My Reminiscences of East AfricaLettow-Vorbeck, Paul Emil von
History
My Reminiscences of East Africa
Lettow-Vorbeck, Paul Emil von
World War, 1914-1918 -- Campaigns -- Tanzania
At our main dressing station, in Tanga itself, our male and female
nursing personnel had conscientiously cared for friend and foe even
under the fire of the heavy guns of the ships. As recently as the
evening of the 4th November I had been to see the wounded. I little
thought that Lieutenant Schottstaedt, who was sitting there on a chair
with a severe wound in the chest, had but a few minutes to live. The
English Lieutenant Cook, of the 101st Indian Grenadiers, lay there with
a bad gun-shot wound in the leg. This bright young officer, who had
fallen into our hands in the hottest part of the fight on the Indian
left wing, maintained his cheerfulness in spite of his wound. With the
bulk of the other wounded, he was treated for nine months in the Field
Hospital at Korogwe by our best surgeon, _Stabsarzt_ Dr. Müller. He
was already walking about once more, when an unfortunate fall on the
stairs caused his death.
The fighting at Tanga was the first occasion on which heavy demands
were made on our arrangements for the care of the wounded. For this
purpose, hospitals had been established at Korogwe and at various other
points on the Northern Railway, to which the sick could be taken by
rail without being transferred from one method of transport to another.
No special hospital arrangements of a permanent nature had been made
for transport, but we never had any difficulty in improvising what was
necessary.
In spite of their undoubted defeat at Tanga it was probable that
British determination would not accept this decision as final. Even
after his defeat the enemy was still several times as strong as we
were, and would not improbably attempt another landing elsewhere. But
a cycle ride on the 6th November to Mansa Bay, in the North, convinced
me that the hostile ships had run in there only for the purpose of
attending to their wounded and burying their dead and had no intention
of landing. And the ships actually did steam off towards Zanzibar soon
after. At that time it was interesting to me to visit our Government
Hospital near Ras-Kasone, which had in the meantime been evacuated by
the English wounded released on parole. Among others I saw here two
German officers who had been wounded at Tanga on the 3rd November, and
others who had been wounded in an earlier action; from the hospital
they had been able to observe events behind the English front on the
4th November, the day when the principal fighting took place. With the
greatest excitement they had watched the landing at Ras-Kasone and the
advance on Tanga; in the afternoon they had heard the opening of our
decisive machine-gun fire and the bombardment by the ships’ guns, and
had then witnessed the wild flight of the enemy close by the hospital.
The numerous shells that had fallen near the hospital had fortunately
done no damage. Quite early on the 5th November they had suddenly heard
guns firing again, this time from the direction of Tanga; they realized
that they must be German guns.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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