Our Friends Beneath the Sands

by Martin Windrow

  IN THE LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY, the French position in Dahomey was tenuous; there were trading stations on the coast at Porto Novo in the east and Cotonou further west, but any expansion was hampered by commercial and diplomatic competition from the British in Nigeria to the east and the Germans in Togo to the west. In 1864 a French protectorate over Porto Novo had been agreed; in 1878 King Gléglé granted the French the right to collect customs duties there; and in April 1882 a resident officer of Naval Troops was installed at Porto Novo. In 1889, the year Gléglé was succeeded by his son Behanzin, the French – citing various dubious trade treaties – also occupied Cotonou and Ouidah. They received the allegiance of the coastal chief Toffa, and demanded renegotiated terms for the export of the palm oil on which Behanzin’s economy rested. The resentful king (whose name was phonetically rendered by Frenchmen as Bec-en-zinc, ‘Zinc-nose’) determined to punish Toffa and confront the Europeans, at a time when the French resident was backed only by a half-company of Naval Infantry.

  In February and March 1890, Behanzin sent troops to attack the Fabre & Régis trading warehouse and the telegraph station at Cotonou. They were driven off only with some difficulty by Lieutenant Compérat and his handful of men, and on 17 April Behanzin massacred and burned villages around Porto Novo. Lieutenant-Colonel Terrillon of the Naval Infantry was shipped down the coast from Senegal, and on 20 April he advanced some miles from Porto Novo with 350 Senegalese Skirmishers, three mountain guns and about 500 of Toffa’s warriors as a scouting screen. After being pushed back by a much larger force of Dahomeyans and losing 8 killed and 53 wounded, Terrillon was replaced by Lieutenant-Colonel Klipfel, who began fortifying Porto Novo, but Behanzin declined to assault the town.

  In October 1890 a peace was concluded that left the French in possession of Cotonou and Porto Novo, with a usefully indefinite buffer zone between them and the Fon heartland up-country.44 Following these encounters with French breech-loading rifles, Behanzin made efforts to re-arm his crack units (including Amazons) with modern weapons. Over the next two years he acquired at least 2,000 breech-loaders of assorted types from German traders on the Togo coast, and about 500 of these were American repeaters – Winchester and Spencer magazine carbines. To his small artillery of old ships’ cannon on improvised carriages, the German entrepreneurs also added six Krupp breech-loaders, and five old French mitrailleuses captured in 1870.45

  On 27 March 1892 the gunboat Topaz, carrying the French governor on reconnaissance up the Ouemé river, was fired upon. Paris decided to tie up this loose end, and on 30 April gave full civil and military powers to a Naval Troops officer from Senegal, Colonel Dodds. From his arrival on 18 May he began to assemble an expeditionary column of nearly 3,000 men. As an afterthought, on 17 July the War Ministry announced that – most unusually for this theatre of operations – it was to include a marching battalion of the Legion.

  WHEN WORD WENT ROUND THE ALGERIAN GARRISONS that a bataillon de marche was to be formed, Corporal Frederic Martyn was among the first to volunteer; of more than 4,000 légionnaires in Algeria just 800 were needed, and competition was intense.46 The Republic’s hardest cases became choirboys overnight, sick men tried to fake their way out of the infirmary, NCOs argued over the precedence to which a few extra days in their rank might entitle them, and officers begged and lobbied shamelessly. That same month there had been a call for just four officers to lead a half-company to the Niger river country; although the odds of being chosen were still slim, a whole battalion’s-worth of appointments (about 20, plus some staff slots) made it worth a try.47 It was in hope of this kind of opportunity that officers had chosen a North African posting, rather than putting up with the repetitive processing of intakes of Metropolitan conscripts at home – the back-biting pettiness of garrison life and the stuffy social round of provincial towns, enlivened once a year by rigidly scripted manoeuvres. This was why they endured the dreary loneliness of Algerian outposts: the hope of a chance to escape daily supervision, see combat, test their skills, take risks, and earn medals and promotion – simply, to exercise their calling, and to be at last the soldiers they had dreamt of being when they were growing up in the aftermath of ‘the Terrible Year’. At Géryville, every officer of II/2nd RE volunteered; the most senior in each rank was chosen, and they selected the subordinates and the men they wanted (this may have weakened company cohesion, but it guaranteed the quality of the expeditionary unit).48

