French Foreign Legion

by Douglas Porch

  On September 1, the Legion marched north out of Porto Novo along a trail that led through a palm forest and past villages surrounded by fields of potatoes and maize. However, the relative pleasantness of the countryside and the friendliness of the blacks who sold fruit and chickens to the passing troops could not mask the difficulties of campaigning in the tropics. “One hour we would be struggling through a mangrove swamp, and the next forcing our way through tall grasses that reached well above our heads and chopping our way through thick bush,” Martyn remembered of this early march. “We carried nothing except our arms and 150 rounds of ammunition per man, and even this light load was as much as we could struggle along with.”33 “The heat is suffocating,” Jacquot recorded on September 2, “and our men, although lightly loaded, sweat profusely, so we can hardly advance two miles an hour.”34 For Lelièvre, the march was made especially painful by small insects that had penetrated the skin of his feet, which a local black had to extract with a needle.35

  And so the march continued for over a week, up before dawn to consume the obligatory draught of quinine, check ammunition and then march north along the east bank of the Oueme River, stopping at ten o'clock for breakfast, then continuing the march until around four o'clock in the afternoon, when camp was made by forming a square, clearing fields of fire in the bush (a process that usually brought out an army of ferocious ants) and slaughtering a cow for supper, which brought down a flock of vultures from the sky who became more and more persistent as the march progressed.36 On September 5, Jacquot's company hitched a ride upriver on pirogues dragged by French gunboats. By September 11, the first troops arrived on a piece of high ground overlooking the Oueme across from the small village of Dogba. Here Dodds decided to establish a camp to regroup the entire expedition before pushing further north.

  At five o'clock on the morning of September 19, all the drums, fifes and bugles of the column banged and blew a wake-up call that even the soundest sleeper could not ignore. The men of two of the groups crawled from their tents arranged along the faces of the square encampment (the first group had been dispatched north on the preceding day). Lieutenant Jacquot was hardly awake when he heard shots barely one hundred yards away. He did not have time to finish dressing, but found his revolver and looked for his legionnaires,

  who are already running toward us their rifles in hand, some in their under shorts, others with their shirts on. It doesn't matter, they are there, and when Major Faurax comes up less than two minutes later, we have already opened fire on a numerous enemy whose ranks appearing at the edge of the wood fortunately are stopped by the abatis which forms an obstacle between the forest and this side of the camp.37

  Frederic Martyn had “been fumbling and groping around to get ready for our march” when he heard shots and saw the marine pickets come “bounding into camp with thousands and thousands of black shadows close at the men's heels—the Dahomeyans had surprised us.”38 Men were running in all directions, snatching rifles from the stacks in front of the tents, “it didn't matter which one,” according to Lelièvre, and firing into the jungle on the east face of the camp.39 Legionnaire J. Bern found the tide of attackers rolling out of the jungle in the half light of dawn “truly impressive” and believed that “with troops less steady than the marines and our brave legionnaires, I don't know what would have happened. The least hesitation and all might have been lost. Fortunately, everyone did his duty.”40

  “As fast as we could ram the cartridges in and loose off we fired into the moving black shadows and saw them topple over like corn falling under the sickle,” Martyn wrote.41 When Lelièvre joined the firing line, the Dahomans were barely ten yards away, “kneeling or sitting on wooden stools which they brought with them.”42 “The infantry fires violent salvos,” wrote Jacquot, “the artillery shoots canister at barely 100 yards, while the gunboat Opale joins in by sprinkling the woods with small shells from her Hotchkiss which pass whistling over our heads.”43 Martyn's group launched the first of several charges at those in front of them,

  ramming our bayonets into their bodies until the hilt came up against the flesh with a sickening thud, and then throwing them off to make room for another, like a farm laborer forking hay, until we had to clamber over dead and dying men piled two or three high to get at the living. For the moment there was no question of those of the enemy who were receiving our special attention running away. They couldn't run away, for the great mass behind was pushing them on to our bayonets. It was a terrible slaughter.44

