Tip and Run: The Untold Tragedy of the Great War in Africa (review)

The outbreak of war in 1914 came as a profound shock to the European colonial communities in Africa. The conflict shattered the prewar order and the mystique of white rule. It cost the protagonists millions. Diseases and the tough climatic conditions made it such a gruelling campaign theatre that even veterans of the Somme talked of going back to France where it was easier. Worst of all, it led to the deaths of thousands of Africans, a point that Edward Paice feels has for too long been overlooked. Indeed, the campaigns in Africa have traditionally been regarded as mere sideshows to the events in Europe. The fighting appeared desultory, with scattered skirmishes, and the leaders of the forces have had the image of comic-opera caricature. The German colonies in west and south west Africa were soon swept up, and, whilst the fighting in East Africa was more long winded, the usual appraisal is that it had no bearing on the outcome of the war.

Edward Paice shows that the campaign in East Africa was far more serious than we have previously realised, not least for the Africans. He narrates with great verve the successful resistance by Colonel Paul von Lettow Vorbeck with his 2,000–3,000 troops in Tanganyika, an area two and a half times bigger than Germany. He illustrates that the long duration of the campaign stemmed from the initial British setback at Tanga (1914), where Indian troops were routed by well prepared defenders using a sophisticated defence pattern of thorn zeribas, pits, concealed positions, and cleared fields of fire. Lettow Vorbeck used the abandoned Allied weapons and ammunition at Tanga to arm a number of Africans, and his forces rose to 15,000. By contrast, the British were reduced to 4,000 effectives in the Kenya border area by disease. South African reinforcements were delayed by a rebellion of Afrikaners sympathetic to Germany and by operations against German South West Africa. However, the arrival of more men from West Africa, along with the French, and French and British African troops (including the King's African Rifles) turned the tide. Lettow Vorbeck conducted an extended fighting withdrawal for months, ditching the sick and wounded as he played "tip and run" (a cricketing analogy for guerrilla tactics).

Far from praising this achievement, Paice argues that Lettow Vorbeck merely prolonged a conflict for no gain. It is true that he it tied up 100,000 Allied troops and cost them £70 million, but the cause for which he was fighting was flawed and the campaign strategy was ultimately hopeless. Paice also notes that whilst this campaign has often been overlooked because of the fighting in Europe, had it been a colonial war it would have been studied as much as the South African War of 1899–1902. The comparison is an interesting and telling one. The South African War was expected to be a short and relatively cheap engagement, but was so expensive that, whilst Britain had acquired its black African subjects at an average cost of 15 pence each, it subjected its Afrikaners at £1,000 a head. Not only was the East African campaign expensive and prolonged, it also revealed deep fissures in the wartime alliance. The Portuguese contribution from the south was particularly weak. Their neglected troops took British supplies but failed to cordon Lettow Vorbeck, with the consequence that British officers treated them little better than they did the Africans. The Portuguese national history, Paice maintains, was rewritten after the war to give them a more prestigious reputation and cover up their disastrous performance.

But this was also a campaign of ingenuity. The British could not continue their advance across Lake Tanganyika because of the existence of three German gunboats. Their response was to order two of their own from the United Kingdom. They then brought them 10,000 miles across the ocean, and...