8

Northern Force

FROM THE START, Botha believed the shortest and most direct route to Windhoek was from Swakopmund, just north of Walvis Bay. Against the general consensus of both the Germans and the previous South African command, therefore, he reasoned that the best way to capture the capital would be an attack from Swakopmund, not from the south.¹ Before Botha assumed command, the only plans for Swakopmund involved rendering the seaport inoperable as a supply depot for the German navy, an objective that had been achieved in September 1914.

Although the Germans had evacuated the town, the Schütztruppe maintained an observation station at a small outpost called Nonidas, on the high dunes slightly west of Swakopmund. They also had a garrison or two guarding each of the possible routes out of town: one on the railway line at Rössing Station and another along the Swakop River at the Goanikontes oasis.² Each was about thirty kilometres inland. These garrisons were simply precautionary measures, as the Germans were not expecting a significant attack from Swakopmund. Franke thought that even if the South Africans were bold enough to attempt such a thing, it would be nothing more than a diversion from the main thrust in the south.³ It was generally accepted that a primary attack from Swakopmund was virtually impossible. As with Lüderitz, the attacking forces would have to land by ship directly from Cape Town; and in this case, first at Walvis Bay, as Swakopmund was too small to handle invasion forces of any size. The troops would then have to march up the bleak coast for about ten kilometres to Swakopmund before attempting to traverse the 100-kilometre wide Namib Desert in an endeavour to reach Windhoek.

Swakopmund itself was not an ideal base from which to launch an offensive. Water was by far the biggest problem, as was an adequate supply of fodder for horses and mules. Colonel Skinner, who Botha had sent to secure Swakopmund for the troops’ arrival, reported that the town’s own water supply was limited and brackish at best. It would take time for man and beast to become accustomed to it before they could even begin thinking of marching inland. In addition, Skinner felt that their best route out of town, the railway track, could be easily defended by the Germans, who would no doubt destroy it in stages as the South Africans advanced. This would slow down the advance to a virtual halt.

It was precisely for these reasons that Botha decided to launch his main attack from Swakopmund. He was obeying one of the oldest military maxims – do the unexpected. The Germans ought to have known that when it came to Botha’s military acumen, they should obey the corollary – expect the unexpected. In fact, they remained unconvinced even when the Nonidas observation post reported troop ships docking at Walvis Bay on 10 February, disgorging men and horses into blunt-nosed barges that ploughed their way up the coast to Swakopmund and landed on the beaches in front of the town.⁴

Botha was aware he was taking a grave risk attacking with his main force from Swakopmund, but he was banking on his considerable skill for rapid and mobile deployment. The German observers peering into their dune-top telescopes may have noticed that there were around 5 000 troops amassing below, and that most of them were mounted. They were Boer commandos, by then still the most effective armed raiding militia in the world.

Rather than a hodgepodge of rag-tag quasi-independent units led by a loosely termed colonel or general, by February 1915 the commandos were formed into full brigades led by a brigadier general. Aside from this, the commando system itself had changed little since the Boer War. According to Collyer, each brigadier general had a staff detachment comprised of a brigade major, a staff captain, an aide-de-camp or ‘galloper’, and two administrative staff officers. Each brigade consisted of two flanking mounted columns, or ‘flying wings’ as they were known, commanded by a colonel commandant. The wings were self-contained and could be detached from the main body at will.⁵ Within the wings were the commando units themselves, made up mainly of rural men who were accustomed to frugal habits, a life in the saddle and, most importantly, were expert riflemen.

Commandos were recruited and named on a geographical basis, and consisted of members drawn from around the main towns of each country district, for example the Witwatersrand Rifles and the Ermelo Commando. Sometimes a town could field two commandos, like Standerton Commando A and B. Each commando was led by a commandant, lieutenant colonel or major, depending on the origin, nature and size of the unit. Originally, leaders were elected by their own men, but in 1915 that had changed to a more formal appointment by senior ranks. Sometimes a commando was named after the charismatic personality of its leader, like Hartigan’s Horse. This particular commando was raised by Major M.M. Hartigan, a serving officer of the South African Police in the Eastern Province of the Cape. He was allowed to recruit a squadron from the police personnel of his district. The regiment served with distinction with Southern Force under Van Deventer, and later in the East African Campaign under the same commander.

Perhaps the most standout feature of the commandos were the scouts, who rode ahead of the main body to clear the area and report back on enemy developments. Scout groups consisted of between twenty-five and fifty flying horsemen and were almost always named after their leaders, for example Lemmer’s Scouts and Swart’s Scouts. They were incredibly swift and versatile, but, as Collyer points out, scout leaders were prone to be ‘indifferent to orders’, especially if they felt said orders ‘did not square with the idea of the best method of fighting’.⁶ The scouts were thus instinctive and spontaneous – often invaluable traits – but, at the same time, they were not inclined to commit to the scene of a battle and would retreat as quickly as they attacked if the going got tough.

