Capture of Mount Banyo

At dawn on 6 November 1915 the Nigerian soldiers of General Frederick Cunliffe forced their way onto the summit of Mount Banyo in German Kamerun. A white flag was flying over the German sangars, but most of the defenders were no longer manning them. So ended the three-day assault on the mountain, which the Germans had considered practically impregnable.

Throughout 5 November four companies of the Nigeria Regiment worked their way up slowly but steadily, outflanking one stone wall after another. According to H. C. O’Neill’s account of 1918, the defenders rolled stones down on them, and the three British guns were beginning to run short of ammunition before a fresh supply arrived. By dusk all the companies were lying about 90 metres below the summit. At 5 p.m. the German commander concluded that the position could not be held and ordered the garrison to break through the ring of besiegers in small groups, with porters carrying the baggage and ammunition. All were then to assemble at Ngambe, far to the south. At about 7 p.m. a violent thunderstorm broke over the mountain, and under its cover the Germans and their African soldiers cautiously made their way down the slopes, slipping past the attacking companies.

They did not get far, however. On the plain the roads were blocked by British posts and mounted infantry, and a pursuit set off from the mountain. According to the British official history, of the garrison’s roughly 23 Germans and 200 African soldiers, 13 Germans and 103 Africans were killed, wounded or captured. Among the dead was the commander, Captain Adolf Schipper. On the summit the British found brick houses with glazed windows and furniture, cement water tanks, some 40 tonnes of grain and a herd of cattle, 226 head according to Edmund Dane, as well as a great deal of ammunition and equipment. The garrison had been prepared for a siege lasting many months, like the one the Germans had been withstanding for more than a year on the mountain above Mora.

British losses in the three-day assault came to sixty men. Besides Captain Bowyer-Smijth, killed on the first day, Captain L. N. A. Mackinnon and Sergeant W. King were killed. The British official history wrote that the capture of the mountain was a feat of which Cunliffe, his officers and men could be proud. That same day the column of Lieutenant-Colonel Cotton, which had set out in October from Bare on the Northern Railway, took Dschang without loss, and on 3 November Colonel Brisset’s French drove the Germans out of Tibati. German resistance in the mountainous belt from Bamenda to Tibati collapsed.

Cunliffe, however, did not yet have news of the other columns. He learnt of the capture of Bamenda and Tibati only on 9 November. He then decided to push on to the line Ditam–Ngambe–Yoko in order to join the converging Allied advance on Jaunde, the seat of the colony’s German administration. British troops entered Jaunde on 1 January 1916.