MIMI AND TOUTOU'S BIG ADVENTURE The Bizarre Battle of Lake Tanganyika. By Giles Foden. Illustrated. 250 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $24.

LAKE TANGANYIKA was not exactly at the top of the military agenda during World War I, but in 1915 the British admiralty decided something must be done about this obscure theater of war, wedged between what was then German East Africa, British East Africa and the Belgian Congo. Germany effectively controlled the lake by means of several large military vessels. "It is both the duty and the tradition of the Royal Navy to engage the enemy wherever there is water to float a ship," Adm. Sir Henry Jackson declared, and so a strange plan was devised: two wooden boats, each some 40 feet long, would be taken to the lake and then deployed to sink the German minifleet.

Even odder than the plan was the man chosen to carry it out. Anyone who was anyone was already fighting in Europe, so the admirals alighted on someone, Geoffrey Spicer-Simson, who was tucked away in a dusty admiralty office and wasn't really anyone at all. Up until the moment when Spicer was selected to lead the Naval Africa Expedition, his career was notable mainly for its total lack of distinction. He was a fantasist, a know-it-all, a Walter Mitty, a bully and probably a bit of a coward. He was also toweringly, almost heroically eccentric. His torso was decorated with complex tattoos of snakes, which he liked to show off by bathing in public. He smoked only his own monogrammed cigarettes, told unfunny jokes and tended to sing, not very well, at inappropriate moments.

And he wore a skirt. Not a kilt, mind you; not a sarong; but a knee-length khaki skirt, which had been made specially for the expedition by his wife, Amy, and which he considered "very practical for the hot weather." Almost everyone who came into contact with Spicer found him immensely irritating, and most concluded he was completely bonkers.

Advertisement Continue reading the main story

This, then, was the man selected to lead 28 soldiers, two steam tractors and two heavy wooden boats through dense jungle from Cape Town to Lake Tanganyika, 2,500 miles and a 6,000-foot mountain away, in order to attack a much larger German force. Along the way, he made a point of trying to shoot the wild game, but almost always missed. Employing deadpan to delightful effect, Giles Foden has recreated this forgotten sideshow with aplomb in "Mimi and Toutou's Big Adventure."