THREE YEARS OF WAR
IN EAST AFRICA

It was raining in London. It had been raining all day, and for many days previous, and to-night the atmosphere of damp and greyness pervaded the very soul of the city outdoors.

Number Seven platform, at Waterloo Station, was crowded with troops and baggage, about to depart for service with the B.E.F. in East Africa. They had arrived at the station at 6 p.m. At 11 p.m. they were still there grouped about in talkative jollying clusters, apparently indifferent to the delay in entraining.

Everyone knows this type of crowd nowadays, but in this case, and as commonly with men garbed in identical uniform, no one could tell with any accuracy the remarkable variety of character of the men, or the extent of their notability. Joe Robson, who was standing apart—a quiet onlooker—thought: “It is almost a pity that the individual loses his individuality in the army and becomes a stranger in a strange crowd.” What would that group of schoolboys say, and the inquisitive idle crowd in general, if they knew that here in the ranks, beneath the guise of homogeneous khaki, were gathered many men from all the world over? Men who had come to fight for their native land from Honolulu, Hong-Kong, China, Ceylon, Malay States, India, New Zealand, Australia, South and East Africa, Egypt, South America, Mexico, United States of America, and Canada? Men from the very outer edges of the world; in Ogilvie’s words:

Some were men who had taken part in Arctic exploration; others were of the North-west Mounted Police and of the British South Africa Police; even a cowpuncher or two from under the flag of the U.S.A. were amongst this force of frontiersmen. And there were among them: good sorts, bad sorts, rich sorts, keen sorts, game sorts—all sorts!

Here also, holding the rank of subalterns, were some famous hunters, setting out again on adventure. F. C. Selous, the renowned big-game hunter and naturalist and explorer, was there, and Cherry Kearton, who, like his brother Richard, “shoots” with his camera and has specialised in photographing big game in Africa. Then there were George Outram and Martin Ryan, hailing from divergent corners of our colonies, who were reputed old hunters who knew, by long association, the vast hunting-grounds in Africa, as well as you or I, perhaps, know our grouse moor at home. And, lastly, at the head of all stood Colonel Driscoll, the leader of “Driscoll’s Scouts” in the South African War.

Yes, there was a spirit of romance on Number Seven platform on this evening of April 1915. But, as is often the case with romance, it was obscure to the ordinary vision of the spectator, and but dully realised, if realised at all. So, for the most part, those troops remained commonplace, and passed from London, as thousands of other troops do, out to an unknown destination under cover of the night.

It was 2 o’clock next morning when, after long waiting, the train finally drew out of Waterloo. Between 11 p.m. and 1 a.m., by twos and threes, friends of the troops had taken their last farewells and departed, taking sadness with them, and leaving, here and there, a disconsolate soul behind.

How many touching, aye, last farewells have been witnessed by the soulless shed of that vast station since war began! How many brave souls have laughingly departed never to return!—their one great love their Home, their Empire’s honour.

The battalion’s destination—the port of sailing—was unknown, except to those in command, but in the early dawn of morning it became apparent to all, as we passed along the borders of Somerset and Dorset and on through Devon, that we were en route to Plymouth.

At 10 a.m. we drew up in Plymouth Docks, there to embark on H.M.T.S. Neuralia (Glasgow).

The day was spent in embarking the troops and baggage to their allocated stations on board ship; and in the depth of a pitch-black night, when all was ready, we cleared the docks and steamed slowly out of Plymouth Sound, in company with others of a convoy, and commenced our voyage “outward bound” to Africa.

There are times in all men’s lives when they go through experiences that remain for ever remarkable, either because they are so new and unexpected, or because they contain so much of pain and hardship. The men new to travel—and there were a number of them—who embarked on the good ship Neuralia will remember, to the end of their days, their first experiences on board a troopship and their first voyage to the tropics; for it contained, for them, all the hardship of their new life of soldiering, and all the romance and pleasure of seeing a completely new and unexpected world.

Conversation on board ship dealt largely with contrasts. Old pictures were compared with new and, in most cases, within the mind of the intelligent individual each fresh experience brought new expression and wide awakening. Young men who short weeks before, and all their lives, had enjoyed all the comfort and ease of home life were now feeling the first rigour of army service.

