Battle Sketches 1914-15

The Campaigns in Cameroon

TOWARDS the end of July, 1914, H.M.S. Cumberland was lying at Cowes, in readiness for the Spithead review. She was a cruiser of 9,800 tons, with a primary armament of fourteen 6 in. guns and a speed of twenty-three knots, and was then engaged in the practical training of naval cadets. One evening, when all were settling down to repose, a slip of paper was taken from the wireless office to the captain. It was a coded telegram : Austria had declared war upon Serbia. Immediately everybody was astir. The cadets, who, after cricket at Osborne, had turned in, their hammocks slung on the upper deck, were unfortunate enough to be sent below to be out of the way. Steam was raised, and the Cumberland at once weighed, and left for Devonport. Guns were prepared, lyddite shells were fused, warheads were put on the torpedoes. At Devonport coaling was hastily completed, extra men were taken on, and all except twelve of the cadets, shortly to be gazetted as midshipmen, were sent away to their war stations. The cruiser proceeded to Gibraltar immediately. On the night of August 4, officers and men were drawn up before the captain on the quarterdeck : he read out, amid tense silence, Great Britain's declaration of war against Germany. That night the Cumberland left Gibraltar ; and after some days, spent in preparing the ship for battle, she arrived off the coast of Nigeria, with its capital port, inaccessible for large vessels owing to a dangerous bar, of Lagos.

British Nigeria comprises the territories situated on the Bight of Benin between French Dahomey on the west and German Cameroon on the east. Its area totals some 338,000 square miles, its population nearly seventeen millions, statistics which, indeed, compare favourably with the 295,000 square miles and the three and a half million population of Cameroon. The dependency, both in natural features and in inhabitants, presents striking contrasts. A great swamp region, hardly equalled in the world for immensity and gloom, forms much of the coast, where the Atlantic adjoins the vast delta of the Oil Rivers, filtering their sluggish, muddy waters, in countless intercommunicating channels, through thousands of square miles of dank, malodorous slime, covered with mangrove -trees which, where drained waterless, stand rotting in putrefaction. The strange saurian monsters drowsing for ever in the stagnant pools are the only inhabitants impervious to the breath of the malarial mud. The Niger recalls to some travellers, indeed, classical memories of the Styx or the Cocytus. From these pestilential regions the surface of the country mounts through a belt of hills and dense forests, which gradually thin out towards the north, to a hot but healthier tableland, bordering, in sandy desert stretches, the wastes of the Sahara. Kano, the greatest commercial city of the central Sudan, lies upon these arid steppes ; and its ancient walls, opened by thirteen cowhide gates set in massive entrance towers, hold in their spacious confines, watered by a great pool and overlooked by the dome of the Emir's gorgeous palace, Africans of many a varied tongue, colour, or race. To its markets gather the Salaga from Guinea, the trader from the shores of Chad, the Arab and the Tuareg, bringing tea, sugar, and other European commodities in caravans from Tripoli. From its industries emanate most of the Morocco leather goods on the European market, brought over the desert at great risk and expense, and the clothing of half the population of the Sudan. A railway line links the town with the navigable reaches of the Niger. These, innumerable other waterways, and a second line from Lagos into the interior, give the colony excellent communications, bearing to the coast ports the multifarious products, cocoa, rice and tobacco, rubber and mahogany, cotton and indigo, which a frequent steamship service transports to the docks of Liverpool. Northern Nigeria, indeed, is believed by experts to be the most suitable of all British dependencies for the production of cotton on such a scale as to render the looms of Lancashire independent of sources of supply outside the Empire. The climate of the plateau is favourable, and has the requisite humidity. Violent tornadoes and drenching rains frequently break over the country. The worst of the rainy season takes place in August and September, a fact which, indeed, when war broke out in August 1914, seriously complicated military problems. The commander to whom fell the task of their settlement was Brigadier-General C. M. Dobell.

