Smuts takes command in East Africa

On the morning of 19 February 1916 Lieutenant-General Jan Smuts, the new commander-in-chief of the British forces in East Africa, came ashore at Mombasa. Waiting for him on the quay was General Michael Tighe, who had commanded the troops there since April 1915 and in recent weeks had been standing in for the seriously ill General Horace Smith-Dorrien. Tighe briefed him on the situation and handed over command. This ended an interregnum of several weeks that had begun when Smith-Dorrien had to give up the post before he had even reached East Africa.

A Boer general in British service

Smuts was one of the most important figures in the Union of South Africa. As a young Boer general he had fought against the British in the Boer War, and afterwards, together with Prime Minister Louis Botha, he had staked everything on reconciliation with Britain. During the war he was the Union’s Minister of Defence. In the autumn of 1914 he helped to put down the Boer rebellion, and in 1915 he commanded one of the forces in the campaign that ended with the capitulation of German South West Africa. According to the British official history he was appointed commander-in-chief in East Africa on 6 February 1916. The choice also had a political dimension, since the core of the new reinforcements consisted of volunteers from South Africa. According to the South African official history Smuts sailed from Durban on the evening of 12 February (other accounts mention Delagoa Bay) and after a week’s voyage reached Mombasa.

Defeat at Salaita

The new commander arrived just after a defeat. On the same day that he sailed from South Africa, 12 February, Tighe’s troops attacked the German position on Salaita Hill (in German Oldorobo), which covered the road from British into German East Africa through Taveta. The attack by about 6,000 men with 18 guns was directed by Brigadier-General Wilfrid Malleson. Airmen and patrols put the strength of the defenders at about 300 men, but in reality about 1,300 Germans and askaris stood on and near the hill, with further companies in reserve. The newly arrived 2nd South African Infantry Brigade, which was to outflank the hill from the north, was pinned down by fire, and German counter-attacks from the flank drove it back. The withdrawal was covered by mountain artillery and the steadfast 130th Baluchis. According to the official history the South African brigade lost 138 men, and according to Governor Heinrich Schnee the Germans lost 9 killed and 34 wounded. For the soldiers from South Africa it was their first taste of bush fighting and a hard lesson, and the morale of the German askaris rose markedly.

A race against the rainy season

Smuts did not linger in Mombasa. He went straight to the front, viewed the road to Taveta from Mbuyuni and the northern approaches to Kilimanjaro from Longido, and on 23 February reached headquarters in Nairobi. From there he telegraphed to London that an immediate offensive was possible and desirable, and two days later he received the government’s approval. Smith-Dorrien had wanted to wait until the end of the rainy season, which in that area usually began at the end of March. Smuts judged it better to take the risk before Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck found out what the British forces really looked like. By African standards they were enormous: according to the British official history, on 3 February the fighting units in the colony and on their way there numbered about 27,350 men with 71 guns. At the beginning of January Lettow reported to the governor that in the whole colony he had about 2,700 Europeans and 11,400 askaris, and in the Kilimanjaro area the British estimated his forces at about 6,000 men.

In essence Smuts adopted the plan prepared by Tighe: a converging attack on the German forces at Kilimanjaro from the north and from the east. The lessons of Salaita, however, led him to avoid frontal attacks on entrenched positions in the bush and to replace them with outflanking moves. He therefore moved the South African Mounted Brigade from the northern to the eastern axis, so that under his direct command it could outflank Salaita and Taveta from the north. By 4 March all the regrouping was complete. The next day the 1st Division set off southwards from Longido, and in the following days the offensive against Kilimanjaro also began from the east. Smuts commanded in East Africa until January 1917, but he did not manage to defeat Lettow-Vorbeck.