This hit-and-run method worked to great effect during the Boer War, where no tactical combinations were required, especially when the Boers went to ground as guerrilla fighters. In 1915, however, this tendency meant that both scouts and commandos would often forget they were part of a broad tactical enterprise. Generals and their staff found it extremely difficult to gather information from long-ranging, hard-riding troops bent on their own conceived mission.⁷ Nonetheless, the commandos were also apt to confuse the enemy for the same reasons. The unsuspecting Germans erroneously thought that all battles would follow a similar pattern to the conventional one that had unfolded at Sandfontein the previous year.

Each of the two mounted commando brigades making up Botha’s Northern Force consisted of a battery of artillery commanded by Brigadier Generals Coen Brits and J.J. Alberts. Besides these main attacking brigades, Botha also had protective brigades, whose duty was to cover the railway line and supervise its reconstruction. The protective brigades included two infantry brigades under Colonels Skinner and Wylie, each with three battalions, plus two unbrigaded infantry brigades and one mounted regiment with a battery of heavy artillery – guns that were bigger and heavier than the smaller but mobile 13-pounder quick-firing field artillery. All the brigades had the usual administrative, medical and engineering units.

Botha’s first task was to simultaneously clear the observation post at Nonidas and move up the railway line and the Swakop River towards the German garrisons at Rössing Station and Goanikontes respectively. Skinner was tasked with occupying Nonidas, and was the first to achieve his objective. Perhaps because he was not a South African, Skinner’s brigade contained the only non–South African units in the campaign: a Rhodesian regiment, as well as an Irish regiment whose honorary colonel was none other than Botha’s wife, Annie, who was of pure Irish stock herself. It was mainly the Irish troops who were responsible for clearing the outpost at Nonidas. The surprised German observers retreated with some haste when they saw the enemy on the dawn of 23 February.

Botha successfully secures a solid beachhead by clearing the Schütztruppe outposts outside Swakopmund

Colonel Commandant Collins of Alberts’ left wing was tasked with getting astride the railway line. He saw brief action from the German rearguard, but managed to push them off the track, taking some prisoners in the process. As with Aus, the advance could only move as fast as the engineers re-laying the sabotaged line, so Rössing Station itself would only be occupied a month later. The task was slowed down significantly by someone deeming it important to replace the German two-foot narrow-gauge track with a wider, three-foot six-inch track.

Meanwhile, Alberts followed the river with the right wing of his 2nd Mounted Brigade, and easily occupied the oasis at Goanikontes. Travelling a further ten kilometres up the gorge, he took a watering point called Heigamchab, and another ten kilometres on, the Husab well, all without resistance. These conquests were vital for securing the necessary water supply for an army to move in relay convoys upriver. In addition, they were now within striking distance of good grazing, which intelligence reports claimed began along a broad belt starting at the town of Usakos, sixty kilometres further along the railway line from Rössing, then ran south in a haphazard arc to a farm called Riet, about forty kilometres further up the Swakop River from Husab.⁸

With the area in front of him now cleared, Botha had gained a sizeable beachhead around Swakopmund and the power of movement as well as reconnaissance. The springboard was now almost ready. Even though the enemy had easily given way in the face of his initial advance, there were two far more difficult obstacles that had to be overcome before the prime minister could continue with the bulk of his force. These delayed his launch into the desert by a full five weeks.

The most serious obstacle was the question of supplies. There were two routes out of Swakopmund that offered differing supply options. The first route involved a slow advance along the railway line dependent on the speed at which the new line could be laid. The advantage of this was that troops could be fed and watered along the way. Supplies could be steadily brought up from Cape Town by ship and then transported from Swakopmund to the rear by steam engine. However, the route up the railway would lose Botha the element of surprise and sacrifice the mobility of his Boer commandos, who were in any case too impatient to sit idly on a railway track behind the engineer corps for a few months. And worst of all, further inland the narrow-gauge track passed through a series of mountain ranges, which, like Aus, could be easily defended with just a handful of soldiers.

The second option was to take the commandos rapidly up the more direct route of the Swakop River and leave only a protective infantry force to guard the construction of the railway line, which would still be necessary to continually supply refreshed troops and food to the stretching front. One disadvantage of this was that the river almost never flowed, so it provided little hope of an adequate water supply. (Incidentally, and with little consequence, the Swakop flooded and flowed briefly for the first time in living memory the day Botha landed in Walvis Bay in February 1915.) Water could be obtained at various stages, like at the Goanikontes oasis and a few places further upstream, but these wells only gave a trickle of water, too inadequate to supply an army of men and horses. Not to mention the fact that supply lines would have to be carried in ‘hops’ from waterhole to waterhole by mules and oxen, of which there remained an inadequate supply. All the Germans had to do was defend these waterholes, a task made easier by the fact that the Swakop disgorges from a twisted, lengthy and deep canyon.