Robson, an observant old soldier, heard much of his neighbours’ little troubles. It was common to hear the warm, soft, white-sheeted bed at home ruefully recalled by the men, when rolled in coarse grey blankets on the hard deck, or, chrysalis-like, bound in hammocks slung from the ceiling in the impure atmosphere below. Also to hear, when men viewed their portions of bare, often ill-cooked rations, fond recollections of Sunday dinners at home, or a lucid description of a favourite dish. Personal comparisons those, which would have in time become odious had they not usually evoked laughter from some buoyant spirit, and the request to “Shut up, you old Funeral!”

It was much the same with everything of this new environment—the men’s clothes, their boots, their fatigue work (deck-scrubbing, etc.), all were of a rougher nature than that to which they had been accustomed in pre-war life.

The process of securing and ensuring hardihood had begun, and, as time went on, the men, particularly the good ones, came to see the purpose of it and, generally, to laugh more than to “grouse” at their difficulties.

Were they not, after all, starting out on the greatest adventure of all—the stern pursuit of a perilous quest—and was not a rough life part of the setting to be expected and contested?

“Assuredly yes,” thought Robson. “I who am an old traveller know it. Before you again see England you, who are ‘green hands,’ will have seen and experienced what ‘roughing it’ really is, and you will be the stronger men for it; you who live through.”

While the change of personal surroundings was being discussed and searching out men’s weaknesses, the Neuralia was proceeding daily on her way—overjoying the men, in their idle hours, with the new scenes constantly presenting themselves, and stirring awake excited anticipation of the adventurous country to which they were going.

The ship’s course—the war-time course—held south, well west of France and Spain and outside the Bay of Biscay. The first few days had been dull, for sea-sickness and strange quarters affect the best of spirits, but by the time the ship ran into Gibraltar, on the fourth day, everyone was about deck and cheerful.

No shore leave was granted at “Gib.,” nor was there any real time for it. The ship lay off “the Rock” only a few hours—the time required to take off, from launches, a few troops for Malta and some fresh vegetables. From the sea the towering Rock looked magnificent—grave, strong-featured, impressive. From the ship’s side the eye could just discern the houses around the base of the promontory, clustered like molluscs on a rock, the white-bright dwellings of the inhabitants rising tier above tier from the water’s edge to the sheer rock face a little distance inland from shore. A few light sailing craft were dodging about in the foreground, out on their habitual occupation of the day, making pleasant pictures when they swept past with full white sail taut in the breeze. Alongside, a number of native row-boats, which had raced for the ship from shore as soon as it anchored, were doing thriving business in cigarettes, cigars, and tobacco, which gaily dressed Moors, and other low-caste tradesmen, were disposing of rapidly at their own figures to the improvident Tommies.

Dear old Gib., so proudly British, to many it was the entrance to the promised land of adventure, and the portal of farewell to things that are near and dear to home.

The ship sailed amid the gay raillery and cheers of Tommies to the barter-boats, but behind the laughter there lurked, perhaps, a tear, for this was the final, irrevocable, parting of the ways.

The good ship was now in the Mediterranean Sea—fast bidding good-bye to Europe, and with Northern Africa distantly in sight, at times, on our starboard beam.

It pleased many on board, at this stage, to get a hint of Africa’s vastness. Here were they sighting the Continent on the fifth day out from England, and yet they knew that they must have about twenty days of travel, hugging her shores, before they could reach their destination on the East Coast of that same continent.

This set some of the more enterprising Tommies to establishing a “range card,” and, after questioning good-natured ship’s officers, they arrived at the information that our journey from Gib. to Mombasa was one of roughly some 6,000 miles.

This “range card” was:

It was pleasant, now, forging ahead day after day, through sunny seas, neither storm-disturbed nor storm-delayed. Fair weather and placid sea, and the mellow wind of a southern spring—indeed we had found the Mediterranean in gracious mood. And under a clear sky is there another sea like that of the soft cobalt blue of the Mediterranean? It is not the commonplace sea, for it has lost all that is grey or blackish, and lives completely and wholly blue—blue as the overhead April sky; even more blue, more alluringly attractive.

On the morning of the eighth day the ship worked slowly into the snug but narrow harbour at Malta, while all along deck deeply interested troops conversed on the unfolding view of this quaint and foreign port, dressed for the business of war and bristling with grim fortifications.

