Tip & Run

[Pete1052]

Today's Sunday Times has a review of Tip & Run: The Untold Tragedy of the Great War in Africa,

by Edward Paice, Weidenfeld, £25, pp488.

[Chris_Baker]

These media typres are very slow off the mark these days. I reviewed it weeks ago: http://www.1914-1918.net/books/tipandrun.html

[KONDOA]

I too have had this tipped today but unless there is somnething really new in it, it would seem expensive.

Roop

[Halder]

Here's the review going into the March edition of Navy News; the emphasis, as ever, is on things nautical, so it's not a wholly balanced review...

WHEN war broke out in August 1914 the Kaiser, like his English cousin, concentrated his Hochseeflotte not on the high seas for which it was named, but home waters.

Scattered around the globe, however, was a handful of German ships which proved to be irritating thorns in Britain’s side in the opening months of the Great War.

Graf Spee’s squadron was victorious at Coronel before Fate – and British battle-cruisers – caught up with it at the Falklands, and the Emden ran amok in the Indian Ocean before HMAS Sydney dispatched her.

Arguably less well known, however, is the Kaiser’s African thorn, the cruiser Königsberg, operating out of Dar-es-Salaam.

Today, as 90 years ago, Dar-es-Salaam was a bustling port; but 90 years ago, it was the principal port of the colony of German East Africa.

The struggle for that colony – today Tanzania – raged for four years. It cost the Empire nearly £3bn in today’s money. And they failed to beat their opponent.

It is a sobering, grim story told from all sides – British, German and African – by Edward Paice in his definitive Tip & Run: The Untold Tragedy of the Great War in Africa (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £25 ISBN 978-0-297-84709-0).

Drawing upon letters, official papers and published accounts in numerous languages, Paice paints the most complete picture yet of a war which one British colonial official conceded “seemed so futile”.

In this inglorious campaign, the Royal Navy’s role was perhaps the least inglorious. Yet its leadership was uninspired, its gunnery indifferent – the sum seemed rather less than the combined parts.

At the root of the problem lay a single German cruiser, the Königsberg, which had inflicted Britain’s first merchant shipping loss of the Great War. To add insult to injury she also raided Zanzibar, catching the RN off guard, destroying the elderly cruiser Pegasus.

The beast was finally tracked to its lair in the Rufiji delta and in the spring of 1915, the Navy, aided by air power, began its destruction.

Trapped in her hideout, all the German cruiser could hope to do was paw her attacker and hope to wound him.

Yet it took almost a week of fighting in July 1915, led by monitors Severn and Mersey, with the RNAS spotting their shots, to finally dispatch Königsberg.

Worse still, the Königsberg’s crew – who actually scuttled their ship, she was not sunk by British guns – bolstered German ground forces in East Africa.

And yet it was one bright spot in a campaign which the Empire lost, outfoxed by a wily – and ruthless – German opponent, von Lettow-Vorbeck.

Recent treatment of the fighting in East Africa has been rather light-hearted, notably Mimi and Toutou Go Forth.

Mimi and Toutou – gunboats deployed on Lake Tanganyika – feature in Paice’s book, but they are little more than footnote in a savage war which spared neither soldier nor civilian.

The African conflict was a war utterly removed from that on the Western Front. It was a war of movement, of guerrilla raids and few pitch battles, of heat, dust, crocodiles and mosquitoes, of disease.

The peoples of East Africa were pawns in the great game of Empire; a good 100,000 Africans serving with the British Army in the campaign were killed (British deaths amounted to a little over 11,000).

Von Lettow-Vorbeck was even more ruthless: as many as 350,000 men, women and children died because of the actions of the German authorities during the four-year campaign.

The general was never beaten – he was even allowed a victory parade through the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin – but he lost his colony: German East Africa was shared between Britain, Belgium and Portugal.

[Kirkes Lamb]

I have it and its worth every penny of the asking price, however I am sure there are some deals out there and you will get it cheaper than the publishers marked price.

[Hambo]

Incidently the author is doing a talk on the book at 4.30pm on Monday the 26th of February at Lloyds of London's Old library in Lime Street EC3. For those that are interested (I'll be there as I work round the corner) contact Toby Humphreys the organiser to book a place and presumably he would have to organise a security pass but I could organise one if you send me a PM with your details

His email is

toby.humphreys@integrogroup.com

Hambo

[Kirkes Lamb]

Incidently the author is doing a talk on the book at 4.30pm on Monday the 26th of February at Lloyds of London's Old library in Lime Street EC3. For those that are interested (I'll be there as I work round the corner) contact Toby Humphreys the organiser to book a place and presumably he would have to organise a security pass but I could organise one if you send me a PM with your details

His email is

toby.humphreys@integrogroup.com

Hambo

Lloyds of London is worth a visit anyway-fascinating place especially in working hours!

[Irish-American]

Has anyone seen and compared Paice's new book World War I: The African Front (2008) to his earlier Tip and Run? The detail in African Front is tremendous--almost too much for me as I'm unfamilar with this theater.

Incidentally, here is a link to an older interview with Paice: http://www.worldwar1.com/tripwire/ei_ep.htm (My apologies if this has already been posted.)

[AlanCurragh]

I'm not 100% certain, but I think they are the same book. They certainly seem to have the same cover illustration

Alan

[Irish-American]

I'm not 100% certain, but I think they are the same book. They certainly seem to have the same cover illustration

Alan

I suspect you're right, though one has to look quite hard to find any mention of Tip and Run in the American edition. (Odd.) I only found it just now reading the acknowledgement pages. Many thanks, Alan!