Fighting at Beho-Beho begins

On the afternoon of 3 January 1917 two small British columns, under Lieutenant-Colonels Lyall and Dyke, came upon the Germans north of Beho-Beho, bush-covered hills in the valley of the Rufiji, and fought them until dark. On the morning of the same day, several dozen kilometres further west, General Beves’s South African brigade crossed the Rufiji in collapsible boats. The British chronology of the war records the “action at Beho-Beho” under 3 and 4 January. It was the third day of a new offensive by General Jan Smuts, which was at last to trap the German force in a pocket between his columns and the great river.

A new offensive

After the unsuccessful action at Kisaki in September 1916 Smuts’s troops had halted on the Mgeta river and waited out sickness and lack of supplies there throughout the rainy season. During this time Smuts reorganised his army. According to The Times History of the War, between mid-October and the end of December more than 12,000 white South African soldiers, worn down by malaria, were sent home from East Africa. They were replaced by new battalions of African riflemen and by General Cunliffe’s infantry brigade from Nigeria, brought over from West Africa. Facing them on the Mgeta stood five German companies under Captain Otto. Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck himself was fighting with his main force far to the east at the time, at Kibata, inland from Kilwa.

The attack, set for 26 December, was delayed by downpours until 1 January. Smuts wanted to seize a crossing over the Rufiji and, if possible, destroy the German force on the northern bank. General Beves’s 2nd South African Infantry Brigade, reinforced by a battalion of the Cape Corps, was to make a wide sweep round the Germans from the west, through Kisaki, and seize a bridgehead on the Rufiji near Mkalinzo. General Sheppard’s 1st East African Brigade was to strike the German left flank, while Colonel Dyke’s 130th Baluchis, pushed forward, were to advance along the road to Wiransi. The Nigerians were to pin the Germans frontally, and Lyall’s column, with a Nigerian battalion and the 2nd Kashmir Rifles, was to go round them from the east and come out in their rear at Chimbe.

The first days

On 1 January the Baluchis drove the Germans from Wiransi after heavy fighting, and in the evening Lyall’s column at Chimbe beat off detachments that were falling back towards Beho-Beho and ran into it on the road. Lettow-Vorbeck later wrote that his askaris often had to clear their way with the bayonet, and that in the thick bush several companies found themselves in a very difficult position. During the retreat the British ambushed a poorly covered German field howitzer and killed its entire crew. On 2 January it turned out that the Germans from Chimbe had slipped into the bush and set off towards Beho-Beho, and the Nigerians occupied the abandoned position at Kiderengwa without a fight.

On 3 January Beves’s advance guard, after a march of about 110 kilometres in tropical heat and with heavy packs, reached the Rufiji at Kipenio and launched its collapsible Berthon boats. According to the South African official history the men were on the far bank at 6.30 a.m., a day earlier than the order had envisaged, while according to other accounts the crossing began during the night. They then took the German post at Mkalinzo, where they captured documents and took prisoners. In the afternoon the columns of Lyall and Dyke, joined under Dyke’s command, attacked the Germans north of Beho-Beho. General Sheppard was ordered to go round Beho-Beho from the west and cut the road from Beho-Beho to Kibambawe, where the only bridge over the Rufiji stood. His column marched all through the night of 3–4 January. Accounts differ in the details: some write that Sheppard struck at Beho-Beho as early as 3 January, but the South African official history and Smuts’s own account place the decisive clash on the morning of 4 January.

Captain Otto thus had superior forces in front of him and on both sides, and behind him a swollen river and a single fragile bridge. From the documents captured at Mkalinzo the British learned that the Germans had orders to fall back eastwards along the Rufiji, but that the march of Lyall’s column had thwarted this. According to British accounts the Germans’ whole attention was drawn by Dyke’s Baluchis, and Beves’s wide outflanking movement went unnoticed. Lettow-Vorbeck claimed on the contrary that the move towards Mkalinzo had been spotted, and that Smuts’s plan, well conceived in his view, failed because Beves’s brigade reached the river too exhausted to act further at once. Everything now depended on whether Sheppard’s column would manage to close the road to the bridge.