Allies advance on Kamina in Togoland

On 13 August 1914 British and French troops, which had taken Lomé a few days earlier, set out into the interior of the German colony of Togoland. Their objective was the radio station at Kamina, about 100 kilometres from the coast, one of the most important communications installations in Germany’s colonial empire.

The Kamina radio station

The station at Kamina, near the town of Atakpamé, had been completed just before the war. It provided communications between Germany and its colonies in Africa and with ships in the Atlantic. Its destruction or capture would weaken Germany’s ability to coordinate operations on the oceans. Having withdrawn from Lomé, the Germans concentrated their small forces on its defence.

The march north

The combined Allied forces were commanded by a British officer, Frederick Bryant, promoted to lieutenant colonel after the capture of Lomé. The troops advanced along the railway line and the road leading inland. Other French units from Dahomey were also entering the colony from the north and east. Not all their operations were successful: on 13 August at Bafilo a small German detachment repulsed a French column.

The Germans tried to delay the Allied advance by destroying bridges and track. On 15 August there was a clash at Agbeluvhoe, and on 22 August the heaviest fighting of the campaign took place on the Chra river, where the Germans held up the attack for several hours.

End of the colony

German resistance could not last long. On the night of 24–25 August, as the Allied troops drew near, the Germans blew up the radio station at Kamina, and on 26 August they capitulated. Togoland became the first German colony lost in this war. After the war it was divided between Great Britain and France.