BELGIAN PONTOON BRIDGE: -NATIVE CARRIERS CROSSING A RIVER
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/german-infamies-in-east-africa-2q69mtqmv?CMP=TNLEmail_118918_1934449
German Infamies in East Africa
They made both civilian and military prisoners do the lowest kind of work in order that they might lose caste before the Africans
December 30, 1916
With the arrival in this country of the first Englishmen and Englishwomen who have been prisoners of the Germans in East Africa since the outbreak of war, and who were released when the Belgians captured Tabora, a picture in proper perspective is available of the foul treatment meted out to them by the Germans. The record of the degradation to which English civil and military prisoners were subjected, and of the terrible experiences of English ladies was as revolting as any in the history of German Kultur. The specific purpose was to discredit British prestige in Africa and to make the English appear before the natives as slaves of Germany. So strongly is this felt that a formal petition, accompanied by sworn statements, has been sent to General Smuts to hold a commission of inquiry into a course of conduct many details of which are too loathsome to be made public, but the knowledge of which will at once show the impossibility of the Germans ever being allowed to return to their colony.
Among those who returned home a few days ago is the Rev B F Spanton, Principal of St Andrew’s College, Zanzibar, who was on a tour of school inspection in the German colony. On the outbreak of war, in conversation with Reuters’ representative, Mr Spanton said: “The real point is that the Germans from the first did their best to destroy British prestige. They were brutal and cruel in the prosecution of a deliberate policy to this end. They made both civilian and military prisoners do the lowest kind of work in order that they might lose caste before the Africans. For great distances throughout Africa the news was passed that we were German slaves. This was drummed into the people on every opportunity and by all kinds of propaganda, and even the native German soldiers referred to us as slaves.
“British prisoners in the scantiest of clothing were set to pull a lorry through the streets - work usually done by oxen - in full view of the jeering natives. And one could see one English university graduate hoeing up a native gardien patch or a wealthy rubber planter clearing out native latrines. All this has had a great effect on the native mind, and the news of the degradation of British and other European men and women, flashed as it has been across Africa, is a source of wonder to tribes hundreds of miles distant.
SELECTED FOR BRUTALITY.
The commandant at Tabora was a man who had been warned by the German Government on account of his brutality, of which he had been officially convicted. He was once publicly horsewhipped by a German servant, yet he was appointed officer in charge of the prisoners’ camp at Tabora. The same plan was followed in the case of the ladies’ camp at Kisboriani. The man placed in charge here bore such a character that the local chiefs sent their wives and daughters out of the country. His own wife had committed suicide as a result of his vile conduct and he was deliberately chosen to take charge of ladies of gentle birth and education.
At Tabora 88 of us men of all nationalities and stations in life were herded in a corrugated shed which was so crowded that the beds touched one another. Sanitation there was none, and as we were locked up at 7 at night until the next morning the conditions were awful. The Germans made native soldiers with loaded rIfles march up and down inside the shed all night. lt is quite clear that from a military point of view the sentries were useless - it was only meant as another degradation for us, for one could not imagine a greater outrage than to place a native guard in a white man’s bedroom.
The ladies were required to do their own housework and also six hours’ work for the Government every day. They protested against being set to tasks whIch would assist the enemy, and were threatened with confinement with bread and water.
While being conveyed from one camp to another 30 English ladies, nine Englishmen, and about 40 native prisoners were shut up in an iron railway shed, again without the slightest pretence of sanitation, for one whole night, and most of the next day. The natives were not allowed to go out under any pretext, while for many hours the Englishmen and women were refused facilities for the ordinary decencies of life.
On another occasion a caravan of men and women were sent on a long march of 10 days under escort. It was pointed out that, in the interests of decency, tents must be provided for the ladies. Although these were obtainable, the officer applied to refused permission, and replied: “What have --- English women to do with decency?”
A CONTRAST
As soon as the Germans began to see that their colony was going grievances were redressed. When the advancing Belgians were 50 miles from Tabora the German attitude had completely changed. The Belgians behaved splendidly to the Germans on entering Tabora - a great contrast to the manner in which the latter had behaved to us.
