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Discovering Diverse Content Through
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held a parade of details from all companies that could be spared
from the firing-line, and decorated 3926 Regimental Sergeant-Major
Manasara Kanjaga, 4388 Battery Sergeant-Major Bukari Moshi, and
Sergeant Palpukah Grumah with Distinguished Conduct Medals
which had been awarded to them for services rendered in the
Kamerun Campaign.
The strength of the Regiment on the 31st December, 1916, after
the reinforcements above mentioned had been received, amounted
to 19 officers, 14 British non-commissioned officers, 10 clerks and
dressers, 860 rank and file, 444 gun, ammunition, and transport
carriers, 34 servants, and 48 stretcher-bearers, making a total of
1429 officers and men of all ranks.
During the first week of January, 1917, the Regiment continued to
occupy the ridge to the north-west of the Mtumbei Juu mission
station, and on the left of the road leading to Kibata, sending out
frequent patrols, which collected some useful information, and came
on more than one occasion into touch with the enemy. The latter,
meanwhile, had sustained a fairly severe check at the hands of
General O’Grady’s force, which, from the ridge occupied by it to the
eastward of the Kibata mission station, had delivered a very
successful night attack upon the extreme left of the enemy’s
position.
On the 8th January, information having been received that large
bodies of the enemy had left and were leaving the area by the road
to Mwengei—a village over the hills directly to the north of Kibata—
Colonel Rose decided to make a reconnaissance in force in order to
try to reach this road, and to retake Gold Coast Hill. At an early hour
of the day, therefore, he proceeded with 250 rifles from A and B
Company, with the Battery and with the 24th Mountain Battery,
along the high ridge overlooking Gold Coast Hill, of which mention
has already been made, starting from the north-westerly extremity
of the ridge which the Regiment had been holding. Owing, however,
to the extremely difficult character of the country through which his
way led, he was not able to reach a suitable place from which to
begin operations until late in the afternoon.
 At 6.30 on the following morning Major Goodwin began to push
forward along the ridge which commanded Gold Coast Hill from the
north-west. No opposition was met with, and a patrol which was
sent out to reconnoitre Gold Coast Hill reported that it had been
evacuated by the enemy. This was later confirmed by Lieutenant
Downer, who had reached Gold Coast Hill by the old route from
Harman’s Kopje, which the Regiment had followed on the 15th
December.
Other patrols were sent forward and reached the Mwengei road,
effecting a junction with the 2nd King’s African Rifles and the 129th
Baluchis, who had been operating from Kibata. The fact of the
enemy’s retreat was now established, the whole area being clear of
hostile forces; but the day being far advanced, Colonel Rose camped
for the night at One-Stick Hill, so named from a conspicuous white
palm-tree on its crest, in a position of extraordinary strength which
had been established by the Germans, and from which it was
obvious most of the heavy howitzer, rifle, and machine-gun fire
poured upon Gold Coast Hill on the 15th December had come.
On the 10th January the reconnoitring party returned to
Regimental Headquarters viâ Gold Coast Hill and the main road from
Kibata to Mtumbei Juu Mission, while active patrolling of the Kibata-
Mwengei road began.
On this day word was received that Captain Poyntz had been
awarded the Military Cross, Colour-Sergeant Campbell the
Distinguished Conduct Medal, and Lance-Corporal Sully Ibadan the
Military Medal for their meritorious services in the engagement on
the 15th December.
During the next few days points of strategic importance were
occupied, and patrols were sent out in various directions. By one of
these, which was furnished by the 40th Pathans, two white German
prisoners were brought in, one of whom was a certain Major von
Bompkin, and the other a gunner from the Koenigsberg, decorated
with the Iron Cross. Major von Bompkin had been second-in-
command to von Lettow-Vorbeck, but after the British had forced
their way into the Uluguru Mountains at the beginning of the
preceding September, he had headed a deputation to the German
Commander-in-Chief, representing to him that enough had been
done for honour, and that further resistance was useless and a mere
waste of human lives. Von Lettow-Vorbeck’s reply was forthwith to
degrade him to the rank of a mere patrol commander; and at the
time of his capture von Bompkin was in charge of a party of only six
men. He had apparently taken the harsh treatment meted out to him
in a fine soldierly spirit, and as a patrol leader had shown great
daring and enterprise. For instance, on one occasion he had passed
the greater part of the night in the middle of the camp occupied by
the 40th Pathans, sheltering himself from the rain in the officers’
latrine. At dawn he had run into a very sleepy officer of the
regiment, who failed to recognize him as an enemy in the uncertain
light, and he had thereafter made good his retreat, carrying with him
the detailed information of which he had come in search.