  Lelièvre agreed that the slaughter was terrible and desperately onesided, largely because the attackers were such poor shots, “for, despite the rain of bullets which covered the camp, we only counted four dead and several wounded,” most of them caused by snipers placed in treetops.45 Martyn agreed that, the snipers apart, “in general the enemy were wretched shots, which was in part explained by the fact that they rested the butt of the rifle on the thigh when firing, so that the bullets for the most part passed over our heads.”46 Despite their poor marksmanship, they had managed to kill the Legion battalion commander, Major Faurax. And no one doubted their courage. “The enemy ripostes with an unbelievable energy,” Jacquot found. “Bullets and canister do not cause him to retreat an inch and without a doubt if the abatis had not been there he would have thrown himself on our bayonets. For two hours the fight continues, the firing slackening from time to time only to begin almost immediately with new intensity.”47

  After nine o'clock, the fighting died away. Dodds, fearing that the Dahomans were merely regrouping for another attack, ordered the artillery to fire into the forests. Then the line advanced into the jungle, only to find that the enemy had decamped: “We can now visit the scene of the combat in security, where 130 or 140 corpses are stretched out, for, one must say it, the wounded Dahomans are considered as corpses,” wrote Jacquot. “We do not have the means to treat and save them and they are finished off where they lie. The Lebel bullets have done wonders. We find blacks who, hidden behind enormous palm trees and believing themselves safe, have been shot through despite their cover. These wounds are awful.. ,”48 Lelievre discovered the ground to be covered with bodies of

  large men of ferocious aspect, covered with hideous wounds and bathed in blood. Some lack a head and others a leg. I saw several with their heads split open . . . [by] artillery fire. . . . The wounded who we finished off died courageously, one of whom had his two legs broken and who had been taken to the colonel to be interrogated and who refused to talk. Several, realizing that they were taken, did themselves in.49

  A reconnaissance carried out by Jacquot's company discovered thirty more bodies abandoned by the retreating Dahomans “that our porters dragged by the feet back to the bivouac.”50 The bodies, together with a large number of weapons, were collected by the porters into a large pile and burned.

  The French estimated that they had been attacked by a force of four to five thousand, which, rumor had it, had set out to bypass them and strike at Porto Novo, but which instead had been lured into an attack upon what they believed would be an easy target. They had been allowed to approach so closely to the camp because the sentinels at first believed them to be porters on their morning “promenades hygiéniques.”51 The next day, the positions of the French camp were strengthened and christened Fort Faurax, in memory of the dead Legion major. But not before an emissary from Behanzin arrived to ask for peace, and to threaten that “the shark who will eat the French” would soon arrive with twelve thousand men and artillery. He also asked for the bodies of several chiefs killed in the assault. “In the way of reply, we took him to the place where his comrades had been burned,” wrote Lelievre. “He was very frightened, believing that we were going to throw him on the ashes.” Dodds sent him away with a message to the effect that if “You are the shark who eats the French, then I am the whale who eats the shark.”52 Perhaps it escaped his attention that whales do not as a rule dine upon sharks, but then Behanzin's command of this aspect of natural history was pr
obably no greater than that of the French colonel.

  The march resumed up the east bank of the river, slowly, because of the need to carve a path for the artillery through the thick bush, and because of the requirement, insisted upon by Dodds since Dogba, that a trench be dug each evening along the four sides of the camp. Rain fell in buckets, men collapsed on the march and “each night found us utterly exhausted,” said Martyn,53 a situation that was hardly improved by the order to double pickets and the requirement that all soldiers “stand to” in the trenches each morning.54 “Nothing is more tiring than a night of guard duty in these tropical countries,” wrote Lelievre, who complained of the enervating watch tormented by mosquitoes, distracted by fireflies and frightened by the cries of howling monkeys and nightbirds, while all the time fearing that an attack would find the sentries caught in a crossfire.55 On September 28, the French gunboats were ambushed unsuccessfully while carrying out a reconnaissance up the river, while on the night of September 30–31, the French camp was briefly, and harmlessly, bombarded by Dahoman artillery from the opposite bank. All of this led Dodds to believe that the Dahoman army was massing at the Tohoue ford, where he planned to cross over the river. Therefore, on October 2, while continuing a reconnaissance up the left bank calculated to deceive the enemy into thinking that he was proceeding northward toward the ford, Dodds quickly shifted a contingent over the river by gunboat and pirogue to establish a bridgehead on the west bank south of the ford. Caught by surprise, the Dahomans could not oppose Dodd's move to the right bank of the Ouémé.