One Belgian officer said to me: “I have seen my father, teether, and brothers massacred in Flanders, and my sister outraged.” One can imagine the difficulty in which such a man would be placed under the circumstances in repressing his natural feelings.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/obituary-captain-f-g-selous-famous-explorer-killed-in-action-hscpljhjq?CMP=TNLEmail_118918_1934449
Among those who returned home a few days ago is the Rev B F Spanton, Principal of St Andrew’s College, Zanzibar, who was on a tour of school inspection in the German colony. On the outbreak of war, in conversation with Reuters’ representative, Mr Spanton said: “The real point is that the Germans from the first did their best to destroy British prestige. They were brutal and cruel in the prosecution of a deliberate policy to this end. They made both civilian and military prisoners do the lowest kind of work in order that they might lose caste before the Africans. For great distances throughout Africa the news was passed that we were German slaves. This was drummed into the people on every opportunity and by all kinds of propaganda, and even the native German soldiers referred to us as slaves.
“British prisoners in the scantiest of clothing were set to pull a lorry through the streets - work usually done by oxen - in full view of the jeering natives. And one could see one English university graduate hoeing up a native gardien patch or a wealthy rubber planter clearing out native latrines. All this has had a great effect on the native mind, and the news of the degradation of British and other European men and women, flashed as it has been across Africa, is a source of wonder to tribes hundreds of miles distant.
SELECTED FOR BRUTALITY.
The commandant at Tabora was a man who had been warned by the German Government on account of his brutality, of which he had been officially convicted. He was once publicly horsewhipped by a German servant, yet he was appointed officer in charge of the prisoners’ camp at Tabora. The same plan was followed in the case of the ladies’ camp at Kisboriani. The man placed in charge here bore such a character that the local chiefs sent their wives and daughters out of the country. His own wife had committed suicide as a result of his vile conduct and he was deliberately chosen to take charge of ladies of gentle birth and education.
The ladies were required to do their own housework and also six hours’ work for the Government every day. They protested against being set to tasks whIch would assist the enemy, and were threatened with confinement with bread and water.
While being conveyed from one camp to another 30 English ladies, nine Englishmen, and about 40 native prisoners were shut up in an iron railway shed, again without the slightest pretence of sanitation, for one whole night, and most of the next day. The natives were not allowed to go out under any pretext, while for many hours the Englishmen and women were refused facilities for the ordinary decencies of life.
On another occasion a caravan of men and women were sent on a long march of 10 days under escort. It was pointed out that, in the interests of decency, tents must be provided for the ladies. Although these were obtainable, the officer applied to refused permission, and replied: “What have --- English women to do with decency?”
A CONTRAST
As soon as the Germans began to see that their colony was going grievances were redressed. When the advancing Belgians were 50 miles from Tabora the German attitude had completely changed. The Belgians behaved splendidly to the Germans on entering Tabora - a great contrast to the manner in which the latter had behaved to us.
One Belgian officer said to me: “I have seen my father, teether, and brothers massacred in Flanders, and my sister outraged.” One can imagine the difficulty in which such a man would be placed under the circumstances in repressing his natural feelings.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/obituary-captain-f-g-selous-famous-explorer-killed-in-action-hscpljhjq?CMP=TNLEmail_118918_1934449
Obituary: Captain F G Selous, famous explorer killed in action
Not only did Selous bag many elephants before he came of age, but by the time he was five-and-twenty he was known far and wide in South Africa as one of the most successful ivory hunters of the day
January 8, 1917
We regret to announce that Captain F C Selous, DSO, the famous South African explorer and big game hunter, has been killed in action in East Africa at the age of 64. He was gazetted lieutenant in the Royal Fusiliers in February, 1915, and received his captaincy in the following August. Last September he was awarded the DSO “for conspicuous gallantry, resource, and endurance,” the official report adding that he had set a magnificent example to all ranks and that the value of his services with his battalion could not be over-estimated. Captain Selous was home on leave last summer after 15 months in East Africa, During the whole campaign he had enjoyed perfect health, and was the only officer of his party not temporarily laid aside by illness. Thoroughly inured to hardship, he withstood the rigours of campaigning better than men less than half his age.
