Belgians occupy Tabora

On 19 September 1916 troops of the Force Publique, the colonial army of the Belgian Congo, occupied without a fight Tabora, the largest town in the interior of German East Africa. During the night the German troops of General Kurt Wahle had left their positions on the hills north of the town and moved off to the south-east. According to the British official history (Hordern), relying here on the Belgian official history, in the morning patrols of the Northern Brigade found the German trenches empty, and at 8.45 a.m. two European missionaries informed a company commander at an outpost that the town was surrendering. At 10.30 a.m. this officer entered Tabora and met there soldiers of Colonel Frederik-Valdemar Olsen’s Southern Brigade, to whom a delegation of the local civil authorities had meanwhile formally handed over the town. In the course of the day the Belgians set up their administration in Tabora.

The British chronology of the war calls Tabora the capital of the colony. The capital was Dar es Salaam, occupied by the British two weeks earlier, but Tabora was very important to the Germans. A former centre of the caravan trade in the land of the Nyamwezi people, after the arrival of the Central Railway in 1912 it had become the main communications hub in the interior of the colony, a centre of administration and of supply for the troops. During the war coins were even struck here, including gold 15-rupee pieces, from local gold.

Two brigades

Olsen’s Southern Brigade, which in July had occupied Kigoma and Ujiji on Lake Tanganyika, advanced on Tabora along the railway from the west. At the end of August its advance guard took Usoke station and held it against German counter-attacks, but on 1 September at Mabama one of Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas’s battalions was routed, losing about 85 killed and four machine guns. From 10 to 12 September Olsen fought the Germans on a prepared position at Lulanguru, some fifteen kilometres west of Tabora. Hordern describes these three days as continuous, confused fighting by small units on a broad front. On the evening of 12 September both sides were exhausted, and the Belgians were running out of ammunition. They did not notice that the Germans withdrew during the night. Only on 15 September did Olsen move on, and on 17 September he dug in on the Igange hills, from which Tabora could be seen.

The Northern Brigade of Colonel Philippe Molitor, which had occupied Ruanda in the spring, set out on 1 September from St. Michael mission, south of Lake Victoria, through densely populated country in which its African soldiers could live off local supplies. Before dawn on 14 September it attacked the German positions on the Itaga and Masagola hills north of Tabora. In the morning the Belgians took the Itaga ridge with two guns and two machine guns, but could not hold it under crossfire. In the afternoon Captain Max Wintgens, supported by at least two guns from the cruiser Königsberg, struck them in the flank, captured two Belgian guns and forced the brigade to retreat. Hordern judges that this tactical defeat was a modest price, because it drew Wahle’s forces away from Lulanguru. Wahle made excellent use of the advantage of interior lines, but in the face of the Belgians’ numerical superiority and the approaching British his position was becoming ever more difficult. A new attack on Itaga was planned for 19 September. It proved unnecessary.

A race the British did not know they had lost

A British column under Brigadier-General Charles Crewe, which in July had taken Mwanza, was also marching on Tabora from the north. According to Hordern, the two allied forces, instead of cooperating, were in practice racing each other to the railway, and poor communications and disagreements between Crewe and the Belgian commander, General Charles Tombeur, only made matters worse. The British, dependent on a long supply line through barren bush full of tsetse flies, advanced slowly and had to halt every few days. Only on 25 September at 1.30 p.m. did a Belgian motorcyclist reach Ndala, where Crewe was preparing to cut the railway east of Tabora and to attack the town together with the Belgians, with the news that Tabora had been in Belgian hands for six days. The Belgian official history writes that an earlier messenger “fortunately” did not reach Ndala, because there was reportedly still a German garrison there.

In Tabora the Belgians freed foreigners interned by the Germans. Hordern writes of about 35 missionaries and 160 other civilians, including 100 Britons, who complained of brutal treatment and of being forced to do menial work under the guard of askaris. German and some more recent accounts also describe how, after entering the town, soldiers of the Force Publique plundered Tabora and the surrounding area for several days, and that the victims of the violence were both Europeans and, above all, the African inhabitants.

Significance

For the Belgians the occupation of Tabora was the greatest success of the war in Africa and the fulfilment of the aims set by the government in Le Havre. The whole western part of the German colony, with Ruanda, Urundi and the western section of the Central Railway, was in their hands, and Brussels had gained an important asset for future peace negotiations. Tombeur judged that further operations were no longer in Belgium’s interest, and the Belgian offensive stopped at Tabora. The Germans, however, slipped away once again. Wintgens with about 1,400 men went south through Sikonge, and a smaller group under Captain Langenn, about 400 men, with which Wahle himself was reportedly travelling, went east along the railway. The German troops from the west fell back towards the areas in the south of the colony, where the main forces of Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck were fighting.