  Command of the battalion went to Major Marius Paul Faurax of 1st RE, chosen from among no fewer than sixty applicants. Then 43 years old, he had volunteered into the ranks of the Line in 1867 and was promoted sergeant before his twentieth birthday. The Franco-Prussian War had brought him three wounds, a battlefield commission and, by the age of only 22, admission to the Legion of Honour and a captain’s stripes. He lost one of them during the post-war ‘revisions’, and after long years spent re-climbing the ladder of peacetime seniority he had volunteered for Tonkin, where he had led a Legion battalion in 1889 – 90. Faurax was under no illusions about the coming campaign, and shortly before embarking he wrote to a friend that ‘Most of us setting out will never return, but we are all in good heart, full of confidence, and determined to justify the superb reputation of the Foreign Legion’.49

  On 2 August 1892 the battalion marched out of the Quartier Viénot, led to the railway station by Minnaert’s pioneers and the band, and escorted by the colonel, the colours and the rest of the garrison. Their send-off from Sidi bel Abbès was mirrored by their welcome in Oran; the whole town was en fête, and during the three days’ wait caused by a shipping delay they enjoyed many admiring glances, slaps on the back and free drinks. They finally sailed on 7 August, aboard the Mytho and Ville de Saint-Nicolas; they were allowed ashore while the troopships were coaled at Dakar on the 14th – 16th, and finally anchored off Cotonou on the 25th. There they disembarked ‘in the exciting and haphazard manner peculiar to the surf-bound West African coast’.50

  THE COASTLINE OF DAHOMEY is low and level, pounded by the Atlantic surf and guarded by treacherous sandbanks; ships had to anchor 2 miles off shore, which made all landings via lighters and small boats perilous, despite the 300-yard timber jetty built out from the beach at Cotonou. The expert Mina boatmen had to time their runs through the breakers and sandbars carefully; they were skilled swimmers, but if their boats were swamped they and their passengers might be taken by the sharks that haunted the shallows.51 There was no town at Cotonou; behind the beaches lay a network of mangrove swamps and brackish lagoons, and it was through these that the battalion made the 20-mile boat trip east to Porto Novo, the base for the expedition. Here the légionnaires were issued with sun helmets and lightweight khaki jackets, and on 27 August they were inspected by the expedition commander, whom Corporal Martyn was surprised to discover was a mulatto.

  Born of a European father and an African mother at St Louis de Sénégal, Alfred Amédée Dodds had graduated from St Cyr in 1864 and reached the rank of full colonel in the Naval Troops by the age of 45 years. ‘He looked us over in a way that told us that he was a soldier to his fingers’ ends, and many were the expressions of satisfaction that we had got such a leader. Our satisfaction did not diminish, either, when we got to know him better.’52 Dodds already had nearly 2,000 troops assembled north of Porto Novo, half of them a marching battalion from the 3rd Naval Infantry Regiment with Naval Artillery support; these marsouins from Rochefort had the new Lebel repeating rifle, but seemed very young – they had been chosen for the campaign by lottery. 53 The third main element was a marching battalion drawn from the 1st and 2nd Regiments of Senegalese Skirmishers; other black troops were a half-battalion of Hausa Skirmishers and a squadron of mounted Senegalese Spahis.

  Behind the coast the country sloped gently upwards towards an interior covered with thick tropical forest; in places this was true primary jungle with a high canopy, in others secondary jungle choked with almost impenetrable bush and tall elephant grass. About 50 miles inland the forest gave way t
o the lama, a great stagnant swamp covering some 400 square miles; this guarded the southern approaches to a more open plateau where Behanzin’s capital, Abomey, rose from the scrubland. Although the 80-odd miles from the coast to the capital looked short on the map, in such terrain the only practicable route for a European force with animals, artillery and a large train of African porters was along two sides of a triangle: up the banks of the navigable Ouemé river as far as Poguessa, and then west across country to Abomey (see Map 6). The climate was exhaustingly hot and humid, and the marshy bush was a cauldron of malaria, yellow fever and more exotic diseases. After a lifetime in West Africa, Dodds knew that the main threats to his men were the exhaustion of moving across country and the disease that inevitably followed. While such casualties were unavoidable, they could be reduced by providing large numbers of porters – at first, enough to assign one to carry the rations and camping kit for every two white soldiers. Some of the stores could also be carried part of the way upriver aboard the expedition’s two stern-wheel gunboats, Opale and Corail.

