The 2nd
Battalion The Loyal North Lancashire Regiment in East Africa 1914-1917
(Harry sent me this article with a fantastic selection of Photographs. Many of us are used to visiting the battlefields on the Western Front which can range from an industrial farm on the Belgian border to a hillside at Verdun... I am sure you will agree, none of these can match the beauty of the battlefields in East Africa. To crop the photos to include them with the text would not have done them justice so I have kept the photos with the main article to a minimum, and created 2 pages where you can enjoy the Photos in a larger size. Page 1 HERE, Page 2 HERE, Maps HERE)
‘The
Loyal North Lancashires, too, have borne the heat and burden of the day from
the first disastrous landing at Tanga. Always exceedingly well disciplined, they
yield to none in the amount of solid unrewarded work done in this campaign.’
From Robert Valentine Dolbey’s: Sketches of the East African Campaign.
The Battalion in 1914
When the Great War started in August 1914
the 2nd Battalion of the Loyal North Lancashire Regiment (2LNL) was
one of the 52 British Regular Army Battalions serving in India and Burma; 2LNL
was stationed at Bangalore in southern India.
Most British Regular Army units were soon despatched to various war
theatres and British Territorial Army units were sent to replace them in
India.
British East Africa (BEA - now named
Kenya) had the large hostile territory of German East Africa (GEA - now named
Tanzania) on its southern border, and troops from India were despatched to East
Africa. Indian Expeditionary Force ‘C’,
commanded by Brigadier General L.J.M. Stewart CB, provided the first
reinforcements for BEA in September 1914 and the units in this force, all from
the Indian Army, were quickly in action protecting the railway line that ran
from the port of Mombasa on the Indian Ocean up to Kisumu on Lake Victoria;
this railway line was known as the Uganda Railway.
Then Indian Expeditionary Force ‘B’ (IEF
‘B’) was formed, under Brigadier General A.E. Aitken, to invade GEA and hopefully
knock it out of the war. All the units
in this force were from the Indian Army or from Indian Princely States,
excepting 2LNL which was the sole British Regular Army unit to serve in East
Africa during the Great War. IEF ‘B’
consisted of two infantry brigades - an Imperial Service Brigade (most of the
troops came from Princely States) commanded by Brigadier General M.J. Tighe CIE
DSO CB, and the Bangalore Brigade commanded by Brigadier General R. Wapshare
that contained 2LNL. Lieutenant Colonel
C.E.A. Jourdain DSO commanded 2LNL.
Additional troops, termed Divisional Troops, included a mountain
battery, a Pioneer battalion, railway construction and operating companies, and
an Imperial Service sapper and miner (field engineer) company.
Spalte 2
Above: Typical country fought over by 2nd Loyals on the shores of Lake Victoria
The Tanga Landings
In mid-October 1914 IEF ‘B’ sailed from
India for East Africa. India had already
found troops for France, Egypt and Mesopotamia and so the battalions allocated
to IEF ‘B’ were mostly inexperienced in military operations. At least one unit had not handled machine
guns before embarking, when the guns were delivered to the boat; also some
units that had never sailed before boarded their ships two weeks before final
departure from India. This confinement
aboard, with consequent poor and often non-ethnic rations, combined with
totally inadequate training on machine guns, the key weapon, did not bode well
for the future.
After a brief stop at Mombasa when only
senior and staff officers went ashore, the expeditionary ships sailed down the
coast to Tanga, a port in northern GEA and the terminal of the Usambara Railway
that started at Moshi in German territory overshadowed by Mount
Kilimanjaro. Meanwhile IEF ‘C’ was
tasked with a creating a diversion on the GEA-BEA border to the north-west that
would draw German attention away from Tanga.
The Royal Navy battleship HMS
Goliath had planned to accompany IEF ‘B’ to Tanga but the ship broke down
at Mombasa and so her 12-inch guns were not available to support the infantry
landing.