Captain Frederick Courteney Selous was born in London on December 31, 1851, of mixed French and English parentage on his father’s side and Scotch and English on his mother’s. He was educated at Rugby, and afterwards at Neuchatel and Wiesbaden. At the age of 19 he left England with £400 in his pocket, determined to earn his living as a professional elephant hunter. With this object he made his way to the Kimberley diamond fields, then recently discovered. On learning that the right season of the year for a trip to the interior would not be due for some months, young Selous joined a trading expedition into Griqualand. Most lads similarly situated would have been lured to the diggings; but he allowed nothing to divert him from the great object of his travels. In 1873 he at last set forth for the interior - that is, for the territory now known as Southern Rhodesia, then terrorized by the Matabele and their martial chief Lobengula.
Without the permission of this monarch no one might enter Matabeleland itself or any of the neighbouring territories; nor might trading or hunting be carried on without his sanction. Selous was kept so long waiting for the desired permission that he approached Lobengula again about the matter. The king was pleased to jest at his petitioner’s youthful appearance and to regard the idea of his attacking an elephant with derision. Having worked himself into a good humour at the Englishman’s expense, he gave the desired permission, which was taken advantage of promptly. Not only did Selous bag many elephants before he came of age, but by the time he was five-and-twenty he was known far and wide in South Africa as one of the most successful ivory hunters of the day.
About the time when these events were happening many of the Boer elephant hunters were giving up the profession, which was supposed to be no longer safe or profitable; The method hitherto pursued had been to ride down the herds on the open plains of the Free State and Transvaal, and later of Mashonaland on fast horses, and to shoot the elephants of all ages and both sexes indiscriminately. Taught by bitter experience, the elephants had given up their old haunts of the open veld, and the herds had retreated to the forest country. Here the use of horses was impossible, and in the bush country malarial and other fevers took heavy toll of the hunters. In spite of these drawbacks, a few of the bolder spirits, both Boer and British, made up their minds to stick to elephant hunting; and it was among these hardy and experienced men that Selous speedily made a great reputation for courage, bushcraft, and endurance.
A man of beautiful proportions, with a chest of extraordinary depth and breadth, he is described as the best white runner that the Matabele had ever seen and more than once he owed his life to his power of sprinting, jumping, and swerving. The life of constant hardship toughened him, and he seldom suffered.
Until 1881 Selous devoted himself mainly to elephant hunting, save for one holiday to England in 1875. In the former year he returned home for the second time, and shortly afterwards published “A Hunter’s Wanderings in Africa”, a book which ran through five editions, and took rank immediately among the classical works on African hunting. His keen interest in topography led to a succession of contributions to the Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society, which in due time awarded him its gold medal.
By the end of 1881 he was back at the Cape, determined to give up hunting and to start ostrich farming. This industry, however, was just then passing through a period of depression, so Selous returned to his hunting, and for the next six years wandered about the Matabele and other territories adjacent to the Zambesi. By this time the elephants had been greatly thinned out, and Selous devoted himself mainly to procuring specimens of the African fauna for museums and private collections at home. Many of the finest specimens now to be seen in the Victoria and Albert Museum were procured by Selous during these years.
After being for a long time on friendly terms with Lobengula, Selous was treated very unjustly by that despot in 1884, when he was fined the equivalent of £60 for a trifling misdemeanour on the part of one of his servants. In 1888 elephants were reported to abound in the far interior of the Garanganzi country. Selous crossed the Zambesi, but in passing through the Mashukulumbwi territory was set upon by that tribe. His caravan was plundered, many of his followers were killed, and he himself, escaping with difficulty, made his way back in the last stages of exhaustion.
In 1881 he travelled down the Zambesi to the sea, and noted the efforts then being made by the Portuguese to establish a claim to the hinterland of their coastal possessions. To these claims he was stoutly opposed, and early in 1890 he led the pioneer expedition of the Chartered Company into Mashonaland, and so saved that valuable country from Portuguese annexation. The next two years were spent on surveying and similar work for the Chartered Company; and in 1892 Selous returned to England. In 1893 he published “Travel and Adventure in South-East Africa,” which contained not only an account of his many adventures since the publication of his former book, but also glowing descriptions of the potentialities of Mashonaland and Manicaland.
