End of the fighting at Latema Nek

At dawn on 12 March 1916 British soldiers who had withdrawn during the night to the plain near Taveta saw their own troops on the ridge of the Latema and Reata hills. These were men written off during the night as missing. The Germans, who throughout the previous day had successfully defended the pass between the hills, had just left it. The road from Taveta into the interior of German East Africa, towards Moshi and Kahe, lay open before General Jan Smuts.

The order to withdraw

The fight for Latema Nek began at noon on 11 March with a frontal attack by General Michael Tighe’s 2nd Division. The daytime attacks were repulsed, and the night bayonet assault by the 5th and 7th South African Infantry battalions looked like a failure. Its commander, the wounded Lieutenant-Colonel J. J. Byron, returned to his own lines at 1.30 a.m. with half his men. Tighe asked for reinforcements, but Smuts had only two battalions left in reserve and refused. Uncertain reports were also reaching headquarters that the Germans were outflanking the left wing towards the Lumi river. Neither Tighe nor Smuts knew that groups from the 7th Battalion and a handful of men of the 2nd Rhodesia Regiment were still holding on to the ridges on both sides of the pass. At 4.30 a.m. Smuts therefore ordered Tighe to withdraw all units from below the hills before dawn. He preferred to wait for the outflanking movement that Brigadier-General Jacob van Deventer’s mounted troops had been carrying out for several days to take effect rather than renew the frontal attack.

The withdrawal went off without interference. When it grew light, however, British soldiers were spotted on the ridge from the plain. Smuts immediately sent from Taveta, on all the lorries that could be gathered, the 8th South African Infantry and a field battery. They occupied both hills, which the Germans had only just left. The battery tried to shell the retreating columns, but almost nothing could be seen in the bush, and a pursuit was out of the question, as the British units were only just reassembling after the night’s fighting. According to the South African official history, about 170 men of the 7th Battalion under Lieutenant-Colonel Freeth and Major Thompson had dug in during the night in the rear of the German position. Both were decorated on the spot for it.

Lettow-Vorbeck’s retreat

On the German side the pass was defended by Major Georg Kraut’s Abteilung, reinforced during the fighting to about a thousand rifles. Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, who on the evening of 11 March was preparing a blow against van Deventer, called it off after a report that the South Africans had broken into the Reata position, and ordered the units east of the Himo river to fall back south, onto the road from Taveta to Kahe. He himself set off across country towards Latema and arrived there at dawn on 12 March. Some of Kraut’s men had already left, and the hope of surprising van Deventer was gone. In the face of British superiority he had no choice but to retreat towards Kahe.

Assessments of this decision vary according to the source. Lettow-Vorbeck later explained that he had left the position under the impression of a report that overestimated the strength of the night attack. The British official history (Hordern) holds that the retreat was decided by the tenacity of a few groups of Rhodesians and South Africans who held on to the ridge, as well as by the threat from van Deventer, who was already far behind the left flank of the position. The South African official history of 1924 stresses the role of the mounted outflanking movement and adds that the frontal attack could have been postponed until that manoeuvre had fully developed.

After the battle

On 12 March van Deventer moved west, routed a weak German rearguard on the Himo river and secured the crossing at the site of a blown-up bridge. On the other side of Kilimanjaro, General James Stewart’s 1st Division, marching from Longido, was still standing at the bridge over the Sanya river, waiting for its belated mounted troops, despite another telegram from Smuts urging it on.

According to the official history, the fighting for Latema Nek cost the British about 270 men. The heaviest losses were suffered by the 3rd Battalion, King’s African Rifles (81 men); no detailed figures are available for the South African battalions. Governor Heinrich Schnee put German losses at 123 men, including 17 killed, but the British official history considers this figure too low, as at least 40 bodies were found on the battlefield. The capture of the pass opened Smuts’s way to Moshi, the terminus of the railway from Tanga, and further south towards Kahe, where Lettow-Vorbeck was preparing his next line of defence.