The landings at Tanga were delayed by the
Royal Navy’s insistence on warning the Germans there of the cancellation of an
unofficial truce that had not been ratified by London; General Aitken should
have insisted on immediate landings but he complacently believed that his
Indian troops would easily defeat the German African troops. The Germans in Tanga used the delay well,
they organised their local troops for defence and they informed their commander
in Moshi, Colonel Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, of the British arrival; von Lettow
immediately started sending reinforcements down the Usambara Railway to Tanga.
During the night 2nd-3rd
November 1915 the 13th Rajputs (The Shekhawati Regiment) and three
companies of the 61st (King George’s Own) Pioneers were landed at
Tanga and they advanced on the town at dawn.
General Aitken had ordered his mountain battery not to disembark as he
thought that the ground was unsuitable for its deployment, and he did not want
the navy to shell the town and destroy the buildings that he intended to
use. But the German 17th
Field Company was waiting for the British advance and it beat the two Indian
battalions back with effective machine gun fire. The German Schutztruppe, as the local GEA
army was named, was in fact a formidable fighting force that was well-armed
with machine guns manned by Europeans, whilst the riflemen were African Askari
recruited from the martial tribes of GEA; the Askari were not proficient
marksmen but they were adept at ferociously using their bayonets in the thick
bush that then covered most of East Africa.
The British landings continued and on 4th
November a British general advance was again made on Tanga town once all the
troops had been given breakfast; supporting fire came from the mountain battery
firing ineffectively from the deck of its ship.
Instead of using 2LNL as his reserve to exploit suitable situations as
they developed, General Aitken placed the battalion in the centre of his
attacking line. The advance was through
bush and agricultural plantations and visibility was poor. Some Indian units that had stood-to for
disembarkation throughout the night were by now too exhausted after their long
confinement aboard ships to be effective.
German troops harassed the advance and tree-top beehives broken by small
arms fire released angry bees onto both sides.
German resistance, now strengthened by
the arrival of reinforcements as IEF ‘C’’s diversionary attack further to the north-west
had failed, was centred on the strongly-built railway workshops on the left of
the British advance. Here the 101st
Grenadiers fought valiantly, charging the workshops several times but always
being repulsed by very effective German machine gun fire; the unit lost 11
officers and 130 sepoys killed in action, and all had fought gallantly. On the British right flank Nepalese and
Dogras of the Kashmir Rifles and sepoys of the 13th Rajputs
penetrated into the town but did not have enough men to combat the fierce
German resistance. Belatedly General
Aitken allowed the navy to use 6-inch guns against the town but the fire was
not controlled by observers and it endangered Indian as well as German troops.
In the centre strong resistance was met
when the attacking line reached a railway cutting that ran in a curve from the
workshops to the port. Here enemy
machine gun fire demoralised the 63rd Palmacottah Light infantry who
broke and fled back to the beach, whilst the 98th Infantry declined
to advance. This left 2LNL without
support, nevertheless the battalion fought across the cutting and all the rifle
companies entered the town; however Colonel Jourdain stayed near General
Aitken’s headquarters group, perhaps because he was ordered to. In the town 2LNL fought fiercely but without
a commanding officer, and when sounds of a German advance from the railway workshops
were heard the 2LNL company commanders conferred and decided to pull back to
avoid encirclement. Many Lancashire
soldiers were killed by enemy machine gun fire during the withdrawal over the
steep-sided and exposed railway cutting.
Meanwhile the Indian troops on 2LNL’s right also fought withdrawal
actions back across the railway cutting.
IEF ‘B’ re-grouped west of the beaches
that they had landed over and the many stout-hearted troops prepared for
another assault on the town the next day.