Returning to Rhodesia in that same year, he assisted in the suppression of the first Matabele insurrection; he then came home, as he thought for good, and soon afterwards married Marie Catherine Gladys (daughter of the late Canon Maddy), who survives him. In 1895, he returned to Rhodesia with his wife to take up the management of an estate. and was thus in time to serve through the second Matabele war, during which his homestead was burnt by the rebels. In 1896 he embodied these experiences, together with a review of the causes of the Matabele wars and of the resources of Charterland, in a book entitled “Sunshine and Storm in Rhodesia.”
From this time onwards Selous gratified his ruling passion, big-game shooting, rather as an amateur than as a professional. In 1894-5 he visited Asia Minor on a hunting tour, and in 1897 and 1898 he made two trips to the Rocky Mountains. In 1900, 1901, and 1905 he shot in Newfoundland. In 1904 and 1906 he was on the Macmillan River in the Yukon territory of North-Western Canada. In later years he once more turned his attention to Africa, this time to British East Africa and the Nile.
Throughout his career Selous was much more than merely a successful game-shooter. Wherever he went he took the deepest interest in the habits and personality of all animals encountered. Keen observation, indefatigable patience, and a retentive memory combined to make him a field naturalist of very exceptional excellence; and these qualities, together with his enormous experience, raised him to the position of acknowledged doyen of the whole tribe of modern hunters. In 1909-10 he organised and accompanied Mr, Roosevelt’s hunting expedition in British East Africa. In one of his later books, “African Nature Notes and. Reminiscences,” Selous summarized his vast stores of knowledge about many of the noblest of the African wild game and he wrote also two books dealing with his adventures in Asia Minor and in North America. All his books are written in a spirit of transparent honesty and in a simple and direct style, reflecting the character of the author, whose straightforwardness, integrity, hospitality, and kindness of heart were as well known to hosts of friends as the qualities which made him so successful a hunter. At his house at Worplesdon he built a special museum for his numerous trophies, and nothing pleased mm better than to show visitors over this building, except, perhaps, the acquisition of fresh additions to it. He is commonly, supposed to have been the original from whom Sir R Haggard conceived the character of Allan Quartermain, and he sat for the central figure of Sir J E Millais’s last drawing, which appeared as a frontispiece to his son’s (J G Millais’) book, “A Breath from the Veld.”
He leaves two sons, one of whom is serving in the Royal Flying Corps and the other is about to enter the Army.
An old friend, “F G A” adds the following details: “Big-game hunting, whether for pleasure or profit, was not his only hobby. He was a keen bird’s-nester, and would take as much trouble to secure a now and rare egg as it it had been an antelope new to his museum at Worplesdon. He was indeed a man of catholic joy of life. He loved cricket, and was devoted to watching the game, a curiously calm recreation for a man who had gone through haIrbreadth escapes from elephant, lion, buffalo, and rhinoceros. Time and again he would sit out those long three-day matches at Lord’s with his wife, and, whatever the weather, he and Mrs Selous were to be found in the members’ enclosure each morning when the first ball went down.
“He was a total abstainer and a non-smoker, and with his meals he drank tea for choice, after the fashion of the bush. His general appearance gave the stranger any impression rather than that of an indomitable shikari. He had a horror of being conspicuous in any way. His clothes were as quiet as his manner, and it was with the greatest difficulty that he could ever be induced to talk shop. Only those who knew him well knew him for a man, and the manner of his death at only a few Years short of the Biblical three score and ten should add yet another to the many reproaches of laggards less than half his age.”
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/many-fights-in-east-africa-0rb8c3blt
Captain Frederick Courteney Selous was born in London on December 31, 1851, of mixed French and English parentage on his father’s side and Scotch and English on his mother’s. He was educated at Rugby, and afterwards at Neuchatel and Wiesbaden. At the age of 19 he left England with £400 in his pocket, determined to earn his living as a professional elephant hunter. With this object he made his way to the Kimberley diamond fields, then recently discovered. On learning that the right season of the year for a trip to the interior would not be due for some months, young Selous joined a trading expedition into Griqualand. Most lads similarly situated would have been lured to the diggings; but he allowed nothing to divert him from the great object of his travels. In 1873 he at last set forth for the interior - that is, for the territory now known as Southern Rhodesia, then terrorized by the Matabele and their martial chief Lobengula.
