Читать книгу My Reminiscences of East Africa - General von Lettow-Vorbeck - Страница 12

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DOCUMENTS which we captured later proved by figures that the enemy moved troops from Lake Victoria towards Kilima Njaro. So the battle actually did relieve other, far distant theatres. This observation bore out the original contention that the best protection of the whole territory consisted in taking a firm hold of the enemy at one point. Whether the remainder of the Colony was also locally protected with energy was not as important. All the same, I was greatly rejoiced when in February, 1915, the Governor was persuaded to issue the order that the coast towns were to be defended if threatened by the enemy. The successes obtained hitherto had demonstrated that this local defence was not hopeless, even against the fire of ships’ guns.

Although the attack carried out at Jassini with nine companies had been completely successful, it showed that such heavy losses as we also had suffered could only be borne in exceptional cases. We had to economize our forces in order to last out a long war. Of the regular officers, Major Kepler, Lieuts. Spalding and Gerlich, Second-Lieuts. Kaufmann and Erdmann were killed; Captain von Hammerstein had died of his wound. The loss of these professional soldiers—about one seventh of the regular officers present—could not be replaced.

The expenditure of 200,000 rounds also proved that with the means at my disposal I could at the most fight three more actions of this nature. The need to strike great blows only quite exceptionally, and to restrict myself principally to guerilla warfare, was evidently imperative.

The guiding principle of constantly operating against the Uganda Railway could, however, be resumed, as here it was in any case impossible to act with larger forces. For it was necessary to make marches of several days’ duration through the great, waterless and thinly populated desert, which provided little sustenance beyond occasional game. Not only food, but water had to be carried. This alone limited the size of the force to be employed. Such expeditions through districts providing neither water nor food require a degree of experience on the part of the troops which could not possibly exist at that stage of the war. A company even was too large a force to send across this desert, and if, after several days of marching, it really had reached some point on the railway, it would have had to come back again, because it could not be supplied. However, these conditions improved as the troops became better trained, and as our knowledge of the country, which was at first mainly terra incognita, increased.

So there was nothing for it but to seek to attain our object by means of small detachments, or patrols. To these patrols we afterwards attached the greatest importance. Starting from the Engare-Nairobi, small detachments of eight to ten men, Europeans and Askaris, rode round the rear of the enemy’s camps, which had been pushed up as far as the Longido, and attacked their communications. They made use of telephones we had captured at Tanga, tapping in on the English telephone-lines; then they waited for large or small hostile detachments or columns of ox-wagons to pass. From their ambush they opened fire on the enemy at thirty yards’ range, captured prisoners and booty, and then disappeared again in the boundless desert. Thus, at that time, we captured rifles, ammunition, and war material of all kinds. One of these patrols had observed near Erok Mountain that the enemy sent his riding-horses to water at a certain time. Ten of our horsemen at once started out, and, after a two days’ ride through the desert, camped close to the enemy. Six men went back with the horses; the four others each took a saddle, and crept at a distance of a few paces past the enemy’s sentries close up to the watering-place, which lay behind the camp. An English soldier was driving the horses, when suddenly two men of our patrol confronted him out of the bush and covering him with their rifles ordered “Hands up!” In his surprise he dropped his clay pipe out of his mouth. At once he was asked: “Where are the missing four horses?” for our conscientious patrol had noticed that there were only fifty-seven, whereas the day before they had counted sixty-one! These four needed light treatment and had been left in camp. The leading horse and a few others were quickly saddled, mounted, and off they went at a gallop round the enemy’s camp towards the German lines. Even in the captured Englishman, who had to take part in this safari on a bare horse, without much comfort, the innate sporting instinct of his nation came out. With great humour he shouted: “I should just like to see my Captain’s face now!” and when the animals had arrived safely in the German camp he remarked: “It was a damned good piece of work.”