On the 20th January the Regiment moved down the mountain by
the main road to Kitambi, Colonel Rose returning to Mtumbei Juu
mission station in the afternoon. He came back to Kitambi on the
following day with the staff of the 3rd East African Brigade, to the
command of which he had been temporarily appointed; and on the
22nd January he left for Ngarambi Chini, a place situated some
twenty miles due west of Kibata. Major Goodwin took over the
command of the Gold Coast Regiment with effect from the 21st
January.
 CHAPTER V
IN THE KILWA AREA—IN THE SOUTHERN VALLEY
OF THE LOWER RUFIJI

On the 26th January, 1917, the Regiment, under the command of

Major Goodwin, left Kitambi for Ngarambi Chini, and reached its
destination next day, after camping for the night on the road at
Namatwe, a spot distant fourteen and a half miles from the former
place. From this point the roads in the neighbourhood were regularly
patrolled; and on the 31st January the Regiment moved to Kiyombo
—a place some six miles north of Ngarambi Chini—where the
brigade camp was established. From the 29th January to the 6th
February A and B Companies were detached from the Regiment, and
were stationed first at Namburage and later at a place on the banks
of the Lugomya River, to which the name of Greene’s Post was
given. From all these points, the work of patrolling the roads in the
vicinity was regularly carried out; and on the 3rd February
Lieutenant Shields, with Colour-Sergeant Nelson, 50 rank and file
and 1 machine-gun, were sent out on this duty from Njimbwe,
where the Pioneer Company was then on a detached post, along the
road leading to Utete. It should be noted that the Utete here
mentioned is not the largish town on the right bank of the Rufiji
River which bears that name, but a much smaller place situated
about eleven miles north of Kiyombo.
 KIBATA AND NGARAMBI AREA

The patrol under Lieutenant Shields had orders to meet a patrol of

the King’s African Rifles from Kiwambi at a point some nine miles
from Njimbwe, but he had proceeded along the road leading to
Utete for a distance of only about a mile and a half when the
advance point sent back to report that they had seen a group of
about ten German Askari on the eastern or right side of the track. It
was a favourite trick of the Germans at this time to dress themselves
and their native soldiers in kit belonging to the British which had
fallen into their hands, and thus to occasion confusion as to who was
friend and who was foe. The country through which Lieutenant
Shields was patrolling was for the most part of a fairly open
character, though it was covered with rank grass, set pretty thickly
with trees, and studded here and there with patches of underwood.
The party of the enemy had only been glimpsed for a moment, but
as Lieutenant Shields went forward at once, followed or
accompanied by Colour-Sergeant Nelson, a white man, dressed like
an officer of the King’s African Rifles, appeared at a little distance
ahead of the advance point, crying out in English, “Don’t fire! we are
K.A.R.’s.” Lieutenant Shields, who was very short-sighted, taken in by
this treacherous ruse, bade his men not fire, and the enemy, who
appear to have been about 200 strong with many Europeans among
them, thereupon poured a volley into the patrol from the bush at
very short range. This was followed by the blowing of bugles and an
assault. Lieutenant Shields and Colour-Sergeant Nelson were both
shot, as also was the corporal in charge of the machine-gun while
trying to bring his piece into action. A German who attempted to
approach Shields as he lay on the ground was shot by a man of the
Gold Coast Regiment, and the rest of the machine-gun team
managed to get their gun away safely. The patrol, however, had to
retire in disorder, and in addition to the casualties already
enumerated 8 rank and file were missing and were afterwards
ascertained to have been killed, while 2 stretcher-bearers were
wounded, and 1 machine-gun carrier, 1 transport-carrier and 2
stretcher-bearers were also missing. The patrol further lost 3 boxes
of small-arm ammunition, 6 machine-gun belts, 2 stretchers and a
medical haversack.
It was Lieutenant Shields, it will be remembered, who held the
advanced post on the ridge beyond the summit of Gold Coast Hill
during those soul-searching hours between 11 a.m. and dusk on the
15th December. It seemed a tragedy that this gallant young officer,
who had come unscathed through the ordeal of that day, and who
had earned for himself a high reputation for coolness and courage,
should lose his life in the paltry wayside ambush above described.
George Hilliard Shields was at the outbreak of war a member of
the Education Department of the Gold Coast, and held the post of
headmaster of the Government Boys’ School at Accra. He had earlier
filled a scholastic post in Raffles’ Institute at Singapore: and in the
Gold Coast he distinguished himself by passing the very difficult
interpreter’s examination in the Ga language. Like so many Gold
Coast civilians, Mr. Shields early volunteered for active service, but it
was not found possible to release him from civil employment until
the Regiment was ordered to East Africa in the middle of 1916. He
will long be remembered in Accra for the excellent and manly
influence which he exerted over the boys who were under his
tutelage.
