Northey's troops enter German East Africa

On 25 May 1916 the troops of Brigadier-General Edward Northey were to surround simultaneously four German posts on the south-western border of German East Africa, on the stretch between Lake Nyasa and Lake Tanganyika. So began the British offensive from Nyasaland and Northern Rhodesia, today’s Malawi and Zambia. The British chronology of the war gives this day as the beginning of the crossing of the border, but it was rather the day set for the encirclement of the posts. According to the British official history (Hordern), the first column crossed the border river Songwe as early as the evening of 20 May, and the others set out between 23 and 25 May.

A new commander on an old frontier

Since September 1914, when the Germans attacked Abercorn and Karonga, a war of posts and small raids had been fought along a border some 400 kilometres long. The British stood on the defensive. In November 1915, at the request of the High Commissioner in South Africa, Lord Buxton, a single commander was appointed for all forces on this front. The choice fell on Northey, a regular officer who in 1914 had led the 1st Battalion, King’s Royal Rifle Corps, from Mons to Ypres, and in 1915 had been wounded there as a brigade commander. He reached Karonga on 16 February 1916. For seven weeks he toured the border as far as Abercorn, rebuilding outdated forts and organising porters and supplies. The War Office advised him to remain on the defensive, but in Pretoria he agreed with Generals Louis Botha and Jan Smuts that at the first opportunity he would push the Germans back from the border.

By mid-April he had about 2,600 men, some 1,100 white and 1,500 African, and 14 guns. They were askaris of the 1st Battalion, King’s African Rifles, and the Northern Rhodesia Police, policemen from Southern Rhodesia, volunteers and newly raised battalions of South African Rifles. Six of his guns were German mountain guns captured a year earlier in South West Africa. The rainy season lasted longer here than in the north, so Northey agreed with Smuts that he would not move until the end of May. Smuts’s main forces began their march along the Pangani River at almost the same time, on 22 May, while Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck kept most of his troops far to the north, at Kondoa Irangi.

Four columns

Northey’s intelligence put the Germans at about 1,500 men in four fortified posts. This was greatly exaggerated: according to the German account by Arning, which Hordern cites, they were held by about 80 Germans and 640 askaris. Northey wanted to surround them simultaneously and force them to surrender. The right-hand column of Lieutenant-Colonel G. M. P. Hawthorn, about 800 men, set out from near Karonga on the afternoon of 20 May for Ipiana at the northern end of Lake Nyasa. The column of Major R. L. Flindt, about 400 men, crossed the border from Fort Hill (today Chitipa) during the night of 24–25 May and advanced on Igamba. The column of Lieutenant-Colonel E. Rodger, about 600 men, left Fife on 24 May for Luwiwa. Furthest west, the column of Lieutenant-Colonel R. E. Murray, about 800 men, set out on 23 May from Abercorn, today Mbala, for Namema.

The plan failed. Hawthorn, who had taken his men across the Songwe by boat and by a pontoon ferry, found Ipiana empty on 23 May. On 25 May Flindt found Igamba abandoned. Both garrisons had withdrawn north towards Neu Langenburg, the seat of the German district. Northey noted in his war diary that day that he wanted to “herd” the enemy into Neu Langenburg before Rodger could cut him off from the north. Rodger surrounded Luwiwa on 26 May, but his ring was too stretched, and during the night of 27–28 May the garrison slipped away in small groups. Murray besieged Namema from 25 May. Its garrison escaped only during the night of 2–3 June. Earlier, on 28 May, a sortie by it had been repulsed, and the German commander, von Francken, had been taken prisoner, mortally wounded.

Hordern admits that in none of the four places did Northey achieve more than driving the enemy out. Even so, by 10 June his troops had advanced in places as much as 240 kilometres, taken the border posts and removed the threat to Nyasaland and Rhodesia. According to the historian Ross Anderson, casualties were very small, fewer than 20 men. Two years of fighting on the border turned into a pursuit deep into the German colony, which by the end of August had brought Northey to Iringa.