West Africa, Imperial Germany’s possessions in East Africa consisted of what is now Burundi, Rwanda and mainland Tanzania. German East Africa inevitably also became a theatre of operations. However, the campaign in East Africa extended into what is now Mozambique, Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda.
In 1916, General Jan Smuts was given the task of defeating the German colonial army, which was commanded by the able Colonel Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck. There was no prospect of the German forces achieving a victory, but Lettow-Vorbeck’s strategy was to tie down as many British or Allied forces as possible and prevent them being deployed to the major theatre of war in France. Smuts opened his dispatch on the East African campaign as follows: “At the commencement of 1916 the German forces in German East Africa were estimated at some 16 000 men, of whom 2 000 were white, with 60 guns and 80 machine guns. They were organised in companies varying from 150 to 200 strong, with 10 per cent of whites and an average of two machine guns per company. The enemy occupied a considerable tract of British territory.”
The terrain was difficult for both sides. It was covered in dense bush, wrote the historian Ross Anderson,
… that ranged from tropical jungle with swamps to forested mountain ranges to undulating parched scrubland. Physical communications were generally very primitive, apart from two unconnected railways and movement was usually limited to narrow and unsurfaced tracks. With virtually no roads, this forced the combatants to move in columns, most often in a single file that stretched out over many miles. Powerful, wide and unbridged rivers, rocky outcrops and swamps also caused time-consuming diversions while navigation itself was extremely problematic owing to the virtually non-existent state of survey and consequently inaccurate maps.
If these difficulties were not enough, dense vegetation often reduced visibility to a few metres or less, especially when moving through bamboo thickets or elephant grass. Climate played its part, as for much of the year there was insufficient precipitation to support grazing, while for the remainder there was a superabundance of water that impeded movement, made life generally miserable and promoted sickness. In the dry season, the dust raised by the marching columns or vehicles covered everything and enveloped the troops in a thick cloud, while in the wet, heavy continuous rain and mist made observation very difficult. The temperature ranged from very hot, with humid and arid extremes in the lowlands to cold and damp in the mountains.
Smuts had a large army (for the area), consisting of some 13 000 South Africans, British and Rhodesians, as well as 7 000 Indian and African troops. In addition, he could call on Belgian troops from the Belgian Congo and Portuguese forces from Mozambique. Lettow-Vorbeck had at his disposal just 1 800 Germans and some 12 000 African troops.
“Early in February the 2nd South African Infantry Brigade arrived,” Smuts wrote in his dispatch, “and on the 12th of that month General Tighe directed the 2nd Division to make a reconnaissance in force of Salaita, and if possible to occupy that position. General Malleson carried out this operation with three battalions 2nd South African Brigade and three battalions 1st East African Brigade, supported by 18 guns and howitzers. The Salaita position is one of considerable natural strength, and had been carefully entrenched. The enemy was found to be in force and counterattacked vigorously. General Malleson was compelled to withdraw to Serengeti, but much useful information had been gained, and the South African Infantry had learned some invaluable lessons in bush fighting, and also had opportunity to estimate the fighting qualities of their enemy.
“The original plan devised by General Tighe had been to occupy the Kilimanjaro area by making a converging advance from Longido and Mbuyuni with the 1st and 2nd Divisions respectively, with Kahe as the point towards which movement was to be directed. To this main plan I adhered, but I decided that some alteration of dispositions was necessary in order to avoid frontal attacks against entrenched positions of the enemy in the dense bush and to secure the rapidity of advance which appeared to me essential to the success of the operation in the short time at our disposal before the commencement of the rains …”
This summary by Smuts reflected the approach he took through the entire campaign: the emphasis on mobility and outflanking rather than actual holding of territory.
The plan of campaign called for a main attack from the north, from British East Africa. From the Belgian Congo in the west, two columns of the Force Publique crossed Lake Victoria on board British steamers, while another British contingent crossed Lake Nyasa from the southeast. However, these efforts failed to capture Lettow-Vorbeck. Smuts’s force was severely weakened by disease: one unit, the 9th South African Infantry, found itself reduced to just 116 fit soldiers by October (from 1 135 men in February), having seen virtually no combat.
Lettow-Vorbeck’s tactic was to retreat from the larger British troop concentrations. Smuts was able to gain territory but was unable to put his enemy out of action. By September 1916, the British controlled the German Central Railway from the coast at Dar es Salaam to Ujiji. This meant that Lettow-Vorbeck’s forces were now confined to the southern part of the colony. Smuts, doubtless influenced by the success of the Boers against the British on the vast, dry, open plains of South Africa (and by the more recent and successful campaign in German South West Africa), favoured a tactic of swift manoeuvre. “He was opposed to fighting heavy battles,” wrote Anderson, “and preferred to use limited frontal holding attacks supported by wide turning movements by highly mobile mounted columns aimed at hitting the enemy’s flanks and cutting off his escape … Above all, he wanted to conquer territory and, despite his pronouncements, he never appears to have been really interested in defeating the Germans in pitched battle … His emphasis on speed left little time for accurate reconnaissance.”
