53 Marshal Lyautey, in an official portrait taken at some date between 1921 and 1925, so at least 66 years old. He now shows a greyer moustache and thickened features, perhaps due to his serious ill-health from 1923 onwards.
54 Group of légionnaires of 3rd REI off-duty in Fes in the early 1930s; the tall soldier in the background is an Englishman, No.3254 Albert Neal, who before his discharge in 1936 had been promoted sergeant and awarded the Croix de Guerre TOE. These men all wear the bleached képi-cover with winter walking-out uniform; they proudly display at the left shoulder the double fourragère lanyard of the Légion d’Honneur and Croix de Guerre awarded in October 1918 to this regiment’s predecessor, the RMLE, for nine citations while fighting on the Western Front – a distinction shared by only one other French regiment, the RICM. (Courtesy John Neal)
55 Légionnaires Cyril Conway (left) and Albert Neal photographed in handsome ‘whites’ at Er Rachidia, March 1935; they had enlisted together in Marseille in February 1931. From the early 1920s white walking-out dress was encouraged, to give battalions some extra ‘swank’, but it was not an issue uniform. The 4th Foreign seem to have been the first to blossom, followed by the 2nd and 3rd; when the repentant sinner Corporal Adolphe Cooper served with III/4th REI in 1929 he was determined to be the most dazzling soldier in his company, and bleached his whites with Eau de Javel disinfectant and cinders. (Courtesy John Neal)
56 After the Rif and Tache de Taza campaigns of 1925 – 26 Legion infantry spent much of their time – and after 1933, almost all of it – labouring on Morocco’s roads and other building projects. (AdeQ Historical Archives)
57 Tattoos – more or less crudely executed, usually by the soldiers themselves – were a long-standing tradition in the old Legion, as one of the rare outlets for individuality. There are many accounts of men tattooing defiant obscenities on their hands, feet or even foreheads, and some extraordinarily ambitious ‘illustrated soldiers’ are recorded. In 1912 d’Esparbes published a photo of a légionnaire whose entire torso was the canvas for an intricate and lubricious scene of ‘Venus Awakening’ on a draped bed, attended by three winged lovers, and the same author claimed to have seen with his own eyes the legendary ‘Fox Hunt’ tattoo. This légionnaire of the 4th REI in the 1930s has been fairly restrained: on his right arm can be made out a crescent and palm trees, and a snake coiled round a sword with the motto Pas de chance – ‘No luck’. The illegible declaration on his collarbones, above a strange Picasso-like profile and the sultry beauty, seems to end with the words ‘ . . . j’en rien’ – which has a suitably nihilist ring to it. (Courtesy R.G. Harris)
58 No.2388 Légionnaire Robert Lincoln, photographed at Meknes in the early 1930s in clean white fatigues with the Legion sash. This Londoner – who looks like a man who could look after himself – enlisted in 1930 at the age of 23 and served for five years with the 2nd REI. At the time of his discharge in 1935 he was serving with the regiment’s Mounted Company, then still equipped with mules, so it is not impossible that he saw action under Captain Fouré at Bu Gafer in 1933. Bobby Lincoln died in London in 1986. (Courtesy Jim Worden)
59 A Legion senior NCOs’ canteen, probably at a regimental depot, in the early 1930s. Legion sergeants and above did not have to frequent squalid local grog-shops, and had the pay to stand each other drinks more varied than the rough red pinard. As in the old British Army, to get – and keep – a sergeant’s stripes made an enormous difference to a soldier’s status and prospects. Assuming that they avoided bullets, microbes and cirrhosis, most men who achieved this rank re-enlisted for the maximum term, earning a pension and valuable civic privileges on their eventual discharge. Foreign-born légionnaires earned French citizenship by a single five-year hitch, and naturalization was expected of men with ambitions for promotion. (Photo Sretchkovitch, courtesy Jacques Gandini)
