Northern Force advances on Windhoek

The British chronology of the war records under 22 February 1915 the start of the advance of the South African Northern Force from Swakopmund on Windhoek, the capital of German South West Africa. South African accounts link the first operation to 23 February, when the troops of the prime minister and commander-in-chief, Louis Botha, pushed the German outposts away from the town into the desert. On 22 February, far to the south, the forces of General Duncan McKenzie, advancing from Lüderitzbucht, took Garub station.

Botha takes command

Since the occupation of Swakopmund in mid-January the troops of the Union of South Africa had been gathering on the coast, at Swakopmund and nearby Walvis Bay. On 10 or 11 February (sources differ by a day) Botha himself arrived and took command of the Northern Force. He brought reinforcements with him: two mounted brigades and artillery. Further infantry battalions and heavy guns soon joined them.

The Northern Force was to strike at the heart of the colony, along the valley of the seasonal Swakop river and the railway line leading inland. First, however, it had to cross the broad belt of the Namib desert, which stretches along the whole coast. The Germans blew up the track and poisoned the wells, and in Swakopmund itself drinking water had to be brought by ship from Cape Town and mixed with the brackish local water. Every step inland depended on water, fodder for the horses and the delivery of supplies.

The first sortie into the desert

On 23 February Botha led out of the town Colonel P. C. B. Skinner’s infantry and Colonel Alberts’s mounted brigade. The infantry took Nonidas without a fight, a halting place a few kilometres from Swakopmund on the railway line. The cavalry ran into a German rearguard and suffered some losses in a skirmish. A few prisoners were taken, among them an officer. The German outposts withdrew into the desert.

In the following days mounted units advanced up the Swakop valley, taking almost without resistance Goanikontes, the police post and well at Haigamchab, about 40 kilometres from the coast, and the well at Husab. From 23 February to 3 March Botha halted railway construction in order to increase the delivery of supplies from Walvis Bay to the advancing troops.

The road ahead

The sortie of 23 February was only the beginning. Before the Northern Force could move further, supplies had to be accumulated and the railway rebuilt. In the second half of March Botha led the main force out of Swakopmund and struck at the German positions on the edge of the desert, at Riet, Pforte and Jakalswater. At the same time further South African columns were advancing from Lüderitzbucht and from the territory of the Union. In May 1915 Botha’s troops took Windhoek.