Without the permission of this monarch no one might enter Matabeleland itself or any of the neighbouring territories; nor might trading or hunting be carried on without his sanction. Selous was kept so long waiting for the desired permission that he approached Lobengula again about the matter. The king was pleased to jest at his petitioner’s youthful appearance and to regard the idea of his attacking an elephant with derision. Having worked himself into a good humour at the Englishman’s expense, he gave the desired permission, which was taken advantage of promptly. Not only did Selous bag many elephants before he came of age, but by the time he was five-and-twenty he was known far and wide in South Africa as one of the most successful ivory hunters of the day.
About the time when these events were happening many of the Boer elephant hunters were giving up the profession, which was supposed to be no longer safe or profitable; The method hitherto pursued had been to ride down the herds on the open plains of the Free State and Transvaal, and later of Mashonaland on fast horses, and to shoot the elephants of all ages and both sexes indiscriminately. Taught by bitter experience, the elephants had given up their old haunts of the open veld, and the herds had retreated to the forest country. Here the use of horses was impossible, and in the bush country malarial and other fevers took heavy toll of the hunters. In spite of these drawbacks, a few of the bolder spirits, both Boer and British, made up their minds to stick to elephant hunting; and it was among these hardy and experienced men that Selous speedily made a great reputation for courage, bushcraft, and endurance.
A man of beautiful proportions, with a chest of extraordinary depth and breadth, he is described as the best white runner that the Matabele had ever seen and more than once he owed his life to his power of sprinting, jumping, and swerving. The life of constant hardship toughened him, and he seldom suffered.
By the end of 1881 he was back at the Cape, determined to give up hunting and to start ostrich farming. This industry, however, was just then passing through a period of depression, so Selous returned to his hunting, and for the next six years wandered about the Matabele and other territories adjacent to the Zambesi. By this time the elephants had been greatly thinned out, and Selous devoted himself mainly to procuring specimens of the African fauna for museums and private collections at home. Many of the finest specimens now to be seen in the Victoria and Albert Museum were procured by Selous during these years.
After being for a long time on friendly terms with Lobengula, Selous was treated very unjustly by that despot in 1884, when he was fined the equivalent of £60 for a trifling misdemeanour on the part of one of his servants. In 1888 elephants were reported to abound in the far interior of the Garanganzi country. Selous crossed the Zambesi, but in passing through the Mashukulumbwi territory was set upon by that tribe. His caravan was plundered, many of his followers were killed, and he himself, escaping with difficulty, made his way back in the last stages of exhaustion.
In 1881 he travelled down the Zambesi to the sea, and noted the efforts then being made by the Portuguese to establish a claim to the hinterland of their coastal possessions. To these claims he was stoutly opposed, and early in 1890 he led the pioneer expedition of the Chartered Company into Mashonaland, and so saved that valuable country from Portuguese annexation. The next two years were spent on surveying and similar work for the Chartered Company; and in 1892 Selous returned to England. In 1893 he published “Travel and Adventure in South-East Africa,” which contained not only an account of his many adventures since the publication of his former book, but also glowing descriptions of the potentialities of Mashonaland and Manicaland.
Returning to Rhodesia in that same year, he assisted in the suppression of the first Matabele insurrection; he then came home, as he thought for good, and soon afterwards married Marie Catherine Gladys (daughter of the late Canon Maddy), who survives him. In 1895, he returned to Rhodesia with his wife to take up the management of an estate. and was thus in time to serve through the second Matabele war, during which his homestead was burnt by the rebels. In 1896 he embodied these experiences, together with a review of the causes of the Matabele wars and of the resources of Charterland, in a book entitled “Sunshine and Storm in Rhodesia.”
