| Article Index |
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| Great War In German East Africa |
| The German strategy |
| Conclusions |
| All Pages |
Page 1 of 3
IntroductionMany tourists spending their holidays in the game-parks and on the beaches of East Africa, have no idea about the battles and the daring-do that took place there over 80 years ago in what was an important, if relatively minor, theatre of the 1914-1918 war. This lack of interest in the military campaign in German East Africa (GEA) - most of today's Tanzania - which lasted from November 1914 to November 1918, is all the more amazing since the sites of many the actions which made up this running war are generally little changed. Just as in parts of the Western Front in France and Belgium, time and reconstruction have largely alleviated any devastation wrought by the war. But unlike, say, Palestine the major sites are still to be seen in something approaching the same form that the various British and Indian expeditionary forces knew them. For the student of the Great War, it is an extremely interesting area and well worth the visit, allowing as it does the scope for so many pleasant diversions other than the study of the Great War.
Examples of interesting sites are: Ikoma Fort, situated in tsetse-fly country east of the Serengeti National Park, that is much as the Germans left it: ochre yellow and grim in its desperately isolated setting in The Bush. The coastal town of Bagamoya, 100 miles north of the present capital, Dar es Salaam, that still has its German garrison buildings and not far away, deep in The Bush, another fort, with its huge ramparts reminiscent of a Crusader medieval fortress, that looms huge amid the encroaching vegetation. In Independence Square in Dar es Salaam (= Harbour of Peace), stands a bronze statue to the askaris (indigenous African soldiers) who formed the highly disciplined core of the GEA Defence Force (Schutztruppen). At Tanga (the capital of German East Africa), 300 miles north of Dar es Salaam, the beaches where the first elements of Indian Army Expeditionary Force (IAEF'B' - also see paras. 9 and 11) landed on 2 November 1914, that are relatively unchanged, apart from a scattering of bungalows. Nearby, in the Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery, there are military graves of British and German soldiers dated November 1914.
Col. Von Lettow-Vorbeck's Army
The cause of the military mayhem that was to beset East Africa and last for four violent years, was a virtually unknown German soldier, Colonel Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, who in 1914 was appointed the commanding officer of the Colonial Army of German East Africa (GEACA). His skilful planning and prosecution of the four years of highly effective guerilla war, with a paucity of supplies and men, has gone down in the history of war as the classic campaign of its kind. At the outbreak of war his resources were modest in the extreme; 260 Germans regular soldiers and settlers and 2,472 askaris, many newly recruited. Later the army grew in strength to around 10,000; less than a tenth of the forces that were eventually to be ranged against him. At the outset of the campaign, his army was organised into 14 companies of around 200 men. The operational companies were grouped together in threes and were expected to operate entirely independently. Initially the askaris were armed with obsolete German rifles (1871 model), but these were largely replaced by the up-to-date SMLE rifles that were captured from the British at Tanga, along with a vast amount of other munitions and supplies. However, each company was equipped with from two to four Maxim machine-guns. That meant in the early days they easily outgunned the British colonial forces in East Africa, who only had one machine-gun per company.
Portage was an important element in the mobility and effectiveness of the German colonial forces. Each Feldkompagnie (FK) and Schultzkompagnie (SchK) had an establishment of 250 African porters to carry its equipment. Having learnt from bitter experience that neither vehicles nor animals were suited to the terrain, the British eventually had 200,000 porters organised into a Carrier Corps.
For both of the fighting factions a lot of the terrain where the campaigning took place was infested with big and small game. No doubt some of the animal protein that was required to supplement the field rations of the soldiers came from this source; a large bull buffalo would make a lot of army beef stew! (Unfortunately, much of the game has disappeared over the last 30 years, so the visitor of today cannot expect to find much outside the areas set aside as national game-reserves or game-parks).
The British defence
If the GEACA was a modest defence force at the outbreak of war, the British were no better founded. The entire East African standing army consisted of the 62 officers and 2,317 askaris of the 3rd and 4th Kenya Africa Rifles (KAR). These troops were to form the key force as the war progressed. Once war was declared, 3000 European volunteers were recruited and formed into reserve units as the East Africa Mounted Rifles (EAMR) and the East Africa Regiment (EAR). There was no artillery. About 1,500 Europeans and 2,300 Africans were available to take part on the British side in the early battles along the border.
The most strategically important asset in East Africa, apart from the British East African port of Mombassa and the German East African ports of Dar es Salaam and Tanga, was the Uganda Railway located in British East Africa. It ran over 600 miles from Mombassa to Kisumu (formerly Port Florence) on the western shore of Lake Victoria. The military objective of the KAR and the volunteer units was the protection of British assets along the common border (now the Tanzania/Kenya frontier) and, in particular, the Uganda railway. The most vulnerable point on the railway line was where it ran closest to the GEA border just north of Mount Kilimanjaro; at that time it was very sparsely inhabited and in the home range of the Masai tribes. The principal GEA railway, which ran from Dar es Salaam, via Morogoro, Dodoma and Tabora, to Kigoma on Lake Victoria, was, in the early stages of the war, far from the battle zone.
