French Foreign Legion

by Douglas Porch

  Even Duchesne began to realize that, despite the arrival of reinforcements, his force was wasting away to the point that soon it would be incapable of combat. According to his report to the French parliament, on August 4 he took the decision to create a light column to press forward to Tananarive. Nevertheless, this column could not be created, he believed, until the road had reached Andriba, which would serve as the staging area for the projected offensive.36 In early September, the road, such as it was, was declared complete, and the light column began to form at Mangasoarina on the plain of Andriba. Three hundred fifty tons of supplies were collected there, and reinforcements, including 150 legionnaires, joined the force: “The most impressive of all these relief detachments was that of the Legion,” Reibell, who had seen them disembark at Majunga in mid-August, wrote.37 When, on September 12, Langlois witnessed the review of the men, including a battalion of the Legion, whom Duchesne had selected for the light column, he was less impressed. There, surrounded by the naked red mountains of Madagascar, 1,500 men stood to attention,

  so dejected, so depressed, so pale, that one would have believed them more dead than alive. Their clothes were in rags, their boots in pieces, their helmets, too large for their emaciated heads, fell to their shoulders, covering almost entirely their yellow faces where only eyes the color of fever seemed to exist. And they seemed so pathetic, so poor, so miserable, that unconsciously tears came to the eyes.38

  On September 14, the light column left Andriba. In the van was the régiment d'Algérie, made up of two battalions of Algerian tirailleurs and a battalion of the Legion. A second group had at its nucleus the aptly named régiment mixte, which contained a battalion of the 13th Marine Infantry Regiment and some Malagasies and Senegalese. In the rear, the remnants of the 200th Infantry Regiment and some more Africans and marines guarded the convoy. In all, 4,013 soldiers led by 237 officers and followed by 1,515 mule drivers and 2,809 mules left for Tananarive.39 Some pessimists were already calling this march “the suicide of General Duchesne,” but Langlois's legionnaires were already dreaming of the riches to be found in the capital.40 Nevertheless, it was apparent as the column made its way off the plateau of Andriba and up the narrow valley of the Mamokomita that the countryside of rocky, naked slopes rising to jagged summits would be difficult enough to march through, much less fight over if a determined enemy chose to defend it. Therefore, it was with great relief that the column, after a march of seven miles, arrived at the foot of Mount Tafofo at the end of the Mamokomita defile to find it undefended.

  The view from the summit was glorious—three large mountain massifs separated by valleys whose floors, made green by marshes, cacti and mango trees, contrasted with the stark, boulder-strewn slopes. However, hardly a mile and a half away a Hova army was in the process of throwing up fortifications along a ridge line near the village of Tsmainondry, which blocked the column's projected line of march up the Firingalava valley. At dawn on the following morning, Duchesne launched his troops into the attack. The task of the Legion was to carry out a frontal assault, wading through the marshes that covered the valley floor and attacking up the slopes, while other units flanked the positions. However, hardly were they through the marshes than the Hova artillery opened up. Fortunately, few of their shells exploded. The legionnaires began to fire on the offending batteries from over two thousand yards away, inaccurate from such a great distance, but enough to send the Hova troops dressed in their white lambas, a shawl-like garment, scattering like the flocks of aquatic birds that the legionnaires had raised while wading through the marsh. “One of the defenders, probably believing that his resistance had been sufficient, got up, looked around, and bolted off with no self respect,” wrote Langlois.