60 & 61 Légionnaires in action in the cedar-clad alpine terrain of the Atlas, where after 1914 the Legion did far more of its soldiering than in the open desert. These may be men of the Mounted Company/2nd RE, photographed in summer 1932 during operations against the Ait Haddidou tribe, around the Assif Melloul valley south of the Plateau des Lacs in the High Atlas. The soldier in the foreground of the left-hand picture may be Bobby Lincoln; in the right-hand photo, note also one of the Berber partisan scouts, who were always indispensable. (Courtesy Jim Worden)
62 Southern Morocco, July 1932: the Georgian Lieutenant Prince Djindjeradze, a troop commander in 4th Squadron/1st Foreign Cavalry. He wears a covered képi and the 1st REC’s gandourah field smock over his uniform. The English légionnaire Adolphe Cooper, who had been his orderly in 1929 when Djindjeradze was a platoon commander with III/4th REI, claimed that he and the other two company officers turned a blind eye to the unfortunate death in action, from a bullet in the back of the head, of a sadistic NCO. (Family collection)
63 Djindjeradze’s troop trumpeter in IV/1st REC, Légionnaire Slavko. The Foreign Cavalry created a definite style for themselves when in the field. They wore képis with long couvre-nuque sun-curtains, abandoned by Legion infantry since the First World War; the gandourah, then worn by no other Legion enlisted men, was bleached a creamy white; a pale khaki cheich scarf was crossed on the chest; and sometimes these baggy khaki seroual desert trousers replaced the regulation breeches and leather leggings. (Family collection)
64 Studio portrait of an unidentified légionnaire posing in summer grande tenue, 1930s. The regimental number on his collar patch cannot be made out, but the long sun-curtain on his képi-cover almost certainly marks him as a cavalry trooper, since only the REC are known to have worn this folklorique item by this date. (AdeQ Historical Archives)
65 Prince Aage of Denmark was a big, high-spirited man who became popular with both his brother-officers and his men once he had proved himself free of any royal conceits. He was a ‘group-oriented’ rather than a ‘goal-oriented’ commander, who might be seen in louche city nightspots treating his subalterns to champagne and caviar, and sitting in on drums with the jazzband with his képi tipped at a rakish angle. The close friend with whom he is photographed here, in Marrakesh on New Year’s Eve 1936, is an American expatriate named Dorothy Gould. She and Aage were also friends of the Georgian Prince Djindjeradze, whose family believed that he later owed her his freedom from internment by the Germans after the 1940 Armistice. When a Nazi commission obliged the Vichy regime to let it comb out ‘undesirables’ from the Legion, she apparently offered ‘Djinn’ a marriage of convenience that enabled him to sail for the neutral USA. (Family collection)
66 The terrain of the Djebel Sahro, photographed in hot October weather in 1997. This is the Tadout n’Tabla plateau, north and east of the village of Nekob; when Captain Spillmann’s goumiers and partisans advanced across it against the Ait Atta in February 1933 it was bitterly cold and lashed by icy winds and rain. (Photo Andy Grainger)
67 A Legion infantry encampment in the Moroccan mountains in the early 1930s. The tents are pitched and rifles stacked inside the low dry-stone murettes d’Afrique that were built around every night camp, and pack-mules of the train de combat are picketed just outside, under the eyes of the armed sentry. At right foreground, the officers are gathered for a meal – the popotte or officers’ dining mess was a sacred tradition, even in the field.
