The Battle of Salaita Remembered – German East Africa, February 1916.
Earlier this year marked 100 years since the battle of Salaita Hill: 12 February 1916, and the First World War German East Africa (GEA) campaign that followed in and around what is today Tanzania. The then Union’s involvement in GEA cost the lives of more than 2 000 South Africans – the vast majority from appalling campaign-induced deprivations to their health.
Thousands more Union men were emaciated by tropical illnesses, scant and poor rations, to the extent that in many cases, they required continued hospital treatment well after the war’s conclusion.
In order to read and understand the GEA campaign it is necessary to locate it within its early 20th century historical context, and most particularly the context of war. Notably, the fatalities of white white troops in the campaign were dwarfed by those of black Africans. This is because the logistical transport units of both British and German Empire armies were predominantly black African porters who perished in their hundreds of thousands from disease and enemy action.
Like many other sagas concerning black African suffering, this chapter is little covered and even less remembered than the GEA campaign is as military history; the latter in part being the primary concern of this essay.
My personal connection to the campaign lies in the fact that between 6 January and 21 February 1916, my grandfather Lieutenant Algenon Sparks of the 5th Mountain Battery, South African Mounted Rifles (SAMR) - a first generation South African of English/Scots descent - led a pack mule train consisting of one hundred such animals 850 kilometres through the British Nyasaland (now Malawi) bush from Limbe to Vua.
Sparks was a member of the Union Defence Forces’ (UDF) (today’s SANDF) tiny permanent force; then barely four years old. Sparks’ command included seventeen white soldiers and forty nine “native” artillery drivers. Most of those serving under him were volunteers and their task formed part of the South African plan to penetrate German defences on GEA’s southern border with Nyasaland.
While the guns and other SAMR personnel travelled by pont across Lake Nyasaland, Sparks was to bring his unit’s pack animals overland; well to the West in order to avoid the treacherous tsetse fly belt. This disease would have decimated the animals needed to carry the SAMR’s German 75 millimetre mountain artillery pieces - captured during the German South West Africa campaign - and dissembled and its requisite ammunition, along with other supplies. Sparks achieved this objective, losing only one mule on the trek and re-joined his battery to participate in later GEA fighting.
Salaita Hill
The battle of Salaita Hill was a baptism of fire for the South Africans and one which shook the beliefs held up until then by white English and Afrikaner troops alike: Their contempt towards the German-officered black troops and the Indian soldiers under British Imperial Command; their confidence in their British and South African commanders; and not least, the assumption that a quick and easy victory in German East Africa was assured.
Salaita is located in south-eastern Kenya close to the border with Tanzania. Mount Kilimanjaro lies across the about fifty kilometres to the North West.
In 1916 the military option authorised (but not planned) by the overall Imperial Campaign commander, British General Horace Smith-Dorrien, a veteran of the Anglo-Zulu and Boer Wars, was determined by geography. The route from here into GEA was via a thirty kilometre gap of flat terrain located between the Pare Mountains’ in the south-east and the foothills of Kilimanjaro in the north-west, covered by “thick bush” according to 1916 military maps.
Also astride this “gap” lying sixteen kilometres to the west of Salaita, were several other rock outcrops in which German forces were lodged.
As the GEA campaign opened, General Jan Smuts – then serving as defence minister – accepted, with Prime Minister Louis Botha’s enthusiastic support, an urgent offer from the British government to take over the overall GEA Imperial command from a seriously ill Smith-Dorrien. Smuts arrived in mid-February.
While the majority of white English-speaking South Africans had responded with patriotic enthusiasm at the 1914 call to arms in common with their British Empire kin across the globe the white Afrikaner position was more complicated; with the division between nationalists and the (governing) South African Party supporters (Sappe).
Although Smuts’ pro-British Empire sentiments alienated many Afrikaner nationalist elites, this hardly restrained thousands of Boers flocking to Union Jack colours. In 1914 South Africa used the Union Jack as a national flag; an existing red Union flag with the Union Jack in the corner and SA Coat of Arms diagonally opposite was very rarely used.
