10 
LAND & WATER 
August 23, 1917 
but urged Mary Abyssinia on at her topmost speed, which, 
when she felt like it, as she did that morning, was quite a 
respectable gallop. We got clear at last, and out of the 
smoke, the heat which, added to the heat of the sun, was 
almost intolerable. But behind us the sky grew blacker and 
blacker with smoke, and the thought that our transport with 
its heavy waggons and long teams of mules was in the thick 
of it, made us very anxious indeed, an anxiety which the 
ob\'ious concern of some of our oldest and usually most imper- 
turbable officers did not serve to diminish. 
Nor were our own dangers by any means over. When we 
.nade the middav halt for lunch, and fires for cooking pur- 
poses were lighted, we were disturbed time and again by 
shouts of alarm, the horrid crackling noise of burning grass, 
and a general nish from all over the camp to the point of 
danger. I was myself within a few yards of one of these con- 
flagrations when it started, and- though ten of us must have 
been onjit within a few seconds, beating for all we were Worth 
with branches, it was a good ten minutes before we had got it 
under. That will give the reader some idea of what I mean 
by the explosive force of the flames. 
Arrival of a Home Mail 
The cloud of smoke behind us grew darker as we advanced 
in the afternoon, though we had no more fires in our imme- 
diate vicinity. But we had only exchanged one evil for 
another, for after a few miles the road became blocked, and 
we had numberless halts. Such halts are at any time wearying 
to a degree, but when you are marching on water and in an 
absolutely shadeless country', they become absolutely madden- 
ing. I was so disgusted with things in general that even the 
appearance of a snake and its liappy dispatch a few yards 
away from me did not arouse sufficient interest to make me 
get up. It needed the arrival of a mail, which by some 
extraordinary freak of fortune caught us up during one of 
these halts, to dissipate the universal gloom. I was i)articu- 
larly blessed in this mail, for whereas for every one else there 
' were only newspapers, for me besides newspapers there were 
several letters. I' remember there was a copy of the Parish 
Magazine, of which I had once been editor, and the incon- 
gruity of reading about the school children's picnic, with my 
head in a tiny patch of shade, and a row of patient Baluchis 
sitting on the other side of the road, struck me very much. 
But even the arrival of the mail could not make us forget 
for long the all-important subject of water. When at last 
We did creep on again, every one coming from the front 
of the coluntm Was eagerly questioned as to its whereabouts, 
and how far away we were. The answers were ndt reassur- 
ing, for no one had seen the much desired river, and the 
estimates of its distance varied from anything up to ten miles. 
Then disquieting rumours begun to spread ; it was said 'that 
We had missed our way, and that the river was away to the 
left, that the river was dry, that there was no river, and that 
what river there was, the Germans were holding in force. 
Some colour was given to this last theory by the sound of 
distant firing at nightfall, but in the end we camped by the 
wayside after dark without reaching water at all. draining the 
carts to their last dregs for the evening meal. The carts were 
sent on ahead to get to the water if possible and come back to 
meet us in the morning. 
After sundown, the whole sky was ablaze with the light of 
the bush fires, pro4ucing much the effect of an arrested sun- 
set. It looked very pretty, but our anxiety for our wagons, 
which had not come in, prevented our enjoying it very much. 
Fortunately, just as we were turning in, the welcome news 
arrived that they had got through safelv, and were near the 
camp, and shortly after they came laboWing in. They had 
had a fairly exciting time, being compelled at one point to 
bum a fire-break before they could get on, but none of them 
suffered any damage. Other units had been less fortunate, 
and at least one ammunition cart had been caught by the 
flames and sent its contents popping about in all directions. 
Our anxieties with regard to fire were for the moment set 'at 
rest, but those with regard to water still remained. 
The carts had not returned when we started off at day- 
break, nor did we meet them on the way. But after a mile 
or two of marching we met natives carrying water, which 
proved conclusively that there was really a river somewhere 
about. Shortly afterward we struck it — quite a respectable 
stream— and camped near its bank, for the rest of the day. 
One of the minor drawbacks of a waterless day is that it is 
impossible to get a decent wash. A great deal, it is true, 
can be done with a very little, but it is impossible to get a 
bath and a shave in a teacupful of water, Our sufferings in 
this respect, however, were nothing to what many of the men 
had gone through in the German West Campaign. An 
officer told me that he had seen men there, their tongues black 
With thirst, trying to lick up the drops of hot water which fell 
from the pipes of a locomotive. He had another story about 
a bath too gruesome for repetition. 