  The entire trench, worried, became agitated. Two or three other men got up, looked about, and..., like their comrade, took French leave. That proved too much for the delicate morale of the intrepid warriors of Ranavalo. As one man, like those jack-in-the-boxes pushed out on their springs, they suddenly surged out of the back of the parapets and disappeared rapidly down the thousands of ravines which furrowed the terrain, throwing away their arms so as to run faster. We saluted this grotesque flight with the most energetic catcalls.41

  Yet the undignified retreat of the Hovas before Tsmainondry, while gratifying, simply allowed the French to march on to the next, and many believed the most formidable, obstacle of the campaign, the Ambohimenas mountains. The route of the column climbed the valley of the Firingalava river, wading through torrents that spilled down mountainsides so steep that only with difficulty could the mules be kept from tumbling into the water below. The fatigue of the men was obvious, and a wake of stragglers trailed behind the advancing French who, on the 17th, could see the great mass of the Ambohimenas, which lay across their path in the distance. Duchesne made camp to allow the remainder of the plodding column to catch up, and on the 18th ordered a night march to approach the Hova defense lines. The men ate their meager rations and then bent into a path that led straight up the mountainside. “The men . . . advanced with great difficulty,” according to Langlois. “We were obliged to use clubs to make these poor feverish men march. We struck them with a heavy heart, but absolutely convinced that our duty and their interest commanded it. All who remained behind are lost men.”42

  When dawn broke, the Hova fortifications were visible atop the high ridge to the front. The régiment d'Algérie was given the task, once again, of mounting a frontal assault, while the régiment mixte climbed the mountain to turn the Hova positions on the flanks. As the legionnaires approached, puffs of black powder smoke appeared from the heights, but the defenders were firing from a distance too great to cause any damage. The Hova artillery soon joined in, but it shot badly. Even though the legionnaires and tirailleurs were still over a mile away, the line of Hovas in their white lambas lower down the slopes rose up and began grappling their way toward the fortifications on the summit, sowing panic. Duchesne ordered his legionnaires and tirailleurs forward toward groups of men milling around some of the fortifications that had yet to be abandoned, when the appearance of the marines and Malagasy tirailleurs, recruited among Sakalave tribesmen, traditional enemies of the Hovas, on the ridge to their flank precipitated a complete panic. “Despite the fact that our troops were beginning to become accustomed to the speed with which the Hovas ordinarily break off the combat,” Duchesne reported, “they had the profound surprise to see them abandon completely their formidable positions and beat a retreat along the entire front.”43

  The French now stood on the threshold of the Hova heartland. From the naked heights of the Ambohimenas, they could look out over a spread of plateaus covered by a checkerboard of rice paddies and small villages surrounded by hedges of cactus. All that lay before them now was a few days of hard marching. According to E. F. Knight, the Malagasy commander-in-chief had told his prime minister that “I can do nothing. My men will not stand. They run away as soon as they perceive that two or three of their friends have been killed. Nothing will stop them.” An English officer trying to put some backbone into the Hova army told him that, in their panic to get away from the French attack on the Ambohimenas, fully 300 soldiers had tumbled over a precipice and been killed. Soldiers had bribed their officers to run away “so as to have an excuse for saving their own skins,” which had reduced the army, which had numbered around 7,000 on September 12, to 1,313 starving men by September 23. To be fair to the Hovas, on the Ambohimenas their soldiers probably had shot up what little ammunition they had been given while the French were still well out of range. The Hova government was calling up miserable peasants and even prisoners, who passed through the streets of Tananarive shackled by the neck, to carry out a last-ditch defense of the capital.44

  However, the ability of the French to take advantage of Hova confusion and demoralization was impaired by their own condition, which verged upon utter collapse—the light column was barely in a fit state to lurch forward, much less administer a knockout punch. Langlois be
lieved that the mere effort to climb the Ambohimenas had cost the attackers a tenth of their strength. Patrols sent out returned only with corpses already stiff with death, victims of the night cold of the mountains, or exhausted by the intense heat of the day. Several had obviously committed suicide. Indeed, suicide had already manifested itself in the Legion—on September 3, Langlois's company had marched out of camp past the body of one of their soldiers who had hanged himself from a mango tree. In the wee hours of the morning of September 21, a legionnaire shot himself through the head with a bullet that then pierced the colonel's tent, narrowly missing him. On the following day, a second man in his company shot himself just before dawn: “Our excellent paymaster ... is of the opinion that the men are intentionally killing themselves just to force him to write out the death certificates, a work which he claims to detest,” wrote Langlois.45 Lentonnet noted on July 27, even before the light column set out, that “Suicides are very rare in the regiment of Algerian tirailleurs. But they are more frequent in the Legion. In three days, there have been no less than six legionnaires who have killed themselves. Yesterday, one hanged himself, another blew his brains out.” On September 21 he again recorded that “suicides are more and more frequent in the Legion, which is becoming demoralized.”46

