Germans take the Gauala ridge

On the night of 8/9 October 1915 the German garrison besieged on the mountain above Mora, in the far north of German Kamerun, made a successful sortie. Its soldiers seized the Gauala ridge, a neighbouring height on which the besiegers had previously had outposts. According to the British official history, they held on there despite every attempt to dislodge them until 6 December.

The siege after the September assault

Captain Ernst von Raben’s garrison had been holding out on the mountain since August 1914, when it beat off the first Allied attack. After the failed assault of 8 September 1915 General Frederick Cunliffe left for the south with most of his forces. Only a company of Nigerian mounted infantry, a company of the 3rd Battalion of the Nigeria Regiment and two French companies remained below the mountain. The French heavy gun was sent back to Garua about two weeks later. The Allies again confined themselves to a blockade.

On 30 September Raben, going round the forward posts, was seriously wounded in the head. With no medicines he recovered slowly, so for a time command passed to Lieutenant Siegfried Kallmeyer. Even so, the defenders did not shut themselves up in their redoubts. As the British official history writes, throughout October and November they showed “great enterprise” and came down from the mountain to obtain food in sorties and feint attacks. They usually succeeded. Raben’s diary shows that by 1 December they had gathered supplies in this way that were to last until the beginning of March 1916.

The Gauala ridge

The Gauala ridge lay about 1,100 metres west of the main ridge of the mountain, on which the Germans had their redoubts. It was somewhat lower and separated from it by a deep valley with several villages, wells and cultivated fields. The Allies had occupied it in November 1914 and since then had been shelling the German positions from there day and night. In September 1915 the Nigerian company had covered the assault on the German post at Dabaskum with fire from the outposts on Gauala. The sortie of 8/9 October thus gave the Germans the height from which the Allies had been harassing them for almost a year. The British official history gives no details of the fighting or the losses.

The Germans held the ridge for two months. Raben’s garrison, cut off from the rest of the colony, survived on the mountain through the whole winter. It surrendered only on 18 February 1916, when the Allies informed Raben that the remaining German forces in Kamerun had taken refuge in Spanish Muni.