British and French warships lay in harbour, and merchant vessels of all kinds—suggestive of the great activities of war in this quarter of the world, for here routes touched to the war zones of Egypt, Gallipoli, Mesopotamia, India, and Africa.

Here, as at Gibraltar, the boat hawking tobacco vendors arrived alongside from shore in their small craft, plying clamorous trade with the good-natured troops, until the arrival of the coal barges put them to flight.

The ship coaled all day and late into night; a process conducted by swarms of gibbering ill-thriven Maltese natives, meagrely garbed in ragged loin-cloths, who filed, endlessly, up plank gangways from the barges to the coal bunkers in the ship’s side, each with his loaded wicker basket hoisted shoulder high.

Coaling is a filthy business. Before evening, despite awnings and closed port-holes, the fine coal-dust had sought its way into every conceivable corner of the ship, to be roundly abused and accused by a thousand discomforted Tommies. None were sorry to get it over, and all rejoiced when, the following morning, the ship hove anchor and took again to the clean-winded open sea.

Before departing, at early dawn, it was a strange sight to see row-boats from shore dredging the shallow harbour, with small bag nets, for the oddments of coal which had fallen overboard during the process of coaling—patient labour for a mere pittance of reward that forcibly suggested the value of fuel to the low-caste natives of the island.

Fair weather continued, and the next few days were as pleasant and generous of speed as those preceding our arrival at Malta. A noteworthy occurrence was the northern-bound migration of bird life which was encountered on the 19th and 20th of April. Many swallows and doves were seen and a few yellow wagtails, while a whitethroat and a screech owl were picked up on deck. At the time most migration was observed the ship was about in a longitudinal line with the island of Crete.

On the morning of the twelfth day the ship arrived at Port Said, at the entrance of the Suez Canal, and anchored for a few hours—not long enough to go ashore and get any real first impression of the place. But it marked an important stage in the voyage; and the colonial, somewhat oriental, appearance of the town on the west shore of the Canal entrance, close to which the ship had anchored, was predictive of things Egyptian, and of the weird beauty and strangeness of the Land of Deserts.

Leaving Port Said, the Suez Canal was entered, and slowly the ship proceeded on her course up the narrow fairway; but not before sand-bags had been stacked on the bridge for protection from enemy sniping, for we were now in a theatre of war.

On entering the Canal, which, between its low banks, is straight and of apparent width of a city thoroughfare, the first view, at this season, is of mud flats and shallow sheets of water, like flooded fen country; colourless of green, except for a few isolated tufts of grass or dwarfed shrub.

Soon this changes to the dry level plain of sand desert, endless as far as eye can see on land, and featureless in geographical outline if one seeks profile or form. There were many outposts stationed along the Canal, safeguarding it from Turkish enemy who longed to wreak destruction on it. And they made picturesque scenes, those outposts on the desert, with their chalk-white groups of clustered conical tents, standing prominent in the unbroken desolation of pale wastes of sand. On the outskirts of camp were a few patient camels and some soldiers—helmeted British Tommies or turbaned Indians—all sharply outlined in firm silhouette, since they were darker in colour than the dead flat background.

By evening the ship was well up the Canal, and the scene was very beautiful and impressive then. Far as the eye could see on either side were deep desolate stretches of limitless desert, unbroken by the slightest undulation. Overhead, the sky was soft and peculiar; singularly wistful and hazed and unlike any sky one sees at home, while a brilliant rainbow, foreboding, perhaps, a light shower of rain, lit up and went out low on the north-east horizon, away, apparently, at the uttermost edges of the world, where sand and sky merged almost without any visible line.

It was strange brooding country, and it infused a vein of solemnity into the atmosphere, for it held a suggestion that it had something to say, could it but give utterance, as an unexpressed thought may do which lies dormant for unknown ages through the long, long life of mankind.

At daybreak the ship arrived at Port Suez, having completed the passage through the Canal during the night. Here ammunition was taken on board before proceeding onward a few hours later.

Suez was left with regret. Many were sorry to go to sea from a land so attractively picturesque and so full of indefinite mystery.