His task may be stated simply. It was important that all available troops should be organized and prepared for offensive action against Cameroon without delay. The German coastline, 200 miles long, offered a ready shelter for German commerce -destroyers, and there was, moreover, a danger that, unless strong measures were taken by the British authorities against the foes of their nation, British influence amongst the natives, always alert to note signs of weakness, might sensibly decline. These two considerations, indeed, not only determined the course of policy, they suggested also the course of strategy. Any fear of the coastline being used as an enemy cruiser base must obviously be averted by the occupation of that coastline, and the seizure of Duala, the principal port. A dark and sinister fact supported schemes of such invasion from the sea. German treatment of natives had a reputation for harshness not only throughout West Africa, but throughout the world. If, by the entry of British troops at two or three points on the Nigerian-Cameroon frontier, considerable German forces, led to believe that this was the main line of advance, could be enticed into the interior ; if, with coast defences accordingly weakened, Duala and the neighbourhood of the Cameroon estuary could be assaulted suddenly from the sea, and occupied ; and if, constantly driven further inland, the Germans were at last forced to depend for their supplies upon native aid, might not native hostility, smouldering during peace, and at this opportunity probably breaking into open flame, be expected ultimately to bring about their capitulation ? The French in Dahomey could co-operate both by sea and land to the same purpose. The great point that had brought the Germans into disrepute with the natives was their military spirit, since this was seen in a desire to regulate everything by rule and method, and in a habit of nagging and fault-finding peculiarly abhorrent to the temperamentally easy-going African. The authorities, moreover, habitually solved the labour problem, ever the most insistent of West African problems, by resort to a system of forced labour. When a German planter wanted native workers he notified his government, and they were brought to him. Conditions such as these, not far short of mere military despotism, had, indeed, more than once given rise to serious trouble, and a revolt of labourers imported from Togoland in 1894 had cost several white lives. None of the natives, it is noteworthy, spoke German, even in Cameroon, but pidgin-English instead. Hausas and Kruboys were chiefly utilized for labour purposes, and Hausas almost wholly for the native troops and police, both in Nigeria and in Cameroon. The German native levies numbered several thousand, and the British consisted of three regiments of infantry and two artillery batteries. But on the outbreak of war fresh recruits were speedily raised; and General Dobell's command was later swelled by reinforcements from other British West African dependencies, which had first been employed in the Togoland operations. Meanwhile, he made his preliminary dispositions.

Three British columns were first told off to operate on the Cameroon frontier, in order to create the desired diversions, from Yola, from Ikom, and from Calabar. The incursion from Yola, which it was planned that the 2nd and 5th Nigerias should make, was to be, indeed, a more serious enterprise than a mere raid, its purpose being to overpower the extreme north of Cameroon, and to prevent any retirement thither of the main forces of the enemy. Meanwhile, at all the coast ports of Nigeria preparations for the invasion were hastily pushed forward. Transports were equipped, supplies were collected, troops were organized. In view of a possible shortage of food the Administration took control of the supplies, and no provisions were allowed to be bought without a permit. Considerable difficulty was experienced in preparing maps for the adventure. Maps of Cameroon had to be enlarged, and kilometres turned into miles. To extract information as to rivers or distances, canoes or bridges, from woolly and perplexed heads proved a tedious and painful task. The cruiser Cumberland and the Dwarf, a gunboat of 710 tons, carrying two 4 in. guns, were, in the meantime, engaged in reconnoitring the Cameroon coast. It was a shore fringed by countless tiny islands and narrow creeks, where crocodiles, wallowing on the muddy banks, dense with mangroves and prolific vegetation, rendered incursion adventurous. In the midst of these multifarious preparations, at the beginning of September, an ominous report gained currency in the coast settlements. Colonel Maclear's northern column, in the course of its operations from Yola, had been disastrously cut up.

