Allies take Ngaundere

On 28 June 1915 Lieutenant-Colonel Webb-Bowen’s Anglo-French column fought its way onto the plateau on whose edge lies Ngaundere (today Ngaoundéré), an important town in the north of German Kamerun. According to the British official history, the Allies occupied the town itself the next day, 29 June, and that is the date given by most accounts. Ngaundere, founded in the 19th century by the Muslim Fulani, was the seat of a local ruler and the gateway to the vast Adamawa Plateau in central Kamerun.

The march was a direct consequence of the fall of Garua. According to information held by Lieutenant-Colonel Frederick Cunliffe, commander of the Allied troops in the north, between Garua and the mountainous region of Bamenda there were now only some seventy German African soldiers in the Ngaundere area and a small post near Tibati. Fugitives from Garua were also heading for Ngaundere. Cunliffe wanted to give them no time to rest, to forestall any German concentration and to gain a good base for a further advance south. He therefore sent Webb-Bowen’s column against Ngaundere, while he himself went with part of the British troops to Yola, from where he had telegraph communication with the Governor of Nigeria and with General Dobell. On 27 June his detachment from Yola took the strong German fort at Koncha after a short, bloodless skirmish.

Webb-Bowen’s column left Garua on 17 June and met no resistance until 28 June. That day it stood at the foot of a very steep ascent to the plateau. German pickets held all the steep and precipitous paths leading upwards, and behind them, over the last 2,000 feet (about 600 m) of the climb, several strong positions had been prepared. Captain Fowle’s advanced guard, however, pushed forward during a violent tropical storm, took the pickets completely by surprise and drove them uphill. Their flight caused the Germans to abandon several strong positions further back as well. In the evening the French cavalry, having pursued the enemy for several miles, stood on the top of the plateau.

On the morning of 29 June the main body of the column occupied the forts and the town without a fight. The following night about four Germans and a hundred African soldiers who had come up from the south fired on the Allied units in the forts and barracks, wounding or killing nine men, but soon withdrew towards Tibati. The capture of Ngaundere opened the way onto the plateau, but it caused a dispute between the commanders. Colonel Brisset, commander of the French troops from Chad, had left Garua on 23 June with most of his units to establish himself in Ngaundere, as he believed that a strong Allied force on the plateau would impress the Germans. Cunliffe, convinced that there were no major enemy forces in the area, preferred during the rainy season to deal with the German mountain stronghold at Mora in the far north. On 29 June he asked Brisset to send the British units in Ngaundere back to Garua.