  Langlois agreed that morale was seriously low: “In the silent camp, the men seem discouraged and without energy,” he wrote. “It is the first time since the beginning of the campaign, that I have noticed such an utter demoralization.”47 Low morale, a great danger in any unit, was thought especially serious in the Legion. Legionnaires, because of their pasts, were believed to be psychologically fragile, apt to give themselves over to expressions of despair, of which suicide was one. It is possible, as some believed, that for many legionnaires enlistment had been an alternative to suicide. Raimond Premschwitz and Flutsch both admitted that they had considered it, and that the Legion, for them, had been an option of last resort.48 Frederic Martyn also recommended it for those who were contemplating suicide, because “it may possibly introduce you to a zest of life that you have never felt, and in any case you can commit suicide just as well in Algeria, you know, as you can in London.”49 But service as an antidote to suicide might not work in every case. Jacques Weygand, who commanded a Legion cavalry squadron in the 1930s, believed legionnaires particularly susceptible to “crises, whims and depression.” However, the theory, in any case, was that the active life of the Legion kept these under control. Suicide, like desertion, hit its peak in calm garrisons where “they must look themselves in the mirror, and it's not happy.” For this reason, Legion officers were always careful to keep their men busy and occupied, to prevent unconstructive brooding over the past, “to distract their men, to tear them from the mortal prostration which grips the best ones.”50

  Therefore, two perceptions seem prevalent about suicide in the Legion. The first is that the Legion had a relatively high suicide rate, at least higher than that of other corps. The second is that suicide appeared to occur more frequently in garrison because legionnaires, predisposed to depression in conditions of enforced boredom and inactivity, rose to the occasion when confronted with the challenges of a campaign. Neither of these is possible to resolve with any certainty. French historian Bernard Savelli concluded in his thesis on the Legion in Tonkin before World War I that suicides in the Legion at that time averaged only three or four a year, and the rate was no higher than those of other corps, including the Algerians.51 But as has been seen, Indochina, at least after 1885, became a garrison of choice, with enough distractions to adjourn thoughts of suicide except among those most inclined toward self-destruction. No comparative statistics exist for Algeria, which was a far less attractive garrison. However, Savelli seemed to agree with the second perception, that suicides declined on campaign, citing as his evidence that only one legionnaire committed suicide during the grueling, and apparently hopeless, defense of Tuyen Quang. Likewise, the regimental diaries for Tonkin in 1885 and Dahomey in 1892 make no mention of suicides, nor do the memoirs mention any.

  The Legion battalion in the light column counted six suicides, and it appears that eleven of the sixteen suicides that occurred in the Algerian regiment during the campaign were in the Legion. And while this is certainly not catastrophic, other suicides might have passed unnoticed among the thirty-three legionnaires listed as “missing” from the light column.52 There are perhaps three explanations of why Madagascar appears to have produced the exception to the general rule that suicides in the Legion declined on campaign. One, of course, is that the evidence is too fragmentary to draw a firm conclusion, that there were suicides in Tonkin in 1885 and during the Dahomey expedition of 1892 that were not recorded. However, the common sense explanation would suggest that suicides in those two campaigns were too rare to be considered worthy of mention.