At 1.30 p.m. a standing patrol was sent forward to the Kibega
River on the Unguara road, where it entrenched itself. Shortly
afterwards a small enemy patrol appeared on the road to the south
of this post and was fired upon. The men composing it bolted into
the bush, their porters dropping their loads, which turned out to be
part of the small-arms ammunition lost by Lieutenant Shields earlier
in the day. Later in the afternoon the enemy returned and,
supported by three maxims, attacked the post. The patrol of the
Regiment held on for a while, but finding itself outnumbered, retired
through the bush to the camp at Njimbwe, losing one man.
On the 4th February, the Regiment left the camp at Kiyombo and
moved forward to Njimbwe, which lies about five miles to the north,
where the 40th Pathans presently joined them; and from here, as
usual, small patrols were daily sent out along the roads in the
neighbourhood.
On the 5th February the Pioneer Company and the Battery left
Njimbwe at 5.30 a.m., in the midst of a terrific thunderstorm, for the
purpose of supporting the 2nd Battalion of the 2nd Regiment of the
King’s African Rifles, who were about to deliver an attack upon two
German camps, both of which overlooked the Ngarambi-Utete road.
They came in contact with an enemy post, which was quickly
dislodged, and they subsequently joined up with the King’s African
Rifles, only to learn that the elusive enemy had abandoned his
camps.
The detachment camped for the night with the King’s African
Rifles at the junction of the road to Utete with another track; and as
a token that the dry season was now fairly over, heavy rain fell with
melancholy persistency during all the hours of darkness. The men,
of course, had no shelter save such as they had been able to
improvise for themselves on the preceding evening; and there are,
perhaps, few more dreary or depressing experiences than that of
lying out all night under the relentless beat of a steady tropical
downpour. The cold felt has little in common with the brisk, keen
cold of a frosty day or that met with at a high altitude; but it has
certain raw and penetrating properties, and the discomfort becomes
hourly more acute, while at every moment the puddles suck and
squelch beneath you, and fresh streams of colder water flow in from
unexpected directions to chill you to the bone.
At 8 a.m. on the following morning—February 6th—the
detachment left its comfortless bivouac, and marched and waded
back to Njimbwe over a shockingly bad track, which the heavy rain
of the night before had reduced to a quagmire and in places had
flooded to a depth of two feet. The detachment had hardly got into
camp when some carriers, who had been out searching for fuel, ran
in with the news that the enemy was approaching. An attack quickly
followed, the enemy taking up a line from south-east to west, and
approaching in places to within 200 yards of the camp. The surprise
was complete, and some of the men of the 40th Pathans, who were
outside the perimeter when the attack began, were unfortunately
injured by their own machine-gun fire. The enemy, however, was not
in any great strength, and he had evidently not realized that he was
attacking so large a force. When he discovered the situation he drew
off somewhat hastily, and was hotly pursued for over a mile. Only a
few of the attacking force were seen, but among them an European
was observed wearing a King’s African Rifles hat and flash, and two
Askari, one with a turban and one with the green knitted cap which
is part of the service kit of the men of the Gold Coast Regiment. The
casualties sustained by the latter were 1 man killed, 3 wounded, 1
gun-carrier and 5 transport-carriers wounded, and 1 Gold Coast
Volunteer missing, of whom nothing was ever subsequently heard.
The 40th Pathans lost 6 men killed and 18 wounded, while the
known enemy losses were 10 men wounded, including 1 European.
Immediately after this incident, Captain Harman took out a patrol to
repair the telephone-line, which had been cut, while for some time
previously it had been frequently tapped by the enemy.
The next few days were occupied in patrolling the roads in the
neighbourhood of the camp; and on the 9th February the bodies of
Lieutenant Shields, Colour-Sergeant Nelson, and of eight soldiers,
who had been killed on the Utete road on the 3rd February, were
discovered. A burial party was sent out, and the bodies of Lieutenant
Shields and Colour-Sergeant Nelson were brought back to the camp,
where the burial service was read by the Rev. Captain Nicholl, and
Holy Communion was celebrated.
For some weeks past the men of the Regiment had been suffering
very acutely from lack of sufficient food. Not only was the supply
inadequate, but much of the stuff sent up had to be condemned as
quite unfit for human consumption. Many of the men were terribly
emaciated, and some eighty of them were subsequently sent to
hospital suffering from starvation. Had the Regiment not had the
good fortune to find a few food plots planted with cassava, things
would have been even worse than they were. The officers would
have fared no better had not some of them chanced to possess a
slender stock of European provisions, which they shared in common;
but the officers of a neighbouring mess had to live for weeks upon
nothing but mealie porridge, which they consumed at frequent
intervals throughout the day, as they found it impossible to eat at a
sitting enough of this filling but unsatisfying stuff to allay their
hunger for more than a few hours.
