Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck

[Philip Martin]

Lettow-Vorbeck strikes me as a magnificent soldier during WWI. From wiki: "Lettow-Vorbeck knew he could count on his highly motivated officers (their casualty rate was certainly proof of that). Although casualties remained high, Lettow insisted his commanders engage British forces. Unfortunately, the British offered few enticing targets, and forced him to conduct raids into British East Africa (later Kenya, Uganda, and Zambia), targeting forts, railways, and communications, all with the goal of forcing the Entente to divert manpower from the main theater of war in Europe.
"In June 1926, Lettow-Vorbeck met Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen at Bremen, the British Intelligence officer with whom he had fought a battle of wits until Meinertzhagen was invalided back to England in December 1916 (he was later posted to Palestine). Three years later, Lettow-Vorbeck accepted an invitation to London, where he met face-to-face for the first time J. C. Smuts; the two men formed a lasting friendship. When Smuts died in 1950, Lettow-Vorbeck sent his widow a moving letter of sympathy."

Illustration caption: "Great War poster of Lettow-Vorbeck leading African soldiers. Above: "Colonial Warriors' Donation"; below a facsimile of Lettow-Vorbeck's signature"

[John Ashworth]

An excellent book on the World War I campaigns in Africa is "Tip and Run - the Untold Tragedy of the Great War in Africa" by Edward Paice.

It was certainly a campaign with a lot of railway interest, particularly in the early stages when the Germans in Tanganyika attacked the railway in Kenya.

In East Africa the railways and harbours have often been connected, so there is also an interest in some of the naval battles of the war. There's a couple of threads on the FOTR forum about the African Queen (made famous by the popular film starring Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn) and the German gunboat Liemba. See http://www.friendsoftherail.com/phpBB2/ ... ican+queen and http://www.friendsoftherail.com/phpBB2/ ... ican+queen

Some artefacts from the German light cruiser Konigsberg, which was scuttled in Tanganyika's Rufiji Delta in 1915 after being attacked and bottled up there by the Royal Navy, can be seen in the Nairobi railway museum.

[Philip Martin]

This also, from the same wiki article: "As military commander, Lettow-Vorbeck's first obligation was to his army, over the objections of Governor Heinrich Schnee: the governor regarded war as the worst possible calamity that could befall German East Africa; it would "undo everything his social and economic reforms had accomplished."