Clash at Nhamacurra

On the afternoon of 1 July 1918 three companies of the German Schutztruppe under Captain Erich Müller made a surprise attack on the Portuguese positions at Nhamacurra, today Namacurra, a settlement with a large sugar mill about 40 kilometres north of the port of Quelimane in Portuguese East Africa. The same afternoon the main force of Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck forded the river Licungo, several hundred metres wide, with the water up to their necks in the deepest places. Three days of fighting ended in one of the Germans’ greatest victories in Mozambique and the southernmost point of their march.

The march south

Since crossing the Rovuma in November 1917 Lettow-Vorbeck had lived on what he captured from the enemy. Instead of turning back north, as the British commander General Jacob van Deventer expected, in the spring of 1918 he led his troops deep into the colony, slipping away from British columns and seizing one Portuguese depot after another at Alto Molócuè, Ile and Lugela. His scouts heard from the local people of great stores at a place called Kokosani. Only later did the Germans establish that this was the Nhamacurra of the Portuguese maps. Supplies from Quelimane came here up the river Namacurra, and from here a light railway ran north towards Lugela. The British feared that the Germans would take Quelimane and seize ships there. At the end of June, therefore, 600–700 Portuguese African soldiers and a company of the British King’s African Rifles, soon reinforced by a second, were sent to Nhamacurra. The whole force was commanded by a British officer, Eric Gore-Browne.

Three days of fighting

According to van Deventer’s report, the attack of 1 July struck straight into the gap between the Portuguese western flank and the river, as if the Germans knew the layout of the defences exactly. The garrison of this sector, about 500 African soldiers, was taken by surprise. Despite the brave conduct of the Portuguese officers and NCOs, the Germans quickly took the western part of the defences together with two field guns. The Portuguese garrison of the central sector withdrew on orders eastwards, to the position at the railway station on the river Namacurra, held by about 300 British askaris. According to Lettow-Vorbeck’s memoirs, the rest of his troops arrived on 2 July and came up against the trenches at the station (van Deventer wrote that the main German force arrived only on 3 July). The British repulsed attacks that day and the next, and the exchange of fire in the rain brought no decision. Lettow-Vorbeck judged that an assault through the dense bush would be too costly.

On 3 July the Germans repaired a gun by exchanging parts between their own damaged gun and the captured ones, which were of the same pattern. In the afternoon, at about 3 p.m., they opened fire with it on the station, while from the other side a lighter gun and numerous machine guns fired on it. Under fire from two sides the defenders began to waver, and the German companies, on their own initiative, went in to the assault and broke into the positions. The garrison fell back and was pushed into a bend of the river. Many soldiers tried to swim across the Namacurra and drowned. Among them was Gore-Browne.

Losses and booty

Lettow-Vorbeck put the enemy’s losses at 5 Europeans and 100 askaris killed and 4 Europeans and about 100 askaris drowned. He took prisoner 421 askaris and 122 Europeans, mostly Portuguese, some of whom escaped, while the wounded were left in the hospital. Later studies speak of about 209 killed and drowned and about 540 prisoners in all. According to German figures the Schutztruppe lost only 9 killed and a dozen or so wounded. The booty exceeded expectations: 10 machine guns, about 350 modern rifles, which made it possible to withdraw the old black-powder rifles almost completely, hundreds of boxes of ammunition, including the cargo of a river steamer which, unaware of anything, tied up at the landing stage after the battle, as well as over 300 tonnes of food, sugar from the mill, cloth and wine.

Lettow-Vorbeck did not go on to Quelimane. The country between the Namacurra and the Zambezi was cut by numerous rivers, and he feared being pinned against the Zambezi, which was guarded by gunboats. British columns, misled by false reports, converged on Nhamacurra when the Germans had already turned back north-east. The defeat was a severe blow to the Portuguese. According to some historians it practically ended their part in the fighting in East Africa, and at a conference in Quelimane on 22 July van Deventer and the colony’s governor-general decided to set up separate zones of operation for the British and Portuguese forces.