The Battle of the Bees: The East
Africa Campaign of WWI
World
War I is the perfect example of the old truism "war is hell". It is also an excellent example of "war
is boring". The war is engrained
into our minds as a mess of mud, barbed wire, and pointless attacks resulting
in millions of deaths. With no decisive
victories, idiotic generals, and a complete lack of movement, WWI has bored
military history nerds for decades.
However, while the main event may be mind numbingly boring, the
sideshows are not. One such sideshow was
the wildly successful guerrilla campaign of General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck.
German
East Africa (now Tanzania) was one of those regions that can be described as
utterly worthless. In fact, despite the
building of railways, plantations, and ports the colony never once turned a
profit. As such, when World War I broke
out the British decided to attack it. Opposing
them were 2,700 troops under the command of General von Lettow-Vorbeck.
German East Africa
Apart
from Vorbeck himself, Germany's one advantage lay in the makeup of their
forces. When fighting in Africa, the
most potent killers tended to be tropical diseases and bug bites. The Schutztruppe (the German forces in Africa)
was made up of European officers with academy training commanding African
troops who knew the terrain and had immunities to most of the local
diseases. The British, meanwhile, relied
on South African colonists and Indians. It
wasn’t until near the end of the war that the British finally relented and
started recruiting Africans into their forces.
A Schutztruppe column
Despite
this, the British still heavily outnumbered the Germans. British commander Aitken quickly drew up
plans to conduct a massive pincer movement with a small force attacking around
Kilimanjaro while the main force landed at the port of Tanga. All seemed jolly as the British launched
8,000 troops to crush von Lettow-Vorbeck's 1,000 man army defending the town.
The
attack was somewhat botched from the start.
Several weeks before the attack a British ship stopped at the port and
officially declared that the British were planning to attack. This gave Vorbeck plenty of time to reinforce
the city. On November 2nd
Aitken's forces landed just south of the port.
The next day they then marched straight into town without bothering to
check if there were any Germans there. It
was at this point that the British forces were inexplicable attacked by a
massive swarm of bees. African bees tend
to be larger and more aggressive than the ones the British were used to and the
swarm put their front lines in disarray.
The combination of this and a counter attack by Vorbeck's outnumbered
forces led to the British retreating back to their boats. British propaganda later claimed that the
bees were in fact an insidious German plot to foil the invasion. However, the bees attacked both armies making
the claim questionable at best.
The Battle of the Bees
After
routing the British in the north, Vorbeck attacked into Kenya in the one
invasion of British Imperial soil in WWI.
Later, when the British finally gained a foothold in German territory, Vorbeck
ran rings around them in the bush for several years. During this time he not only staved off
defeat, but also attacked outward into Portuguese East Africa and later the
Belgian Congo. Still undefeated in the
field Vorbeck didn't hear about the armistice until two days after it was
signed. The von Lettow-Vorbeck Memorial
in what is now northern Zambia marks the place where the general finally
surrendered, ending WWI.
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