The Germans had made the southern region one of the most developed colonies in Africa, having built three metre-gauge railway lines and several roads from Lomé, the capital and main city.

[5] The colony was adjacent to Allied territory, with French Dahomey on its northern and eastern borders and the British Gold Coast to the west.

Dobell called the capital, Lomé and the wireless station at Kamina, about 62 mi (100 km) inland and connected to the coast by road and rail, the only places of military significance.

[8] On 29 July 1914, a Colonial Office telegram arrived at Accra, ordering the adoption of the precautionary stage of the Defence Scheme and Robertson forwarded the information to Bryant the next day.

[9] Bryant dispensed with the Scheme, which had not been revised after the wireless station at Kamina was built and by 31 July, had mobilised the Gold Coast Regiment along the southern, rather than the northern, border with Togoland.

[10] In London, on 3 August, Dobell proposed that if war was declared, an advance would begin along the coast road from Ada to Keta and thence to Lomé, which was less than 2 mi (3.2 km) from the border.

Bryant had reached the same conclusion as Dobell and had already organised small expeditionary columns at Krachi and Ada and assembled the main force at Kumasi, ready to move in either direction.

[15] Bryant, on his own initiative, after hearing that the French in Dahomey wished to co-operate, sent Captain Barker and the District Commissioner of Keta to Doering, with a demand the surrender of the colony and gave him 24 hours to reply.

A French contingency plan to seize Lomé and the coast had been drafted in ignorance of the wireless station at Kamina, only 37 mi (60 km) from the Dahomey border.

[19] On 8 August, the emissaries took command of fourteen British soldiers and police from Aflao; a telegraph operator arrived by bicycle and repaired the line to Keta and Accra.

The British force at Lomé comprised 558 soldiers, 2,084 carriers, police and volunteers, who were preparing to advance inland when Bryant received news of a German foray to Togblekove.

The relatively harsh terrain of bushland and swamp impeded the Allied push to Kamina, by keeping them on the railway and the road, which had fallen into disrepair and was impassable by wheeled vehicles.

[25] The main force moved on from Tabligbo at 6:00 a.m. on 15 August and at 8:30 a.m., local civilians told Bryant that a train full of Germans had steamed into Tsévié that morning and shot up the station.

[26] In the afternoon the British advanced guard met German troops near the Lili river, who blew the bridge and dug in on a ridge on the far side.

A Togolese civilian guided the section to the railway, where Lieutenant Collins and his men piled stones and a heavy iron plate on the tracks, about 200 yd (180 m) north of the bridge at Ekuni and then set an ambush.

[29] Despite the skirmish in the north-west at Bafilo and the Affair of Agbeluvoe, Allied forces advancing towards the German base at Kamina had not encountered substantial resistance.

[30] The West African Rifles, supported by French forces from the east, assembled on the south bank and during 22 August Bryant ordered attacks on the German entrenchments.

[35] In December 1916, the colony was divided into British and French occupation zones, which cut through the German administrative divisions and civilian boundaries.

[36] Both powers sought a new partition and in 1919, during the Paris Peace Conference, Article 22 of the Treaty of Versailles distributed the former German colonies between the Allies.

[38] The surrender of Togoland marked the beginning of the end for the German colonial empire, which lost all of its overseas possessions by conquest during the war or under Article 22.

Field hospitals were established along the lines of communication and wounded were swiftly evacuated from Khra by an ambulance train, which was running two days after the engagement.