Without heavy firepower cover, the 514th Division could only advance at an unhurried pace, as slow as a turtle. They searched for cover while firing back, and the East African Army and Pretoria's defenders entered garbage time.
This made Wiggins immensely pleased. He said to the "Youth Patriotic Army," "I told you the Germans were no good. Who did they think they were facing this time? Primitives like the Ndebele people!"
Pretoria's patriotic youths also went from nervous to composed. After all, their opponents were Germans. The German territories were Europe's battleground of four wars, and with the formidable image of Prussia and the Austro-Hungarian Empire added on top, no one doubted the Germans' fighting strength. Moreover, the enemy greatly outnumbered them, while their own side had only a little over two thousand men, natives not included. It had been inevitable that they would feel nervous before the battle. But now, seeing that the 514th Division was nothing special, they immediately felt capable again.
Ernst summarized from the rear, "A force like the 514th Division is better suited to bullying natives armed with cold weapons on the open grasslands. Against fortifications, strongholds, and cities, they do not resemble an army at all. Fortunately, the Boers helped us test our army's weaknesses!"
Of course, the natives were not incapable of building cities, but their cities were exceedingly primitive. Setting aside the Ndebele people, who abandoned their cities to fight East Africa in the field, and the Sultanate of Zanzibar, which let East Africa reap the benefits of its internal strife, the toughest fortifications the Kingdom of East Africa had encountered in Africa were the primitive walls built by several native Kingdoms in the Great Lakes Region.
To put it bluntly, these cities were merely stones piled together at random, without the