An evening counter-attack by the Germans was beaten back by 2LNL’s
musketry and machine gun skills. In fact
if General Aitken had reconnoitred after dusk he would have discovered that the
town was empty of Germans as they had also pulled back a few kilometres; Tanga
was waiting to be occupied by the British but they did not choose to send
reconnaissance patrols forward. That
night General Aitken and his senior staff officers conferred. Whilst the majority of the British infantry
units could and would still fight, the rear-echelon units on the beaches had
become demoralised by the sounds of battle and the sight of fleeing and wounded
sepoys; the total of 900 British casualties suffered so far was a shock to
all. General Aitken listened to his
senior staff officers, themselves totally shaken by the ferocity of the German
defence, and a decision was taken to withdraw the next day. German superiority in infantry fighting and
machine gunnery had won the day.
On 6th November IEF ‘B’
re-embarked without interference from the Germans who were unaware of the
withdrawal until it was nearly over. The
operation was secured by 2LNL, the final unit to re-embark. The Royal Navy refused to carry machine guns
in case they damaged the small landing boats (although no damage had been
reported on the initial landings), and the force’s remaining guns plus many
other valuable store items were left on the beach for the enemy. The most severely wounded British soldiers
were left in German hands.
Four officers, including the Medical
Officer, and 47 rank and file of 2LNL had been killed in action at Tanga, one
officer and 39 men had been wounded and evacuated, and one wounded officer, 17
wounded men and four unwounded men had been taken prisoner – a total of 113
casualties out of the 831 officers and men who had sailed from India. Later nine men from 2LNL were awarded the
Distinguished Conduct Medal for gallantry displayed during the fighting at
Tanga.
In recognition of the firm grip
that he had exerted on the battalion during the Tanga action, particularly
during the withdrawal, the Regimental Sergeant Major, Owen Almond, was
commissioned; sadly he was killed in action the following year.(Right)
British East Africa
IEF ‘B’ steamed to Mombasa, where BEA
customs tried but failed to charge duty on certain items of military stores,
and then the force merged with IEF ‘C’ to be deployed in defence of the BEA-GEA
border, the Uganda-GEA border, and the Uganda Railway. 2LNL Marched through Nairobi and was then
dispersed in company groups around BEA, being used as a ‘fire-fighting’ unit to
support threatened areas in the Protectorate.
To Colonel Jourdain’s increasing
aggravation the denudation of 2LNL of specialists to man other hastily
improvised units now began. The only
regular unit in BEA was the 3rd Battalion the King’s African Rifles
(3KAR) plus elements of 1KAR from Nyasaland (now Malawi) and 4KAR from Uganda;
these KAR Askari were splendid bush fighters but there was no British army
infrastructure in East Africa to support the fighting troops. Individuals were posted from 2LNL to man
signals, provost, transport and training units as well as formation
headquarters and new KAR battalions, whilst bodies of men were posted into new
combatant units. No 1 Light Battery, known as Logan’s Battery after its commander,
was formed from 2LNL soldiers using two naval 3-pounder guns; later the battery
was issued with two naval 12-pounder 8-hundredweight guns and was re-titled No 6 Field Battery. The battery saw action on Lake Victoria where
it manned the light guns on Royal Navy lake steamers before fighting during the
advance into GEA.
A local mounted infantry unit, Cole’s
Scouts, absorbed over 70 officers and men from 2LNL. When Cole’s Scouts was disbanded a new unit, The Mounted Infantry Company, was
formed jointly from men of 2LNL and the 25th Royal Fusiliers
(Frontiersmen), a war-time service unit from England. Later The Mounted Infantry Company only
contained men from 2LNL and it fought as part of the British advance into
GEA. During 1915 2LNL formed the 8-gun Loyal North Lancashire Machine Gun Company,
which after wasting away mainly through illness was re-formed in late 1916 and
then in 1917 (when 2LNL was re-located to Egypt) re-badged as 259 Company, Machine Gun Corps and
fought on in GEA until the end of 1917.