This capture, increased by a number of other horses and mules we had picked up, enabled us to form a second mounted company. We now had two mounted companies, composed of Askari and Europeans mixed, an organization which proved successful. They provided us with the means of sweeping the extensive desert north of Kilima Njaro with strong patrols who went out for several days at a time; they penetrated even as far as the Uganda and Magad Railways, destroyed bridges, surprised guards posted on the railways, mined the permanent way and carried out raids of all kinds on the land communications between the railways and the enemy’s camps. In these enterprises our own people did not get off scot free. One patrol had brilliantly surprised two companies of Indians by rifle fire, but had then lost their horses, which had been left behind in hiding, by the fire of the enemy; they had to make their way back across the desert on foot, which took four days, and they had no food. Luckily they found milk and cattle in a Masai kraal, and later on saved themselves from starvation by killing an elephant. But success whetted the spirit of adventure, and the requests to be sent on patrol, mounted or on foot, increased.

The patrols that went out from the Kilima Njaro in a more easterly direction were of a different character. They had to work on foot through the dense bush for days on end. The patrols sent out to destroy the railway were mostly weak: one or two Europeans, two to four Askari, and five to seven carriers. They had to worm their way through the enemy’s pickets and were often betrayed by native scouts. In spite of this they mostly reached their objective and were sometimes away for more than a fortnight. For such a small party a bit of game or a small quantity of booty afforded a considerable reserve of rations. But the fatigue and thirst in the burning sun were so great that several men died of thirst, and even Europeans drank urine. It was a bad business when anyone fell ill or was wounded, with the best will in the world it was often impossible to bring him along. To carry a severely wounded man from the Uganda Railway right across the desert to the German camps, as was occasionally done, is a tremendous performance. Even the blacks understood that, and cases did occur in which a wounded Askari, well knowing that he was lost without hope, and a prey to the numerous lions, did not complain when he had to be left in the bush, but of his own accord gave his comrades his rifle and ammunition, so that they at least might be saved.

The working of these patrols became more and more perfect. Knowledge of the desert improved, and in addition to patrols for destruction and intelligence work, we developed a system of fighting patrols. The latter, consisting of twenty to thirty Askari, or even more, and sometimes equipped with one or two machine-guns, went out to look for the enemy and inflict losses upon him. In the thick bush the combatants came upon each other at such close quarters and so unexpectedly, that our Askari sometimes literally jumped over their prone adversaries and so got behind them again. The influence of these expeditions on the self-reliance and enterprise of both Europeans and natives was so great that it would be difficult to find a force imbued with a better spirit. Some disadvantages were, however, unavoidable. In particular, our small supply of ammunition did not enable us to attain such a degree of marksmanship as to enable us, when we did get the enemy in an unfavourable situation, completely to destroy him. In technical matters we were also busy. Skilled artificers and armourers were constantly engaged with the factory engineers in the manufacture of suitable apparatus for blowing up the railways. Some of these appliances fired according as they were set, either at once, or after a certain number of wheels had passed over them. With the latter arrangement we hoped to destroy the engines, even if the English tried to protect them by pushing one or two trucks filled with sand in front of them. There was abundance of dynamite to be had on the plantations, but the demolition charges captured at Tanga were much more effective.

We occasionally got German newspapers, but we had had no private mails for a long time. On the 12th February, 1915, I was sitting at dinner in the Railway Station at New Moshi, when I got a letter from Germany. It was from my sister, who wrote to say she had already repeatedly informed me of the death of my brother, who had been killed on the Western Front at Libramont on the 22nd August, 1914.

In April, 1915, we were surprised by the news of the arrival of a store-ship. When entering Mansa Bay, north of Tanga, she was chased and fired at by an English cruiser, and her captain had to run her aground. Although during the ensuing weeks we salved almost the whole of the valuable cargo, we found that unfortunately the cartridges had suffered severely from the sea-water. The powder and caps deteriorated more and more, and so the number of miss-fires increased. There was nothing for it but to break up the whole of the ammunition, clean the powder, and replace some of the caps by new ones. Luckily there were caps in the Colony, though of a different pattern; but for months all the Askari and carriers we could lay hands on were employed at Moshi from morning till night making ammunition. The serviceable cartridges we had left were kept exclusively for the machine-guns; of the re-made ammunition, that which gave about 20 per cent. of miss-fires was kept for action, while that giving a higher percentage was used for practice.