  Once across, the French continued their march up the right bank toward the village of Paguessa, but not before Dodds had ordered a substantial reduction of the baggage train to save the porters, whose numbers were diminishing.56 On the morning of October 4, Dodds set out at six o'clock, marching in two columns, one following a path along the river while the one on the left made its way with difficulty through high grass. About a mile and a half north of the village of Grede, a well-laid ambush broke upon a newly arrived squadron of Sudanese spahis at the head of the column. The horsemen were retreating in some haste when the next unit in the order of march, a company of Hausa riflemen, took a broadside from the high grass, and according to Martyn, “retired to the rear without stopping to make further enquiries.”57 The marines and Senegalese bore the brunt of the attack, with some of the Legion companies too coming on line. Lelievre found that “their fire was much better directed than at Dogba,” especially that of the snipers in the trees, who managed to fell three French officers. However, the projectiles of their Krupp guns passed overhead to crash harmlessly into the jungle behind.58

  The battle developed into the kind of slogging match seen at Dogba, with the French drawn up in defensive squares supported by small eighty-millimeter artillery served by French sailors firing volley after volley into waves of attacking Dahomans often led by the Amazons. “The uniform of these female warriors was a sort of kilted divided skirt of blue cotton stuff,” Martyn recounted.

  This garment barely reached to the knees. It was supported at the waist by a leather belt which carried the cartridge pouches. The upper part of their bodies were quite nude, but the head was covered with a coquettish red fez, or tarboosh, into which was stuck an eagle's feather. . . . These young women were far and away the best men in the Dahomeyan army, and woman to man were quite a match for any of us. . . . They fought like unchained demons, and if driven into a corner did not disdain the use of their teeth and nails.59

  Indeed, one marine grabbed an Amazon thinking no doubt that he would claim her as a prize. But she bit his nose with such ferocity that only when mortally wounded by an officer who ran her through with his saber could she be induced to let go.60

  “All of a sudden, the bugle sounded ‘cease fire,’ ” Lelièvre wrote. “... The Dahomans probably believed that our silence meant that we were out of ammunition and charged again (for, during the combat, they retreated a little), screaming. Then we opened up all along the line with salvos.”61 A company of the Legion was ordered to outflank the Dahoman line on the left. “We had not begun our fire when 300 or 400 Dahomans emerge out of the high grass right in front of us,” Jacquot wrote. “Surprised to find troops at a point they believed unoccupied, they do a quick about face and flee for their lives in front of our bayonets, not without leaving several behind.”62 The gunboats on the Ouémé moved up beyond the left flank of the Dahomans, firing first upon their reserves, clearly visible in clearings along the river, and then opened a flanking bombardment of their main battle line. The Dahomans fled northward at about ten o'clock.

  The battlefield, as at Dogba, was a tangle of carnage. The high grass, which barely two hours before seemed impenetrable, had been trampled flat. Jacquot estimated that two hundred Dahomans lay dead, including thirty Amazons. “But it is not possible to evaluate exactly the losses of the enemy, as they usually carry away as many of their dead and wounded as they can,” he wrote. “But without exaggerating a great deal, one can augment the number of victims left on the field by two-thirds.”63 Lelièvre discovered that their ambush consisted of a series of well-concealed fortifications made of tree trunks, which apparently they had foolishly abandoned to fight in the open against the superior firepower of the French. “All around and inside these defenses [were] dead,” he recorded.

  Entering one of them I found three Dahomans of which one was still breathing. (I finished him off with my bayonet.) Among these dead, many Amazons.... I was surprised to see that most of them were very young girls, hardly formed. However, among them were some old women with flaccid breasts.... Two lying next to each other seemed to me to be mother and daughter.