The discipline of the men of the Gold Coast Regiment under this
prolonged and trying ordeal was beyond all praise. They had
followed their white officers across the sea to this unknown land,
where they had endured cold such as they had never dreamed of,
where they had been grilled by the sun and parched by
unappeasable thirst. They had plodded manfully up hill and down
dale, across barren, arid flats, and had waded through a water-
logged country. Whenever and wherever they had met the enemy
they had fought him like the fine soldiers they are, until the saying,
“The green caps never go back,” had passed into a proverb in the
German camp. Now in the heart of a dismal swamp, they were
slowly but surely starving. Yet never once did they murmur or blame
their officers.
During the next fortnight the Regiment remained in the camp at
Njimbwe, sending out patrols, some of which had difficulty in
preventing themselves from being cut off by the suddenly deepening
swamps, when a more than usually heavy downpour flooded the
low-lying land; squabbling with enemy forage-parties for possession
of the rare patches of cassava; taking an occasional prisoner; and
sustaining a few attacks upon its outposts. During one of the latter
incidents, on Valentine’s Day, Machine-gun Corporal Tinbela Busanga
behaved with great gallantry, working his gun, after he had been
badly wounded in the arm, until he was too faint with loss of blood
to carry on. On this day, though the enemy was driven off without
difficulty, two men of B Company were wounded. On another
occasion, a patrol of six men, under Corporal Amandu Fulani 4, was
ambushed and killed to a man, though not until they had made a
hard fight of it. Amandu Fulani, who was a very smart and gallant
young soldier, had been orderly to the Governor at Accra, but when
D Company was ordered to East Africa, he insisted upon
accompanying “his brothers.” When his body was found, it had been
stripped of his uniform, but a gunshot wound in the abdomen had
been bound up with his kamar-band. Though the enemy had
removed his casualties, there were abundant signs that the little
patrol had sold their lives dearly.
And during all this time the entry in the War Diary of the
Regiment, “Half Rations,” sounds its reiterated and despairing note.
On the 23rd February the Gold Coast Regiment moved out of
Njimbwe camp at daybreak, marched to Ngarambi Chini, which was
reached at 2 p.m., and where an hour’s halt was called. The march
was continued till 6 p.m., at which time Namatewa was reached. The
distance traversed was a good twenty miles, which at any time is a
tough bit of work for a body of marching men, but though a few
swamps were met with the road was drier than might have been
expected. None the less, the men, in their then half-famished
condition, arrived very tired, and were glad to find that the Pioneer
Company, which had gone on in advance, had got a comfortable
camp ready for their reception, and had succeeded in finding
excellent water. This latter feat had been performed, not for the first
time, by Corporal Musa Fra-Fra, a native of the North-Eastern
Province of the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast. This man
seemed to possess some strange instinct which enabled him
unerringly to discover water if such were to be obtained anywhere
by digging or otherwise; and though he obstinately refused to reveal
his secret or to show any one how to perform similar miracles,
frequent use was made of his strange faculty by the officers of the
Pioneer Company during the campaign in East Africa.
From this point the Regiment marched by fairly easy stages to
Kitambi, at the foot of the hills, to Mtumbei Chini, Chemera, and
Mitole, where it arrived on the 27th February, and went into camp to
reorganize and recuperate. The men had richly earned a period of
rest, for they had been continuously on the march or on active
service ever since their arrival at Kilindini, in British East Africa,
exactly seven months earlier.
Colonel R. A. de B. Rose, D.S.O., who had actively commanded the
Regiment ever since the end of August, 1914, who had served with
it throughout the Kameruns campaign before bringing it to East
Africa, and who since January 20th had been in command of a
column, was made a Brevet Lieutenant-Colonel with effect from the
1st January, 1917, to the great satisfaction of the officers and men.

This pause in the Regiment’s activities, though it was not destined

to prove of any long duration, may be taken as providing a
convenient opportunity briefly to review the general military situation
as it stood at the end of the wet season of 1917. The rains in the
lower valley of the Rufiji River began this year early in February, and
in the ordinary course they might be expected to last until late in
May, the commencement of the dry season in tropical East Africa
usually synchronizing more or less accurately with the breaking of
the south-west monsoon upon the shores of Ceylon on the other
side of the Indian Ocean.
