British capture Yabassi

On 14 October 1914 British troops captured Yabassi (in German spelling Jabassi), a German post on the Wouri river, several dozen kilometres upstream from Duala. They succeeded only at the second attempt.

After taking Duala on 27 September, the commander of the Allied expedition to German Kamerun, General Charles Dobell, wanted to secure the port against a German counter-attack. The German units had withdrawn inland, but still threatened the town from the north and east. Dobell therefore sent a mixed military and naval force up the Wouri under Brigadier-General Edmund Gorges. It comprised six companies of the West African Regiment, two companies of the 1st Nigeria Regiment, a company of the Gold Coast Regiment and about a hundred sailors and marines. The troops travelled in barges with four field guns, escorted by armed boats.

The first attack, on 7–8 October (sources differ on the date), ended in failure. After landing a few kilometres from Yabassi, the soldiers had to force their way through dense bush, where units lost contact with one another. Under fire from German machine guns, which the African soldiers were encountering for the first time, the attackers had to withdraw. Dobell later wrote in his report that the defeat was caused by the difficult terrain, unfamiliar conditions and, above all, machine-gun fire.

Gorges’s force was reorganised and reinforced, among other things with two heavy guns. On 14 October it landed on both sides of the river and captured the post. The defence was small; according to some sources it included only 26 Europeans. In the two actions the Germans lost a few killed, and after the post fell about ten were taken prisoner.

The capture of Yabassi covered Duala from the north-east. The Germans withdrew deeper into the colony, to the highlands in its centre. The next objective of Dobell’s expedition was Edea, on the railway line leading from Duala towards Jaunde.