Although this route offered the opportunity to catch the enemy unawares, even to the most uninitiated military mind, any attempt to approach Windhoek along the Swakop would be suicide. It was deemed so risky that most, including Smuts and the Germans, assumed it impossible. All were convinced that Botha would remain astride the umbilical railway line.⁹ Accordingly, Smuts did not ship out the necessary food, wagons and transport animals needed to advance rapidly along the Swakop River route, to the consternation of his commander-in-chief, who had planned once again to do the unexpected.¹⁰

For the next month, while Smuts focused on supplying the transport needs of the so-called diversionary Southern, Eastern and Central forces, Botha was preoccupied with addressing his grave shortage of transport and supplies. According to Collyer, the only units that enjoyed their full line of transport and wagons were Botha’s two commando brigades, but even they had only enough supplies for a day, or two at a stretch. Ideally, they needed a minimum of a week’s supply. The infantry brigades, medical and veterinary units, and machine-gun and artillery brigades were without transport altogether. Botha consequently pulled most of the labourers and mule wagons off the railway reconstruction and diverted every ounce of his resources to supply the string of waterhole depots along the Swakop as far as Alberts’ advanced position at Husab.¹¹

Botha calculated that in order to begin his advance along the river he needed no less than 400 wagons, each with a team of twelve mules. In February he had only a tenth of that number. Furthermore, the mules had to pull the wagons over dunes and through soft sand along the riverbed, which took a heavy toll on the poor beasts. After each trek to Husab and back, it would take the animals more than a week to recover before they could do it again. After urgent telegrams to Smuts demanding more supplies, some belatedly began to trickle through and the eventual arrival of more draft animals and motor lorries by ship from Cape Town was some help, but Botha was still way off his intended target. Nonetheless, by 16 March, he had collected almost six days’ worth of supplies at Husab – just enough for his troops to move on Riet and the all-important grasslands beyond, where he hoped the grazing would be adequate enough to circumvent his supply problems.¹²

The whole endeavour may have been in vain had the Germans had the foresight to harass the unprotected supply convoys with snipers from the craggy hills and canyon walls on either side of the river. Botha’s supplies of transport animals and fodder were so short that he could not afford the luxury of armed escorts. As Collyer writes, the general greatly appreciated ‘this indulgence on the part of the German Commander’.¹³ It is clear that the circumspect Franke was not the same sort of leader as his dynamic predecessor.

The other major obstacle that delayed Botha’s advance was the issue of acclimatisation, of his troops and himself, at Swakopmund. Eric Moore-Ritchie of Botha’s bodyguard eloquently describes the coastal town:

It is purely artificial, and artificial to a ghastly degree too. There is not a spot of vegetation. There is not a genuine tree to be seen. The water has a detestable, unsatisfying blurred taste, to which the adjective ‘brackish’ is applied … Maybe we were not acclimatised, but the fact remains that a very large proportion of us were down with a kind of dysentery, attended by vomiting and violent pains in the stomach. Then there are days when the winds blow from the desert – an indescribable experience. They bring moths and flies with them, and great clouds of sand; it is a genuine labour to breathe, and at noon and for two hours after the temperature in the sun runs up into the ‘hundred-and-sixties’.¹⁴

Botha fell ill with stomach pains soon after arriving in Swakopmund and his doctor prescribed a diet of fresh milk and eggs, which were unobtainable in the bleak coastal town. His wife Annie was shipped from Cape Town with the necessary cows and hens. While nursing her husband, Annie busied herself attending to the numerous sick on Botha’s staff and mending their clothes. After two weeks with the troops, her departure in mid-March was apparently much regretted by all.¹⁵

Having recovered from his illness, Botha left Swakopmund for Goanikontes, where he mustered his troops and the supplies he had managed to scrape together.

A hundred years later, Swakopmund is a somewhat better place. It now has a few trees, mainly date palms, the sandy roads are tarred and the water is better, brought in by pipeline from the hinterland. Teutonic architecture remains steadfast and the town ends abruptly where the desert begins. The breakwater was never completed, so it never became a fully fledged seaport. When the natural harbour of Walvis Bay down the road was incorporated after the South Africans occupied the colony, it was no longer necessary. The weather is unexpected for a desert town; Swakopmund is often shrouded in a cool, damp coastal mist.

The oldest accommodation is the Hansa Hotel. Built in 1905, it retains, certainly on the inside, an air of ostentatious bygone German colonialism. There is a large sweeping staircase as one enters, with a plush formal saloon to one side and a large restaurant with starched tablecloths and tarnished silverware to the other. The rooms are large and high-ceilinged, the passageways heavily adorned with sepia photographs and prints of German-era Swakopmund. Many are of the Schütztruppe standing proud in their uniforms, white tunics and wide-brimmed hats peeled up to the right, the officers with swords attached to their left sides. Like the long-gone troops, the hotel staff wear oversized, faded green or blue uniforms complete with braiding, gold-tasselled epaulettes and white gloves.

Although largely German in architecture, Swakopmund represents the full spectrum of Namibia’s colourful population. There are plenty of German- and Afrikaans-speaking citizens, but they form a minority against the Damara, Herero, Ovambo, Nama and even Basters.