As we have seen, the drive from north to south, which had been
begun in earnest in the preceding August, and for participation in
which the Gold Coast Regiment had arrived just in time, had had the
effect of expelling the enemy first from the country between the
Tanga-Moschi and the Dar-es-Salaam-Lake Tanganyika railways, and
later from the country between the last-named line and the Rufiji.
Once across this river, a further retreat to the south became for the
enemy almost a necessity; and when he found that he could not
establish his winter headquarters in the highlands about Kibata
mission station, he seems to have broken his forces up into
comparatively small parties, and while keeping in touch with the
troops on the southern side of the Rufiji, who were under General
Hannyngton’s command, to have worked steadily south, living on the
country as far as possible, and gradually making his way out of the
water-logged areas amid which he had been overtaken by the break-
up of the dry weather early in February.
Von Lettow-Vorbeck, the German Commander-in-Chief, who
throughout was the living soul of the resistance offered to the
British, was not a man who believed in doing things by halves, and
when he found that the valley of the Rufiji was untenable, he
established his main headquarters nearly two hundred miles further
to the south of that river, at a place lying within thirty-five miles of
the Rovuma, which is the boundary between erstwhile German and
Portuguese East Africa. The spot chosen was the mission station at
Massassi, which is pleasantly situated at a height of 1500 feet above
sea-level, and is a point at which the principal roads running through
the south-eastern portion of the territory cross one another. The
main road from the port of Lindi, which runs in a south-westerly
direction to Makotschera on the Rovuna, and there effects a junction
with the main road which skirts the northern bank of that river from
Sassaware to its mouth, crosses at Massassi the main road from
Newala on the south-east, which runs in a north-westerly direction
to Liwale, and thence almost due north to the Rufiji River at Mikesse.
From Liwale, moreover, another main road runs in a north-easterly
direction to the sea at Kilwa Kivinje, and west by south to Songea—
itself a point of junction of an elaborate road-system—and thence
due west to Wiedhafen on the shores of Lake Tanganyika.
Even in this campaign, it should be noted, the influence of British
sea-power made itself felt, for though some supplies are known to
have reached the enemy in spite of the naval blockade, the
command of the sea had enabled General Hannyngton’s force to be
slipped in behind the retreating Germans viâ Kilwa, and had shown
to von Lettow-Vorbeck the danger he ran of being cut off or
surrounded by troops rapidly transported by sea to some spot south
of the scene of his land operations. Apart from the commanding
position which Massassi occupied as the key-point of the main lines
of communication by land in this part of the country, and from its
convenient proximity to the German-Portuguese boundary, its
selection as von Lettow-Vorbeck’s main headquarters during the
1917 campaign was probably due to the fact that it could not easily
be outflanked by troops conveyed further to the south by sea. With
his main headquarters established at this point, moreover, and with
all the principal highways in this part of the country at his immediate
disposal, he could freely raid the districts to the north in which the
scattered British forces were strongly established, and could occupy
and hold, as long as it paid him to occupy and hold them, points of
vantage such as Liwale, which could conveniently be used as his
advance bases.
The German troops must have suffered considerably during the
months immediately following their expulsion from the country north
of the Rufiji, though it is doubtful whether they were called upon to
endure a greater measure of physical discomfort or more acute
starvation than that which fell to the lot of the Gold Coast Regiment
and the 40th Pathans in their water-logged camp at Njimbwe, or to
that of the Nigerian Brigade—which had now arrived in East Africa—
and which, while holding with other troops the northern bank of the
Rufiji during all that dismal rainy season, went lamentably short of
everything save water, of which there was always an odious
superfluity.
The fidelity of the German native soldiers at this period, and the
fact that so few of them voluntarily surrendered to the British, have
been quoted in certain ill-informed quarters as providing a striking
testimony to the affection which the Germans are alleged to have
inspired in the native population of East Africa. Subscription to any
such opinion argues a complete misunderstanding of the military
system which the Germans erected in their African colonies. It had
for its basic principle the establishment among the native population
of an isolated caste, whose members were not only allowed, but
were actively encouraged, to assert their superiority over the rest of
the inhabitants of the country, who, where a soldier was concerned,
ceased to have any rights of person or of property, and could look
for no redress when it was an Askari who had maltreated them. It
will be remembered that in the German mind, as it was revealed to a
disgusted world in August and September, 1914, there existed a
strange confusion of thought, which drew no distinction between
fear of physical violence and the respect inspired by noble qualities.
