South Africans occupy Aus

A British chronology of the war records under 30 March 1915 the occupation of Aus by the troops of the Union of South Africa. This small settlement in the mountains on the edge of the Namib desert, on the railway from Lüderitzbucht to Keetmanshoop, was the most strongly fortified German position in the south of German South West Africa. The Germans nevertheless gave it up without a fight.

Six months in the desert

Brigadier-General Sir Duncan McKenzie’s Central Force set out towards Aus from Lüderitzbucht, which had been occupied in September 1914. More than 120 kilometres of desert separated Aus from the coast. The Germans hoped this obstacle would stop the enemy. As they withdrew they destroyed the track, and at Aus they built strong defensive positions and set up a wireless station moved from Lüderitzbucht.

The Union troops advanced slowly, because every step forward required rebuilding the railway that brought up water and supplies. In November 1914 they occupied Tschaukaib station, and on 22 February 1915, without a fight, Garub (PL) station, which lay not far from Aus. The wells there, however, first had to be developed. In the second half of March they yielded about 270,000 litres of water a day, and McKenzie could at last bring three mounted brigades up to Garub.

The Germans leave

An attack on Aus proved unnecessary. In the north Louis Botha’s troops defeated the Germans at Riet and Pforte on 20 March, and a day later captured documents showing that the German command had stripped the south of the colony in order to defend the north against Botha’s advance. On 26 March Botha conferred with McKenzie at Lüderitzbucht. On the night of 28–29 March the wireless station at Aus fell silent, a sign that the Germans would soon leave.

The evacuation took several days. German records date the abandonment of Aus to 24 or 28 March, while according to a South African account the last Germans left on the night of 30 March, when the Central Force had already set out from Garub. McKenzie’s troops entered Aus unopposed. The retreating Germans took away the dismantled masts of the wireless station by rail and left mines on the track.

The advance continues

Aus opened the way into the southern part of the colony, but for nine days its wells could not water the horses of the whole Central Force. Only on 15 April did a flying column of three mounted brigades set out from Aus; pursuing the Germans through Bethanien towards Berseba, it advanced by forced marches. At the same time the Southern Force of Colonel Jacob van Deventer was advancing from the south, from the Orange river, and the Eastern Force of Colonel C. A. L. Berrangé from the east, across the Kalahari. By the end of April the Union troops controlled the whole south of the colony.

After the colony’s capitulation in July 1915 the South Africans set up a camp for German prisoners of war at Aus. It held up to 1,500 men. The last prisoners left it in 1919.