From this time onwards Selous gratified his ruling passion, big-game shooting, rather as an amateur than as a professional. In 1894-5 he visited Asia Minor on a hunting tour, and in 1897 and 1898 he made two trips to the Rocky Mountains. In 1900, 1901, and 1905 he shot in Newfoundland. In 1904 and 1906 he was on the Macmillan River in the Yukon territory of North-Western Canada. In later years he once more turned his attention to Africa, this time to British East Africa and the Nile.
Throughout his career Selous was much more than merely a successful game-shooter. Wherever he went he took the deepest interest in the habits and personality of all animals encountered. Keen observation, indefatigable patience, and a retentive memory combined to make him a field naturalist of very exceptional excellence; and these qualities, together with his enormous experience, raised him to the position of acknowledged doyen of the whole tribe of modern hunters. In 1909-10 he organised and accompanied Mr, Roosevelt’s hunting expedition in British East Africa. In one of his later books, “African Nature Notes and. Reminiscences,” Selous summarized his vast stores of knowledge about many of the noblest of the African wild game and he wrote also two books dealing with his adventures in Asia Minor and in North America. All his books are written in a spirit of transparent honesty and in a simple and direct style, reflecting the character of the author, whose straightforwardness, integrity, hospitality, and kindness of heart were as well known to hosts of friends as the qualities which made him so successful a hunter. At his house at Worplesdon he built a special museum for his numerous trophies, and nothing pleased mm better than to show visitors over this building, except, perhaps, the acquisition of fresh additions to it. He is commonly, supposed to have been the original from whom Sir R Haggard conceived the character of Allan Quartermain, and he sat for the central figure of Sir J E Millais’s last drawing, which appeared as a frontispiece to his son’s (J G Millais’) book, “A Breath from the Veld.”
He leaves two sons, one of whom is serving in the Royal Flying Corps and the other is about to enter the Army.
An old friend, “F G A” adds the following details: “Big-game hunting, whether for pleasure or profit, was not his only hobby. He was a keen bird’s-nester, and would take as much trouble to secure a now and rare egg as it it had been an antelope new to his museum at Worplesdon. He was indeed a man of catholic joy of life. He loved cricket, and was devoted to watching the game, a curiously calm recreation for a man who had gone through haIrbreadth escapes from elephant, lion, buffalo, and rhinoceros. Time and again he would sit out those long three-day matches at Lord’s with his wife, and, whatever the weather, he and Mrs Selous were to be found in the members’ enclosure each morning when the first ball went down.
“He was a total abstainer and a non-smoker, and with his meals he drank tea for choice, after the fashion of the bush. His general appearance gave the stranger any impression rather than that of an indomitable shikari. He had a horror of being conspicuous in any way. His clothes were as quiet as his manner, and it was with the greatest difficulty that he could ever be induced to talk shop. Only those who knew him well knew him for a man, and the manner of his death at only a few Years short of the Biblical three score and ten should add yet another to the many reproaches of laggards less than half his age.”
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/many-fights-in-east-africa-0rb8c3blt
Many fights in East Africa
As the result of British successes, what is presumably the main German force is retreating south, into the area between the sea and the northern end of Lake Nyasa
July 5, 1917
Information issued by the War Office last night shows that detachments of enemy troops are scattered over a very wide area in East Africa, in some cases 600 miles apart. Apart from the presence of an isolated, and unimportant, party in the extreme north of the country, fighting is reported from regions 300 or more miles from one another. In the south the Germans marching across Portuguese territory reached the British border east of Lake Nyasa.
The penetration of Portuguese East Africa by the Germans had previously been reported; it was then stated that they were foraging for food. British and Portuguese columns from the south have already driven back the invaders over 60 miles. The chief fighting is reported from the coast district south of Kilwa and in the region between Lake Nyasa and the Central Railway. As the result of British successes, what is presumably the main German force is retreating south, into the area between the sea and the northern end of Lake Nyasa. There are indications of a German concentration around Liwale, a place 120 miles south-west of Kilwa.
