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Our Colonies in the War: No. 11 - The Cameroons

The War Illustrated, Volume 8, No. 185, Page 152, July 21, 1944.

Remembering the days of Teuton misrule that part of the Cameroons which became British after the Germans were defeated there in February 1916 is helping to ensure another defeat for the enemy. Lying between our colony of Nigeria, by whose government it is administered under a mandate, and French Equatorial Africa, the British Cameroons is a strip of land running the whole length of the Nigerian border with a total extent of some 34,000 square miles. Pulling its weight with Nigeria, the British Cameroons is producing bananas, rubber, tea, palm oil, castor seeds and cocoa for the war effort; bananas particularly being of great value, as tons of them, dried and made into banana "dates", go to feed our troops in West Africa.

Tons of shelled castor seeds are spread out in the sun to dry. Green tea leaves are poured into a rolling machine. Tapping a rubber tree; an incision is made in the outer bark which frees the sap (latex rubber) and allows it to flow into the collecting cups. Great bunches of bananas fill the ripening sheds, which are served by railed trucks.

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