  The ground was also covered with fetishes, which, in this case, had decidedly failed to work.64 As at Dogba, the corpses were gathered in a pile and incinerated.

  On October 5, Dodds sent out scouting parties toward the direction of Abomey. “The party I was with scoured the country until late in the afternoon without seeing any Dahomeyans except a dead one here and there—evidently wounded men from G'bede [Grede] who had struggled on until they had dropped and died,” wrote Martyn.65 However, others discovered that the Dahomans held a bridge that crossed a tributary of the Ouémé. A violent rainstorm caused Dodds to postpone his departure until the 6th, when the French once again began their slow movement forward, part of the men keeping watch while the other group slashed a broad path through the foliage.

  About two o'clock in the afternoon, Jacquot was sitting in his tent with another officer, reading the newspapers brought in by the post the day before, when he heard several shots followed by an intense fusillade and the pounding of cannons. He hardly had time to look up when a bullet whistled into his tent and ripped into the newspaper he held in his hands. Throwing it to the ground, he rushed out to discover that the Dahomans had decided to make a fight for the bridge over the small stream. It was not a serious one, however, probably because they wished to escape with their guns, with which, Martyn believed, they might have done substantial damage from their fortified positions on the far side of the bridge had they chosen to make a stand.66 A bayonet charge by the Legion cleared the bridge of defenders. A group of Amazons also broke cover and fled before Jacquot's company,67 a sign perhaps that Dahoman morale had begun to suffer after two stiff battles. Still, the Dahomans left behind ninety-five dead, while the French losses were six killed and thirty-three wounded, almost as many as the eight killed and thirty-five wounded on the 4th.

  As the French passed through the Dahoman camp, they discovered that the Africans had abandoned a large amount of ammunition and supplies in their precipitous retreat.68 Lelièvre found four prisoners, including an Amazon, tied up in front of Dodds's tent: “The Amazon was very sweet and could have been no more than fifteen years old. She smiled when we caressed her. We put a bucket of water next to her and brought her some food. After being interrogated by the Colonel, and despite their protestations of innocence, they were all shot.”69

  The
most difficult phase of the campaign now began for the French as they moved away from their supply line on the river and struck out overland toward Abomey through about sixty miles of thick, unmapped bush. The trail the French followed toward Abomey was decorated with fetishes and broken by prepared ambush sites. Dodds organized his force in three parallel columns flanked by cavalry. However, only the center column marched on the trail, while those on the flanks had to cut their way through the jungle and scrub: “From 8 o'clock in the morning the firing begins and the combat continues until nightfall against a numerous and tenacious enemy, which harasses us, who charges us with the greatest courage.”70 Nevertheless, the Africans’ courage often evaporated when confronted by a Legion bayonet charge, which invariably sent them into headlong retreat. The Dahomans were also frustrated by Dodd's marching order, which though slow and fatiguing for the Frenchmen protected his convoy, usually the most vulnerable section of a column.

  Yet the French were also suffering. The constant fighting took a small but mounting toil of casualties, while the retreating Dahomans filled in their wells, forcing the French to collect rain water to drink. On October 13, “when we reached the place where it was decided to camp for the night every one was so utterly exhausted that we pitched ourselves on the ground and went to sleep in the open, without troubling to eat or to pitch our tents,” Martyn wrote. As a consequence, they were drenched by a night rain, which at least “provided us with satisfaction for our devouring thirst.”71

  On October 14, the French met their most serious test since Dogba. The main trail to Abomey led through the village of Kotopa, which the Dahomans had fortified with defense lines three deep, before it descended to the Koto River. On the low heights beyond the Koto, the defenders had sited their artillery. To avoid having to attack Kotopa, which, Dodds calculated, would cost him heavily, he ordered his artillery to bombard it while he bypassed the village to the north, marching toward a ford over the Koto that his guides believed to be upriver. At eight-thirty in the morning, his troops cut their way out of their bivouac through a tangle of bush and vines. “The heat is overwhelming and our canteens are soon empty,” Jacquot recorded. “So we give a great sigh of relief when we emerge upon a vast plateau where we see several hundred yards away the somber line of foliage through which runs the Koto.”72