The following is the text of the War Office communique: Telegraphing on June 30, the GOC-in-C, East Africa, reported that the strongly-held enemy positions south of the Ngaura River (south and south-west of Kilwa Kissivani), extending from Kimamba Hill (on the shore of Beaver Hafen) to Makangaga (12 miles inland), had been evacuated in consequence of the pressure of our forces advancing from Kilwa [a port 20 miles north of Kilwa Kissivani]. The enemy forces in this area, after retreating a distance of seven to nine miles, have now been located on the line Lunyu-Mnindi-Utigeri astride the tracks leading south and south-west towards Lindi, Liwale, and Massassi [all places on the route to Lake Nyasa or the Portuguese frontier]. In the Lindi area our troops advancing inland from that port have been engaged with strong enemy detachments to the west and south-west of the town. In the Iringa area [which is roughly midway between Lake Nyasa and the Central Railway] our columns have advanced south-eastwards and are engaged with minor enemy detachments on the Ruipa River 46 miles south-east of Iringa).
In the Songea area [Songea lies east of Nyasa, 60 miles north of the Portuguese border] a considerable German force, after a half-hearted attempt to engage our forces concentrating at Likuju (49 miles east-north-east of Songea), fell back along the road leading to Liwale.
In the extreme north of the German Colony, in the direction of Ikoma [east of Victoria Nyanza and 50 miles south of the frontier of British East Africa] Belgian troops from the Congo, acting in cooperation with ours, are en- gaged in the pursuit of a small enemy force which has for some time been at large in this area.
In Portuguese East Africa, to the east of Lake Nyasa, our troops advancing from Fort Johnston at the southern end of the lake, are operating against German detachments which, having entered Portuguese territory by the Luchulingo Valley [which runs some 50 miles east of Nyasa] had penetrated to Mtengula (on the shore-of Lake Nyasa) and to the [British] Nyasaland border [110 miles from the German frontier]. These German forces have now been driven back to Mwembe [65 miles north-east of the British border].
A Portuguese contingent is cooperating in this area from the direction of Mlanje [which is south-east of Lake Nyasa], and further Portuguese forces are concentrating on the coast south of the Rovuma River.
The penetration of Portuguese East Africa by the Germans had previously been reported; it was then stated that they were foraging for food. British and Portuguese columns from the south have already driven back the invaders over 60 miles. The chief fighting is reported from the coast district south of Kilwa and in the region between Lake Nyasa and the Central Railway. As the result of British successes, what is presumably the main German force is retreating south, into the area between the sea and the northern end of Lake Nyasa. There are indications of a German concentration around Liwale, a place 120 miles south-west of Kilwa.
The following is the text of the War Office communique: Telegraphing on June 30, the GOC-in-C, East Africa, reported that the strongly-held enemy positions south of the Ngaura River (south and south-west of Kilwa Kissivani), extending from Kimamba Hill (on the shore of Beaver Hafen) to Makangaga (12 miles inland), had been evacuated in consequence of the pressure of our forces advancing from Kilwa [a port 20 miles north of Kilwa Kissivani]. The enemy forces in this area, after retreating a distance of seven to nine miles, have now been located on the line Lunyu-Mnindi-Utigeri astride the tracks leading south and south-west towards Lindi, Liwale, and Massassi [all places on the route to Lake Nyasa or the Portuguese frontier]. In the Lindi area our troops advancing inland from that port have been engaged with strong enemy detachments to the west and south-west of the town. In the Iringa area [which is roughly midway between Lake Nyasa and the Central Railway] our columns have advanced south-eastwards and are engaged with minor enemy detachments on the Ruipa River 46 miles south-east of Iringa).
In the Songea area [Songea lies east of Nyasa, 60 miles north of the Portuguese border] a considerable German force, after a half-hearted attempt to engage our forces concentrating at Likuju (49 miles east-north-east of Songea), fell back along the road leading to Liwale.
In the extreme north of the German Colony, in the direction of Ikoma [east of Victoria Nyanza and 50 miles south of the frontier of British East Africa] Belgian troops from the Congo, acting in cooperation with ours, are en- gaged in the pursuit of a small enemy force which has for some time been at large in this area.
A Portuguese contingent is cooperating in this area from the direction of Mlanje [which is south-east of Lake Nyasa], and further Portuguese forces are concentrating on the coast south of the Rovuma River.
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