This did not mean that Smuts’s army lacked enterprise or courage. In his dispatch, he writes of an attack by Lieutenant Colonel Byron, commanding the 5th South African Infantry:
Shortly afterwards he decided that the best chance of quickly dislodging the enemy from their position on the nek was to send in the two South African Battalions with the bayonet by night. This operation was no doubt fraught with considerable risk as there was no opportunity of adequately reconnoitring the ground over which the attack must be made, nor was it by any means certain that the enemy was not present in large numbers. On the other hand the moon was in the first quarter, and so facilitated movement up to midnight; the bush along the line of the road to the nek did not appear to be very dense; and, moreover, the volume of fire developed by the enemy did not seem to indicate that he had a large force actually in his first line, though he had, as usual, a large proportion of machine guns in action … They advanced with great dash through the bush – which proved to be much thicker than anticipated – driving the enemy before them till the latter was on the crest, where he checked our advance. A certain amount of disintegration was inevitable in a night advance through the dense thorn bush in the face of stubborn opposition.
The map of the campaign seemed to indicate that Smuts had been very successful. He had captured much ground, the ports and railways, and large areas of good farmland. When Smuts left the East African theatre in the spring of 1917 to join the Imperial War Cabinet in London, his successor, Brigadier General Jacob van Deventer, commanding the 1st South African Mounted Brigade, continued to chase the Germans. In July 1917 he launched a major offensive, which pushed the Germans 160km to the south. However, they were still able to tie down large British forces and even defeat them on occasion. Over time, the composition of the British force was steadily transformed, with African troops of the King’s African Riflesbeing brought in to replace South African, Rhodesian and Indian formations. By the end of the war, the force opposing Lettow-Vorbeck was almost entirely African.
In mid-October 1917, Lettow-Vorbeck fought a pivotal and costly battle at Mahiwa, where he lost 519 men killed, wounded or missing. The British Nigerian brigade lost 2 700 killed, wounded or missing in the engagement. Smuts was to write of Van Deventer that he “commanded throughout the operations an independent column, and executed the turning movements to which the rapidity of our success was undoubtedly due. He displayed soldierly qualities of a high order in controlling the mounted troops in their long night marches and manoeuvres through unknown and extremely difficult country.”
However, Lettow-Vorbeck remained undefeated. For the next year, he sustained an amazing campaign of evasion and delaying tactics. In November 1917 he crossed into Portuguese East Africa (Mozambique) to gain supplies by capturing Portuguese garrisons, and with his caravans of troops, bearers, wives and children, he marched through Mozambique for the next nine months. In August 1918 he moved back into German East Africa and then Northern Rhodesia. On 13 November 1918, two days after the Armistice was signed in France, the German army occupied its last town, Kasama, which had been evacuated by the British. The next day, at the Zambezi River, Lettow-Vorbeck was handed a telegram announcing the signing of the armistice and he agreed to a ceasefire. He surrendered his undefeated army on 23 November 1918.
Ross Anderson summed up the different personalities and styles of the two South African commanders-in-chief:
If the standard of military success is victory on the battlefield then it is difficult to judge Smuts a success. While he captured a great deal of territory, he never seriously threatened the existence of his enemy and left the theatre with their morale and fighting power unharmed. On the debit side, he had to evacuate the bulk of his army through ill health and those who were left were in no condition to carry on the advance.
Van Deventer was given the mission of ending the campaign as rapidly as possible. In this he failed, as Lettow-Vorbeck did not surrender until after the signing of the Armistice. However, he achieved a number of successes in the field, reducing his opponents to little more than a band of weakened companies and enabling the withdrawal of a large number of his own units. His policy of attacking the enemy's food supplies was a sound one and hastened the end of resistance in German East Africa. Van Deventer also occupied a considerable amount of enemy territory … and maintained a mobile and hard-hitting force until the end of the war. In the final analysis, although Smuts was well known and lauded for his exploits, Van Deventer must be considered the better general.
Early German armoured cars in the South West Africa campaign.
Battlefield destroyed: South African infantry in trenches, France
King George V (second from right) inspects members of the South African Native Labour Corps in France, 1916.
South African Medical Corps members at 1 SA General Hospital, France.
Any transport will do: SA Pioneer Battalion in German East Africa.
South African troops march over a bridge on campaign in German East Africa.
