Fighting at Latema Nek begins

At noon on 11 March 1916 British troops attacked the German position on the Latema and Reata hills west of Taveta, taken the day before. Both hills, covered in dense bush, rose about 200 metres above the plain in the gap between Kilimanjaro and the Pare Mountains. The saddle between them (in English a nek) barred the road from Taveta to the railway station at Kahe, and next to Latema ran the road to Moshi. Lieutenant-General Jan Smuts did not know whether only a German rearguard was holding out here or the main forces of Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, but he decided that he had to push the Germans off the nek before moving on. Outflanking the hills from the north was very difficult, and from the south, through bush and swamp, impossible. He therefore decided to attack frontally, while at the same time sending Brigadier-General Jacob van Deventer’s mounted troops further west, towards Moshi.

The attack was made by Brigadier-General Wilfrid Malleson’s 1st East African Brigade of Major-General Michael Tighe’s 2nd Division: the 130th Baluchis, the 2nd Rhodesia Regiment and the 3rd Battalion of the King’s African Rifles, about 1,500 men in all, at first supported by only 12 guns. The defence was held by Major Georg Kraut’s detachment. According to the British official history, based on German figures, it initially numbered about 550 soldiers, mainly askaris, with three light guns and four machine guns. During the day reinforcements arrived that raised its strength to about a thousand men. The Germans had perfectly concealed positions in the scrub on the ridge, while the attackers had to cross the open plain.

The Baluchis and the African riflemen reached the foot of the slopes and there were pinned down by fire. Because communications in the bush were difficult, news reached headquarters late. Malleson, who had been ill with dysentery since the morning, had to hand over command, and at about 4 p.m. Tighe himself took charge of the fighting. At about 5 p.m. he sent the Rhodesians into the attack. The sun setting behind Latema dazzled them on the plain, while the slopes lay in shadow and the gunners could not see their own infantry. Some of the Rhodesians reached the ridge and held on there, but at about 6 p.m. a strong German counter-attack from the nek drove most of them back down. The Baluchis and the King’s African Rifles, exhausted after five hours of fighting, also withdrew; their commander, Lieutenant-Colonel B. R. Graham, was killed. On the plain the newly arrived 5th South African Infantry was already digging in, and at 6.30 p.m. it beat off a German attempt to break through.

At about 8 p.m. the 7th South African Infantry, sent by Smuts, arrived. Tighe concluded that there were not many Germans and that the easiest way to dislodge them was a night bayonet attack. At about 9 p.m., by the light of a first-quarter moon, the 5th and 7th battalions advanced on both hills without any reconnaissance of the ground. Below the ridge they met a violent counter-attack that threw back most of the South Africans. The commander of the attack, Lieutenant-Colonel J. J. Byron, got along the road as far as the nek, but under the crossfire of three machine guns he lost half of his 40 men, was himself wounded and withdrew. He got back to his own lines at 1.30 a.m. In the darkness headquarters lost contact with the units, and neither Tighe nor Smuts knew that groups of men of the 7th Battalion and the Rhodesians were still holding on to the ridges on both sides of the nek.

The night attack, though it looked like a failure, decided the outcome of the fighting. Lettow-Vorbeck had kept a reserve on the Himo river all day and in the evening, judging Kraut’s position to be secure, was preparing a blow against van Deventer’s mounted troops. At 10.30 p.m. the commander of the German artillery on Latema reported to him by telephone that the South Africans had broken into the Reata position. Lettow called off the attack and ordered his troops to fall back towards the Kahe road. Some of Kraut’s units had already begun to come down from the hills, and the withdrawal from the nek continued until dawn on 12 March.