Robert Fleming, the National Army Museum’s Templer Study Centre Manager, discusses the First World War campaign in East Africa.
The First World War reached many of Europe’s far-flung colonies, including those in East Africa. The fighting there was brutal, but the environment was even more deadly. Soldiers marched across hundreds of miles of plains, swamps and jungles, and faced constant threats from heat, tropical diseases and parasitic bugs, such as the tsetse fly, as well as ambush and combat.
Britain committed £200m and more than half a million men to capturing and defeating General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck’s well-trained Askaris. But the German commander led the Allies on a merry game of cat and mouse for the duration of the war, avoiding defeat to the very end.
Throughout the First World War, British Empire soldiers fought against a small German force in East Africa. Led by Colonel Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, the Germans inflicted many casualties and avoided defeat in the field.
The First World War was the first truly global conflict. From 1914 to 1918, fighting took place across several continents, at sea and, for the first time, in the air.