In the early morning of August 15, 1914, a column of 200 soldiers of the German Schutztruppe marched into the Taveta township and exchanged fire with a British East African Police Border Detachment. A German officer mounted on a mule charged out front, before the British District Commissioner, Hugh La Fontaine, shot him through the open window of the police station.
The officer was Friedrich Broecker, La Fontaine’s drinking companion from the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro. He was also the first German casualty of the East African Campaign of the First World War.
