Attack on Fife

On the afternoon of 1 November 1918 the German Schutztruppe of General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck approached Fife, a British post just across the border of Northern Rhodesia, present-day Zambia. A month after he had returned across the Rovuma, Lettow-Vorbeck passed through the south-western edge of German East Africa and entered the British colony with his column. Fife was an important supply hub: the road from Neu Langenburg in the north to Abercorn and Kasama ran through it, and there were large stores at the post.

A race for the stores

In the last days of October the Germans captured one British depot after another along the way. At the Mbozi mission they found, among other things, 75 loads of salt and 47 loads of coffee. Patrol reports showed that the main British supply road ran from Mbozi through Fife, so there had to be a large depot near Fife. On 31 October Lettow-Vorbeck sent a fighting patrol there, but that same evening he learned that strong British forces were approaching from the direction of Neu Langenburg. On the morning of 1 November he set off with the whole column. From tracks on the road and notes nailed to trees he realised that the British were also hurrying to Fife and were ahead of him. The march lasted ten hours.

The British won the race by a few hours. According to a study by the Western Front Association, the post was held by a detachment of the Northern Rhodesia Police, which had managed to dig in shortly before the Germans arrived. At about half past five in the afternoon the German vanguard drove back the advanced posts on the hills in front of Fife. Lettow-Vorbeck himself, advancing along a ridge with Captain Spangenberg’s detachment, came to within about 200 metres of the British tents and came under heavy rifle and machine-gun fire. The attackers realised that in front of them lay several companies in trenches with a good field of fire.

Bombardment instead of assault

Lettow-Vorbeck did not want to lose men in a costly assault. During the night he brought machine guns up close to the British position and had them dug in, and on 2 November he shelled the camp with a field gun and a trench mortar. According to his memoirs the shelling inflicted some losses on the defenders, but the mortar burst at one of the first rounds, and flat-trajectory fire alone could do no harm to a well-covered garrison. The British relief force from the direction of Neu Langenburg did not appear, so the battle the German commander had hoped for did not take place either.

On the afternoon of 2 November the main German force, driving a herd of more than 400 head of cattle with it, moved off to the south-west, between Fife and the Mwenzo mission, deeper into Northern Rhodesia. The rearguard set fire to the previously captured stores lying outside the British trenches. At the field hospital at the Mwenzo mission the Germans replenished their supply of medicines: Lettow-Vorbeck wrote that from then on he had more than 14 kilograms of quinine, enough to last until June 1919.

The attack failed, but for Lettow-Vorbeck it was not the most important thing. From prisoners he learned that British transports were coming from the Broken Hill area, today Kabwe, through Kasama to Fife. He therefore decided to march south along this supply line, towards Kasama, counting on more well-stocked depots. The South African official account of the campaign later noted briefly that on 2 November General von Lettow “was again out of East Africa, attacking Fife unsuccessfully”.