The First Victory Read online

  This is a new account based around private papers and documents located in archives scattered around the world, which have been used to supplement the very limited writing that has been done previously. Titled ‘First Victory’ and not ‘First Defeat’, it does not dwell extensively on the role played in this campaign by the Italian military and its leaders other than to provide some background for the actions of the British and Commonwealth forces. In addition to the official Italian history, a small number of recent writers have studied the campaign from the other side and these works provide an excellent reference point for those who are interested.15 It is to be hoped that this book might act as a catalyst for the re-telling of the Italian story extending beyond a narrow one of abject defeat and incompetency. It also does not provide lengthy tactical description of the fighting other than for a few of the most important – or particularly noteworthy – key engagements that warrant some more detailed elucidation. Where there is reference to ‘bullets and bombs’, this is intended, as much as anything, to give some colour to what was an often unusual and fascinating campaign.

  The papers of two individuals have proved pivotal in telling the story in the detail it deserves: one who features actively in the course of events and the other who was not present at the time. Major James Blewitt was a young British Army officer who arrived in Kenya just prior to the start of the British and Commonwealth offensive and who was fortunate to have an important eyewitness role despite his junior rank. The often uncensored letters he sent back to his family provide an invaluable and frank account of the campaign which has not previously been drawn upon. The greatest resource, however, is the huge archive of work produced by Lieutenant-Colonel J.E.B. Barton, an Indian Army officer who was appointed to act as the official narrator. Despite suffering from an illness contracted during the war and knowing that he had not been the first choice for the role, he diligently sought to interview all of the principals who had fought on the winning side and gathered together as many official papers and accounts as he could find.16 The written documents he prepared were presented only to a small group of British military officers and civil servants who worked after war’s end on recording the history of the Second World War, but his findings will now have a bigger audience.

  Having carried out such an exhaustive survey and identified and incorporated new sources that remove the previous gaps in the history, resolving the debate about terminology has presented a surprisingly complicated challenge.17 There was some issue amongst those who were involved at the time as to whether the country should be called ‘Ethiopia’ or ‘Abyssinia’ and, in turn, whether it was the ‘East African’, ‘Abyssinian’ or even ‘Ethiopian and Eritrean’ campaign. ‘Abyssinia’ comes from the Arabic habesh meaning confusion, on account of the country’s mixed races, and this seemed a fitting description when writing about the battles that had been fought there. Added to this was a post-war argument about the need to ensure that equal credit was given to all who had been involved, with the suggestion that Barton had failed to fully recognise the role played by some of the British and Commonwealth forces and their commanders. For this reason, and largely at the behest of one senior officer, it was most frequently subsequently referred to as ‘the Abyssinian Campaign’.18 Sometimes the post-war accounts therefore referred to two campaigns, this one and ‘the Eritrean Campaign’. This study has chosen ‘East Africa’ to reflect a more contemporary feel, and to acknowledge that virtually all of the fighting took place in what the United Nations today refers to the as the ‘Eastern African’ sub-region.19 It also chooses to use ‘Ethiopia’ as the country name.

  What follows is not merely a story of military adventure and bravery but also one of significant strategic purpose and decisive outcomes. Senior British military and political commanders faced a hard strategic dilemma about how best to manage the limited manpower and resources available to them, but the decisions they ultimately took led to the destruction of Italy’s East African Empire. And without the victory at Gondar and the triumphs won before it, there might not actually have been a much more celebrated final battle nearly twelve months later at El Alamein. Looking at it from beginning to end, what emerges is the story of a brilliantly fought campaign which both allowed the British Empire to attain its first significant wartime victory and secured the southern flank for its forces that subsequently battled their way across North Africa.

  CHAPTER 1

  STRATEGIC MISCALCULATION

  ON 5 AUGUST 1914 the British governor of the East African Protectorate, Sir Henry Belfield, received confirmation from the Colonial Office in London that King George V had signed an executive order and war had been declared late the previous evening. Despite having apparently previously agreed with his German counterpart, Heinrich Schnee, to remain neutral, a special publication was rushed out which carried the governor’s proclamations confirming that war had broken out, martial law had been declared across the protectorate and the men of the King’s African Rifles (KAR) and the local police were now under conditions of active service against Germany.1 Emergency measures began at once and the approximately 3,000 military-age white male settlers, both there and in Uganda, were mobilised. The First World War, a conflict fought primarily between the European powers, had reached to the equator and dragged in eastern Africa and the people who lived across the region. This was because, following an agreement reached between Britain and Germany, virtually all of what is today termed ‘East Africa’ had by the end of the nineteenth century been divided into the two countries’ spheres of influence.2

