This unusual unit had been created by Colonel Daniel Patrick Driscoll as an irregular skirmish force shaped by his experiences during the Second Boer War, and drawn largely from his peacetime paramilitary group, the Legion of Frontiersmen.

Upon reaching the objective at Bukoba the attackers were accidentally landed in a large swamp and were pinned down by fierce rifle and machine gun fire from the German positions.

An Australian member of the unit, Lieutenant Wilbur Dartnell, climbed to the top of the town hall and removed the German Imperial Ensign from the flagpole as a symbolic gesture of victory.

Von Stuemer did not authorise his men to return to Bukoba until the following day, where they discovered that local Africans had also taken part in the sack and responded by summarily executing a chief named Ntale.

The citation for Dartnell's VC On 3 September 1915, near Maktau, Kenya, during a mounted infantry engagement, the enemy were so close that it was impossible to get the more severely wounded away.