These Afrikaner volunteers included both veterans of the South African War and newcomers going for the first time on commando. Despite detractors, and even the 1914 Rebellion, popular Afrikaner mobilisation for war had occurred during the GSWA campaign and was repeated for GEA. This campaign in central Africa would mirror, so the Boers believed, that which had been so successfully completed in GSWA.
Besides it was assumed that East Africa would also suit the South African historical military pattern of mounted warfare; applicable alike to both the traditional Boer commando and the former colonial light horse regiments. In the GEA campaign the traditional Boer/Calvary enveloping sweeps would be hindered by expansive jungle and bush terrain.
Although South African politicians like Smuts assumed that given the Boer commando tradition Afrikaners would choose and excel in an African rather than a European campaign. In fact just over half the mounted South African troops in GEA were English-speaking, a result of the fine mounted colonial regiments developed in the colonial Cape, Natal and then Transvaal – such as the Imperial Light Horse. Soldiering came rather naturally to the white South African male of a century ago – a point further commented upon below.
Amongst both his Afrikaner nationalist opponents and the now displaced, suspicious British GEA staff officers, Smuts very quickly earned a reputation of surrounding himself with his own loyal men. Two of Smuts’s most senior field commanders were close confidants and explicitly trusted comrades from 1899 – 1902: Jaap Van Deventer and Coenraad Brits.
Both were appointed Brigadier-Generals and took charge of the South African 2nd and 3rd Mounted Brigades respectively. Van Deventer would later succeed Smuts as GEA Imperial Commander and was knighted after the war, becoming “Sir Jaap”, much to his bemused Afrikaner contemporaries. Other Boer War veterans close to Smuts: Manie Botha and Denys Reitz for example, were slotted directly into field leadership.
One trusted English South African was allowed to breech Smuts’s inner circle as his Chief of Staff. This was the highly professional permanent force officer Jack Collyer. Smuts also attached to this staff his own brother in law, Tottie Krige. Another regular officer was appointed Staff Captain - Piet Van der Byl whom Smuts had personally invited to join the UDF. Van der Byl hailed from a prominent Cape Dutch family.
Smuts had also long harboured ambitions for extending South African borders north; these musings dating back to his senior civil service days in Kruger’s Transvaal Republic. The notion that a conquered GEA could well be parcelled out as cheap farming land to the victors had trickled down as rumours to both Boer commandos and the largely English-speaking South African infantrymen and mounted regiments.
Smuts even speculated that some kind of peacetime international arrangement might be plausible regarding Portuguese Mozambique, by which South African control might be extended to at least the Zambezi.
In terms of their service conditions the South Africans in GEA were mustered as Imperial Service Units, volunteers to the Imperial Forces and paid by the British government. My grandfather’s SAMR 5th Mountain Battery was the only UDF permanent force unit. The mouthpiece of JBM Hertzog’s recently created National Party Die Burger, caustically commented that Smuts was escaping his political difficulties and seeking an English (sic) general’s pay in addition to that of a South African Cabinet Minister. But for Smuts, Botha and their supporters, South African involvement in the war also provided a potential opportunity to unite English and Afrikaner white South Africans through common adversity and forge a white nationhood. This ideal received a tepid and glum response from his republican-orientated rivals.
It is also doubtful whether many Afrikaners served in GEA with this white South African military brotherhood ideal in mind; most were following their own leaders; performing a male passage rite of going on commando; seeking adventure and anticipating rewards.
One could hardly expect the same kind of mass mobilization amongst white Afrikaners today regarding some distant war on behalf of another country and no white Afrikaner leader, political or military, currently exists with the stature of Smuts and Botha a century ago.
The white English-speaking South African troops would have been part motivated by similar male rite of passage impulses as the Afrikaners, but amongst many there was also the intense British loyalty felt across the British Empire by so many white colonials of this period, whether in the Cape, Natal, Canada or Australia.
