Surrender of Tafel's column

On 28 November 1917, on the northern bank of the Rovuma, in the valley of the Mwiti stream, the column of Captain Theodor Tafel laid down its arms. It was the second-largest part of the German Schutztruppe in German East Africa. For several weeks Tafel had been fighting his way from the west of the colony to join Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck. When he reached the agreed area, it turned out that the main German force had already left and crossed the Rovuma into Mozambique. Without food and without news of Lettow-Vorbeck’s fate, Tafel surrendered to the British, even though two days earlier he had beaten them in a skirmish.

The march from Mahenge

Tafel commanded the so-called western detachments. In 1917 he defended the fertile Mahenge area, where he had taken over command from General Kurt Wahle when the latter left for the front at Lindi. In the autumn Belgian and British troops advanced on Mahenge from two directions. Tafel removed his supplies in good time, and Mahenge itself was taken by the Belgians in October. When Lettow-Vorbeck decided to leave the colony, he summoned Tafel to join him on the Rovuma. According to British accounts Tafel was leading about 1,400 soldiers, who marched in three columns. On the way they fought several successful actions. In mid-November they attacked a British column and captured four machine guns, and they also seized two convoys of food and ammunition. The British command was very much afraid of the two German groups joining up and brought up columns to prevent it.

Tafel, however, was marching blind. He headed for Masasi and Newala, where he expected to find Lettow-Vorbeck, but the latter had left Newala on 21 November. From the local people Tafel learned that there had been no German fighting north of the Rovuma for several days. He therefore crossed the river near the mouth of the Bangala in the hope of finding food on the southern bank, but found nothing. Lettow-Vorbeck later wrote bitterly that Tafel did not know that only a day’s march away from him Captain Göring’s detachment had taken a Portuguese camp and come upon well-stocked farms that could have fed the troops for two weeks. Tafel’s supplies were utterly exhausted. He went back to the northern bank of the Rovuma.

Victory before surrender

On 25 November several of Tafel’s companies attacked a British intelligence post on Tshrimba hill and killed its commander, but did not take the fortified position. On 26 November, on the Mwiti stream, the Germans ambushed the 129th Baluchis, a battalion of only about 120 men encumbered with a large convoy. A bayonet charge broke its left flank, while on the right they were stopped by the fire of a patrol of the 25th Indian Cavalry. The Indian battalion lost more than 40 per cent of its men within minutes and fell back to a new position, which it intended to hold to the last. Then, to the surprise of the British, the Germans broke off the fight.

That same afternoon a large group of Tafel’s men came into the Baluchis’ camp and surrendered: according to Captain W. D. Downes, author of the history of the Nigerian Brigade, 30 Europeans, 180 askaris, 640 porters and 220 women. Early on the morning of 27 November an envoy arrived with an offer to surrender the rest of the column, 62 Europeans and 1,000 askaris. The British accepted it, and on 28 November Tafel and his officers laid down their arms. Beforehand his men destroyed two guns, 30 machine guns and about 1,300 rifles. Captain Otto, commander of one of the columns, refused to surrender and during the night of 26–27 November slipped away southwards with five Europeans and twenty askaris. He later joined Lettow-Vorbeck.

The balance

Downes reckoned that in all about 95 Europeans and 1,200 askaris, who had just won a skirmish, surrendered to roughly a hundred Indian soldiers, and that no one was more surprised by this than the Baluchis themselves. General C. P. Fendall, writing from memory after the war, gave much higher figures, about 300 Europeans and 1,500 askaris as well as many porters and women. The British official chronology of the war places the surrender, in line with Downes’s account, on 28 November in the Mwiti valley.

Lettow-Vorbeck learned of the surrender from a message from General Jacob van Deventer and took it as a heavy and unexpected blow. It confirmed him in his resolve not to divide his forces again. With Tafel’s surrender the Germans lost their last large detachment on the territory of the colony. According to Downes, in November 1917 alone more than 1,100 Europeans and almost 3,400 askaris of the Schutztruppe were killed or captured. A few days later the British concluded that there was no longer a free German soldier in German East Africa. The war was carried on only by Lettow-Vorbeck’s army, which after the Battle of Ngomano was marching deep into Mozambique.