The arrival of the store-ship aroused tremendous enthusiasm, since it proved that communication between ourselves and home still existed. All of us listened with eagerness to the stories of the Captain, Lieutenant Christiansen, when he arrived at my Headquarters at New Moshi after his wound was healed. The terrific fighting at home, the spirit of self-sacrifice and boundless enterprise which inspired the deeds of the German troops, awakened a response in our hearts. Many who had been despondent now took courage once more, since they learned that what appears impossible can be achieved if effort is sustained by determination.

Another means of raising the spirit of the force was by promotion. Generally speaking, I could only make promotions to non-commissioned rank, and within the commissioned ranks; but the grant of a commission, which would in many cases have been well-deserved, was beyond my power. Each case was very carefully considered, so as to determine whether really good work had been done. In this way unmerited promotions, which ruin the spirit of the troops, were avoided. On the whole, however, we had to cultivate the moral factors less by rewards than by other means. Decorations for war service were practically unknown among us. It was not personal ambition to which we appealed; we sought to arouse and maintain a real sense of duty dictated by patriotism, and an evergrowing feeling of comradeship. Perhaps it was the very fact that this lasting and pure motive remained unsoiled by any other purpose that inspired Europeans and Askari with that endurance and energy which the Protective Force manifested until the end.

In the Kilima Njaro country the English were not inactive. From Oldorobo Mountain, seven and a half miles east of Taveta, which was held by a German detached post under an officer, an attack by two Indian Companies was reported by telephone one morning. Thereupon Captain Koehl and the Austrian Lieutenant Freiherr von Unterrichter at once marched off from Taveta; the two companies had become immobilized on the steep slopes of the mountain, and our people attacked them on both flanks with such vigour that they fled, leaving about twenty dead behind, while one machine-gun and 70,000 rounds fell into our hands. Other hostile expeditions were undertaken along the Tsavo River to the north-east side of Kilima Njaro; they were based on Mzima Camp on the Tsavo, which was strongly fortified and held by several companies. The patrol encounters that took place north-east of Kilima Njaro all ended in our favour; even the young Askari of the Rombo Detachment, which had a strength of sixty and was named after the mission on the Eastern Kilima Njaro, had unbounded faith in their commander, Lieutenant-Colonel von Bock, who was over sixty years old. I remember a wounded man who came from him to New Moshi, with a report for me, and refused to be attended to so as to lose no time in getting back to his commanding officer. In several fights, when the enemy occasionally amounted to two companies, these young troops were victorious, and it is a significant fact that among the English all manner of tales were current about these actions. The British Commander-in-Chief sent me a written complaint, saying that a German woman was taking part in them, and perpetrating inhuman cruelties, an idea which was, of course, without any foundation, and merely served to show the degree of nerves with which the enemy authorities had become afflicted.

Notwithstanding the great amount of booty taken at Tanga, it was evident that, as the war seemed likely to be prolonged, the stocks in the Colony would become exhausted. The natives at New Moshi began all of a sudden to wear silk: this was by no means a sign of special extravagance: the stocks of cotton clothing in the Indian shops were simply coming to an end. We had seriously to think of starting manufactures ourselves, in order to convert the abundant raw material into finished products. A curious existence now developed, reminding one of the industry of the Swiss family Robinson. Cotton fields existed in plenty. Popular books were hunted up, giving information about the forgotten arts of hand spinning and weaving; white and black women took to spinning by hand; at the missions and in private workshops spinning-wheels and looms were built. In this manner, in a short time, the first useful piece of cotton cloth was produced. After various trials, the most suitable dye was obtained from the root of a tree called Ndaa, which imparted a brownish-yellow colour, very inconspicuous both in the grass and in the bush, and therefore specially suitable for uniforms. The rubber gathered by the planters was vulcanized with sulphur, and we succeeded in producing efficient tyres for motors and bicycles. At Morogoro a few planters successfully produced a motor-fuel from cocos, known as trebol, which was like benzol, and was employed in the automobiles. As in former times, candles were made out of tallow and wax, both by private persons and by the troops, and also soap. Then again, the numerous factories on the plantations in the northern territories and on the Tanganyika Railway were adapted to produce various means of subsistence.

