Qualla: Siege of Toma https://qualla.com/siege-of-toma en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:29 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_res/siteimages/rsslogo.png Qualla: Siege of Toma https://qualla.com/siege-of-toma Siege of Toma: Introduction https://qualla.com/siege-of-toma/ The shells did not hit anything important. That was the point. In the ridge country above the little inland town of Toma, on the Gazelle Peninsula of what was then Neu-Pommern, the Australians fired a single 12-pounder naval field gun and waited. A protected cruiser, standing offshore, lobbed a few more rounds at a nearby ridgeline for show. The men behind the field gun were tired and far from home, strung out through jungle they did not understand. The men on the other side, huddled around the German governor Eduard Haber, did not know that the force surrounding them was only 200 strong. And so, between 14 and 17 September 1914, a siege with no casualties quietly ended the German colonial empire in the Pacific.

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]]> Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/r/h/p/siege-of-toma-wp/rrhp-siege-of-toma-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Siege of Toma: A Radio Station Nobody Could Find https://qualla.com/siege-of-toma/ The entire campaign hung on a transmitter. Count Maximilian von Spee's East Asia Squadron was loose somewhere in the Pacific, and as long as German wireless stations at Rabaul and the Caroline Islands could feed it information, the squadron could threaten Allied merchant shipping...

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]]> Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/r/h/p/siege-of-toma-wp/rrhp-siege-of-toma-a-radio-station-nobody-could-find.mp3 0:06 2 full Siege of Toma: Seven Dead at Bita Paka https://qualla.com/siege-of-toma/ By the time the Australians reached the wireless station that evening, seven of them were dead. The defenders had left the transmitter largely intact but taken down the mast. Australia's first major military engagement of the war had been won, at a cost that looked small beside w...

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]]> Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/r/h/p/siege-of-toma-wp/rrhp-siege-of-toma-seven-dead-at-bita-paka.mp3 0:06 3 full Siege of Toma: The Retreat Inland https://qualla.com/siege-of-toma/ The surviving German defenders pulled back nineteen miles through dense bush to Toma, a small hill settlement where Governor Haber set up what remained of the colonial administration. He was waiting for von Spee. If the East Asia Squadron could reach Rabaul, it might yet relieve ...

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]]> Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/r/h/p/siege-of-toma-wp/rrhp-siege-of-toma-the-retreat-inland.mp3 0:06 4 full Siege of Toma: Saved by a Bluff https://qualla.com/siege-of-toma/ The shelling was, more than anything, theatre. The 12-pounder was one gun. Two hundred men scattered through jungle could not have held off a determined counter-attack. But the noise was enough. Haber, looking out from Toma at what sounded like a substantial attacking force, unde...

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]]> Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/r/h/p/siege-of-toma-wp/rrhp-siege-of-toma-saved-by-a-bluff.mp3 0:06 5 full Siege of Toma: What the Four Days Left Behind https://qualla.com/siege-of-toma/ Most of the Germans in the colony were interned and deported. A single stubborn holdout, Leutnant Hermann Detzner, took twenty Melanesian police into the interior of mainland New Guinea and evaded capture for the entire war, emerging in 1919 to an already-changed world. German Ne...

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]]> Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/r/h/p/siege-of-toma-wp/rrhp-siege-of-toma-what-the-four-days-left-behind.mp3 0:06 6 full