A few circumstances there were that favoured us. For one thing, from personal experience in East Asia, I knew the clumsiness with which English troops were moved and led in battle, and it was certain that in the very close and completely unknown country in which the enemy would find himself directly he landed, these difficulties would grow to infinity. The slightest disorder was bound to have far-reaching consequences. With my troops, of whom the Europeans were well acquainted with the country round Tanga, while the Askari were at home in the bush, I had a reasonable prospect of taking advantage of the enemy’s weak points by skilful and rapid manœuvre. On the other hand, if the affair miscarried, it would be a bad business. Already my method of waging active war had met with disapproval. If on top of that we were to suffer a severe defeat the confidence of the troops would probably be gone, and it was certain that my superiors would place insuperable difficulties in the way of my exercising command. My decision was not easy, and as if the military situation alone did not render it difficult enough, it was made unnecessarily harder by the fact that the regulations did not allow sufficient freedom to the responsible commander. But there was nothing for it: to gain all we must risk all. The same morning I personally ordered Captain von Prince to move into Tanga with his two companies of Europeans, so that, in case of an attack on the Askari Company holding the eastern edge of the place, he could intervene rapidly without orders. I had already begun to doubt whether the enemy would attack at all on the 4th November, when at 3 p.m. an Askari reported to me in his simple, smart way: “Adui tayari.” (The enemy is ready.) Those two short words I shall never forget. The next moment the rifle fire opened along the whole front, and one could only judge of the rapid development and the ebb and flow of the action from the direction of the firing. One heard the fire draw in from the eastern edge of the town to the middle: so the 6th Company had been driven back at this point. The enemy, with odds twenty to one in his favour, had penetrated close up to the station and into the town. Captain von Prince had immediately rushed up his two companies of Europeans and at once prevailed upon the brave Askari to stand and then to advance once more. The British North Lancashire Regiment, consisting only of long-service Europeans, 800 strong, was driven back with heavy losses, and the houses captured by the Indian Brigade (Kashmir Rifles), who were advancing between that regiment and the beach, were re-taken in stubborn street-fighting. But on the south side of Tanga Captain Baumstark had also brought his companies into action on the front, and after about one hour’s fighting I observed the Askari at this point retiring through the palm-trees to the Tanga-Pangani road. The European members of Headquarters at once ran there and stopped them.