Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders

November 1st 1917

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Lieut. Gustavus Hume-Gore (Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders)

News from German East Africa takes time to reach our shores and only recently have we heard of the death of Lieut. Gus Hume-Gore, who since December has been attached to the King’s African Rifles.

The bare facts are that he was killed in a battle fought at Nakadi River, 28 miles from Lindi on October 17th.

He was involved in an attack on German troops near Mahiwa, driving them back over what was a dry river bed. However, the exact manner in which Gus met his death is unknown.

We were most grateful to Gus for his descriptions of the conditions faced by our troops in East Africa, written within a week of his death. Illness was rife, but it was noted that in his time with the Battalion he had never been taken sick, and was one of only three in the Battalion not to require hospital treatment.

October 18th 1917

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A second letter has been received from Lieut. Gus Hume-Gore (Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders), who is with the King’s African Rifles and the British East Africa Expeditionary Force.

In addition to the extreme heat he complained about last time, he now catalogues a number of other difficulties the British soldier faces:

11/10/17 “Tinned rations that are mostly full of sand before you have finished eating them (aided by the worst kind of flies), the water in your bottle a bit more than lukewarm, and not the best of water very often at that; bottles have been filled from a stream and then dead bodies have been discovered roosting against a rock up-stream; sun that burns the eyes out of you; sun that makes you sick, that goes clean through your backbone and out the other side; sun that makes everything made of metal red-hot, so hot that it will blister your fingers if you give it a chance – and miles and miles of the ‘road’ that never seems to grow less and is harder and harder the farther you get.

When the rains come in about three weeks and then slack off for a bit, I gather that everything I have tried to picture may be multiplied by about ten.”

October 11th 1917

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Lieut. Gus Hume-Gore (Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders) was seconded to the King’s African Rifles with the British East Africa Expeditionary Force last December. Whereas many an Old Dragon is complaining of the mud so prevalent on the Western Front, Gus has very different but equally trying conditions with which to contend:

4/10/17 “I have just had my first wash and shave for seven days and feel quite respectable again.

We have just done a great push and advanced about 8 miles with some heavy fighting. The positions the Germans take up are terrible. They get well dug-in and then stick trees and spikes etc well round them, so that attacking over the open with a lot of machine guns firing at you is a nasty job.

The heat is overwhelming and makes even breathing difficult. My arms and knees are the colour of bronze…

We are simply eaten alive with mosquitoes, bugs etc., as we can’t put up a net when we are on the move. There is a lot of swampy ground around here.

I am trying to improve my German by reading German letters and books which are lying about all over the place.” 

One can forget that this war is being fought across the world, so we are grateful to Gus for reminding us of this.