Siege of Garua begins

On 31 May 1915 British and French troops under Lieutenant-Colonel Frederick Cunliffe began the final stage of the fighting for Garua (today Garoua), the German fortress on the Benue river in the north of German Kamerun. For many months Allied units had been watching the fortress and tightening the ring around it. That day heavy guns struck it for the first time.

What Cunliffe was waiting for

The attack had been delayed for weeks. Cunliffe agreed with the commander of the French troops, Colonel Brisset, that the main blow would come from the north, and accepted his request to wait for a French 95 mm gun sent from Dakar. On 8 May the commandant of the fortress, Captain von Crailsheim, returned to Garua with his detachment from a raid on the Nigerian border. On 18 May Cunliffe learned that the gun was close and began his final preparations.

From 15 to 25 May, exclusively at night, carriers moved British stores, ammunition and equipment to Jambutu Manga, north of the fortress, and the British units followed them there. According to the British official history the Germans noticed nothing. Crailsheim was just about to leave Garua with the whole garrison and break through to the south, to the German troops fighting the main Allied forces. The new disposition of Cunliffe’s troops forced him to abandon this plan. For several days he confined himself to shelling the British outposts.

On 28 May the gun arrived before Garua. Transporting it from the railway at Baro in Nigeria up the rivers, over a distance of about 750 miles (about 1,200 km), at a very low water level, was judged by the British official history a great feat of Nigerian marine transport. With the gun came a convoy of ammunition and an additional company of infantry. The Allies now had before Garua 78 Europeans and 1,130 African soldiers on the British side, with a naval gun, three mountain guns and ten machine guns, and 46 Europeans and 580 African soldiers on the French side, with the heavy gun, two mountain guns and two Hotchkiss machine guns. On 29 May Cunliffe issued orders for the main force to occupy its starting positions north of the fortress during the night.

The artillery duel

At dawn on 31 May the Germans saw that the Allied units had dug in about 3,000–3,500 yards (just under 3 km) north of Fort A, one of the works of Garua, and immediately opened artillery fire. The heavy Allied guns replied only after four hours, but quickly silenced the German gun in Fort A. Under their cover the British mounted infantry on the right flank drove back the German outposts and occupied points less than 2,000 yards from the enemy’s main position.

The artillery duel died down at 11.15 a.m. The German fire was accurate, but the well dug-in Allies had only one man wounded. According to information from the local population, the Germans had several killed or wounded and lost a machine gun and a good deal of ammunition, destroyed in Fort A.

Further fighting

The bombardment continued the next day. Cunliffe judged, however, that the German forts were too strong to storm across open ground and decided to approach them by trenches. Over the following days the Allied trenches drew closer to the works, and the garrison was cut off from supplies. The fire of the heavy guns undermined the morale of the garrison’s African soldiers. On 10 June 1915 Crailsheim capitulated.