Four days after the declaration of war the 5th (Mounted Infantry) Battalion of the Nigeria Regiment had set out from their barracks at Kano. For seventeen days they journeyed through the bush, and at length reached Yola, where the 2nd Battalion had already concentrated, after a march of 400 miles, no light performance during the rainy season, with rivers and streams in flood. Yola, capital of Adamawa, was situated on the southern side of the Benue, a tributary of the Niger, near the point where the former entered Cameroon, some 400 miles from either Calabar or Duala, and from the sea by river some 850 miles, which, however, small steamers could navigate. In this part of Nigeria, Mohammedanism, a faith embraced by about a tenth of the population, was widely prevalent. It is these particular religionists that Germans single out as especially qualified to be gulled by the most absurd fables, and to be inflamed by the most fanatic passions. A letter is said to have been found, some time later, in the nioyque at Yola, purporting to give news, good and true, from Germany, to the effect that Germans and English had met in battle for one day at an English town ; that ten thousand English had been killed, those who fled being thirty thousand ; and that these, soon captured, had been sent to Germany with chains around their necks. The letter was written, it was added, in order that all Mussulmans might know that English and French were liars and thieves. Similar intrigue was not, indeed, wholly absent even from the southern parts of Nigeria, where one message was intercepted predicting the invasion of England by a German air fleet, and the slaughter of her inhabitants by the raining down of tigers from the sky. These tidings had in one part been directly productive of slight disaffection. At Yola, therefore, Colonel Maclear was operating in a district which, bordering German territory and susceptible to German influences, rendered circumspection and prudence particularly necessary. How far these circumstances increased his difficulties and contributed to his disaster can only be surmised. He was unquestionably dependent for information respecting the enemy and much of the district upon the natives, though the Benue itself in this neighbourhood had been mapped out eleven years before by an Anglo-German boundary commission. There seems ground for the suspicion that, when entering hostile territory, Maclear's knowledge and preparations were inadequate, and that his advance was precipitate and ill-advised. On August 25, immediately upon the arrival of the Mounted Infantry, the colonel directed them to push forward to Tepe, a small German frontier station 30 miles up-river from Yola, in order to feel the enemy's strength and to reconnoitre the country. The infantry, the 2nd Nigerias, followed in their wake. At Tepe the advance column first came into contact with the Germans. There was a sharp skirmish, lasting some twenty-five minutes, as a result of which the enemy were forced to retire. The British lost three of their six officers and one white non-commissioned officer, but a distressing incident, which caused a further casualty, occurred after the fighting. A certain Captain Wickham had taken prisoner a German officer, who begged for mercy and told his orderly to respect the Englishman ; Wickham turned away to ask his commanding officer for instructions ; immediately the orderly brought up his rifle and blew his captor's head off. The German and his orderly were at once shot, and Tepe was burned to the ground. Next morning the column again moved forward upriver, followed by the main body, the infantry, to Saratse. During the ensuing three days the advance was continued towards the important and well-fortified river station of Garua, which formed the most considerable native town of Northern Cameroon. The British fixed their camp four miles away, and made preparations to attack the station. At night on August 29 the 2nd Nigerias moved out of camp, and shortly before midnight reached the enemy's position. There was a surprise in the darkness, and one of the German entrenched works was rushed. Promiscuous firing began, which the colonel ordered to cease on the British side until dawn. The enemy were now alert and watchful. About 4.30, as soon as dawn flushed the horizon, they counter-attacked heavily with the aid of several maxims. These weapons proved deciding factors, and the British, unable to resist or counter their deadly fire, were thrown into confusion. Panic took the native troops at the sight of their comrades falling in large numbers, and they turned and fled, leaving only officers and non-commissioned officers in the entrenchments. It was a mortifying position for brave and spirited men, but flight was inevitable. The remnants of the battalion at length straggled into their camp, and it was seen in what appalling loss the venture had resulted. Ten out of 21 officers, and 250 out of 600 native rank and file, had fallen. Maclear himself had met his death, so Captain Adams now assumed command. It was probable that the enemy would take the offensive, and withdrawal into British territory forthwith was decided upon. The camp was not, however, evacuated for some hours, in case more stragglers might turn up, and it was feared, when the column set out, that the delay would have given the Germans an opportunity to follow up their success. The enemy, however, were apparently engaged otherwise. Two British surgeons who had remained behind to tend the wounded were apprehended, but no efforts, fortunately for the retreating column, were made to molest it. Captain Adams made a cautious and clever retreat to the frontier, and reached it safely. It is said that, some days after, the Germans sent into Yola to ask for letters for the prisoners they had taken : and later they returned the rings found on the hands of the dead . . .