Battle of Narungombe

At six in the morning on 19 July 1917 three British columns advanced on the German trenches at Narungombe, among hills and tall grass about 50 kilometres south of Kilwa in German East Africa. The fighting lasted until dusk and was one of the hardest of the whole campaign. The Germans repulsed attack after attack but abandoned the position during the night. The British won the coveted wells, but at the cost of more than 600 killed, wounded and missing.

The pursuit from Kilwa

The new commander in East Africa, General Jacob van Deventer, moved immediately after the rainy season against the German forces standing between Kilwa and Lindi. Three columns set out from Kilwa, commanded, in the absence of the sick General Hannyngton, by General Percival Beves, already known from the crossing of the Rufiji. No. 1 Column under Colonel Orr consisted of the Gold Coast Regiment, the 33rd Punjabis, a battalion of the King’s African Rifles and the 8th South African Infantry; No. 2 Column of two battalions of the King’s African Rifles and the 7th South African Infantry; and No. 3 Column of another battalion of the King’s African Rifles and the 40th Pathans. They set out on the night of 4–5 July, during an eclipse of the Moon, and were to outflank the Germans in wide arcs and close them in a pocket. Heavy fighting took place in the first days. According to Lettow-Vorbeck, on 6 July Captain Eberhard von Liebermann’s companies repulsed with heavy losses a frontal attack by at least a brigade.

The encirclement plan failed, as it almost always did in dense bush. The columns moved slowly, cut passages through the grass for motor vehicles and suffered from lack of water. The history of the Gold Coast Regiment (Clifford) describes men who for several days hacked an eight-foot road through elephant grass on a few biscuits and without water, until they came to a precipice that no vehicle could cross. On 18 July all three columns, contrary to plan, converged on the main road a few kilometres north of Narungombe. That day a battalion of the King’s African Rifles drove the Germans from the wells at Kihumburu, but the water there did not last long. The larger springs were at Narungombe, where Liebermann was waiting in an entrenched position. Beves ordered an attack for the next morning.

A day under fire

The German breastworks of earth and stakes, with redoubts and machine-gun nests, stretched for about four kilometres along the slopes of two hills between which the road ran. For 300 metres in front of the trenches the Germans had cut the grass, depriving the attackers of all cover. According to Clifford, Liebermann had four companies of askaris in the front line, with four more that arrived too late to take part in the fighting, as well as two guns and at least six machine guns. A more recent study by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC), based on British war diaries, speaks of eight companies and two captured Portuguese guns.

The Gold Coast Regiment, advancing in the centre, came under fire a few hundred metres from the camp, and before 8.15 a.m. its advanced guard was pinned down just short of the trenches. Nos. 2 and 3 Columns were ordered to outflank the wings. No. 3 Column entered a valley on the left flank without reconnaissance and at noon found itself in crossfire. British shells set the dry grass alight, and the wind drove the fire towards the attackers. An inexperienced battalion of the King’s African Rifles, which had lost many officers, broke, and a German counter-attack pushed the whole column back several hundred metres. According to the battalion’s history, many wounded who could not be carried away died in the flames. The Africans of the Gold Coast, used to bush fires, beat out the flames under fire and held on, although their left flank was in the air. In the afternoon the Gold Coast men, the Punjabis and the King’s African Rifles broke into part of the German trenches, but without ammunition or support on the left they had to fall back a hundred metres and dig in. On the right flank Major Durham led his King’s African Rifles battalion in a bayonet charge, repulsed a German counter-attack and at dusk held the trenches he had taken.

During the night Liebermann, who was running out of ammunition, withdrew to the south. Lettow-Vorbeck, who was hurrying to his aid with several companies and a mountain battery, arrived too late. In his memoirs, where he placed this battle at the end of July, he wrote that the enemy had suffered a heavy defeat and that his troops had fled in disorder, throwing away their weapons, and regretted that he had not arrived in time to finish him off. British accounts admit that the left flank broke, but stress that the line was restored before nightfall.

The price of the wells

According to the column reports cited by the CWGC, the British lost 152 killed, 457 wounded and 15 missing. The Gold Coast Regiment alone had 158 killed and wounded out of about 790 men. The exact German losses are not known. Clifford wrote that the losses inflicted by the Germans were out of all proportion to any gains, and that Narungombe showed that without a rapid and uninterrupted pursuit, and above all without securing water, Lettow-Vorbeck could not be beaten. Beves’s columns halted at Narungombe for two months, and the next advance from Kilwa began only on 17 September. For decades the battle was remembered mainly by the British, Indian, South African and Gold Coast regiments. The fallen askaris of the King’s African Rifles, who made up about a third of the dead, have only recently begun to be commemorated by name by the CWGC.