Thus it was openly declared by the German High Command that the
organized bestialities practised in Belgium would cause the whole
world “to respect the German soldier.” It was this characteristic
confusion of ideas which led the Germans in their African colonies to
seek to inspire the native population with a proper spirit of “respect”
for their white rulers, by placing every ruffian who wore the Kaiser’s
uniform above the law, and by bestowing upon him a free hand in so
far as the treatment of the rest of the native population was
concerned. An example may be cited, which is drawn from the
personal knowledge of the present writer. In September, 1913, a
German native soldier in the employment of the Togoland
Government shot an old woman—a British subject—for an unwitting
breach of quarantine regulations, and having shot her, proceeded to
club her to death with the butt-end of his rifle Protests were duly
made to the then Governor of Togoland, Duke Adolf Freidrich of
Mecklenburg, and assurances were given that suitable notice had
been taken of the incident. Yet when the British occupied Lome, the
capital of Togoland, less than a year later, the culprit was found not
even to have been sentenced to a term of imprisonment.
During the earlier part of the campaign, and as far as possible up
to the very end, everything was done to mark the superiority of the
Askari over the rest of African mankind. They were provided with
carriers who were, to all intents and purposes, their bondsmen and
body-servants, their very rifles being carried for the soldiers when on
the line of march and at a secure distance from the enemy. For their
use a commando of women, under military escort, was marched
about the country—a luxury with which the German officers also
were for the most part plentifully provided; and, in fact, no stone
was left unturned to impress upon the men themselves and upon
the rest of the native population that the Askari were a Chosen
People in whose presence no dog must presume to bark.
The inevitable effect of this system was that the hand of every
civilian native throughout the German colonies in Africa was against
the Askari, and when war broke out these native soldiers were
unable, even if they had been willing to risk so hazardous an
experiment, to melt back into the native population from whom they
had been completely differentiated and isolated, and whose undying
hatred they had earned in good measure, shaken together, pressed
down, and running over. Their only safety lay in holding together,
and in maintaining as long as possible the tottering military system
to which they owed alike their past privileges and their present
imminent danger of death at the hands of an enemy, or of still worse
things if they fell into the clutches of their outraged countrymen.
Toward the end of 1916 a number of captured Askari were sent back
to British East Africa, and were there incorporated in a battalion of
the King’s African Rifles. The reputation which they there won for
themselves is instructive—excellent on parade, but a most violent
and undisciplined crew when off duty, who in their relations with the
native population respected the laws neither of God nor of man.
It was due to the German system, it is true, that the Askari
remained faithful to their white masters, but the reasons which
inspired this fidelity are to the last degree discreditable to Germany
and to her conception of the manner in which an European nation
should “co-operate in the work of civilization”[2] among a primitive
people in a distant land.

2. It was a British Prime Minister who declared, speaking during

the early eighties of the nineteenth century, that if Germany desired
colonies, “Great Britain would welcome her co-operation in the work
of civilization.”
 CHAPTER VI
IN THE KILWA AREA—MNASI AND RUMBO

During the month of March, 1917, the main body of the Regiment
lay in camp at Mitole, undergoing company training, and sending out
frequent small patrols along the roads in the neighbourhood. The
Depôt Company still remained at Mpara, between Kilwa Kivinje and
Kilwa Kisiwani, the latter being the port at which the Regiment had
landed when it was transported south by sea from Dar-es-Salaam in
the preceding November. B Company was dispatched to hold a post
at a place variously called Kirongo and Nivanga, which lies almost
due west from Mnasi a few miles up a track that leads from the main
Kilwa Kivinje-Liwale road, to Njijo, whence the main road from Kilwa
Kivinje runs northward to Kitambi. A post consisting of one officer
and twenty men of the Pioneer Company was also established at
Nigeri-geri, near the junction of the main roads from Kitambi and
Liwale, and on March 26th the whole company was sent there. On
the 25th March the post at Nivanga, which was protecting a party
working on the Chemera road, was attacked by an enemy patrol,
which was driven off without difficulty, but two men of A Company
were wounded.
On the 3rd April, the Regiment left Mitole, and marching across
country along a vile track till the main highway leading from Kilwa
Kivinje to Liwale was encountered, reached Mnasi on the following
day, and proceeded to establish a camp there. Mnasi lies on the
main road above mentioned and is distant about three-and-twenty
miles from Kilwa Kivinje. Here two wells, dug by the Germans and
cased with brick, were found, but they contained no water. B
Company was separated from the rest of the Regiment at this time,
being still stationed at Kirongo.
Very early in the morning of April 11th, a bush native came into
camp and reported that another native, who had come into
Makangaga from the south on the preceding evening, had brought
word that the enemy was at Likawage, rather more than thirty miles
to the south of Mnasi, and that two companies, over two hundred
strong, were marching down the road to that place. Makangaga lies
south-east of Mnasi and is distant barely four miles from that place.