  What was known as ‘the Scramble for Africa’ had led to the partitioning of the continent between the European powers.3 At the Berlin Conference convened in 1884, not only had Britain and Germany agreed to recognise their respective colonial claims, but it had also been made clear to the other powers in attendance that they should make their own territorial interests known. These would then need to be ‘backed by the establishment of an effective degree of authority in the areas concerned’.4 The British eventually secured control of an area mostly to the south of the equator extending from the Indian Ocean in the east to Lake Victoria in the west, still the world’s second largest freshwater lake. There was a long-standing interest: HMS Barracouta first visited Mombasa in December 1823 as part of a survey expedition and a small presence was maintained there for two years. It was not until more than sixty years later, in 1888, that the level of influence really began to grow. This followed the establishment of the Imperial British East Africa Company, a year before a similar commercial venture farther south and controlled by Cecil Rhodes received its Royal Charter. However, with the company’s finances failing, in 1895 a formal East African Protectorate was declared and control passed to London, repeating an earlier political process that had established the neighbouring Ugandan Protectorate. Seven years later the frontiers between the two territories were redrawn for the final time, remaining largely untouched until their eventual independence.5 There were also two other protectorates established during the period: British Somaliland had been confirmed as such in 1884 and was administered by a commissioner; and six years later the same arrangement was agreed for the islands of Zanzibar and Pemba, about fifteen miles off Africa’s eastern coast.

  This was a vast imperial expansion: it was calculated that the two larger territories of East Africa and Uganda alone covered an area of about 400,000 square miles, roughly three times the area of the British Isles.6 With huge African expanses now flying the Union Jack, this was a potentially valuable addition to the Empire, with considerable economic benefits.7 There was abundant agricultural land – coffee, tea and sisal were initially considered to be the most attractive crops – and it was also relatively simple to raise livestock. Before the First World War there was, however, limited interest from potential settlers in Britain, and most of those who were attracted to the protectorate actually came from South Africa. By 1903 there were only around a hundred European settlers living in or near Nairobi, wh
ich was then just a rail depot and four years away from becoming the capital; by 1911 the white population had increased to 3,200 men, women and children.8 By the start of the First World War it was estimated that in East Africa and Uganda there were several million Africans, nearly 20,000 Asians but fewer than 4,000 Europeans, with only a few hundred of them living west of Lake Victoria, and this led one influential contemporary writer to question why such ‘comparative neglect’ had been shown by the British people to these new territories.9 As transport routes improved, and particularly with the additional development of railways which better linked both of the main protectorates to the major Indian Ocean port at Mombasa, in the decades that followed their appeal to both settlers and successive governments in London grew, keen as they were to seize the commercial opportunities that existed. This expansion did not really lift off, however, until after the conclusion not of the first major European war to be fought in the region, but a second.

  As the British-administered territories had grown, the same was true of that controlled by Germany. Centred on Tanganyika and Ruanda-Urundi, and covering a vast area encompassing the Great Lakes region, it was also just a little less than 400,000 square miles in size and bordered all the British parts of the colonial map aside from British Somaliland. The proximity of these two European empires meant that in August 1914, as war broke out between them, this part of Africa would become a battleground, albeit with highly dispersed conflicts spreading over vast distances and with much of the fighting being done by locally raised forces. Just three battalions of KAR troops were deployed across the British territories of Central and East Africa at the start of the war. The African troops were referred to as askaris and were formed into twenty-one companies, a total of just over 2,300 men, plus a few others who were attached to the respective headquarters. They were led by sixty-two officers who were seconded from regular British regiments for a limited term of service under the Colonial Office, along with a number of NCOs who similarly volunteered. One of those involved described these battalions as ‘very efficient units; the officers were mostly adventurous spirits of a sporting turn of mind, who had got tired of regimental soldiering in peace-time, and had turned to service in less civilised parts of the world than they had been used to. They were the very best stamp of British regimental officer.’10 Only a single battalion was based locally; the 3rd Battalion, KAR had spent most of the period before the war conducting operations against rebellious Somalis in the north, leaving just two companies in position to defend the frontier with German East Africa.11 There were also large numbers of locally raised but still British-led police who received some basic military training but were not considered to be at the same level as those who had volunteered for military service. With so few men available, areas of the frontier remained unguarded, and not even patrolled. But, at least initially, the Germans were little better prepared.12

