August 23, igi7 
LAND & WATER 
Campaigning in East Africa 
By a Padre 
THE \\'ami Ri\er battle had been a terrible dis- 
appointment. The big capture which we had so 
nearly effected would have been a long step towards 
ending the war. Now that the Germans had escaped 
and gone to swell the ranks of the force which we supposed 
was defending the line of the Central HaiKVaV) all the work 
had to be done over again. We started on>tiK» march, after 
two days' rest by the muddy \\'ami Kiver, in anything but a 
jubilant frame of mind, nor did the offifiaHy pronounced 
warning that wc were entering upon a tuact of waterless 
country serve to improve our spirits. 
Tire Central Railway is the greatest engineering achieve- 
ment of the Germans in East Africa. It stretches across the 
entire width of the colony, and links up Lake Tanganyika 
with Dares-Salaam and the sea. Tiie j>art that interested 
me at this time was the- section running through Morogoro, 
and skirting the foot of the Wuguru fountains. These 
mountains wc could see distinctly from our camp on the 
W'ami. as a great sombre mass on the horizon. They looked 
bad enough on the landscape, but on the map they looked 
even worse. For the map showed that frowning mountain 
wall e.xtcndvfd fifty or sixty miles to the south in a tangled and 
confused welter of heights ; the very place for a successful 
defensive campaign. 
At W'ami I lost my good horse Thad\-. and also my private 
bottle of chlorodyne. Thady simply disappeared. He was 
taken out in the morning to graze with the other officers' 
horses, in care of one of the grooms. The other horses came 
back, but not Thady. My own groom, a singularly stupid C'aju 
boy, was tearful, but could give me no consolation, though 
he said he had searclied the camp from end to end. It was a 
large camp, and contained many cavalrymen whose mounts 
had died. Thady was not in gtwd cqndition. but he had a 
great heart, and was good for another six weeks' work. 
Thady 's loss reduced me at once, so to speak, from affluence 
to penury, for while 1 had him, I could use my nuile, Mary 
Abyssinia, as a baggage animal, and so be largely independent 
of the waggons. I came within an ace of losing Mary too, 
with my big saddle bags and blankets, for soon after \^e had 
started on the march (I was riding the machine-gun officer's 
horse for the day) I saw to my horror and dismay Mary break 
away from the line, and dash off over the veldt in the direction, 
more or less, of her home in Abyssinia, dragging with her with 
little effort my insignificant groom. Eortunately, he stuck to 
her, and in the end she gave up the ill-timed effort for free- 
dom, and became once again her normal and placid self. 
It was the only unladylike conduct of which I ever knew her 
to be guilty, except once, when she tried to kick the Colonel, 
absolutely the one and only person she ever did try to kick. 
A Long Trek 
We make a long trek that d;\^, travelling with full water- 
carts, two to each regiment. These would provide us witli 
two water-bottles per man. and the next water was supposed 
to be anything up to twenty miles distant. The water in 
the carts was chlorinatedT which gives it a very peculiar 
flavour, very difficult to get away from- When treated in 
this way it was supposed to be safe drinking, though oiu" 
own M.O. was rather sceptical on the point. The carts, of 
course, were' carefully guarded and under the care of a water 
corporal, a most responsible and sometimes very disagreeable 
office. Earlier in the war. it had very frequently been filled 
by clergymen of the Church of England, who combined this 
duty with the work of chaplain. Tliey carried rifle and pack 
just as the rank and file, and their self-sacrificing and some- 
times heroic labours won them imi\ersal esteem and re.spect. 
My Anglican colleague, who was attached to the other regi- 
ment of our miniature brigade, had at one time been a water 
corporal, with the result that his influence with the men, whose 
trials and hardships he so exactly shared, was quite excep- 
tional. 
Wc marched that first day till well into the night, and 
bivo\iackcd in the dark. The road led through a red country, 
and the clouds of vermilion coloured dust which enveloped 
the column produced in the strong sunlight a most striking 
and theatrical effect. It suggested a company of firemen 
lighting the flames, or some Witch's Kitchen scene from a 
]iantomime, when the red limelight is turned upon the smoke 
from the magic cauldron. 