Accordingly Lieutenant Kinley, with seventy-five rank and file and
one machine-gun, was at once dispatched to make an attempt to
ambush the advancing enemy.
This little band proceeded up the road to Makangaga, and passing
through that village, sought some point of vantage from whence to
attack the enemy as he marched down the road. For once men of
the Gold Coast Regiment, whose patrols had so often been harassed
by an elusive and invisible enemy, were to have a chance of
subjecting a German force to a similarly unpalatable experience.
The country, however, was for the most part a dead flat, broken
only by gentle undulations, and now, toward the end of the rains, it
was covered with a new growth of tall grass, very thick and lush. In
these circumstances, it was not possible to find any spot which
actually overlooked the road and was at the same time securely
concealed from the observation of the enemy’s advanced points.
Lieutenant Kinley, however, took careful note of the lie of the land,
and led his little force into the high grass, where he drew it up in as
compact a line as possible in a position parallel to the highway, and
distant some sixty or seventy yards from it. Here the machine-gun
was set up, and the men, breathless with expectation and
excitement, lay down and waited.
Presently the sound of a large body of men marching down the
road became audible; and Lieutenant Kinley, reserving his fire until
he judged that the main body of the enemy was in his immediate
front, let the Germans have it with rifle and machine-gun for all his
little force was worth. An indescribable uproar ensued, while enemy
bullets whistled in every direction above the heads of Kinley’s men;
and presently it became obvious that the Germans were rushing into
the long grass upon a wide front to counter-attack their assailants.
Fearing to be enveloped by the greatly superior force which he
had had the hardihood to ambush, Lieutenant Kinley ceased fire,
rapidly moved his men to the rear and toward one of the enemy’s
flanks, and from thence repeated his former tactics. Another wild
hooroosh was the result, and for perhaps a quarter of an hour, the
Germans and the little band of Gold Coasters played an exciting
game of hide and seek, each being completely hidden from the
other by the ten-foot screen of grass, and being compelled to trust
purely to the sounds that reached them to determine the direction of
their fire. At the end of that time a luckless band of Germans,
composed of Europeans and natives, wandered into view, walking
along a path within a few yards of a spot in which Lieutenant Kinley
and his breathless men were lying. Very few of the enemy survived
this encounter; and Lieutenant Kinley considering that he had now
done as much damage as he would be able to effect without running
too great a risk of himself being enveloped and cut off, extricated his
small force with considerable skill, and led it back to the camp at
Mnasi.
In this brilliant little encounter six men of the Gold Coast Regiment
were killed, six were wounded, and one fell into the hands of the
enemy. The latter lost three white men and fifteen Askari killed, and
over thirty wounded; and the Gold Coast Regiment, remembering
the fate of Lieutenant Shields and Colour-Sergeant Nelson and their
men, had the satisfaction of feeling that, to use the phrase of the
officers’ mess, “they had got back some of their own.”
On the 13th April the enemy sent in a flag of truce, and restored
to the Gold Coast Regiment four of the men who had been wounded
during Lieutenant Kinley’s action on the 11th April. The bearer of the
flag of truce admitted the heavy losses which the enemy had
sustained on that occasion. For his daring little exploit, Lieutenant
Kinley was recommended by Colonel Rose, who was still
commanding the 3rd East African Brigade, for a Distinguished
Service Order.
 On the 15th April, the Regiment made a nine hours’ march over a
villainous track to Migeri-geri, which is situated on the main road
thirteen and a half miles from Kilwa, where a new camp was
established; and on the 17th of April Lieutenant Beech with a patrol
of fifty rank and file and one machine-gun marched along the Mnasi
road to investigate the cutting of the telegraph wire. He met a patrol
of B Company, with whom was the agent of the Intelligence
Department, and they shortly afterwards had a brush with an enemy
patrol, B Company losing one man killed and one wounded; but the
enemy was driven off and the telegraph line repaired.
On the same day, Captain Foley with the Battery and an escort of
thirty rank and file of A Company, joined a force, commanded by the
Colonel of the 40th Pathans, which was operating in the direction of
Mnasi; the Gold Coast Regiment took over the outposts hitherto held
by the Pathans; Captain Greene and the Pioneer Company joined the
Regiment in camp; and at 7 p.m. a cable party was sent out to
restore communication with the Officer Commanding the Pathans at
Rumbo, a place about five miles south by east of Migeri-geri.