During 1915 detached 2LNL companies
fought actions against German intruders on the Indian Ocean coast and also
along the south-eastern shore of Lake Victoria, whilst the main body of the
battalion fought against German raiders attacking both the Uganda Railway and
the new military railway branch line that was being built from Voi, north of
Mombasa, towards Moshi in GEA. But far
more deadly than the Germans were the diseases that laid low and even killed
many of the Loyal North Lancashires.
Malaria became endemic, backed up by beriberi and Black Water
Fever. Jigger fleas burrowed under toe-nails
whilst poisonous snakes, wild carnivores and charging elephant and rhinoceros
lurked in the thick bush. The extremes
of cold, drenching tropical downpours and intense equatorial sunshine at
altitude wreaked havoc with the health of British soldiers used to more
temperate climates. In constant streams
men were medically evacuated either to hospitals in the highlands of BEA or
down the coast in hospital ships to convalescent hospitals in South
Africa. New drafts of men arrived from
the depot in India but the battalion was always under-manned, and always
over-worked because of its professional abilities. But Colonel Jourdain, not always a popular
man, maintained a tight grip on discipline and always looked after the
interests of his men.
On one occasion Colonel Jourdain managed
to concentrate about half of his battalion in order to take part in an
amphibious landing at Bukoba, GEA, on the western shore of Lake Victoria. A force that included elements from half a
dozen units landed on 22nd June 1915 from a Royal Navy flotilla
consisting of lake steamers; Brigadier General L.J.M. Stewart commanded. This time a successful diversionary operation
had drawn away the bulk of the German troops towards their border with
Uganda. After fighting for two days Bukoba
town was taken and the important German radio communications mast there was
demolished; the force then withdrew back across the lake in good order.
On 14th July 1915 the 2LNL
machine guns, Logan’s Battery and two of the rifle companies were involved in a
battle along the military railway branch line at Mbuyuni. Sadly the Brigade commander, not a friend of
2LNL, was inexperienced in modern infantry fighting and he ordered a frontal
attack that failed; he also unnecessarily ordered the machine guns forward into
inferior fire positions and the crew of one gun all became casualties. During the withdrawal from this failed attack
the gun was lost, much to the Brigadier’s displeasure and he insisted on
court-martialling the gun detachment commander.
Colonel Jourdain adroitly framed the charge to minimise the personal
damage, and two years later the corporal concerned was awarded the
Distinguished Conduct Medal.
The Mounted Infantry Company, riding
mules, was engaged in some fierce actions against German raiding parties during
1915, losing several men but also inflicting significant casualties on the
enemy. A Military Cross and three
Distinguished Conduct Medals were awarded for gallantry displayed during these
actions.
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Above: Salaita Hill from the northeast
Operations and activities during 1916
By January 1916 2LNL was worn out by the
physical demands of the East African theatre; many men had contracted malaria
more than once. Now thousands of fresh
but inadequately trained and poorly disciplined white South African troops were
arriving in BEA in preparation for an invasion of GEA. South Africa’s invasion of German South West
Africa (now Namibia) had been successfully concluded and large numbers of white
South Africans volunteered for further service in East Africa. These new units included artillery batteries,
motor transport units, engineers, conventional marching infantry and many
mounted units; sadly the latter were to repeatedly lose their mounts to tsetse
fly fever.
The first major operation in 1916 for
2LNL, The Mounted Infantry Company, No 6 Field Battery and The Loyal North
Lancashire Machine Gun Company was the attack on Salaita Hill, just east of
Taveta on the GEA-BEA border, on 12th February 1916. Once again the same Brigadier mounted the
same style of frontal attack which failed when one of the new South African
battalions broke and fled at the sight of hundreds of bayonet-wielding German
Askari noisily charging at it through the bush; 30 fleeing and probably wounded
South Africans went missing and were never seen again, doubtless having been
eaten by the carnivores in the bush. A
German counter attack was delayed by the effective fire of The Loyal North
Lancashire Machine Gun Company and finally stopped by a heroic lone stand made
by the 130th (King George’s Own) Baluchis (Jacob’s Rifles).
