AFTERNOON TEA IN AFRICA

In the afternoon of November 20, 1917, Commander Max Looff of the Imperial German Navy sat down to tea with the Chief of Staff of General O'Grady's forces.

Commander Looff was surprised by the invitation. After fighting the British in German East Africa for three years, and having just been forced to surrender, he did not expect an invitation to tea from one of His Majesties generals. However, archaic notions of courtesy and sportsmanship had survived in Africa. Commander Looff was, after all, the senior officer among the German troops who had just surrendered to the British forces. Scattered among a number of small camps and hospitals in the Lukuledi valley in the southeast corner of the German colony, a large number of sick, wounded and war weary soldiers had given up the struggle after three years of war.

At the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, Looff had commanded the light cruiser "Königsberg" just as she was visiting Dar-es-Salaam, the capital and main port of German East Africa. He had evaded the British squadron blockading the harbor and had taken the "Königsberg" into the Indian Ocean. He had cruised along the African coast, looking for prizes, and had surprised the disabled British cruiser "Pegasus" in the Zanzibar roadstead and sunk her. Soon after, British ships had driven him into the Rufiji river and bottled him up there. Looff had resisted vigorously but in 1915, two monitors penetrated into the mangrove jungle of the Rufiji delta and destroyed his cruiser. The men of the "Königsberg" had removed the 10.5 cm guns from the ship, mounted them on improvised gun carriages - one of them can still be seen outside Fort Jesus in Mombasa - shouldered their rifles and joined the German forces defending the colony under the leadership of Colonel Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck.

It had occured to the old sea captain that the invitation to take tea with his captors might serve for something besides social amenities. No doubt, there would be some subtle interrogation. Indeed there was. One question, however, caught Cmdr. Looff off guard. "I know that you expect a zeppelin to come to German East Africa. Where is it supposed to land?"

An airship? Here in Africa, below the Equator! Fly 8,000 kilometers from Germany, almost all of it over enemy territory, across a continent where no airship had flown before? What was this Englishman talking about? Then Looff understood. One of his fellow prisoners evidently had played an outlandish joke on the British. Looff decided to confuse the British even further.

Feigning reticence and inner struggle, Looff told his host: " I also heard something like that, but it is two airships. One is to land at Livale and the other at Masasi".

The English officer did not seem to be taken in by this story and changed the subject.

A few days later, on the 25th, Looff was driven past a flight of BE2 biplanes, squatting on the airstrip at Mtua. They were old, clumsy machines, but their machineguns were loaded and bombs hung in their wingracks. Looff recognized these planes of No. 26 Squadron. They had pestered the Germans since early 1917 when British had opened their latest campaign against the Germans at the end of the rainy season. Unrelentingly, the squadron had searched for the German troops, directed artillery fire upon them and bombed and strafed them. The British officer escorting Looff pointed to the planes and said something about a "reception committee" but Looff did not understand what he meant. His mind was on the prisoner of war camp that awaited him.

What lay behind the mad teaparty Looff had attended a few days before, however, was every bit as fantastic as Looff had thought the question about zeppelins in Africa to be. It was a story of courage and bravery, of success and frustration - a singular adventure which will now be unfolded here.