68 The French monument to the dead of 1933, raised at the foot of the final heights of Bu Gafer. The ruins are those of a police post installed after the submission of Assu u-Ba Slam. (Photo Andy Grainger)
69 View from one of the triple summits of Bu Gafer; in 1997 the ground was still scattered with the fragments of shells and bombs. The Ait Atta guide pictured here, aged about 67, negotiated the climb without any apparent fatigue; he had recently added a new 28-year-old wife to his household. (Photo Andy Grainger)
70 u-Skunti, the Ait Murghad chief who led the final defence of Mount Baddou in August 1933. His features are characteristic of the Berbers of the High Atlas. (Photo Ward Price)
71 Berber partisans d
uring the Mount Baddou campaign, indistinguishable from the rebels led by u-Skunti. The Legion officer in the right background, in cheich and gandourah, is a model of 1930s battlefield chic. (Photo Ward Price)
72 Légionnaire Ronald House of II/2nd REI, photographed by Ward Price during the Mount Baddou operations. A Londoner, House was a man of his hands in more ways than one: a drummer in the regimental clique when in garrison at Meknes, he had reached the finals of the 1932 French Army boxing championships in Morocco, and his skill with a pencil was also employed by his unit. About ten days before this photo was taken he was recommended by his company commander for the Croix de Guerre TOE, for going out alone in front of a very recently secured ridge position and sketching the terrain. Note that he is holding a map – not a usual accessory for a private soldier. (Photo Ward Price)
73 Another Engish légionnaire of II/2nd REI – his trail-worn, unshaven appearance typical of the Legion on campaign in Morocco – photographed while building the inevitable murettes to consolidate a newly occupied ridgetop during the Mount Baddou operations. He was a Leeds-born former Royal Navy petty officer named Hunter, who had enlisted when unable to find work at home. He was quite satisfied with Legion life, and told Ward Price that the hard labour was easier than he had known when working as a lumberjack in Canada. (Photo Ward Price)
74 General Antoine Huré reviewing légionnaires in the field after the submission of u-Skunti’s rebels on 26 August 1933. (Photo Ward Price)
75 The 6th Squadron/1st Foreign Cavalry were the first Legion unit to be mechanized, receiving their first vehicles as early as February 1929, but it was 1933 – 34 before they were fully equipped and operational with armoured cars and carriers. During Colonel Trinquet’s advance into the far south-west in February – March 1934, VI/1st REC operated a troop of three armoured cars and three troops each with five of these Berliet VUDB armoured recce carriers. These fragile vehicles had a three-man crew, four-wheel drive and independent suspension. (SIHLE, courtesy John Robert Young)
76 Photographed during Colonel Trinquet’s 1934 thrust to the frontier with the Spanish Sahara, these are armoured cars of the 4th Foreign Infantry’s Composite Automobile Company (CMA), which Charles Milassin would join the following year. The AMD Panhard 165/175 TOE had a four-man crew including two separate drivers, one for driving forwards and one for going in reverse – a not unusual arrangement at that date. Note the carbines and bayonets clamped inside the open door. The company’s working dress was then a suit of bleu mécanicien denim, like any French factory worker. (Photo Henry Clérisse, courtesy Francois Vauvillier)
77 One of the four squads of the peloton portée of CMA/4th REI at Foum el Hassane had two M1914 Hotchkiss MGs; on their twice-yearly 2,000-mile tours through the Western Sahara each gun and crew travelled in a truck, ‘loaded for bear’ with 5,500 rounds of ammunition. Since the tilt over the truck’s rear body was made of thin sheet iron they suffered badly under the desert sun. Here they pose with, at right, two notably smarter senior NCOs. (Courtesy Charles Milassin)
78 Despite the remoteness of their post, CMA/4th REI lived as comfortably as they could under the paternal command of Captain Gaultier. Jazzbands seem to have been popular in 4th Foreign – Major de Corta’s 3rd Battalion also maintained one. Here, at Christmas 1936, Légionnaire Charles Milassin is on drums; note the company badge. The dark-skinned soldier on banjo may perhaps be the Légionnaire Abd el Halim whom Chief Warrant Officer Milassin remembered. (Courtesy Charles Milassin)
79 The Panhard 179 camion blindé carried – in considerable discomfort – an NCO commander, driver, machine-gunner and seven riflemen, with two light machine guns. Ergonomics was then an unknown science, and the men’s physical wellbeing was not given a high priority in this early experiment with mechanized infantry in a desert environment. (Courtesy Charles Milassin)
80 In December 1939, on the eve of world-changing events, the newly naturalized and promoted young Sergeant Milassin poses in the smart walking-out dress of a Legion career NCO at Tindouf. Half of the 4th Foreign’s motorized company were often based at this major Saharan post just over the Algerian border from Foum el Hassane. (Courtesy Charles Milassin)
81 A veteran légionnaire of the strong detachment sent by 1st REI to Paris to take part in the 14 July 1939 Bastille Day parade – the first time the public saw the white képi-cover officially worn for ceremonial.