A new British theatre commander, the
South African General Jan C. Smuts, now took over and pushed forward towards
GEA. During the battle of Latema-Reata
Nek, just west of Taveta, on 11th and 12th March 1916,
2LNL was not involved but The Mounted Infantry Company, The Loyal North
Lancashire Machine Gun Company and No 6 Field Battery fought. The same Brigadier produced the same
frontal-attack plan until it stalled and he reported sick, (he was then
returned to the Indian Army by General Smuts).
Isolated groups of British soldiers fought similarly isolated groups of
Germans throughout the night on the sides of the Nek until the German
commander’s will broke, and he withdrew.
A Loyal North Lancashire machine gunner and a detached signaller both
won Distinguished Conduct Medals for their parts in the fighting that night.
General Smuts pushed his troops forward
into GEA where von Lettow was waiting to fight some well-planned rearguard
actions. German military manpower was a
decreasing military asset and von Lettow’s tactics were now to withdraw on
interior lines of communication and avoid costly battles, whilst causing the
British as much attrition as possible.
No 6 Field Battery, the Loyal North Lancashire Machine Gun Company and
The Mounted Infantry Company marched with the British advance down the German
Usambara Railway line and the Pangani River valley, but 2LNL did not. Medical Boards declared that most men in 2LNL
needed rest and recuperation, and so after posting all the fit men into the
machine gun and mounted infantry units the remainder of the battalion was
shipped down to South Africa and the more pleasant climate of Cape Town.
As the three remaining Loyal North
Lancashire-manned units marched deeper into GEA supply problems began to
multiply. General Smuts took no interest
in logistics – he was only there to capture GEA within 6 months! The ammunition and rations required by the
fighting troops were delivered from BEA along the military branch railway from
Voi that now connected with the German-wrecked Usambara Railway south of
Moshi. But from the constantly advancing
railhead thousands of under-nourished and under-clothed African porters then
carried the supplies on their heads. The
numbers of these porters who died on the march through exhaustion and illness
have probably never been accurately calculated – they were available and they
were expendable. But there were never
enough African porters and the result was that the British fighting troops
constantly received only half-rations, and sometimes they were issued with only
quarter-rations; physical debilitation now affected most British soldiers.
The Loyal North Lancashire machine
gunners, mounted infantrymen and artillerymen soon began to waste away from
malnutrition and constant fevers. All
three units fought together at the battle of Kwa Di Rema on the Lukigura River
on 24th June 1915, where a small but decisive British victory was
for once achieved due to a successful outflanking movement that the machine
gunners took part in. But immediately
after the battle the Mounted Infantry Company was disbanded due to it being
understrength and without trained reinforcements; the fit men were mostly
posted to the machine gun company.
No 6 Field Battery and the machine
gunners continued the advance into GEA down to the Rufiji River where the field
battery was the next to be disbanded, as the terrain was too difficult for the
guns to be moved efficiently; also by that time the British artillery staff had
decided to standardise on the South African 13-pounder gun. This left the machine gun company which by
September, after fighting in actions on the Dutumi and Wami Rivers, was reduced
to under 30 rank and file; the company was ordered to march back to Dar Es
Salaam where after a Medical Board it was disbanded.
2LNL in South Africa and the return to East Africa
On 8th May 1916 Colonel Jourdain with 15
officers, 5 Warrant Officers and 516 other ranks boarded the SS Professor at Mombasa. The ship reached Durban on 18th May where the
battalion disembarked, immediately sending 37 sick men to hospital. After enjoying a tea and concert provided by
the Mayor and residents of Durban the battalion entrained for a three-day rail
journey to Cape Town. On arrival the
band of HMS Essex played all the
companies to their barracks in Simonstown.
