A Century Later… Remembering the UnRemembered

The East African Campaign of the Great War is a story of heroic human endeavour and terrible suffering set in some of the most difficult terrain in the world. More than a century later, Tom Lawrence explains why it is time it is Remembered.

The East African Campaign in WWI has frequently and inaccurately, been dubbed as a 'sideshow' to the main theatre of war battled out on the European Western Front, but it is an unfortunate trivialisation and diminishes the enormity of the human loss and what became Britain’s most financially costly and ultimately tragically ineffective conflict of the Great War.

Photos courtesy Louisa Thornhill & Lotte Rasmussen

It did not suffer the horror of the trenches, but it was a no less significant campaign with horrors all of its own. Not only was it the longest campaign of the Great War, BEA was the only British colony to be invaded and occupied by the Germans; it was the first territory to legislate mandatory conscription and a huge assembly of different armies was drafted in from all over the Empire, including approximately one million Africans as porters to carry food, equipment and ammunition.

By the end of the campaign, the diversity of troops and countries involved in East and Central Africa was unrivalled in any other single theatre of war. In all, 23 countries deployed troops to the campaign, and around 75 per cent of those serving died from malnutrition, malaria, dysentery, blackwater fever and wild animals - disease killed or incapacitated 30 men for every man killed in battle on the British side. What is generally forgotten is that the EA Campaign was all part of a 'World War,' which stretched from the Far East to Africa. The first casualty from a shot fired in anger was nowhere near Flanders but in Africa. One day after the Declaration of War (4 August 1914) the British and French made a fast move to destroy a radio mast at Kamina in the German colony of Togoland in West Africa (now Togo). This was critical as it meant that the more southern colonies of German East Africa and German South West Africa were now isolated from the Fatherland. In East Africa General von Lettow-

Vorbeck advanced into Taveta on the 15 August 1914, initiating the conflict by shooting dead the East African Border Policeman Murimi Mwiti, closely followed, in retaliation, by Ernst von Bock. Europe didn't get going until 22 August when John Parr was the first of millions to be killed on the Western Front.

The first naval encounters were also part of the East African campaign, with the Konigsberg sinking the first civilian ship of the war -The City of Winchester, which was stopped, and then stripped of her cargo and coal, and then sunk on the 6th August. The Konigsberg then went on to sink HMS Pegasus in Zanzibar harbour - hopelessly outgunned, and unable to move as she was having her boilers cleaned - a regular necessity due to the poor quality of South African coal that the Indian Ocean fleet used.

In contrast to the Western Front, the distances in East Africa were enormous and troop numbers were low. When 50,000 British, Indian, South African and Belgian troops advanced into German East Africa from the north and east in early 1916 they did so on a front 1,500 miles long – almost twice the length of France.

By 1918, the East Africa campaign encompassed 750,000 square miles – an area three times the size of the German Reich - the British had committed at least 180,000 troops and drafted a million carriers to keep them in the field. It had cost the Empire £72,000,000 to fight a war, thousands of miles from European soil.

After four years of bloody fighting, a ceasefire was finally declared on 11 November 1918, but in Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) von Lettow was still fighting his guerilla tactics. Message finally reached him that the war had ended and he marched to Abercorn and laid down his arms - he didn't surrender - to General Edwards on 25 November 1918 - a full two weeks later than Europe, making the East African Campaign both the longest campaign of the war and the costliest since the Napoleonic Wars and the only part of British Territory to be occupied by the Germans in the whole of conflict.

The significance of the 25 November is being revived in Kenya, in the formation of an 'East African Remembrance Day' and by 'Remembering the Unremembered', Kenya is honouring all the thousands of East African soldiers and carriers who died while fighting and supporting the Allied troops and the many who fell with no known grave. Of the porters who died, 45,000 were Kenyan, about 13 percent of the country’s total adult male population.

Last year the third Remembrance Weekend was held in Taita Taveta, fully supported by the KDF led by Brigadier Joachim Mwamburi and was attended by representatives from Tanzania, Britain, Malawi, Sudan and Belgium - all representing the combatant nations in East Africa - as well as additional international representation from the Czech Republic, Denmark, Qatar and Serbia. James Willson, author of 'Guerillas of Tsavo', and MCC Member Tom Lawrence, were also in attendance.

At the end of the war, General Kitchener was proved right - the East African Campaign was drawn out, it drained the European war effort and had no major impact on the final outcome of the war, but it was, by no stretch of the imagination, a ‘side show.’

By the end of the conflict the African troops had proved their worth in the ‘White man’s War’ and had taken over as the main fighting force of the campaign. Their role was pivotal and they embraced the challenge with courage and honour. Brigadier Joachim Mwamburi with British Defense Adviser Nairobi Brigadier Mark Thornhill at the third Remembrance Weekend held in Taita Taveta in 2020. James Willson, author of 'Guerillas of Tsavo', and MCC Member Tom Lawrence, were also in attendance.