Battle of Banyo Mountain

The Battle of Banyo Mountain was the hardest fighting of the autumn offensive by British troops from Nigeria in the northern part of German Kamerun. The Germans had turned a solitary, steep mountain near the town of Banyo into a fortress meant to hold out until the end of the war, just as the garrison on the mountain above Mora had held out for more than a year. General Frederick Cunliffe attacked it on 4 November 1915 with four companies of Nigerian infantry. After two days of climbing from boulder to boulder, under fire and amid exploding dynamite charges, his soldiers stood on the summit at dawn on 6 November. The fall of Banyo opened the way south for the British, towards Jaunde.

Name and dates

The British official history (F. J. Moberly, Military Operations: Togoland and the Cameroons) speaks of operations against Banyo Mountain and of its capture on 6 November. In English-language works the action is also called the Battle of Banjo, after the German spelling of the town’s name. We take 4 November as the start, when the assault began at dawn, and 6 November as the end, when the summit was taken in the morning. The town of Banyo itself, lying a few kilometres west of the mountain, had been occupied by the British without a fight as early as 24 October. After that date they spent more than a week surrounding the mountain and preparing the attack.

Background

After the failed assault on Mora in September 1915 Cunliffe, at the request of the French and of General Charles Dobell, moved south with most of his force. The new Allied advance on Jaunde, ordered by Dobell on 22 September, was to come from several directions, and the troops from Nigeria were to clear the Germans from the mountainous belt from Bamenda to Tibati. Cunliffe estimated that Banyo and the passes north and west of the town were defended by about three hundred men. On 2 October he decided to strike simultaneously at Bamenda, Banyo and Tibati, so as to threaten the Germans from all sides at once.

The plan succeeded. Major Crookenden took Bamenda on 22 October, Captain Parr’s company took Kentu on 17 October, and the French column of Colonel Brisset from Ngaundere, taken in June, supported by the Nigerian column of Lieutenant-Colonel Webb-Bowen, drove the Germans out of Tibati on 3 November. Cunliffe himself set out from Koncha on 14 October with a company of mounted infantry, three guns and four companies of infantry. From the west, from Gashiga, came Major Mann’s column. The Germans did not defend the positions prepared earlier in the mountains and on 23 October withdrew from the hills covering Banyo. On the morning of 24 October Mann’s men entered the European settlement at Banyo, an hour ahead of Cunliffe’s advanced guard. The British lost thirteen men on this march. Part of Cunliffe’s column had covered about 445 miles (more than 700 km) from Mora to Banyo in five weeks, including halts.

Cunliffe was nevertheless disappointed. The Germans did not accept battle near the town but took refuge on the mountain with the entire garrison. The British saw this as part of a wider German tactic: to hold several strong points of resistance, pin down Allied units with them and prevent their concentration against the main German forces around Jaunde. Cunliffe decided to risk an assault, because without it he could not advance further. Supply was a problem. The Germans had laid waste and depopulated the surrounding country, gathered the previous year’s harvest on the mountain and destroyed part of the new one, so almost everything had to be brought up from Yola in Nigeria.

The fortress on the mountain

Banyo Mountain rises alone about 1,200 feet (nearly 370 m) above the hilly surrounding country. Its steep slopes were covered with huge boulders, which the Germans had linked with low stone walls. According to the British official history there were about three hundred such shelters (sangars), and small redoubts stood on all the projecting points. On the summit cement tanks had been built for water from the springs, along with brick houses for the Europeans with cement floors and glazed windows, furnished with heavy furniture from the settlement. About 40 tons of grain, more than two hundred head of cattle, hundreds of chickens and farming tools had been gathered so that the flat summit could be cultivated. The mountain was to be the rallying point for the garrisons of Banyo, Bamenda and Dschang, and the Germans in this part of the colony were convinced that they would hold it until the end of the war.

The garrison was commanded by Captain Adolf Schipper, a colonial official before the war, head of the Ossidinge district, who had returned to the Schutztruppe during the war. According to the British official history there were about 23 Germans and 200 African soldiers on the mountain.

