Fighting at Mkaramo

On 9 June 1916 the main column of General Jan Smuts’s forces fought the Germans at Mkaramo on the Pangani river, in the north-eastern part of German East Africa. The British official history (Hordern) and Smuts’s report spell the name Mkalamo. At this point the Pangani was crossed by a German field railway that ran south-west from Mombo station on the Usambara railway to Handeni. It was the only link between the German detachments in the Usambara Mountains and the main forces of Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, then standing far to the west, at Kondoa Irangi.

The march along the Pangani

When the rains ended, Smuts set out on 22 May from Kilimanjaro to the south-east, along the Pangani and the Usambara railway. On this axis Lettow-Vorbeck had left only a few companies with two batteries under Major Georg Kraut, which fell back without letting themselves be encircled. On 31 May the British took Buiko station. Here Smuts halted the troops for a few days to bridge the Pangani, and went himself to Kondoa Irangi to confer with General van Deventer. His plan was simple: Brigadier-General J. A. Hannyngton’s column was to continue along the railway, while Brigadier-General S. H. Sheppard’s 1st East African Brigade, with two South African battalions in reserve, was to cross to the right bank of the Pangani and strike straight at Mkaramo. Taking this place would cut Kraut off in the Usambara Mountains or force him to retreat to Handeni. In the first week of June four British aircraft bombed the bridge at Mkaramo, but little could be seen in the bush.

On 7 and 8 June Sheppard’s column toiled along a narrow, overgrown and in places swampy path. Kraut, warned of the British movement, sent his heavy artillery back by the field railway towards Handeni and concentrated his main forces at Mkaramo, on the western bank of the river, with an advanced detachment on Mafi Hill. Hannyngton meanwhile advanced along the line and at four in the afternoon on 9 June took Mombo station. The Germans had had time to blow up the railway bridge, water tanks and workshops there.

Battle in the bush

On the morning of 9 June Lieutenant-Colonel P. H. Dyke’s advanced guard, made up of the 29th Punjabis, the 130th Baluchis, a company of the 61st Pioneers and two mountain guns, moved on Mkaramo. At about 11.15 a.m. a British aircraft drew fire from Mafi Hill, and two light guns began shelling the column. Dyke turned away from the river into a belt of dense, thorny scrub, through which he advanced very slowly. At about one in the afternoon two leading companies of the 130th came upon well entrenched Germans, and the fighting at a few dozen metres usual in this campaign began. Further British companies tried to work round the German flanks, and the Germans extended their line. The mountain guns could find no target in the bush. At about 2.30 p.m. Sheppard arrived but, as Hordern writes, in a place where visibility was a few metres he could not even establish exactly where he was.

At about 3.15 p.m. a German counter-attack worked round the British left flank and struck the rear of the column, scattering the dressing stations, doctors and wounded. This was described by the doctor and writer Francis Brett Young in his book Marching on Tanga. A company of the 2nd Kashmir Rifles beat off the attack. With an hour left before dark, Sheppard ordered the units to fall back a little and dig in for the night. According to Hordern, the British lost 15 killed and 33 wounded, mainly from the 130th Baluchis. Both sides fired huge amounts of ammunition: the 130th alone, about 400 strong, used more than 18,000 rounds. Governor Heinrich Schnee gave German losses as 3 killed and 11 wounded, but the British counted 18 bodies and took 5 prisoners.

On the morning of 10 June patrols found the positions empty. The burnt village of Mkaramo was still smouldering, and the field railway and its trucks had been destroyed, although the bridge over the Pangani had survived. It also turned out that Sheppard, who believed he was turning the German right flank, had in fact been attacking their centre and left. Kraut had again slipped away towards Handeni. That same day Smuts returned to the troops and took direct command at Mkaramo, and Hannyngton’s men learned that at the nearby hill station of Wilhelmsthal, today Lushoto, the Germans had left in British care about 500 women and children and about 70 non-combatant men.