The battle at Salaita occurred barely before Smuts had departed Durban harbour; the British field commander, Brigadier-General Michael Tighe, invariably tipsy from regular drinking, launched his attack with a force of 6000 men, half of whom were South African infantry from Brigadier-General Beves’s 2nd SA Brigade.
Worried by Tighe’s “strategy”, the British-born Beves, a careful professional officer moulded by his experiences of fighting the Boers in 1899-1902, was not satisfied with the manner of his troops’ deployment. Furthermore, Tighe had devolved command for Salaita to his staff associate, Brigadier-General Wilfred Malleson, a British Indian Army veteran of theatrical mannerisms, but despite his seniority to Beves woefully lacking in any serious combat experience.
Malleson’s haughty demeanour and witless over-confidence was not lost on Beves who immediately queried the planned frontal infantry attack on relatively open ground from the north, for thick bush or not it would be visible by the Germans several kilometres distant from Salaita. The South Africans would also have an exposed right flank to a German counter-attack from the main German base ten kilometres away at Taverta. Beves requested far more extensive artillery support than had been provided for but Malleson tartly brushed these concerns aside, insisting there would be no further discussion of Tigue’s orders.
The eventual result was a morale battering defeat; for around Salaita were up to 1400 well entrenched men with twelve machine guns commanded by Major Kraut and his fellow white German officers. This German force’s strength and precise positioning only became obvious to the South Africans during the course their ill-fated attack. The German black Askari troops who comprised the rank and file of the GEA colonial army were drawn from tribes that had in the preceding century been used as slave catchers by both white and Asian slave traders.
Colonel von Lettow-Vorbeck, a markedly resourceful professional officer and the overall German commander in GEA, had drilled his officers and men into the most formidable black African army then existent.
Furthermore, South African observers noted that the Askaris were of a markedly superior physique and significantly more aggressive than other GEA blacks. These black German troops also projected themselves as a higher caste amongst the majority population, who in comparison, were noted by white troops as evincing a disposition of timidity and inferiority towards the Askaris. But the white South African troops, despite cautions by British officers, contemptuously dismissed the German Askaris as “kaffirs” and the British Indian Army troops as “coolies”.
It was a confident 2nd Brigade of white South African soldiers, comprising largely English-speaking men from across the Union, who after a long arduous detour march to attack the hill from the north, began advancing amidst baobabs and acacia bush towards the German position. This despite no telephone line communications between Beves and Malleson’s headquarters, the latter officer having further exacerbated his mismanagement by receiving and ignoring a last minute note from an aircraft observer, who reported that Salaita appeared too well fortified for a successful frontal assault.
At 8am the infantry charged directly towards trench lines only now observed at the koppie’s foot and from where the German troops poured rifle and automatic fire. Scores of South Africans dropped to the heavy lead bullets from the Askaris’ vintage rifles, but more damage came from the modern German machine guns.
In addition, just as Beves had predicted, German Askaris under Lieutenant Schultz launched a counter-attack from Taverta in the west. As Schultz’s six hundred men charged screaming: “Piga, Piga” (Shoot! Shoot!), there was confusion amongst the South Africans as poorly relayed orders were shouted by officers to cover the vulnerable right flank. Men from the three different battalions tumbled upon one another as they withdrew in haste through thick hot bush, while also rushing out their wounded on groundsheets.
By now the 110th Baluchis - British Indian troops had under white British officers, had advanced two and a half kilometres from across the east, confronting Schultz’s Askaris with disciplined fire control, but not before considerable South African losses had been incurred. Von Lettow-Vorbeek later recorded the Germans buried more than sixty “Europeans” while the Askaris brought in many dejected prisoners, wounded or otherwise. But not all these apprehended South Africans went into captivity; the following morning three bodies, all with throats cut, were brought in by Baluchi, Rhodesian and British troops. After the battle it was wretchedly embarrassing for the South Africans to receive some of their own abandoned weaponry from their Asian allies, including a note from the Baluchis reminding the Union men their Indian compatriots were “sepoys not coolies”.
