The South African Motorcycle Corps WW1

The campaign in German East Africa during the Great War has always been regarded as a mere side show compared to the tumultuous and bloody events in Europe. But it was the East African campaign that inspired C.S. Forester’s novel The African Queen and Wilbur Smith’s Shout at the Devil. It was the theatre where aircraft were first used as spotters in naval warfare and where the entire crew of the German cruiser Königsberg were each awarded the Iron Cross. It was also where General von Lettow-Vorbeck used a bicycle to travel through the bush to visit his troops. Two gunboats were carried 3,000 miles into the war zone at Lake Tanganyika overland from Cape Town by railway and then dragged in turn by traction engines and hundreds of ‘porters. Germany even dispatched a Zeppelin with supplies for their beleaguered East African soldiers.

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