Talk:Wilbur Dartnell

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Lieutenant Wilbur Taylor Dartnell
An East African Victoria Cross

by Kevin Patience

A hundred miles inland from the port of Mombasa on the East African coast lies the township of Voi where, in a small Commonwealth War Grave Cemetery, stands a headstone engraved with a Victoria Cross. This is the grave of Lieutenant Wilbur Dartnell, killed in action at Maktau on 3 September 1915.

By the late nineteenth century vast tracts of East Africa which had formerly belonged to the Sultan of Zanzibar had been carved up between Germany and Great Britain. German East Africa, now Tanzania, and British East Africa, now Kenya, shared a common border running from Lake Victoria around the foot of Mt. Kilimanjaro to the Indian Ocean. The first settlers arrived from their respective countries in the late 1890s and during the next decade they built railways and established the colonies’ infrastructure.

Following the outbreak of the Great War many of the British settler farmers formed their own mounted patrols and rode into the capital, Nairobi eager to take on the enemy next door. On 14 August a German battalion captured the border town of Taveta. The lifeline of the British colony was the Uganda Railway some sixty miles away and it was not long before the line became the subject of guerrilla attacks by mounted Schutztruppe patrols from Taveta. Despite counter patrols, armoured trains and whitewashing the stone ballast, the Germans succeeded in attacking the railway at least fifty times, derailing trains and destroying many bridges including the one over the River Tsavo. The construction of this twin piered structure in 1898 had been scene of the most devilish attacks by a pair of lionesses that consumed twenty-eight workers and brought construction to a halt for three weeks before they were shot. The enemy placed mines under the track to be detonated by the weight of an engine. To combat this a disposable wagon was placed in front, but the Germans countered this by using delayed action mines. Additional wagons were added until the situation became ludicrous. The British then painted miles of track ballast with whitewash to indicate any disturbance but the Germans quickly responded by bringing their own paint to cover their handiwork.

To deal with this dangerous situation which would otherwise quickly cripple the country, large numbers of allied and Indian troops were hurriedly brought in to patrol the line. One such battalion was the 25th Royal Fusiliers (City of London) which arrived on 6 May 1915, and included in its number Lt. Wilbur Dartnell. Dartnell had been born in Fitzroy, a suburb of Melbourne, Australia on 6 April 1885. At the age of 27 he settled in South Africa where on the outbreak of the Great War he volunteered for service and sailed for England. He was commissioned into the Royal Fusiliers on 12 February 1915 and promoted Lieutenant on 25 July 1915.

The following month the battalion saw action with the capture of the German port of Bukoba on Lake Victoria, during which Dartnell retrieved the imperial ensign from atop the local headquarters (the battle honour "Bukoba" was later granted to the Fusiliers). Shortly afterwards the battalion moved to Voi in preparation for the allied advance towards German East Africa. Two companies were despatched by rail to Maktau, a small village in the lee of the Taita Hills; thirty-five miles from Voi, it was the railhead of the military railway then under construction towards Taveta. A railway had seemed the best solution when it was found that the dry bushland rapidly became a muddy morass during the rainy season that immobilised vehicles, pack animals and men, and brought the mosquitoes out in force. Every drop of drinking water had to be railed in from the wells at Voi and despite stringent precautions casualties from water and food-poisoning were high. It was said that for every man who died in action at least eight died of tropical diseases.

The Germans meanwhile had advanced further into British territory from Taveta and established a second outpost at Mbuyuni. Here they dug hundreds of yards of trenches and defences. They were now less than a day’s ride from Maktau. As the railhead advanced towards Taveta, German mounted patrols harassed the railways gangs and interrupted the plate laying. To combat these raids armed mounted patrols consisting of officers and men of the Fusiliers and Indian troops of the 130th Baluchis ranged the area around the railhead. On a hill overlooking Maktau a lookout post was built with a commanding view over the bush towards Taveta and the border.

On 3 September the Germans attacked in force and a patrol consisting of Captain Woodruffe, Lieutenant Dartnell and Baluchi soldiers occupied a hill in their line of retreat. The patrol came under heavy fire during which Dartnell and some of his men were wounded. Refusing to be evacuated he maintained a defensive fire to aid his wounded comrades. The hill was overrun and the patrol killed. Dartnell was buried at Voi and the award of his Victoria Cross gazetted on 23 December 1915.

His citation reads "For the most conspicuous bravery near Maktau (East Africa) on 3rd September 1915. During a mounted infantry engagement, the enemy got within a few yards of our men and it was found impossible to get the more severely wounded away. Lt. Dartnell who was himself wounded in the leg, seeing the situation and knowing the enemy’s black troops murdered the wounded, insisted on staying behind in the hope of being able to save the lives of other wounded men. He gave his life in a gallant attempt to save others." The Victoria Cross was presented to Elizabeth Dartnell, his widow, by His Excellency, Sir Donald Ferguson, Governor General of Australia at Government House, Melbourne on 7 October, 1916.

During the 1970s I was resident in Mombasa and began an in-depth investigation of the Kenya battlefields. One of the first to be visited was Maktau, now a thriving township. The hill with its observation post behind the town was readily accessible even though it was now within the Tsavo game park. A rough track cut in 1915 was still usable and enabled one to drive within a stone’s throw of the defences. Low stone walls with the outlying emplacements encircled the hilltop with superb views over the surrounding plains towards Mt. Kilimanjaro. A search in the washaway areas on the hillside brought to light a number of empty .303 brass cases together with rusty tin cans that had originally contained stew and Australian corned beef.

Standing on the hilltop I surveyed the scene below and tried to put myself in the situation of sixty years previously. The railhead construction camp would have been directly below the mounted patrols off to my right. The only high ground that could have been advantageous to Dartnell was a rocky hillock also on my right that had stood in the way of the attackers’ retreat. Being off the beaten track it was a good hike through the bush. Armed with pangas or machetes it was a difficult task under the blazing sun to hack a way up the slope. A small rocky overhang seemed a likely refuge and here lying in the dust was a brass cartridge case and a button. More cartridges came to light but little else. Was this Dartnell’s last stand ? Regrettably we shall never know for certain.

Away to the west stands the towering snow-capped bulk of Mt. Kilimanjaro and nearby is Salaita Hill, scene of a shattering Allied defeat in 1916 when General von Lettow Vorbecks troops held the hilltop against a much greater allied force and then quietly evacuated the area before the next attack. Salaita had been originally known as Mbuyuni but is said to have been renamed after the Swahili interpretation of the word slaughter. The casualties lie close by in Taveta war cemetery together with a solitary South African Air Force pilot killed when his aircraft crashed on takeoff. In late 1915 Mbuyuni became a major airstrip for BE2c and Caudron aircraft operated by the RNAS and South African Air Force on reconnaissance patrols over the hills surrounding Mount Kilimanjaro. Today, little remains to show that the tide of war once raged over this area other than a large quantity of broken beer bottles, barbed wire and bits of scrap metal. A stone memorial standing in a small fenced compound near Maktau railway station commemorates the Indian troops who died in the East African campaign. The railway which had been so costly to build was almost dismantled in the 1920s but is still in use today carrying water to the outlying villages.

In 1983 Dartnell’s Victoria Cross and his four other medals were put up for sale in Sydney and bought by a private buyer who later presented them to the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.

(Submitted by Kevin Patience, 8 Feb 1999)

Kevin is also the author of "Konigsberg - A German East African Raider"; the story of this cruiser's exploits in the Indian Ocean and its eventual destruction in the Rufiji Delta, German East Africa, in 1915.

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