Start of the Kilimanjaro offensive

On the morning of 5 March 1916 Major-General James Marshall Stewart’s 1st Division set off south from Longido mountain in British East Africa, north-west of Kilimanjaro. This was the start of the offensive that the new commander-in-chief, Lieutenant-General Jan Smuts, had planned immediately after his arrival in East Africa. The division had completed its concentration at Longido on 3 March. At this same place in November 1914 Stewart had unsuccessfully attacked the Germans; now he was to push from the same direction deep into German East Africa.

The division’s task was the hardest in the whole plan. It was to go round the Kilimanjaro massif from the west, pass between it and Mount Meru and come out in the area of Boma Ngombe in the rear of the German forces defending the gap at Taveta. When Smuts’s main forces struck from the east, Stewart was to cut off the Germans’ line of retreat. That is why he set out two days before the eastern columns. His division included Indian units, among them the 29th Punjabis and the 129th Baluchis, as well as the 1st battalion of the African King’s African Rifles, the settlers’ volunteer cavalry of the East African Mounted Rifles and a battalion of the Cape Corps, made up of so-called Coloureds from South Africa. The British estimated the German forces on the western side of the mountain at about 800 rifles. In reality there were about 1,200 men there.

On the first day the division marched from Longido to the Sheep Hills range, the route to which was hidden from the Germans’ view. At dawn the advance guard of the 29th Punjabis drove a small German post out of there. Ahead of it lay a waterless stretch of about 40 kilometres, so Stewart halted his men during the heat of the day and moved on only at dusk. During the day he also sent a small mounted column towards Kampfontein near Meru, which was to draw the Germans’ attention away from the actual line of march and then turn east at night and rejoin the division. A detachment of Punjabis with mountain guns went off to the left flank, and the next morning drove off a German post at Ngaserai.

At the same time, between 3 and 5 March, the rest of Smuts’s forces were concentrating in the east, at Mbuyuni and Serengeti on the road to Taveta. They went over to the attack on the evening of 7 March. The plan called for close coordination of the two movements, which in unknown, unmapped bush proved very difficult. For several days communication between the columns was possible only by wireless via Longido, because the Kilimanjaro massif separated the two groups.

The first days of the march passed without fighting, but the 1st Division advanced slowly, hampered by the lack of news of the enemy and by downpours heralding the rainy season. Despite Smuts’s urging, its main column reached the Sanya river near Boma Ngombe only on the evening of 11 March, and the division reached Moshi only after the Germans had slipped away to the south.