  LEAVING A RESERVE of about 900 men at Porto Novo, the expedition struck inland at the end of August with around 2,700 troops, including non-combatants, plus apparently about 3,500 porters. Apart from a diversionary force of two Senegalese companies sent directly north-west for Abomey across country, the infantry were divided between three battalion groups of about 900 troops each. The Legion marched on 1 September, bringing up the rear on the first leg of the route up the east bank of the Ouemé. They quickly left the palm groves and village maize-fields behind and plunged into mangrove swamps, elephant grass and bush, which they had to cut with machetes to enlarge trails far too narrow for large numbers of burdened men, artillery, horsemen and ration beefs. Lieutenant Jacquot reckoned they made 2 miles an hour, but Martyn wrote that it was nearer 4 miles in a day. Chopping the bush stirred up ferocious ants and jiggers, and although the soldiers carried only their haversacks, waterbottles, rifles and 150 rounds (the légionnaires still used their ‘de Négrier’ chest-pouches) the wet, stifling heat was insupportable. At about 5pm each afternoon they halted to clear the jungle for a square camp; at night the howling monkeys and other jungle noises made the sentries jumpy, and mosquitoes attacked in their millions – each morning the troops were made to choke down a bitter draft of quinine before they were given their coffee.

  It was eight days before the Legion caught up with the rest of the force, and the battalion was then divided up. The column was now to progress in mixed groups of Senegalese, Naval Infantry and légionnaires, reminiscent of the tactics in North Africa; Groups 1 and 3 had one Legion company each, and Group 2, under Major Faurax, two companies (including Corporal Martyn’s).54 On 11 September the column resumed their march, and on the 15th they reached a patch of slightly higher ground overlooking the village of Dogba on the opposite (west) bank, where they camped, to work on improving the track. On the 16th a strong reconnaissance further upriver to Oboa found no sign of the enemy, and the next day Group 1 moved up to camp there. Groups 2 and 3 remained opposite Dogba, and on the night of 18 September Major Faurax’s men were warned to be prepared for a pre-dawn start.

  IMMEDIATELY AFTER ‘REVEILLE’ sounded at 5am on 19 September, while the men were still knuckling their eyes, shots were heard from an outlying picket of Naval Infantry. The men rushed to their piled arms, fumbling half-dressed in the dark; there were a few more shots – and then the marsouin picket came panting into camp, with what seemed to be thousands of dark figures dashing through the trees close behind them, roaring war cries.

  Dawn was the favourite time for Behanzin’s soldiers to attack – the hour when the Fon slave-raids burst upon some sleeping village. They had marched for days through the forest, wearing their drab brown or grey war tunics and carrying their food and sleeping mats on their heads in pack-frames. Well-practised in stealthy night movement and sudden changes of direction, they had evaded the French patrols to approach the camp from the east in their usual horned formation, led by a screen of scouts camouflaged with cloaks and upswept collars of long grass. Some riflemen had already climbed into treetops overlooking the camp, and as the mass of warriors charged the thornbush fences, these started sniping down at the white and khaki blurs milling around between the tents. Others covered the rush from the edge of the trees – Private Lelièvre described them kneeling to fire, or sitting on little wooden stools they had carried with them. The French later reckoned their attackers to be between 3,000 and 4,000 warriors.

  They were within 100 yards by the time Lieutenant Jacquot snatched up his revolver and stumbled out of his tent in his shirtsleeves to join his half-naked légionnaires, who were already blazing away into the shadows with the first rifles they could grab. On the east side the abatis held up the rush, giving Major Faurax’s officers and buglers the bare moments they needed to get their légionnaires into line. Amid a pandemonium of African war cries, crashing rifle-fire, bugle-calls and bellowed orders, Corporal Martyn was firing as fast as he could reload; the dark figures cannot have made easy targets, since the maize-silk they used to wad their muzzle-loaders made dense black smoke rather than the usual white. The Navy gunners fired their first canister rounds at 100 yards’ range, and the Hotchkiss quick-firers on Opale began to spray the trees above the infantry’s heads. The attackers checked, then switched the weight of their advance to the flanks; Jacquot’s men kept them outside the hedge, but in his sector Faurax had to order a charge to drive them back from the tents.