In Simonstown all the soldiers were medically
examined and weighed, and extra rations of oatmeal, sugar, condensed milk and
oranges were authorised. Lord Buxton,
the Governor General of South Africa inspected the battalion on 26th May and
gave a complimentary speech. But
ill-health still troubled the unit and on 28th May 1 officer and 137 men were
in or attending hospital. Nevertheless
Colonel Jourdain, whilst resting his troops, also trained them and on 31st May
he held an officers training exercise in the hills overlooking the
barracks. Unfortunately that evening
Major H.A. Robinson, the Senior Major, suddenly died from a heart attack; he
was buried the next day at Simonstown.
During June the 2LNL Depot at Bangalore
was moved to Preston, Lancashire, and the authorised wives and families were
returned to England. The battalion
continued recuperating and training, and all ranks enjoyed the warm local
hospitality offered to them; however the numbers of men sick from fever
remained high. In August 1916 2LNL
returned to Mombasa, landing there on the 20th of the month. Some sick men had been left in South Africa
and some of those were to die there, but drafts of men had arrived from
England. The battalion strength was now
21 officers, 31 warrant officers and sergeants, 71 corporals and lance corporals,
4 drummers and 404 privates.
The first operation that 2LNL was
involved in was a landing at Bagomoyo, GEA, followed by a march down the coast
to capture Dar Es Salaam the GEA capital.
After a three-day advance Dar Es Salaam was reached on 4th September,
the Royal Navy having captured it the previous day; because of the large number
of their non-combatants in the town the Germans chose not to defend it.
A week later 2LNL was moved by sea again
down the coast to Kilwa where it was deployed on security duties against enemy
raiding parties. However the unit health
rapidly relapsed into the old pre-South Africa pattern, with often a hundred or
more men being sick with fever each day.
The recuperation period in South Africa had in fact had little effect on
the severely weakened constitutions of men who had spent too long out in the
field in a tropical climate.
In November 2LNL was ordered to re-form a
machine gun company of 120 men and to then prepare the remainder of the
battalion for a transfer to the Egyptian theatre. With difficulty the unit Medical Officer
selected the fittest 120 men and the second Loyal North Lancashire Machine Gun
Company was formed. At the end of December
1916 2LNL departed GEA aboard the transport Elele
for Egypt via Aden. Five sick
soldiers were to die on the voyage. In
Egypt on 9th February 1917 a battalion strength return listed 20 officers and
802 other ranks, but of those 2 officers and 293 other ranks were in or
attending hospital.
However still soldiering on in East
Africa were over 250 men of the regiment who were either machine gunners, military
specialists, staff officers, warrant officers or sergeants serving with KAR
battalions, or who were in hospitals.
The East Africa theatre was to keep some men of 2LNL fully occupied
until the war was over.
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Above: Kilwa where 2nd Loyals landed from Dar Ea Salaam
The second Loyal North Lancashire Machine Gun Company
The second Loyal North Lancashire Machine
Gun Company was commanded by Major R.E. Berkeley, and he was quickly given
orders to march to Kibata, a location in the hills north-west of Kilwa. At Kibata a fierce battle was raging that was
more like the France and Flanders battlefields than the African bush. British troops were dug-in on a series of low
hills near the masonry-built Kibata Fort but German troops with heavy artillery
were occupying a surrounding ring of higher hills.
The enemy was using 4.1-inch guns that each
needed teams of 600 Africans for hauling and ammunition carrying, but labour
supply was not a problem as the Germans applied their colonial laws and
procedures in the areas of GEA that they still occupied. Some of these guns had been salvaged from the
sunken German cruiser Konigsberg in
the Rufiji River delta, and others had arrived on a supply ship from Germany
that evaded the Royal Navy blockade of the GEA coastline. The defenders of Kibata, Baluchis from India
and Askari from Nyasaland, were having a tough time as any movement during
daylight hours attracted accurate enemy artillery fire.
