British occupy Moshi

On 13 March 1916 General Jacob van Deventer’s South African Mounted Brigade approached Moshi, the most important German town at the foot of Kilimanjaro. The British chronology of the war records the occupation of New Moshi under that date. According to the British official history (Hordern), on the evening of 13 March the horsemen were still near the town, and they entered Moshi itself and New Moshi railway station early in the morning of 14 March. They found them abandoned, and there was not a single wagon on the tracks. The same date, 14 March, is also given by other detailed studies of the campaign, although some older ones, like the chronology, give 13 March.

Moshi was the heart of the richest and healthiest part of German East Africa. On the fertile slopes of Kilimanjaro and Meru lay the coffee plantations and farms of German settlers, and New Moshi was the terminus of the Usambara Railway, running from the port of Tanga. In 1914 the headquarters of the German forces had been here, and from here expeditions had set out against Taveta and the British Uganda Railway. After the capture of the Latema Nek pass on 12 March, the road west from Taveta lay open before van Deventer. His horsemen crossed the Himo river and moved on Moshi, meeting only roadblocks of felled trees on the way. Behind them the 2nd and 3rd South African Infantry Brigades came up to the Himo. Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck did not defend the town. His units withdrew south along the railway, towards Kahe and the Ruvu river, taking the rolling stock with them. According to the Western Front Association, van Deventer’s soldiers began looting the empty town after entering it.

General Jan Smuts’s plan, however, envisaged more than the occupation of the town. General James Stewart’s 1st Division, which had set out from Longido on 5 March, was to outflank Kilimanjaro from the west and cut off the Germans’ line of retreat. It moved very slowly, however, and its mounted troops lost at least a day after an unexpected clash with Major Fischer’s detachment on the evening of 10 March. On 12 March Stewart was still waiting for them at the bridge over the Sanya river, despite another telegram from Smuts urging him on. Only on 13 March did the division reach Boma Ngombe, west of Moshi, from where Stewart sent Brigadier-General S. H. Sheppard’s column through the bush to cut the Germans’ road to Kahe. During the night it was halted by a downpour. It was already too late. The Germans had managed to slip away.

At 9.30 a.m. on 14 March a motorcyclist sent from Moshi to Boma Ngombe made the first direct contact between the two forces. The meeting of the two columns in dense bush was not without its tense moments: the South Africans fired on Sheppard’s advance guard from the 1st Battalion, King’s African Rifles, whose uniforms resembled those of the German askaris. Only British flags sent forward prevented a more serious mishap.

The occupation of Moshi dashed Smuts’s hopes of a quick decision. The Germans lost the Kilimanjaro region with its plantations and supplies, but their troops escaped encirclement. The British official history attributes Stewart’s delay not so much to excessive caution as to his and his men’s lack of experience of African warfare. Smuts was dissatisfied with him, and a few days later Stewart gave up command of the division. The offensive now continued further south, on the Ruvu river, and at Moshi the British set up their camps and base.