Marching on Tanga; (With General Smuts in East Africa)

New York: E. P. Dutton & Company, 1919. Second printing [stated]. Hardcover. Good. Format is approximately 5 inches by 7.5 inches. vii, [3], 265, [1] pages plus folding map of the East African Campaign at the back. Illustrations (all present). Cover has some wear and soiling. Some page soiling, discoloration and foxing. Francis Brett Young (29 June 1884 - 28 March 1954) was an English novelist, poet, playwright, composer, doctor and soldier. During the First World War he saw service in German East Africa in the Royal Army Medical Corps (he was a medical officer of the 2nd Rhodesia Regiment), but was invalided out in 1918, and no longer able to practice medicine. His own account of these wartime events is given in his book Marching on Tanga; passages censored from that book were later covertly used in his novel Jim Redlake. Unable to work as a doctor, he decided to devote himself to his writing, and in 1919 he began the first of his Mercian novels. In 1944, near to the war's end, he published his epic poem The Island, recounting in verse the whole history of Britain from the Bronze Age to the Battle of Britain. The entire first edition of 23,500 sold out immediately and was then reprinted. Marching on Tanga is a 1917 non-fiction work by the British writer Francis Brett Young. A war memoir, it recounted his service in the Royal Army Medical Corps during the East African campaign of the First World War. Several of Young's novels were set in German East Africa. The book has been described as "an outstandingly vivid account of campaigns in East Africa", while acknowledging that the fighting there was a sideshow compared to the better-known European conflict. The East African campaign in World War I was a series of battles and guerrilla actions, which started in German East Africa (GEA) and spread to portions of Portuguese Mozambique, Northern Rhodesia, British East Africa, the Uganda Protectorate, and the Belgian Congo. The campaign all but ended in German East Africa in November 1917 when the Germans entered Portuguese Mozambique and continued the campaign living off Portuguese supplies. The strategy of the German colonial forces, led by Lieutenant Colonel (later "Generalmajor") Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, was to divert Allied forces from the Western Front to Africa. His strategy achieved only mixed results after 1916 when he was driven out of German East Africa. The campaign in Africa consumed considerable amounts of money and war material that could have gone to other fronts. The Germans in East Africa fought for the whole of the war, receiving word of the armistice on 14 November 1918 at 07:30 hours. Both sides waited for confirmation, with the Germans formally surrendering on 25 November. GEA became two League of Nations Class B Mandates, Tanganyika Territory of the United Kingdom and Ruanda-Urundi of Belgium, while the Kionga Triangle was ceded to Portugal. Only two British regiments were involved in the East African campaign. The 2nd Battalion, Loyal North Lancashire Regiment arrived with the Indian Army invasion force at Tanga and after this stayed on the border between British and German East Africa. The 25th (Frontiersmen) Battalion, Royal Fusiliers was raised for service in East Africa in early 1915 and served throughout the war. In addition, white contingents were supplied by Rhodesia in 1914-15, the 2nd Rhodesia Regiment, Nyasaland and South Africa including the South African Expeditionary Force which arrived in February 1916. In 1916, General Jan Smuts was given the task of defeating Lettow-Vorbeck. Smuts had a large army (for the area), some 13,000 South Africans including Boers, British, Rhodesians and 7,000 Indian and African troops, a ration strength of 73,300 men. A large Carrier Corps composed of African porters under British command, carried supplies into the interior. Despite the Allied nature of the effort, it was a South African operation of the British Empire. During the previous year, Lettow-Vorbeck had also gained personnel and his army was now 13,800 strong. Smuts attacked from several directions, the main attack coming from British East Africa (Kenya) in the north, while substantial forces from the Belgian Congo advanced from the west in two columns, crossing Lake Victoria on the British troop ships SS Rusinga and SS Usoga and into the Rift Valley. Another contingent advanced over Lake Nyasa (Lake Malawi) from the south-east. The Germans nearly always retreated from the larger British troop concentrations and by September 1916, the German Central Railway from the coast at Dar es Salaam to Ujiji was fully under British control. With Lettow-Vorbeck confined to the southern part of German East Africa, Smuts began to withdraw the South African, Rhodesian and Indian troops and replace them with Askari of the King's African Rifles (KAR), which by November 1918 had 35,424 men. By the start of 1917, more than half the British Army in the theater was composed of Africans and by the end of the war, it was nearly all-African.