French take Oyem

On 16 February 1915 a French column under Major Miquelard entered Oyem, a German post in the south of Kamerun. According to the British official history of the campaign, the Germans abandoned the town the same day without a fight. Some French accounts give the date as 17 February.

Gabon’s lost lands

Oyem lies today in northern Gabon. At the beginning of the 20th century the French founded a military post here. In 1911, after the Second Moroccan Crisis (PL), France ceded vast territories in Equatorial Africa to Germany in return for recognition of its protectorate over Morocco. These lands, named New Cameroon, also included the northern part of Gabon, with Oyem and Bitam. When war broke out in August 1914, recovering them became one of the first aims of the French colonial troops.

Miquelard’s column

The start was unsuccessful. A column of three companies, assembled at Mitzic, crossed the border and on 6 September 1914 attacked the Germans at Mibang. Its commander, Major Dubois de Saligny, was killed, the porters fled and the column had to return to Mitzic. At the same time Major Miquelard landed with one company from the gunboat Surprise at Ukoko (today Cocobeach) and on 21 September, after sharp fighting, took this landing place on the border with Spanish Guinea. He then moved east and at the end of October took command of the Oyem column. Until the end of the year it stayed in a fortified position near the border, waiting for reinforcements. The Germans, who in the autumn had two companies of the Schutztruppe and a reserve and police detachment in the Oyem area, held the line of the Woleu river.

On the night of 9–10 February 1915 Miquelard’s column crossed the Woleu. The next day it met strong resistance and suffered losses, and its advance stalled. According to a French account from 1915, however, after fierce fighting it took the fortified position at N’Kolago, a few kilometres north of the river. On 16 February the Germans withdrew from Oyem, and the French occupied the town the same day.

A long halt

The capture of Oyem was a small but symbolic success: the French had returned to one of the towns lost in 1911. There was not enough strength, however, for a rapid further advance. Miquelard’s column remained in Oyem for many weeks, pushing out only two covering companies to the north and north-east. In March it repulsed a German attack, but the rainy season and supply difficulties immobilised it until the end of June. The French took Bitam, the next town on the road north, only in July 1915. As on the Sanaga, in the south of Kamerun too the war in the equatorial forest moved slowly, and its outcome was decided not so much on the battlefield as by supplies, disease and weather.