A particularly important item was the provision of foot-wear. The raw material was obtained from the plentiful skins of cattle and game; tanning materials from the mangroves on the coast. In peace time the missions had already made good boots; their activity was now further developed, while the troops also established tanneries and shoemakers’ shops on a larger scale. It is true some little time elapsed before the authorities complied with the urgent and inevitable demands of the troops in an adequate manner, and, in particular, before they placed at our disposal the buffalo-hides necessary for making sole-leather. So the old historic fight for the cow-hide revived again, mutatis mutandis, in East Africa. The first boots made in any quantity were turned out at Tanga. Although at first their shape needed improving, they at any rate protected the feet of our white and black troops when marching and patrolling in the thorn bush of the Pori. For the thorns that fall to the ground bore into the feet again and again. All the small beginnings of food-stuff production that had already existed on the plantations in time of peace were galvanized into more extensive activity by the war, and by the need of subsisting large masses. On several farms in the Kilima Njaro country butter and excellent cheese were produced in great quantities, and the slaughter-houses round about Wilhelmstal could hardly keep up with the demands for sausages and other smoked meats.

It was to be anticipated that quinine, which was so important for the health of the Europeans, would soon become exhausted, and that our requirements could not be met by capture alone. So it was a matter of great importance that we succeeded in producing good quinine tablets at the Amani Biological Institute in Usambara out of bark obtained in the North.

The provision of proper communications for ox-wagons and motors involved the construction of permanent bridges. Engineer Rentell, who had been called to the colours, built an arched bridge of stone and concrete, with a heavy pier, over the Kikafu torrent, west of New Moshi. During the rains, particularly in April, no wooden structure would have withstood the masses of water coming down the steep river-bed, which was nearly 70 feet deep.

These examples will suffice to show the stimulating influence of the war and its requirements on the economic life of the Colony.

The organization of the Force was also constantly improved. By transferring Europeans from the Rifle Companies, when they were numerous, to the Askari Companies, the losses of Europeans in the latter were made good; Askari were enrolled in the European Companies. In this way the Field and Rifle Companies became more similar in their composition, which during the course of 1915 became identical. At Muansa, Kigoma, Bismarckburg, Lindi, Langenburg, and elsewhere, small bodies of troops had been formed under various designations, of the existence of which in most cases Headquarters only became aware after a considerable time. These units were also gradually expanded into companies; in this way, during 1915, the number of Field Companies gradually rose to 30, that of the Rifle Companies to 10, and that of other units of company strength to about 20. The maximum total attained was thus about 60 companies. Owing to the limited number of suitable Europeans and of reliable Askari N.C.O.’s, it was not advisable still further to increase the number of companies: it would only have meant the creation of units without cohesion. In order, however, to increase the number of combatants the establishment of the companies was raised from 160 to 200, and the companies were allowed to enrol supernumerary Askari. To some extent the companies trained their own recruits; but the great bulk of Askari reinforcements came from the Recruit Depots established in the populous districts of Tabora, Muansa and the Northern Railway, which also provided for local security and order. But owing to the great number of newly-raised companies the depots could not furnish enough men to bring them all up to their establishment of 200. The maximum strength attained by the end of 1915 was 2,998 Europeans and 11,300 Askari, including Naval personnel, administrative staffs, hospitals and field postal service.

How necessary were all these military preparations was proved by the news received at the end of June, 1915, that General Botha was coming to the East African theatre from South Africa with 15,000 Boers. That this information was highly probably correct had to be assumed from the outset. The scanty wireless messages and other communications about events in the outside world were yet enough to indicate that our affairs in South-West Africa were going badly, and that the British troops employed there would probably become available for other purposes in the immediate future.