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To the state of terror among the German women owing to the fear of a native rising during the intervening period between the retreat of their troops and the arrival of our own in Morogoro I myself can testify.
Judge of my surprise when, one morning in hospital at Morogoro, a fellow walked in to see me whose face reminded me of times, two years back, when I was in the Prisoners of War Camp at Minden in Westphalia.
I used to think that they came to see me in particular, at the long sick parades I held in Morogoro and Handeni, because I too lived, like some of them, in British Columbia. I cannot flatter my soul by thinking that they came for the special quality of the quinine or medical advice I dished out to them. It may have been that they were far from home, and I seemed a friend in a very strange land.
The journey from Morogoro to Dar-es-Salaam is a most interesting experience, a perfect object lesson in the kind of futile railway destruction that defeats its own ends. For Lettow and his advisers said that our long wait at M'syeh had ruined our chances. Complete destruction of the railway and of all the rolling stock would hold us up for the valuable two months until the rains were due.
And German women began to be piqued at the calm indifference of smart Belgian officers to the favours they might have had. Openly chagrined were the local Hun beauties at such a disregard of their full-blown charms. "I fear for our women and children in Tabora," said the German doctor to me in Morogoro.
A commission of inquiry held by British officers of Native Indian regiments elicited the facts. The remains of two double companies, one Kashmiris, the other Bombay Grenadiers, to the number of 150, were brought to Morogoro and there farmed out to German contractors.
Until we came south to Morogoro, to the land of mangoes, coconut, palms, bamboos, we had known the shrill voice of cicadas and the harsh metallic noises of crickets in grass and trees. But here we made two new acquaintances, and charming little voices they had too.
And when they would send him still further back to M'buyuni he broke out from hospital one night, and, with his native orderly, boarded the train to Railhead and marched the other 200 miles to Morogoro. Here I met him on the road starting out on the next long trek of 125 miles to Kissaki.
In the bed of the Morogoro River lives a warbler who sings from the late afternoon until dusk, and he is one of the very few birds that have that deep contralto note, the "Jug" of the nightingale. And there are little wrens with drab bodies and crimson tails that live beside the dwellings of men and pick up crumbs from the doors of our tents, and hunt the rose trees for insects.
Sister Mabel said she would. So now for the first time she is given a native servant, carried in state down the mountain-side in a hammock, and installed in the German hospital in Morogoro. There, in virtue of the excellence of her work and knowledge, she was given charge of badly wounded German officers, and received with acid smiles of welcome from the German sisters.
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