The company marched out with its 40 mules
carrying the guns, 120 First Line porters carrying ammunition, spare parts and
water for the gun cooling systems, and the 500 Second
Line Porters, a tactical distance to the rear, carrying reserve ammunition, trench
mortars, baggage, rations, tentage and soldiers’ kits. It took nearly four days of hard marching on
slippery, muddy, rain-drenched tracks for the Company to reach Kibata, and
before it arrived one detached Loyal North Lancashire officer had been killed
there during a German attack. Another
detached LNL signaller had been awarded a Distinguished Conduct Medal at Kibata
whilst the company was on the march.
Immediately on arrival a section of the
company’s guns was deployed to support an attack being made that night, 15th
December, by 129th Baluchis on a German-held feature named the
Lodgement. The Baluchis attacked
silently, grenade the Lodgement and then assaulted it with the bayonet, killing
or evicting all the defenders. A section
of LNL machine guns immediately moved up into the captured position. On the following morning the Germans put
intense artillery fire onto the Lodgement, and the machine gun company
detachment commander there, Lieutenant Norman MacDonald, was mortally wounded
whilst attending to one of his wounded machine gunners; he died on 25th
December at Kibata as continuous torrential rain made safe casualty evacuation
impossible.
On 1st January 1917 the two
5-inch howitzers of the 14th Howitzer Battery arrived at
Kibata. Many hundreds of African
labourers had put in a massive physical effort in pouring rain to make a
passable road over which the howitzers could be moved. The arrival of these two large guns signalled
the end of the German hopes of destroying the British garrison at Kibata. A few days later Colonel von Lettow-Vorbeck
withdrew six of his nine field companies from the Kibata area and moved them
north. The German priority now was to
withdraw north to meet General Smuts’ main body of British troops that was
fighting for crossings over the Rufiji River.
British intelligence scouts observed this and reported that the enemy
was thinning-out around Kibata. On the 6th
January Brigadier H. de C. O’Grady, the British commander in Kibata, ordered a
general advance that the LNL machine gunners supported with overhead fire. The KAR Askari quickly took the hill crests
previously occupied by the Germans.
As the Germans withdrew northwards 129th
Baluchis followed them up supported by two KAR companies, a section of a
mountain battery and machine gun and mortar detachments of 2LNL Machine Gun
Company. At Mwengei, from where the
German heavy guns had been firing, a serious action developed.
The 2LNL Machine Gun Company supported the
Baluchis in some heavy fighting. A
British aircraft was sent up to bomb the enemy, but as the draft Official
History states:” The aeroplane did not
appear for several hours and then could effect nothing, having expended its
bombs in error on some other hills far to the northward”. Eventually the Germans withdrew,
abandoning and destroying their 4.1-inch naval gun.
The 2LNL Machine Gun Company fought in the
Mtumbei Valley, south of the Rufiji, in support of the Baluchis until
mid-February, when orders were received to return to the coast. On 21st February 1917 the 2nd
LNL MG Coy arrived back at Kilwa. Here
it found that since 15th February it had been transferred to the Machine Gun
Corps with the title of 259 Machine Gun Company. All the rank and file and the
wartime-commissioned officers were transferred to the Machine Gun Corps; the
Regular Army officers retained their Loyal North Lancashire Regiment identities
whilst being on attachment to the Machine Gun Corps. The 2nd LNL Machine Gun Company
had only operated for two and a half months, but those months had been
eventful, marked by fierce fighting over rugged terrain during excessive
tropical rainfall.
259 Machine Gun Company was now ordered to
embark for Mombasa where it took the train to Nakuru, a town 8,000 feet high in
the hills. A recuperation period
followed, and then training programmes were completed on Lewis Guns and mortars
as the company was issued with both weapons in addition to the machine
guns. Major Berkeley received a
Distinguished Service Order and two Military Crosses were awarded.