At the end of the First World War the Legion’s uniforms had been a motley mixture of French and US surplus khaki tunics, trousers and sidecaps, and even some regimental colour parties were unable to lay hands on half-a-dozen képis for parades. Légionnaires were set apart from Metropolitan troops only by the seven-flamed grenade badge, and the green of their collar numbers, piping and rank stripes. Thereafter the accretion of special distinctions would be a semi-official process, nudged along by unit COs and only documented and authorized retrospectively. Some wartime khaki képis began to be issued from 1923, and in June 1926 the Legion – uniquely – was authorized the pre-war red-and-blue design, with a khaki cover for field use. By 1931 the 2nd and 3rd REI were wearing a white cover on parade; an order of August 1933 authorized general issue of a white cover for parade and walking-out and a khaki one for the field, though the latter was often bleached in defiance of regulations. Green re-enlistment chevrons were authorized in September 1929; the three on this soldier’s left sleeve show that he is serving his fourth five-year contract (but is still a private 2nd class, despite his Médaille Militaire). The green-and-red epaulettes de tradition, discontinued in 1914, were restored from November 1930, by the centenary celebrations of March 1931 the légionnaire stood out from lesser breeds as colourfully as Colonel Rollet could wish.
82 Ain ben Tili is in the tri-border region of the Western Sahara, near the meeting-place of the frontiers of Morocco, Mauritania and Algeria. In the 1930s the fort there was a regular way-point on the twice-yearly, two-month-long desert patrols made by Charles Milassin’s motorized company of the 4th Foreign Infantry from Foum el Hassane, and in 1993 its abandoned walls were still serving the same purpose for patrols by UN soldiers from the MINURSO mission. (Photo David Craig)
83 The partly legible gravestone at Ain ben Tili is that of a brigadier – corporal – of the mechanized Legion cavalry squadron V/1st REC, who died here on 12 December 1934 during joint operations by all the motorized and camel companies in the northern Sahara, including CMA/4th REI. (Photo David Craig)
Preface
THERE ARE SOME VISUAL CLICHÉS so woven into our common culture that a cartoonist can evoke a whole back-story with a few economical lines; they pass down the generations with archaic details unchanged, because they offer a useful narrative shortcut – like the long- bearded castaway under his single palm tree, or the burglar with a striped sweater, domino mask and swag-bag. One of them features the boxy outline of a fort amid sand dunes, and a soldier in a big dark coat and a cap with a white sun-flap. His advance beyond a French system of visual shorthand into that of the wider world can be dated with some accuracy to October 1924, when John Murray first published P. C. Wren’s novel Beau Geste. Almost immediately, the légionnaire joined the cowboy, the explorer/big-game hunter and the brilliantly intuitive detective in the pantheon of popular heroes. The cartoon came to encapsulate a certain military concept: a simple, old-fashioned, rather brutal form of soldiering completely separated from the values and concerns of civilian life. It implied the voluntary endurance of harsh discipline, physical hardship and occasional deadly danger, far from home and for little reward. Although that description has, of course, also applied to much other military experience the world over, for some reason the cartoon légionnaire has maintained his grip on the stereotype.
IN SIMPLE TERMS, THE AIM OF THIS BOOK is to try to explain just what the légionnaire was actually doing – in both a historical and a military context – in that landscape, and in others equally inhospitable: to describe where these places were, for what purpose he was sent there, how France use
d him when he got there, and what happened to him.
It is certainly not a general history of the Legion, of which there are arguably too many already. Since the publication in 1991 of Professor Douglas Porch’s magisterial The French Foreign Legion, A Comprehensive History – to which, like all subsequent writings on the subject, this book owes a great deal – it will be at least a couple of generations before the world needs another. Some histories (though not, emphatically, Professor Porch’s) adopt a tight focus on a chronological listing of the Legion’s battles; rather than simply duplicating that record, I have tried to set the légionnaire in the physical, military and political context of the campaigns in which France employed him (although the political material is necessarily restricted to not much more than a series of ‘bluffer’s notes’). I have also tried – by means of occasional snapshots from individual careers – to suggest the continuity that is central to the character of any seasoned military organization. This book does not pretend to be a work of primary research, for which neither my training nor my circumstances qualify me. It is a synthesis of secondary sources, including some of the obscurer French-language material, which I hope may cast light for English-speaking readers on the Legion’s classic period of colonial conquests.
Our Friends Beneath the Sands Page 3