Course of the battle

Preparations

By 2 November Cunliffe had deployed four and a half companies of infantry of the Nigeria Regiment, with ten machine guns, on the lower heights around the mountain. The mounted infantry formed a wide ring on the plain, intended to detect early any attempt to break out of the encirclement. On 3 November Cunliffe issued orders for a general advance at dawn. Three mountain guns, placed to the north-east, south-west and south, were to support four companies converging from different sides: H Company of the 1st Battalion from the north-east, B Company of the 3rd Battalion from the west, H Company of the 3rd Battalion from the south-west and C Company of the 1st Battalion from the south. Half of C Company of the 2nd Battalion linked the first two in the north-west. Cunliffe expected the assault to last several days. Company commanders were themselves responsible for supplying their men and were to advance methodically, in depth, from cover to cover, without haste.

4 November

At dawn the mountain was wrapped in thick mist. It hampered co-operation between the companies but allowed them to advance a long way unseen. H Company of the 3rd Battalion had almost reached the summit when it suddenly found itself in crossfire at close range. Its commander, Captain Bowyer-Smijth, one of Cunliffe’s bravest officers, was killed, and the company was driven far back down. By midday the other companies had climbed roughly halfway up the slope and in many places lay about 30 yards (just under 30 m) from the German walls. In daylight they could only hold the ground they had won, sheltering behind the boulders.

After dark the defenders began throwing dynamite bombs down the slope. For the Nigerian soldiers this was a new weapon, and for a time, as the British official history admits, the situation was very critical, until they realised that the noise of the explosions was more alarming than their effect. According to H. C. O’Neill’s book, published in 1918, the Germans directed their fire by lighting up the slopes with flares. In the darkness the Nigerians re-formed their ranks and advanced a little further.

5 and 6 November

On 5 November the attack made slow but steady progress, although according to O’Neill the defenders rolled rocks down onto the attackers. The companies worked round one stone wall after another, and by dusk all four were about a hundred yards (90 m) from the summit. According to O’Neill the three guns were already running short of ammunition when a fresh supply arrived. At 5 p.m. the German commander, judging the position lost, ordered the garrison to break out in small groups through the ring of besiegers, with carriers bearing the baggage and ammunition, and to reassemble later at Ngambe. At about 7 p.m. a violent thunderstorm broke. Under its cover the Germans and their soldiers cautiously descended the slopes past the attacking companies.

At dawn on 6 November the Nigerians burst onto the summit. A white flag was flying there, but most of the defenders had already fled. They did not get far, however. British posts closing the roads on the plain and a pursuit sent down from the mountain caught many of the fugitives. On the summit huge quantities of stores and equipment were captured, as well as cattle, 226 head according to Edmund Dane.

Casualties

According to the British official history, of the garrison of about 23 Germans and 200 African soldiers, 13 Germans and 103 Africans were killed, wounded or captured. Among the dead was Captain Schipper. Moberly does not say when he died. German biographical works date his death to 4 November, the first day of the assault, so the order to break out was probably given by his successor. British losses amounted to sixty men. Captains C. G. Bowyer-Smijth and L. N. A. Mackinnon and Sergeant W. King were killed, and Captain G. Seccombe and Lieutenant J. Chartres were wounded. Some works give other, lower casualty figures for both sides, often mixing them with the losses of the earlier march on Banyo.

Significance

The British official history called the capture of a position the Germans had considered practically impregnable a feat of which Cunliffe, his officers and men could be proud. Edmund Dane wrote in 1919 that Cunliffe had uprooted the last important German stronghold in that part of the country. On the same day, 6 November, Lieutenant-Colonel Cotton’s column occupied Dschang, and on 9 November Cunliffe received news of the capture of Bamenda and Tibati. The German companies from the north were being pushed south, towards the Sanaga river. Cunliffe decided to push on to the Ditam–Ngambe–Yoko line in order to join the converging advance on Jaunde. In the north only the besieged garrison of the mountain above Mora still held out; in October it had retaken the Gauala ridge.

Jaunde fell on 1 January 1916, and the remnants of the German forces in Kamerun took refuge in February in Spanish Muni (Mbini).