We were now only some fifteen miles distant from Morogoro 
and the Central Railway, and speculation was rife as to whether 
we were on the eVe of the great battle of the war or not. 
We were not, as the reader of course knoWs. The Germans 
made no stand at Morogoro, but retired into the Wuguru 
Mountains after blowing up as much of the line as time per- 
mitted. Next day we heard that the Rhodesians had actually 
entered the town, and simultaneously with this cheering 
announcement, we were told that we were to have at least a 
month's rest in camp when we got there. AVe thouglit the 
war was as good as over, and turned in that night little sus- 
pecting the weary chase and hair-raising adventures which 
were still in store for us. 
A sudden and unexpected downfall of rain, for which most 
of us were quite unprovided, caused us sl night of extremfe 
discomfort ; the moment when the flood, in spite of all my 
efforts, reached my spinal column, remains even now one of 
the most vivid recollections of the war. Perhaps it was due 
to the soaking we had that, when at last we struck with our 
own eyes the long-looked-forward-to line of the Central Rail- 
way, it provoked no outward sign of enthusiasm. One or 
two of the officers took, snapshots of it, but the men plodded 
stolidly over it, hardly raising their heads to look at it. I am 
afraid that as a force, we must have lacked imagination,, for 
otherwise this proof that we had gictually accomplished the 
feat of marching from railway to railway, often enough 
following no beaten track, and clearing the country of the 
enemy as we went, must have evoked some little display of 
satisfaction. It may be that an uncomfortable pre- 
sentiment that we were not so near the end of things as 
we liked to think had something to do with it. A glance at 
the map revealed the fact that there was a great deal of 
German East left to the South of the line. 
An East African Mission 
About three miles outside Morogoro we passed a large 
Catholic Mission on the top of a hill, and I registered a vow to 
visit it at the first possible opportunity. The church had 
quite an imposing tower, and the mere sight of a solid Euro- 
pean building was refreshing to eyes wearied with too much 
veldt and jungle. Many of the native huts had little pious 
pictures set up before the doors, just as one sees in France 
.and Belgium. 
It had been one of my dreams while in France that I might 
live to see the day when we should re-enter Lille, or if not Lille, 
at any rate some one of the occupied towns. That hankering 
after glory was now to be satisfied in a strange topsy-tun-y 
way, and I was actually to enter a real German town, quite 
a respectable town, as we were soon to discover. Morogoro, 
is indeed a model of town-planning, and gives the impression 
of being much bigger than it really is. The station buildings 
were quite imposing ; there were several large sheds and a 
double storied rather fantastically designed house for the 
station master. A portion of the roof had been destroyed 
by a bomb, and one of the sheds had been fired by the 
Germans themselves, but "Jseyond that the station had 
suffered little. 
We marched right through Morogoro, and encamped a 
mile or so beyond the town. The main street, which was 
planted with trees on both sides, was lined by very pros- 
perous white houses and had an extraordinary German 
" feel " about it. I think the advertisements may have had 
something to do with it, but it certainly in some way irresis- 
tibly suggested the idea of beer-gardens, though I need not 
say there was no beer in Morogoro. The civil population had 
remained undisturbed, but they did not line the streets to 
witness our approach ; in fact, nobody took any notice of us 
whatever. There were a few German ladies to be seen, but 
Greeks, Armenians, and Indians formed the greater part of 
the population. The town was plastered all over with notices 
in German and Swahili, signed by the C. in C, and announcing 
the British occupation. 
Our camping ground was a mile beyond the town on a rather 
unprepossessing sandy plain. As we were to stay there for 
a month, we set to work at once to build a' substantial banda 
for the mess. It was everything except waterproof, but, 
unfortunately, that was the one property most necessary', 
for in the evening the rain came down again. Luckily, 
this time I managed to raise an old Kaffir tent. It was 
full of holes, but by carefully manipulating my waterproof 
sheet, I managed to get a dry night. 
Next day I paid the visit to the Mission I had promised 
myself. It stood, as I said, on the top of a hill, and to me, 
after months of trekking and the constant expectation of 
danger, it seemed like the city of peace. I spent the whole 
day there enjoying to the full the atmosphere of rest, the big 