And in after days it was men’s habit to look back on this one brief glimpse of Egypt and recall it as the most novel and memorable picture of the many which unfolded before their eyes on their voyage to Africa. The fast-moving ship was now sailing the Red Sea, and we were experiencing that for which it is famed—excessive heat. Damp, cold, and wintry it had been in England when the troops had sailed, and men had cursed the weather roundly, as soldiers will, but now, lolling listlessly about deck, victims of oppressive heat, they would fain have recalled a little of that northern temperature for the benefit of bodily comfort. However, the heat brought about one good service, for it caused the “powers that be” to issue orders for all ranks to hand in their home service kit to Stores and be supplied with the light tropical khaki drill outfit customarily worn in hot climates.

The troops were now settled to the routine of ship-board, and in leisure hours even the novelties of sea and new scenes became less astonishing the more they grew familiar with them.

The days in the Red Sea passed without particular incident. The weather remained phenomenally fine, and the sea charmingly clear and blue—almost as blue as that of the Mediterranean. Large numbers of flying fish were seen soon after leaving Port Suez; the first of their kind to be observed. With their transparent wings and long bodies they looked like magnified dragon-flies in their short flights over the water.

About this time the shortening of the hours of daylight was noticeable. On the 26th of April dawn was at 5 a.m. and dusk at 6.45 p.m. The North Pole Star, too, was now low on the horizon, as the ship drew farther and farther away from the northern hemisphere, and nearer to the Equator.

On the 17th day land was in sight on both bows. Strange land; of pronounced geographical change in the formation of the prominent mountains. They were not generally round and rolling and soft as the hills at home, but flat-topped, and severe as a cliff-head at their summit, their steep-rearing slopes terminating abruptly in a definite horizontal line. The whole was apparently rock and boulder, barren of any covering of foliage.

The sight of land was a forewarning of approach to Aden, and late at night, some hours after dark, anchor was dropped outside the harbour.

There was little sleep for anyone on board at Aden, unless you had cast-iron nerves and hearing, for coaling was started almost immediately the ship anchored, and continued throughout the night. The uproar of a thousand puny jabbering Lascars, and the run of the coal down the chutes, made merry music for devils’ ears, but not for sleepless Tommies.

Next morning, before sailing, Aden was viewed from the ship’s side, but it was too far to land to glean much. The settlement was at the base of towering ragged mountains and, judging by the gathering of houses close to the shore front, it was apparently a small place, and principally a military station.

Here, for the first time, numbers of that well-known camp thief, the Egyptian kite, were seen gathering their food by robbing the defenceless gulls of the meat scraps that they picked up overboard.

At 10.30 a.m. Aden was left behind. It was the final port en route, and the ship steamed down the Gulf against a light headwind on the last lap of the voyage. She was soon well out to sea, and land was not sighted again until, six days later, her destination was approached. The third day out from Aden, in dead calm weather in the Indian Ocean, the best run of the voyage was recorded—337 miles.

Otherwise the final days were uneventful, except that there was a good deal of bustle and confusion in preparation to land. Arms and ammunition were issued, equipment fitted, and everything got in readiness for the journey up country to the frontier, which was to be immediately undertaken on arrival in port.

On the morning of the 4th of May the battalion landed at Mombasa—twenty-four days after our departure from Plymouth.

The bugle sounded Réveillé at 5 a.m.—one hour earlier than usual; and while all were dressing, low-lying shore came into sight, rich with abundant tropical tree growth, and green, for it was the rainy season and leaf was new. A little later the ship anchored in the harbour of Kilindini, and, in due course, commenced the disembarkation of troops and stores into barges, and thence to the landings on shore. It was late evening ere the labours of transportation had ceased and all were landed and entrained, ready to proceed up country in the narrow, antiquated, wood-seated carriages of which the train was composed.

There had been no time for cooking, and everyone was hungry, for the last meal had been at 12 noon on the previous day. However, some hours after commencing the train journey, the train was stopped at a small wayside station about midnight, and hot tea and rations were served to the famishing troops. In after days all knew much more about going hungry—not for a day, but for many days—but, looking back now, it was strange that the very first experience in Africa was one of short rations and lean “interiors.”

Thus an imperial unit had come to East Africa; to join Indian and Native African forces already holding the frontier against the enemy in German East Africa.