For the last half of the year 259 Company
was involved in heavy fighting in the southern part of GEA. This culminated in a massive four-day battle at
Mahiwa where the company was firing its weapons at close range in thick bush; over
500 German troops were killed but the British suffered similarly and several
officers and men of 259 Company were killed and wounded. Later six men were awarded the Distinguished
Conduct Medal for gallantry displayed in action in southern GEA.
After
this action the British authorities decided to repatriate all remaining
European and Indian troops from East Africa, leaving the fighting to the Askari
who could withstand the local conditions.
259 Machine Gun Company left East Africa on 10th December
1917. On reaching England the Regular
Army officers were posted back to 2LNL and all others were posted elsewhere
within the Machine Gun
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Above: The award document for the Iron Cross 1st Class to Unteroffizier Wetjen, a member of Lettow-Vorbeck's Schutztruppe für deutsch-Ostafrika
The
end of a ‘Sideshow’
At the end of 1917 Colonel von
Lettow-Vorbeck withdrew a very slimmed-down and tightly selected Schutztruppe
southwards into Portuguese East Africa (PEA - now Mozambique). For the final year of the war he stayed ahead
of his British adversaries who followed him from GEA and Nyasaland; several
times he was brought to bay by British columns, but he always extricated his
troops and lived to fight another day.
As the war ended he had marched his men back into GEA, around the head
of Lake Nyasa, and he was in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) advancing towards
Portuguese West Africa (now Angola).
There were no British troops in his way and he would have been able to
operate indefinitely in Angola by capturing Portuguese supply dumps, as he had
done in PEA. But the Armistice in
Europe, when the news of it trickled through to Northern Rhodesia, led to the
surrender of the Schutztruppe, the disbandment of the German Askari, and the
repatriation to Europe of the German, Austrian and Hungarian officers and
senior ranks. Sadly the world-wide
Spanish Influenza epidemic then killed many brave soldiers of both sides who
had survived four years of brutal bush warfare.
In history books the Great War East Africa
Campaign is referred to as a ‘Sideshow’.
Such it may have seemed to be, to observers in Europe, but to the men
fighting in the bush it was a battle of survival against the climate and the
conditions as well as a battle against a fierce enemy who could be just behind
the next tree, with his bayonet lunging towards your belly.
Probably up to 50 men from 2LNL saw the war
end in East Africa. They had become
important parts of the British military machine in the theatre and they were
needed in their staff or specialist appointments until the end. Some men stayed even longer, such as the 2LNL
Bandmaster who became the 3KAR Bandmaster in Kenya, and a Warrant Officer who
became the KAR Quartermaster also in Kenya; they completed their military
careers with the KAR in a strange land that they had come to understand and appreciate. But others had no choice in the matter, they
were the 134 officers and men of the 2nd Battalion The Loyal North
Lancashire Regiment and 259 Company, Machine Gun Corps who were buried in East
Africa or off its coast at sea; other comrades of theirs lie in graves near hospitals
in South Africa.
IEF ‘B’ re-grouped west of the beaches
that they had landed over and the many stout-hearted troops prepared for
another assault on the town the next day.
An evening counter-attack by the Germans was beaten back by 2LNL’s
musketry and machine gun skills. In fact
if General Aitken had reconnoitred after dusk he would have discovered that the
town was empty of Germans as they had also pulled back a few kilometres; Tanga
was waiting to be occupied by the British but they did not choose to send
reconnaissance patrols forward. That
night General Aitken and his senior staff officers conferred. Whilst the majority of the British infantry
units could and would still fight, the rear-echelon units on the beaches had
become demoralised by the sounds of battle and the sight of fleeing and wounded
sepoys; the total of 900 British casualties suffered so far was a shock to
all. General Aitken listened to his
senior staff officers, themselves totally shaken by the ferocity of the German
defence, and a decision was taken to withdraw the next day. German superiority in infantry fighting and
machine gunnery had won the day.
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