Smith-Dorrien resigns the East African command

The official British chronology of the war, Principal Events 1914–1918, records under 31 January 1916 that General Horace Smith-Dorrien had resigned the post of commander-in-chief of the British forces in East Africa. It adds that because of illness he never took up the command at all. The general, chosen for the post in November 1915, did not even reach German East Africa. Severe pneumonia kept him at Cape Town. Neither the British official history nor the general’s own memoirs give the exact day of the resignation, and the British press announced it only in the first half of February.

The voyage of the Saxon

Smith-Dorrien insisted on travelling to East Africa via Cape Town rather than, as the War Office wanted, through the Red Sea straight to Mombasa. He wanted first to discuss with the government of the Union of South Africa the state of the reinforcements being recruited there, which were to make up a large part of his force. In his memoirs he remarked that this change may have saved his life. He and his staff had originally been due to sail in the P&O liner Persia, which on 30 December 1915, soon after leaving Marseilles, was sunk off Crete by the German submarine U-38. Of the 519 people on board, 343 were killed.

On 24 December the general sailed from Plymouth in the Saxon. As soon as she put to sea he fell ill with pneumonia so severe that, as he wrote, his life was despaired of. He owed his survival to the care of the ship’s doctor and of a naval surgeon attached to his staff. At Cape Town he felt better and, through his chief of staff, Brigadier-General Simpson-Baikie, began preparing the campaign. Then his condition worsened again and he underwent two lung operations. The doctors were so pleased with them that they judged he could still take up the command.

Dispute with Pretoria and resignation

The illness did not interrupt the dispute over the campaign plan. Smith-Dorrien wanted only to push the Germans back to their positions near Taveta before the rainy season and to start in earnest only in June, when the troops would be ready “to the last button”. The government in Pretoria pressed, for political reasons, for the main operations to begin before the rains. The general, as he recalled, fought a “telegraphic battle” with it from his bed and refused. In the meantime the troops on the spot were still directed by General Michael Tighe, who was preparing an attack in the Kilimanjaro area.

When the general’s health deteriorated again, he had to resign. According to the British official history he did so “reluctantly”. As late as 4 February, according to the same history, he asked Tighe by telegram about his intentions, which suggests that he formally remained commander until a successor was appointed. The successor was the South African general Jan Smuts, appointed, according to the official history, on 6 February. In the first half of February, between 8 and 13 February according to various accounts, Smith-Dorrien boarded the Balmoral Castle at Cape Town for England. The Prime Minister of the Union, General Louis Botha, came on board to see him off. During the voyage he was again in a critical condition and was saved by an emergency operation performed by a surgeon who happened to be travelling on the ship.

Smuts did not adopt his predecessor’s plan. On 19 February he landed at Mombasa and, before the rainy season, began the offensive in the Kilimanjaro area, which Smith-Dorrien had wanted to avoid. Smith-Dorrien himself was given no further field command for the rest of the war.