THE WAR IN EAST AFRICA.*
THE immense magnitude of the recent war is aptly illustrated by Lord Cranworth's description of the conquest of German East Africa as " a side-show that is believed to have cost more money and many more lives than the whole of the South African campaign." Captain Angus Buchanan draws a lively picture of the daily incidents of this side-show (on which two or three books have lately been published) in his Three Years of War in. East Africa. When the war broke out the author was employed by the Saskatchewan Government in investigating the almost unknown territories lying to the west of Hudson Bay. The first rumours of war did not reach him, so remote and unfriended was his task, until the end of October, 1914, when he at once proceeded to England and enlisted in the 25th(Frontiersmen)Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers. He went to Mombasa as a private in that distinguished unit in the following April, earned a commission before the end of 1915, and took part in all the work of the unit until September, 1917, when he was invalided, through fever, about a month before his battalion was overwhelmed by locally superior forces and cut to pieces whilst covering a temporary retirement of the British forces.
Captain Buchanan's valuable book is thus an unofficial " war diary " of the operations in which he took part, which should be of much service to the future historian as illuminating the official records. It is also of great human interest as a record of the admirable work done by the author's battalion. The Royal Fusiliers, when like other regiments it was expanded by the addition of numerous service battalions, contained • several units of remarkable composition, but none more remarkable than the 25th Battalion, which was mainly composed of men who, like Captain Buchanan, had spent most of their lives on the fringes of the Empire :—
" Men from the very outer edges of the world; in Ogilvie's
words : 'Lean men, brown men, men from overseas, Men from all the outer world ; shy and ill at ease.'
Some were men who had taken part in Arctic exploration ; others were of the North-West Mounted Police and of the British South Africa Police ; even a cow-puncher or two from under the flag of the U.S.A. were amongst this force of frontiersmen. And there were among them : good sorts, bad sorts, rich sorts, keen sorts, game sorts—all sorts. Here also, holding the rank of subalterns, were some famous hunters, setting out again on adventure. F. C. Selous, the renowned big-game hunter and naturalist and explorer, was there, and Cherry Kearton, who, like his brother Richard, shoots ' with his camera and has specialised in photographing big game in Africa. Then there were George Outram and Martin Ryan, hailing from divergent corners of our Colonies, who were reputed old hunters who knew, by long association, the vast hunting-grounds in Africa as well as you or I, perhaps, know our grouse moor at home. And lastly, at the head of all stood Colonel Driscoll, the leader of Driscoll's Scouts' in the South African War."
It was a happy thought on the part of the War Office to select this hard-bitten legion as the first Imperial unit to join the Indian and native African forces who were already holding the frontier against an enterprising enemy in German East Africa. Their immediate task was to guard the Uganda Railway, running parallel to the frontier from Mombasa to the Victoria Nyanza, and to hold the superior forces of Lettow-Vorbeck at bay until an adequate British force could be prepared to take the offensive. This was largely a matter of patrols, in which the personae of the 25th Royal Fusiliers was thoroughly expert. One of Captain Buchanan's most readable chapters describes the exploit of a celebrated scout who, with a single native boy to help him, cut off a party of four Germans with a dozen Askaris (native Hoops) and captured a herd of 700 cattle which they were convoying into the German lines. The spectacular raid on Bukoba, on the great lake, and destruction of its big wireless plant, in June, 1915, was the first regular fight in which the 25th participated. After the arrival of
General Smuts's invading force the 25th played an important part in his operations and earned his warm praise. When the bulk of the white troops were withdrawn in the concluding stages of the campaign, the Frontiersmen were left behind, and, as Lord Cranworth explains in his interesting "Foreword," showed their unique qualities to even greater advantage :
"There is one point of view," he writes, " that I would like to put before readers in estimating the debt that those of us who live in Africa owe to these men—and that is this : when once the coastal belt was reached, and after the departure of General Smuts and practically all his South African fighting troops, it became apparent that European infantry, generally speaking, could no longer compete on even terms with the native soldier. The handicap of climate became too great. The European could no longer stand marching under a load, and more than that, the continual fever and sun sapped the ' essential guts,' so that it became almost impossible for white troops to meet the German-African troops—led, of course, by trained and well-fed German officers and N.C.O.'s—with any fair prospect of success. Such a fact boded ill for the future prestige of the white race. Yet it may be said that the Fusiliers soared triumphant even over this handicap ; and they can boast, without fear of contradiction, that up to the very end no German field company would look with other than apprehension to meeting the 25th on even terms. I have always felt that the prowess and endurance of these fine men during these last months have done more to uphold our prestige and ensure the firm future of our rule than is likely to be adequately realized."
Lord Cranworth also gives a sound appreciation of the military reasons which enabled the Germans to make so pro longed a resistance in East Africa. In the first place, they had in Lettow-Vorbeck " an outstanding personality and a soldier whose merit it is hard to over-estimate." This brilliant leader— whom one is the more willing to praise because his military record is admitted to be free from the stains which besmirched that of too many German officers in the late war—deserves great credit for the courage and ability with which he contrived to hold out until the Armistice), practically without assistance from Germany. Secondly, in East Africa as in other theatres the Germans had the great advantage of being prepared for war : " They had ready, at a conservative estimate, 2,000 to 3,000 trained whites and 8,000 native troops, with some 70 machine-guns and 40 guns. Against this we had in British East Africa about 700 native soldiers and 2 machine-guns, one of which was out of action, and not more than 100 whites with any military experience at all. This force might possibly have been duplicated in Nyasaland."
Further, the natives of German East Africa are fighting races who furnish splendid material for soldiery, whereas the natives of British East Africa are for the most part agriculturists by nature, and of little or no use in battle. As elsewhere, the
Germans had the incalculable advantages of unity of command and interior lines, whereas the Allied forces were disposed along
a lengthy perimeter almost devoid of communications and were under four or five different commands ; even General Northey's Nyasaland force was not under the British Commander-in Chief. In regard to equipment the Germans had much the best of it, in spite of the difficulty of getting further supplies. Lord. Cranworth, who is a gunner, tells us that in the latter part of 1916 a German prisoner, being taken past one of our artillery parks, remarked : " The movable armament from the Ark, I should imagine." Lettow-Vorbeck's naval guns, 41 howitzers, and Q.F. mountain guns were far ahead of anything in our possession. And yet the Germans asserted that we prepared the war in order to deprive them of their colonies We always knew that they thought us fools, but can they seriously have thought us such improvident fools as that ?
Previous page