Talking about colour, German East .\frica, so far as my 
rxiw:rience goes, is a ni<ist disappointing country. I had 
come out full of expectations as to the glories of tropical 
Scenery, but up to the time of \\Titing I can safely say I have 
scarcely seen a decent flower, while as to birds with their 
gorgeous plumage, the most common have been a little 
thing like a blue robin, and another, a big one, which seems 
a cross between a vulture and a carrion crow. The few palm 
trees we have struck have been nearly all decapitated, and 
looked like decrepit factory chimneys. The natives, I believe, 
make spme sort of spirit from the leaves at the centre, and 
the cutting away of these leaves make the entir« head of the 
tree rot away, and fall off. They say that at Neu Langen- 
burg at the top of Lake Nyassa, the roses are quite wonderful, 
and as the country is about the* size of all Europe rhinus Russia, 
. it may well be there are more favoured spots than those I 
have visited. Over and over again. I have fancied myself in 
England, so quiet and subdued was the colouring of the 
scene, and so entirely absent anything distinctly tropical 
Charged by Rhinos'^ 
Next day we struck straight across country, making our 
own road, and leaving the beaten track altogether. We had a 
little excitement at starting, for just as we were saddling up, 
a sudden shout of alarm all over the camp announced the 
approach of some sort of danger. It appeared almost at once 
in the form of tliree rhinos charging down upon us, and looking 
uncommonly ugly- Fortunately, instead of making right 
through the camp, as seemed to be their first intention, they 
swerved oft to the left, and two of them were shot as they 
passed. Someone has described the German East Campaign 
as " General Smuts's War in' a Menagerie," a good phrase, 
and one that has more truth in it than might be supposed. 
This was the only time we were troubled by rhinos, but lions 
were very often with us, and so were leopards, while elephants 
and giraffes knocked dowii our telegraph poles, and monkeys 
of all sorts jabbered at us out of the darkness whene\er we 
encamped near a forest. The part of the country in which 
I am at present writing is particularly rich in lions ; you can 
hear them roaring (or more often grunting) almost any night, 
and we have had one or two Askaris actually carried away 
from the trenches. Only a night or two ago, four lions 
kttacked our cattle kraal, carried off two oxen, stampeded the 
herd, and caused the men in the trenches to open fire under 
the impression that the GeiTnans were making a night attack. 
Even in daytime no one is allowed to go beyond the confines 
of the camp unless armed and with a companion. 
This looks rather like a digression, but the fact is I am 
half afraid to begin the description of the day which followed 
the rhino visit. It was like no other day in the campaign, 
and it lives in memory as a red hot abomination, a thing full 
of a new and furious menace. Our way led across a plain, and 
we made our own road. It was quite easy to do so, as the plain 
was flat, and there were no rivers. It was covered with low 
scrub, and grass burnt to a rich yellow by the sun. The 
grass was the terror. If it had been soaked in paraffin it 
could scarcely have been more inflammable, and when it 
came in contact with anything in the way of fire — a cigarette 
end or a spark from a motor bicycle wa§ quite enough — it 
simply exploded. But it was worse than an explosion, for it 
was not local in its action, but spread in all directions with 
incredible rapidity. There is an expression " to burn like 
wildfire," and we learnt that day to know what it meant. 
Tortunately for us the grass was not very long, and, for- 
tunately, too, such .trees as there were did not catch fire very 
readilv. otherwise a most appalling disaster might have 
occurred. For we had with us not only machine gun and 
rifle ammunition, but two field batteries with their equipment 
of shells. 
We had hardly started when the danger became apparent. 
We were the leading battalion of tiie Brigade that day, but 
other units were ahead of us, and soon we began to see little 
clouds of smoke arising at inter\als in the distance before us. 
.And then suddenly we were in the very thick of it. As it 
seemed to me, miles of flame appeared to spring into existence 
on our left flank, and the whole column swerved suddenly 
away to the right. If the road had been an old one, it would 
])robably have served as an effectual fire-break, but it 
was only a track Ix-aten down by the \anguard of the column, 
and almost instantaneously the flames were over it, and 
had destroyed the new-laid telegrajjli wire. Fortunately, a 
second track had been beaten by a column moving parallel 
to us, and behind this we took refuge, while tlic native troops 
were set at work beating down the flames with branches. 
I suppose they succeeded, but I confess I did not wait to sec, 
