An early WWI engagement in German Togoland where a German ambush failed, accelerating Allied capture of a strategically vital wireless station.
Key Facts
- Date
- 15 August 1914
- Distance inland from Lomé
- 100 miles (160 km) to Kamina
- Railway secured after ambush
- 30 miles (48 km) northward
- Wireless station destroyed
- Night of 24/25 August 1914 at Kamina
- Colony surrendered
- 25 August 1914
By the Numbers
Location
Cause → Event → Consequence
British forces landed in German Togoland and occupied Lomé, then advanced inland toward a major German wireless station at Kamina. The Germans dispatched two trainloads of Polizeitruppen southward to delay the Anglo-French advance and protect the strategically important transmitter, which relayed communications across the Atlantic.
On 15 August 1914 at Agbeluvoe, German colonial troops moving by rail to intercept British West African Rifles were ambushed. The Germans suffered heavy casualties and were forced to retreat, leaving approximately 30 miles of railway intact and open to the advancing Allied column, which then paused three days to accumulate supplies before resuming its push northward with French Tirailleurs Sénégalais support.
Weakened after the ambush, German forces could mount only one further defensive action at the Affair of Khra on 22 August before their position became untenable. The Germans destroyed the Kamina wireless transmitter on the night of 24/25 August 1914, and the entire colony of German Togoland surrendered the following day, making it one of the first German colonial territories to fall in the First World War.
Belligerents & Mobilization Analysis
Side A
2 belligerents
Side B
1 belligerent