Germans withdraw from Kilimanjaro

During the night of 21–22 March 1916 the German units that had spent the whole day repulsing the British at Kahe quietly left their trenches and moved south along the Usambara Railway, which ran from Moshi to the port of Tanga. So ended the German defence of the Kilimanjaro region, the richest and healthiest corner of German East Africa, with its plantations and settler farms, which since the start of the war had been the main base of the German forces in the north of the colony.

The order to retreat was given by Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck when he received a report that British cavalry was coming round into his rear near Kisangire station, about 25 kilometres further south along the railway. When he himself reached Kisangire shortly after midnight, he discovered to his astonishment that the report was false. The retreat, however, was already under way. According to the British official history (Hordern), the Germans broke contact with the enemy, and reconnaissance later showed that they did not halt until Lembeni, at the foot of the Pare Mountains, where they set up a new defensive position. Behind them they left blown bridges and a disabled gun from the cruiser Königsberg.

On the morning of 22 March British patrols found the trenches empty. Scouts of the 2nd Rhodesia Regiment, advancing from the river Himo, still ran into the last soldiers of the German rearguard. According to the regimental history they found there an almost impregnable position, abandoned in haste, with hot meals and stores in carefully built trenches. The 1st Battalion, King’s African Rifles seized a bridgehead on the south bank of the Ruvu, the upper course of the Pangani. On 22 and 23 March the troops of General Jan Smuts reached the line of this river without a fight.

The British official history concludes that German resistance had not been broken, but the Germans had been driven out of the most valuable corner of their colony, and British East Africa no longer needed to fear attacks from that direction. From now on it was the Germans who would have to defend themselves. Smuts, however, had not managed to encircle or destroy Lettow-Vorbeck’s forces, which slipped away almost intact. Nor could he set off in pursuit at once. The rainy season came later than usual that year, but it was exceptionally violent: the rivers swept away almost all the bridges, and the roads turned to mud. Smuts therefore halted on the Ruvu and sent the infantry to camps on higher ground near Moshi, on the Himo and at Mbuyuni, and the cavalry to Arusha, which South African scouts had earlier occupied without a fight.

He used the pause to reorganise the army. In place of two divisions he formed three: two South African, under Generals Jacob van Deventer and Coen Brits, each with a mounted brigade, and one made up of Indian, British, East African and Rhodesian units, which General Reginald Hoskins took over on 1 April. Generals Stewart, Tighe and Malleson returned to the Indian Army. Meanwhile the sappers were extending the railway from Voi, which reached Taveta on 23 March and later linked up with the Usambara Railway. While the rains were still falling, on 3 April, van Deventer set out from Arusha into the interior of the colony, towards Kondoa Irangi.