Out of Africa
Posted: Fri Dec 15, 2017 5:13 pm
In December of 1913 Karen Blixen (better known to the English-speaking world as Isak Dinesen) took a boat to join her
fiance in Kenya.
People often do weird things when they're about to get married. While on board she met a passenger named Paul, a
dashing but unknown German officer from a good family who had previously served and been wounded in China.
History is silent about what happened next, and that boat trip is the key event in an historical novel that I'll
probably never get around to writing. What we do know is that Karen hurriedly married in January 1914.
But life is full of little surprises. One of them came a few months later when an Austrian archduke was assassinated
and Europe was engulfed by collective madness.
Paul found himself in charge of the colony's military forces and was often at odds with the colony's governor (who
probably recognized that the military situation was hopeless).
Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck went on to become Germany's great romantic hero of WW I.
The later part of the campaign for German East Africa (more commonly known as Tanganyika, the mainland portion of modern
Tanzania) is featured in the Breakthrough game, and lets you try your hand at fighting outnumbered and surrounded on the
plains of Africa.
fiance in Kenya.
People often do weird things when they're about to get married. While on board she met a passenger named Paul, a
dashing but unknown German officer from a good family who had previously served and been wounded in China.
History is silent about what happened next, and that boat trip is the key event in an historical novel that I'll
probably never get around to writing. What we do know is that Karen hurriedly married in January 1914.
But life is full of little surprises. One of them came a few months later when an Austrian archduke was assassinated
and Europe was engulfed by collective madness.
Paul found himself in charge of the colony's military forces and was often at odds with the colony's governor (who
probably recognized that the military situation was hopeless).
Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck went on to become Germany's great romantic hero of WW I.
The later part of the campaign for German East Africa (more commonly known as Tanganyika, the mainland portion of modern
Tanzania) is featured in the Breakthrough game, and lets you try your hand at fighting outnumbered and surrounded on the
plains of Africa.