On the following day the Battery and its escort, under the
command of Captain Foley, came in for a pretty hot engagement at
Rumbo, where they were in action with the 40th Pathans and 150
men of the 2nd Battalion of the 2nd Regiment of the King’s African
Rifles. It was the 40th Pathans, it will be remembered, who took
over Gold Coast Hill from the Regiment at dusk on the 15th
December, and throughout the campaign they had fought with
steadfastness and courage. Their casualties, both in the field and
from sickness, had been very severe, however, and their numerical
strength had recently been made up by large drafts of raw recruits
from India, the bulk of whom were not drawn from the strata of the
population which, in the past, have always supplied men for the 40th
Pathans. Precisely what happened on this day does not concern us
here. That the veterans of the 40th Pathans fought gallantly is
attested by the fact that of one of their machine-gun teams every
man was killed at his post, but the rest of the story can best be
confined to the experiences of the Battery of the Gold Coast
Regiment and of its commander.
 On the 18th April Captain Foley got his guns into position, in order
to cover and support the infantry advance, at a point across the
Ngaura River in the neighbourhood of Rumbo. The stream, in which
the water was on that day nearly chin-deep, was behind him, and
the camp of the force which Colonel Tyndall of the 40th Pathans was
commanding lay in the bush on the further bank. The country was
covered by pretty dense trees and scrub, and all that the guns could
do was to shell the area in which the enemy was believed to be
concealed. After this had been going on for some time, the Battery
trumpeter, Nuaga Kusasi, approached Captain Foley and reported
that there were no British soldiers in front or on the flanks of the
Battery, and that the men moving in the bush, barely thirty yards
ahead, were the enemy. Captain Foley was incredulous, but Nuaga
Kusasi insisted, and stating that he could see a German officer, put
up his rifle and fired at him. Immediately the bush ahead of the
guns was seen to be alive with enemy Askari.
The men of the Battery, and the thirty men of A Company which
formed its escort, behaved admirably, and Bogoberi, one of the gun-
carriers, drew his matchet and declared that he and his fellows
would charge the enemy with those weapons before the guns should
be touched. His example was followed by all the other gun-carriers,
who were enlisted men drawn from the same tribes as the soldiers.
These things happened in the space of a few seconds, and already
Captain Foley had taken complete charge of the situation, his fluency
in Hausa making it easy for him to give his orders clearly and rapidly.
He bade the Battery Sergeant-Major retire the two guns and all the
ammunition across the river, and then dividing his small force, which
was composed of the thirty men of A Company and about a dozen
men of the Battery, he placed half under the Sergeant-Major of A
Company and the rest under Sergeant Mahmadu Moshi of the
Battery. These non-commissioned officers successively led charges
into the bush, whence, barely twenty yards away, the enemy were
firing upon Foley’s men. This had its immediate effect, and Foley
next retired half his little party a few yards to the rear, while the rest
emptied their magazine rifles into the bush occupied by the enemy.
The party in advance then retired at the double through the men
behind them, and in their turn took up a position from which to
cover the retreat of their fellows. In this manner the enemy, who
were in greatly superior force, were successfully kept at bay, while
Sergeant-Major Bukare Moshi retired the two guns to the further
bank of the river, an operation which was so successfully conducted
that, in spite of the deep water, it was performed with the loss of
only one box of ammunition. One gunner and three men of A
Company were killed, and three gun-carriers were wounded; but the
guns were saved, and the great coolness and skill with which
Captain Foley handled his men, and the pluck, steadfastness, and
resource which the latter showed, won the special praise of Colonel
Tyndall of the 40th Pathans. The action of the Battery on this
occasion did much to avert what at one time threatened to be a
serious disaster. Later in the day Captain Shaw, with two hundred
men of A and B Companies, marched to Rumbo to reinforce the 40th
Pathans.
The feat thus accomplished was one of quite extraordinary
difficulty. The river-crossing at this point, even in the dry season, is
by no means easy, for the banks, which are some ten feet in height,
rise sheer from the bed and had been worn smooth by the passage
of much running water. On this particular day, however, the stream
was a raging torrent and the steep banks were as slippery as ice.
That, in these circumstances, the passage of the guns and
ammunition should have been effected with such expedition and
success shows what human effort is capable of achieving in
moments of intense excitement.
During the action just described, Lieutenant Murray, R.N., who was
in command of a naval Lewis gun section, had all the men of his
team either killed or wounded. He then attached himself to Captain
Foley, rendering him valuable assistance, and refusing himself to
cross the stream until the last of the Battery had passed over in
safety.
Captain Macpherson, in command of I Company, was also in
action during this day at a place called Beaumont’s Post, which was
situated near the banks of the Magaura river, on a track that runs
parallel to the coast, but well out of sight of the sea, to the east and
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