Total South African casualties for Savita were 138, including dead, wounded and missing; many of the latter being never heard of again; probably also killed on capture by Askaris. This would have further reinforced a pre-battle rumour amongst the South Africans that a white Rhodesian soldier lost on patrol had been found with his arms hacked off and eyes cut out.
Denys Reitz while fighting later in dark, disease-ridden jungle around the Mgeta river 200 kilometres south-west of Dar-es-Salaam, reported his anger and depression at finding wounded South African soldiers having had their heads smashed in by the Askaris. No doubt such atrocities were returned with interest.
Smuts was furious at the unnecessary loss of his men at Salaita and he made short work of the incompetent Malleson and inebriated Tigue. Beves’s infantry had been shot down in the same kind of 1899 trap, the hidden line of trenches at the base of the koppie which caught the Highland Brigade at Magersfontein, similarly executed by De La Rey against General Methuan’s troops at Modder River.
Within weeks, after further hard fighting and additional evidence of their incapacity to wage war without unacceptable casualties, Smuts wrote to the British War Office demanding and getting Malleson, Tigue and some other senior British officers’ removed.
For a detailed GEA campaign account, one is advised to obtain Brigadier-General J.J. Collyers’ 1939 book: The South Africans with General Smuts in German East Africa 1916, for it comprises the most vital primary source for all subsequent histories.
The GEA campaign went on, long, arduously, and inconclusively until the 11 November 1918 Armistice, and was by the end being largely fought by white officered black African troops on both sides. Fatal casualties amongst the South Africans were hugely swelled by those succumbing to disease: malaria, dysentery, tick-bite fever, but also malnutrition and fatigue. 12 000 of the Union’s troops were eventually declared no longer fit for duty and repatriated back home.
The difficult logistics of properly supplying the UDF men and the harsh conditions brought curses onto Smuts’ head from his men. No more was this better illustrated than when he received an invitation to join the British War Cabinet and prepared to depart GEA after handing the Imperial command across to Van Deventer. Four hundred of Smuts’s officers, awaiting repatriation from Dar-es-Salaam, declined his request that they go on parade to shake his hand and say farewell.
Remaining imperial units which saw the GEA campaign out to 1918 included the Cape Coloured Corps infantry, who viewed themselves as proud Imperial sons; for as a community they had appealed for the opportunity to display their patriotism. In response the SAP government sanctioned the Cape Corps formation against vehement Afrikaner nationalist protest.
The story of the thousands of South African black soldier-labourers used in GEA, alongside the wretched black porters, remains unremembered, unlike those of the SA Native Labour Corps contingent who perished during the 1917 Medi sinking in the English Channel.
If Afrikaner nationalism, Boer War leadership popularity, Imperial loyalties and a hope for advantageous land acquisition were amongst motives that took white and coloured South Africans to fight in GEA in 1916, we can easily still admire their courage and sacrifices.
The 1914-18 War Centenary within South Africa should be a fitting occasion for unveiling a memorial for the many dead from the GEA campaign; for it is an African story of heroism in battle and of men on the march against odds ranging from the formidable German Askaris, disease, hunger, a formidable physical environment, strategic blunders, bureaucratic apathy and incompetence.
Salaita Hill and the German East Africa campaign represents some of literally scores of historical topics where a common history of 21st South Africans might be traced.
Dr Rodney Warwick PhD MA (University of Cape Town)
References and further reading:
Brown, James Ambrose: They fought for King and Kaiser, published Johannesburg, Ashanti Books, 1991.
Collyer, John J. Collyer: The South Africans with General Smuts in German East Africa 1916, Government Printer, Pretoria, 1939.
Reitz, D., Trekking On, Faber & Faber Limited, 1933, London.
Van der Byl, P., From Playgrounds to Battlefields, Howard Timmins, Cape Town, 1971.
The Nongqui 1916.