  Corporal Martyn found himself fighting waves of machete-wielding warriors face to face; the 5-foot reach of his bayoneted Gras saved him, and he recalled ‘throwing them off to make room for another, like a farmer forking hay’. The légionnaires were called back so as not to get trapped in the crowd, and after a moment the Fon came on again fearlessly, carrying themselves with the arrogance of conquerors and ignoring the heaps of their dead piling up around their feet. They were taller and stronger than their subject tribes, very dark-skinned, with parallel ritual scars around their deep-set eyes. After a few more volleys the Legion went forward again with the bayonet, harried all the time by the riflemen on the ground and in the trees; French losses would have been much higher had the Fon been better shots. They seemed to have mastered basic fire-and-movement tactics, with some groups making flank attacks or giving covering fire to rushes by others; but they mostly fired from the hip – in slave-raids the shock of continuous noise sufficed, and since they always greatly outgunned their tribal enemies they had never placed much importance on marksmanship. Nevertheless, even those still armed with muskets used massive charges of their weak gunpowder, and at this short range their bullets, handfuls of shot and slugs of bar iron were perfectly effective killers.

  Now that the sun was up, the aim of those with modern rifles became noticeably better; officers were easy to pick out, and Major Faurax was hit – he kept going, was hit again, and fell. Corporal Martyn wrote that légionnaires presented arms spontaneously as their popular commander was carried past, and that Colonel Dodds called out that he would pay 25 francs for every sniper shot out of a tree – ‘We’ll fetch ’em down for nothing, Colonel!’ A third Dahomeyan charge was led by a few women warriors armed with repeaters – the first time that Martyn mentioned these ‘Amazons’, although they traditionally spearheaded Fon attacks. A sergeant-major of Senegalese Skirmishers pressed forward, foolishly brave, and was struck down and dragged off into the bush; his body, horribly mutilated, was found later (when it doomed two captured Amazons to summary execution).

  At some time after 9am the warriors finally gave up and filtered away into the forest, which was shelled blind in order to speed them on their way. Lieutenant Jacquot wrote that when the surroundings of the camp were searched after this battle of Dogba some 170 dead or dying Dahomeyans were found (Martyn reckoned about 300, and another source claims that as many as 832 corpses were finally gathered up and burned). French losses were 45 dead and 60 wounded in all, of which the Legion lost ab
out a dozen killed; they were buried deep, and their graves hidden. The senior captain, Battreau of 1st Company, took over the Legion battalion. Marius Faurax died on one of the riverboats before dawn the following morning; the first bullet to hit him had torn open his large intestine, releasing faecal matter into the stomach cavity, and death from peritonitis was quite inevitable. That day all the troops turned to and began to build an earth and tree-trunk fort, which they named after him. 55

  BEHANZIN SENT AN ENVOY to threaten Dodds with ‘the shark who will eat the French’, but seemed anxious to discuss terms.56 The French commander rejected the offer to parley, and on 27 September the column resumed its exhausting march up the east bank of the Ouemé, making only about 3 miles a day as they hacked out a path; now each camp had to be entrenched for defence by men already worn out, and on most nights heavy rain fell. After a brush with a Dahomeyan rearguard at the ford of Tohoué on the 31st, the column crossed to the west bank.57 From here, Dodds decided to march not directly towards Abomey but via the more southerly town of Kana, the kingdom’s religious capital; his porters were deserting in some numbers, and he was obliged to reduce the baggage train.

  Early on 4 October the force was advancing in two parallel columns, still near the river on their right, when they came up against thousands of Behanzin’s troops drawn up for battle near the village of Gbede.58 Martyn reported that although Behanzin’s Krupp guns opened an inaccurate fire, their ineffectiveness did not wholly cure some Frenchmen of their habitual paranoia that British or German instructors might be working with the enemy. However, it was a traditional Dahomeyan foot-charge that actually drove the leading Senegalese horsemen back. A Hausa company were then badly shot up from the cover of elephant grass and also retreated in confusion, thus exposing the Senegalese Skirmishers to a rush by a ‘battalion of Amazons’, but they stood their ground until the Naval Infantry came up. The Legion were initially held back in reserve, and watched with respect as the women warriors hurled themselves on the tirailleurs and marsouins. Martyn wrote that they were armed with Spencer carbines and machetes, and handled their repeaters with more skill than their male comrades; they are also known to have carried short, adze-shaped sharpened hoes at their belts, as lethal as tomahawks for close work. They were naked to the waist, wearing only a short blue divided kilt, cartridge belts and a red fez with an eagle feather, and their officers sported a human jawbone mounted on a brass plate strung to hang over the crotch. They fought to the death, and would not surrender: ‘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 . . .’59