Battle of Mahiwa begins

The British official chronology of the war records under 16 October 1917 the beginning of the “action of Nyangao” in German East Africa. The participants called it the Battle of Mahiwa, after a place a few kilometres from Nyangao on the road from Lindi to Masasi, and counted it from the day before. As early as 15 October the Nigerian Brigade, which after a ten-day march through waterless hills had reached the Namupa mission, attacked Mahiwa from the north, while the columns from Lindi advanced from the east on Mtama. The real battle broke out, however, on 16 October, when Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck arrived on the battlefield with his reserve. By the evening two Nigerian battalions were surrounded on the Mahiwa river, and a third, which was coming to their aid with ammunition and food, had been driven back with heavy losses.

The first day

The order of General Percival Beves, commander of the Lindi force, was simple: the Nigerians were to take Mahiwa, where the Germans held their main food depot, and cut the line of retreat of General Kurt Wahle’s nine companies, which the Lindi columns were to push out from Mtama. Headquarters assured them that Mahiwa was weakly defended. On the morning of 15 October the 1st Nigerian Battalion with the Gambia Company and two guns set off to block the road at Nyangao, and the 2nd and 4th Battalions under Lieutenant-Colonel Mann moved on Mahiwa. From the first moments they met resistance, and Beves ordered them by telephone to press on despite the losses. At about eleven o’clock the advance guard stood on the Mahiwa river facing an entrenched enemy. Captain Hetley’s company, sent on an outflanking move in the afternoon, ran into a strong German detachment and withdrew, losing about 40 per cent of its men. The Nigerians dug in for the night. They had no supplies, because the ammunition column and the transport had stayed at the mission. The 1st Battalion reported that it too was held up at Nyangao.

On the other side, Lettow-Vorbeck had been marching since 14 October with five companies and two mountain guns through the Likangara hills, hoping for a decisive blow. On the narrow paths his column became strung out, and the guns were left far behind. Before dark he reached Lieutenant Methner’s company, standing in reserve behind Wahle’s left wing, and at once threw his first two companies against the enemy who was outflanking the Germans. In the confusion his porter carrying the box with his most important papers and maps disappeared. He came back only two days later.

Encirclement

On the morning of 16 October Lettow-Vorbeck inspected the line and found that the enemy had dug in 60–100 metres away. Lieutenant von Ruckteschell offered him coffee, but care was needed, because the Nigerians shot accurately. The German commander decided to attack at noon on his left, northern wing and outflank the enemy. Meanwhile the Germans cut the road and the telephone line between Mann’s trenches and the mission, and posted machine guns on the river bank, the only source of water. On an order issued during the night, the 1st Battalion returned in the morning from Nyangao to Namupa, and in the afternoon set out from the mission towards Mahiwa with the supply and ammunition column of the whole brigade.

Captain Stretton, leading the advance company, heard firing ahead and was sure that the Germans were busy fighting Mann, and that he would fall on their rear. He quickened his pace without reporting this to his battalion commander, and one and a half kilometres short of Mann’s trenches ran into an ambush by Captain Göring’s detachment. According to Downes, he and one of his lieutenants were killed, and the remnants of the company fought their way out with the bayonet. At about 4 p.m. the fighting was at its heaviest. Half of the Gambia Company covering the guns was overwhelmed, the crew of one gun were killed or wounded and the gun was lost. The other was saved by Sergeant Tasker with a Lewis gun. The porters, caught in a hail of bullets, fled, and one of the officers, walking along the road with fifteen boxes of ammunition, went straight into the hands of the Germans. Lettow-Vorbeck wrote that the officer leading the ammunition column took his askaris for his own men, and the Germans captured about 150,000 rounds. In the evening the 1st Battalion returned to the mission. The Germans did not pursue it.

At the same time the surrounded battalions came under shellfire. From 2.30 p.m. a long-range 105 mm naval gun fired, and from 3.30 p.m. a modern 70 mm gun from a nearby hill. The Nigerians, who had not been under heavy artillery fire before either in Kamerun or in East Africa, had no shelters, and their little mountain guns could not reply. The sector of one company of the 4th Battalion received three direct hits in succession. Downes, who was in these trenches, recalled that the trees above the trench dripped with blood for two days afterwards. The company was withdrawn a hundred metres, and when the shelling suddenly stopped and the German infantry advanced, the Europeans ran back to the trenches with the machine guns, followed by the soldiers, the wounded among them, who could still hold a rifle. The assault at 4.30 p.m. broke down 150 metres short of the trenches. Downes remembered a German officer on a grey horse who rode along his skirmish line urging it on to the attack until he vanished under the fire.

The brigade’s worst day

According to Downes, 16 October was the blackest day of the Nigerian Brigade since its formation: in a single day the 1st and 4th Battalions and the Gambia Company lost about 300 killed and wounded, a gun and many machine guns. The soldiers, largely Hausa from northern Nigeria, had had no food since 14 October except what they carried with them, and ammunition was running ever lower. During the night the Germans lit hundreds of small fires less than a kilometre to the south, which looked like a lit-up street. The Nigerians, suspecting a trick, did not fire.

That day the Lindi columns occupied Mtama, abandoned by the Germans, and reached Nyangao, and one of them pushed on towards Mahiwa and at once ran into the enemy. Mann’s cut-off soldiers, however, could not hear its guns and asked where Beves’s forces had got to. The Nigerian Brigade, which according to the plan was to be the cork in the bottle, had itself fallen into a trap. The plan of van Deventer, who after the July fighting at Narungombe wanted at last to corner the Germans, was beginning to turn against its authors.