  Despite this, the Committee of Imperial Defence in London – a key body for determining British foreign policy – decided on 5 August, the day after war was declared, that imperial forces would go on the offensive in the region, and orders were given to Indian troops to sail for Mombasa.13 Following a series of initial attacks against its outposts near Lake Victoria, German colonial forces quickly advanced towards this critical port in what was the war’s first invasion of any part of the British Empire.14 They were held up by a heroic defence fought at Gazi, just twenty-five miles to the south of it, and by the year’s end had been expelled from the protectorate. This was followed by a serious reverse, however, as an attempted landing by some of the Indian troops at Tanga, the second port of German East Africa, led to a humiliating defeat.15 In large part this was down to the superb leadership of the German officer in charge of the defending Schutztruppe, the forty-five-year-old Lieutenant-Colonel Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck. Although he had not arrived in Dar es Salaam until January 1914, he was already an extremely experienced officer who had fought previously in the Herero revolt in German South-West Africa. The four years he subsequently spent in East Africa confirmed his reputation as a remarkable military commander. Referred to post-war as both ‘the lion of Africa’ and also ‘the uncatchable lizard’, he has since become widely respected by those studying more contemporary irregular warfare.16

  Seen in London as ‘the Cinderella of the sideshows’, the campaign was barely reported by the British Empire’s media during the war’s first few years, as events elsewhere dominated the press.17 This changed in January 1916 when the first South African reinforcements arrived and with the subsequent appointment of Lieutenant-General Jan Smuts as commander-in-chief.18 He had fought against the British less than twenty years before during the Anglo-Dutch war, but now set about clearing the border region between British and German East Africa and removing any possible threat.19 Support came from troops from across the Empire but the majority of his forces were drawn from the continent; 250,000 South Africans served during the First World War, a figure which included 20 per cent of the white male population, and Britain’s colonies throughout Africa also sent thousands of men to fight.20 Whilst the German commander’s own forces never exceeded 12,000 men, his opponents used more than 300,000 troops in their attempts to defeat him.21 Despite the now huge size of the forces ranged against him, Lettow-Vorbeck nonetheless continued fighting until November 1918 when he finally received word of the armistice and surrendered. It was two weeks after the war’s end in Europe and, having been promoted in the field to the rank of general, he had the unique wartime distinction of having been the only German commander to have successfully invaded British territory. He was never formally defeated.22

  In the years that followed, the strategic significance of the East African region grew. One factor behind this was that, in addition to its own potential, the region dominated important maritime arterial routes which were essential for the continuing development of the British Empire. Although suppliers had to factor in the transit costs, the Suez Canal – the link between the Indian and Mediterranean oceans, which Britain had seized control of in 1882 – considerably shortened delivery times to and from European markets.23 Ships travelling from India, Australia and New Zealand carried vital commodities to Britain: wool, rubber, meat, grain, tin – everything that was needed to keep a commercial entity functioning. At the same time, whilst there remained a British commercial interest in the Kirkuk oilfield in northern Iraq, which by 1931 had been connected by pipelines to the ports of Haifa in Palestine and Tripoli in Syria, the Anglo-Iranian oilfield at the eastern end of the Persian Gulf was still the principal source of British-owned oil. There was only one quick route for this to reach home ports: by 1939 just under one-tenth of all goods arriving in Britain were transiting via the Horn of Africa region to reach Suez and, although there is some debate about just how significant a total this represented at this time, once war broke out and commercial ships had to run the risk of being attacked at sea, access to the shortest route possible would become of critical value.24 It was believed naval forces operating from Aden and aircraft from the Sudan could provide some protection, but it would likely need more military resources than these. Without this, there could be no guarantee of safeguarding access to the Red Sea and the Canal and Egypt beyond. Some political and military figures in London even warned that the supply chain could potentially become unsustainable, threatening the security of the British Empire.25 There was, however, still little or no strategic interest in the position in East Africa.

  If by necessity India remained vital, the perceived importance of Egypt, the ‘essential link in communications’, was the other dominating factor in imperial strategic planning.26 In 1922 the protectorate temporarily established eight years earlier had been formally abolished, but it took another fourteen years for a formal treaty to be signed with the leadership in Cairo. In an era of declining overseas commitments, official policy more generally was described as using treaties and agreements to give up whatever was not vital to imperial interests and to entrench in those p
laces that were deemed essential.27 The 1936 agreement removed ‘certain reservations’ that had long existed about Egyptian sovereignty and signalled the end of a military occupation of the country, but with confirmation that security of the Suez Canal would require the continued presence of limited British forces. These were largely confined within a narrow zone surrounding the Canal, and some troops also still remained initially in the capital, although they were to be withdrawn after four years. Permission was also given for the same number of troops to be stationed in Alexandria and for double that length of time. With further agreements to train and equip the Egyptian army and air force and to carry out significant updating of communications and transport networks, this was where Britain intended to maintain its wartime hub.28 The significant reduction in military expenditure that dominated this period – as was most obviously witnessed by the implementation of the ten-year rule, made permanent in 1928 by the then Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill and signifying a belief that there was no significant threat of a major war developing – meant that there was little more in the way of defence preparations that could be done.29