The relationship between the UDF and the British did not get off to a good start. The GOC (general officer commanding) for East Africa, Major General DP Dickinson, ordered the 1st South African Brigade group to be split up into its component battalions. It thus ceased to operate as an entity, and by the end of September 1940 the battalions were spread out along the northern frontier of Kenya. The “dissection” was completed before the divisional commander, General George Brink, had even arrived in the country. Prime Minister Jan Smuts flew to Nairobi to intervene with Dickinson. The story goes that Smuts ordered Brink and Brigadier Dan Pienaar to leave the room, but Pienaar left the door slightly ajar so that what Smuts had to say could be heard: “You are no general for me,” he screamed at Dickinson, “I did not send my young men to die of fever in East Africa. I sent them here to drive the enemy out of Africa.”
Churchill and General Archibald Wavell, the GOC Middle East, were informed by Smuts. The result was that Dickinson was replaced by General Alan Cunningham. The South Africans would again fight as a united formation – and they achieved spectacular success. The war reporter Carel Birkby, whose book Springbok Victory told the story of the East African campaign, wrote that “in two breathless months General Cunningham’s force blasted its way from Kenya through Italian Somaliland, into Abyssinia and on to Addis Ababa. There was little doubt of the success of his lightning drive once he had forced the enemy’s first main defensive line on the Juba River. And I think the Battle of the Juba in February 1941 was won at the Battle of El Wak in December 1940.”
El Wak was an Italian fort situated on the Kenya-Somali border, 644km northeast of Nairobi and about 160km north of Wajir, one of the jumping-off points for the attacks on Abyssinia and Somaliland. The objective of the 1st South African Brigade, going into action for the first time, was to seize and destroy not only El Wak but also a number of surrounding outposts. The whole operation, wrote Birkby, was “an almost flawless model for a bush-war raid – a textbook exercise in earnest”. He witnessed the attack by South African infantry and armoured cars:
At 08h15 as the sun began to pour down its drenching heat, the infantry moved up and found strong Italian defences behind barbed wire. The rattle of musketry began. Ten minutes later the tanks on the left were heard crashing through the dry thorn bush. They passed the infantry and swept round parallel with the enemy wire. One of the tanks broke down with clutch trouble a few yards from the wire. An enemy 65mm gun was brought to bear on it. Grenades burst around it. Machine-gun bullets thup-thupped against its side. Its headlight was blown off. The crew, busy as bees in an upset hive, laboured to get the clutch right and soon had the tank careering onwards again. The whole line of tanks rolled along the defences letting loose a deafening and devastating broadside for a quarter of a mile. The tank crews were so close that they could see the enemy working their guns.
The South African infantry, with support from the Gold Coast brigade, followed the tanks through gaps that had been blown in the wire and “shot and bayoneted those of the enemy who did not flee from their machine guns and artillery.” Apart from taking 120 prisoners, the troops seized 15 guns, 300 000 rounds of small-arms ammunition and 1 000 shells, and destroyed huge quantities of stores and ammunition. About 200 Italians escaped and “became our unwitting allies; they were walking pamphlets far more convincing than any exhortation in the vernacular that our aircraft could drop among the natives; they were missionaries of terror among their comrades”. The commander of El Wak had fled the fort the day before the battle, “hurrying off as fast as he could go in a mule cart. He left all his secret documents behind him, including complete plans of the Italian defensive scheme for the Lower Jub. The garrison was not heartened by the defection of their commander. They fought with little heart.” For his leadership in the field, Brigadier Pienaar was immediately awarded the DSO.
The next major encounter was the battle for Mega, a strongly defended fortress on the southern Abyssinian plateau. It was assaulted by the 2nd and 5th South African brigades, which constituted General Brink’s main force. Joel Mervis, the legendary editor of the Sunday Times, wrote this account of Mega in his history of South African forces in the Second World War:
Rain fell during the night, and on a wet February 16 a thick mist hid the hills which were the first objective. The enemy had spotted the advance and having already established and registered the road and its vicinity, opened fire with artillery. The South African trucks scattered, and troops rushed from their transports. They started to advance on foot across the hills. At midday a tremendous storm broke, the mist grew thicker, and the troops were lost in the mist.
They were travelling lightly, without either greatcoats or groundsheets, and had little protection against the bitter cold. The supply trucks were bogged in the mud and that night the ration was one can of bully beef and one biscuit to every four men.
On February 17 the weather was bleak but the battle grew hotter. The South African artillery moved up, but not until 18h00 was a Scottish unit able to capture a machine-gun post on a hill dominating the line of the regiment’s advance. By dark the men were so tired and cold they could scarcely move, but there was naught for their comfort. They had to spend another bitter night out in the open. Guns had been manhandled forward during the night and at dawn on February 18 the troops went forward under the cover of the shells.
Carel Birkby takes up the story:
Our men could see the guns hammering the picturesque fort of Mega itself and our fire silenced the enemy guns. Our aircraft bombed and machine-gunned the fort all morning and a direct hit from a bomb killed every man in one of the blockhouses. The mortars of the Irish battalion pounded another blockhouse until the 12 blackshirts in it came out, waving a white flag.
The action reached its climax in the late afternoon. The troops waited for zero hour at 16h45, while black clouds hung over them and rain beat down with then orchestrating the shallower note of mortar fire.
At zero hour the Irish advanced with bayonets fixed across a clearing and down a hillside towards the fort from the left. The Scottish came in from the right, firing as they advanced, and their mortars behind them laying a barrage. The South Africans were fighting in heavy mist. Just after five o clock, through a break in the mist, a Scottish officer saw a white flag flying from a high mast behind the fort.
The Field Force Battalion (FFB) on the mountain peaks had not only captured the enemy’s main artillery position, but now commanded the whole valley in which Mega lay. The FFB boys had not known what it was to be dry for three days and they had little sleep, because they were continually at ‘stand to’. Despite this, they set out on a forced march of 12 miles across the veld at 07h30 on the last day of the battle and they started to scale a mountain with its summit lost in the mist. They slid and slipped and slithered as they struggled upwards, dragging their heavy mortars and machine-guns behind them through the thick bush.
The mist was so dense that at times they lost sight of each other. The advance guard reached the summit after hours of climbing, to be met by two enemy machine-gun posts. The FFB men flung themselves down flat and fought the enemy until reinforcements dragged up mortars through the narrow defile and started to bombard the Italians. The Italian officer commanding the enemy artillery hoisted a white flag, astonished at the sudden appearance of troops in his rear.
Some of the most gallant acts were performed when the SA Irish regiment ran into a field of land mines. Lt HJ Barker of the 5th Field Company, SAEC, won the MC for going forward personally with his men under fire and clearing the road to Mega of mines. The mines were home-made and nobody knew either how they worked or where they were laid as they were buried six inches below the surface with no protruding parts. Barker stayed with his men while they dug them out with their bayonets.
The main battle of the campaign took place in February 1941 at the Juba River, near the village of Gobwen in what is now Somalia. Logistical difficulties were as much of a problem as the enemy. In a night march, the men had to manhandle everything, even their heavy mortars, through the dense thorn scrub. Some of them moved forward on their hands and knees as they carried loads of mortar bombs, which weighed 9lb (4kg) each. Sometimes they had to link their arms and push bodily backwards through the bush. Light tanks came up at about half past four in the morning and helped