  A second reason why Madagascar may have produced so many suicides was simply that it was an extremely difficult campaign. Many men were obviously pushed to the brink of their physical and mental endurance, felt that they could not cope and preferred simply to do themselves in. A third reason was that, once they began, they became difficult to stop. Legion officers generally agreed that suicide, like desertion, was contagious. Once it had introduced itself into a unit, especially one whose morale was stretched as thin as that of the Legion in Madagascar, it could spread dangerously.53 “I know nothing which makes more of an impression than these suicides,” Langlois noted during the spate of suicides in the Legion. “A sort of derangement takes over the brain. You ask yourself with disquiet if this destructive fever is not going to seize you from one moment to another.”54

  Therefore, it was a great relief when the Legion marched out of camp on the 22nd because, Langlois hoped, “the march forward will perhaps chase away the black thoughts which have begun to affect us.”55 The route carried them beneath the rock cliffs of Angavo and into a broad valley where the red earthen village of Ambatohazano rose up like a red island amidst a green, segmented sea of rice fields. The column then climbed some chalk slopes to the plain of Ankazobe, which stretched, dusty and monotonous, to the horizon. “Our men must really have a stout spirit to make these long and tiring marches, pack on the back, without the slightest complaint,” Langlois concluded.56 Unfortunately, not all of them did. One legionnaire committed suicide during the night, while another shot himself in the leg, explaining to the doctor, “I can no longer march. Now you will have to carry me on a stretcher.” Unfortunately, he died of blood loss. A third simply died in his bedroll, his pipe still in his mouth. The cadavers were laid out in a shallow ravine. “We no longer bury,” Langlois noted.57

  As the legionnaires pushed further toward Tananarive, they entered a countryside that was almost European—villages with wide streets, pitched-roof houses, some of which had balconies and verandas, even high steepled churches. Duchesne feared that the many villages left in the rear and to the flanks might become redoubts of Malagasy resistance, and ordered his column to march in a tighter formation.58 But the evidence of Hova panic was all about. The hedge-lined lanes were strewn with the debris of a retreating, even a routed, army, including two cannon that had been pitched into a ravine. At least this allowed the French to advance almost without a fight, which was just as well because many of the legionnaires were on their last legs. Each morning the doctors judged a parade of unimaginable sores, bloody feces and general debilitation, a competition whose dubious winners climbed smiling onto one of the few mule-borne stretchers. On September 24, a small group of “tired legionnaires” was formed under a lieutenant. The ration of sixteen hardtack “biscuits” per soldier per day was reduced to eight, and then to four. “Those with a hearty appetite ate their day's ration with their morning coffee,” noted Reibell. These biscuits sold for ten francs each in the light column, and sick legionnaires handed them over to those who would perform their fatigue duties for them.59

  The number of men simply unable to continue the march grew daily. Others fell by the wayside
and never reappeared: “They were very probably massacred by the inhabitants,” the regimental diary recorded laconically.60 This was no fantasy—E. F. Knight saw a swarm of Hova men and women set upon an Algerian prisoner, probably a straggler, hack him to pieces and then parade his remains through the streets of Tananarive. “This was no isolated case,” Knight reported, “and it appears that two other wounded men were captured by the Hovas on the same day, and treated in like fashion.”61 Hova prisoners of the French seemed to have fared better—Langlois's legionnaires impressed some of them to carry their packs.62 Knight was told by a Hova captured after a fight that the French simply disarmed them, gave them food, patted them on the back and told them “to be off to their homes.”63

  On the morning of September 26, the column climbed the slopes of Alakamisy mountain in staggering heat and looked out over the high tableland of central Madagascar to Tananarive about fifteen miles distant. “We are all crazy with joy,” Langlois wrote. “We laugh, we cry, we embrace each other without being able to stop ourselves from shouting: Tananarive! Tananarive!’ ”64 Admittedly, from a distance the city, bathed in sunlight, appeared as magical and welcome as the onion-domed silhouette of Moscow had been to Napoleon's soldiers in 1812. Large walled buildings, which included the palaces of the queen and the prime minister, the royal observatory and the royal hospital, saddled a ridge 4,700 feet high, their towers and cupolas thrusting skyward as if in competition with the numerous church spires. The ruddy-colored houses interspersed with the deep green of the tropical foliage spilled down the mountainside toward a broad valley dappled with rice fields and herds of sheep.