Our Friends Beneath the Sands

by Martin Windrow

  At the frontier posts he noticed how Galliéni inspired the young subalterns, energizing and encouraging them to use their own initiative, with the result that they accomplished a great deal with minimal resources. A Lieutenant Garelly of the Legion enthused about the Tho tribesmen, backward by comparison with the Delta Annamese but prouder and more honest. A year later, when Lyautey was applying these lessons in the 3rd Territory, he would write of a Tho chief he met near Na Sa, where the people of four or five hamlets had been forced for years to take refuge on a crag honeycombed with caves, reachable only by climbing with the aid of the lianas that draped the rockfaces. In 1894 – 5 some 110 women and children from this district had been kidnapped by Chinese slavers, and these Tho only dared come down to the valley to bury their dead according to custom. The chief was eager to cooperate – but only if he could be sure that the French were there to stay: [He] seems very intelligent and energetic; I spent the evening talking to him; he clearly understands what we want and is only anxious to help us; but heaven grant that no blunderers may come and reject his help, failing to appreciate the value of his assistance! It is a terror to me lest the great effort we are now making may have no result, because the right men may not be put in the right places.

  In the same season Lyautey would write of another important tribal headman, a ‘turned’ bandit whose conversion had been a real coup for the soldiers. He walked for eight hours to present for payment a chit for requisitioned rice given him by Colonel Audéoud of the Naval Infantry, only to be brusquely turned away by a commissary: Audéoud’s home base was Cao Bang, therefore the receipt must be presented there. The chief had never heard of Cao Bang, which was eleven days’ march away along unknown trails. This kind of dull idiocy enraged Lyautey; what would happen the next time a hungry patrol, lost in those hills, asked for help?58

  THE EDGE OF GALLIÉNI’S 2nd Territory snaked along the Chinese frontier for nearly 200 miles, all the way from Bo Gai north-west of Cao Bang down to a point south-east of Lang Son. Its depth west from the frontier was up to 65 miles, so it embraced the northern highlands of the Yen The (see Map 7). The mountains east of Tuyen Quang and north of Thai Nguyen were infested with bandits, but they were also cut by the meandering demarcation line between the 2nd Territory and the civilian-administered Delta, where the civilians’ clumsy attempts to buy off the brigands with subsidies complicated Galliéni’s freedom of manoeuvre in the troubled south-west of his territory. Galliéni convinced the new governor-general, Emmanuel Rousseau, to authorize part of his planned operations; the monsoon was threatening, but in April – May 1895 four columns converged towards the reported hideout of the rebel chief Ba Ky. Lyautey was one of the 4,000 men who marched south-west from Pho Binh Gia, acting as Galliéni’s chief-of-staff. His work buried him in the minutiae of coordinating troop movements, planting logistic depots, building bridges and stringing telegraph wire; it also confronted him with the difficulty of controlling detached Naval Infantry commanders who indulged their personal ambitions ‘to an unimaginable extent’. Of the four column leaders, two thought only ‘of stealing victory from the other . . . manoeuvring to evade the colonel, to bring about an opportunity for some sudden stroke while sheltering themselves behind an accomplished deed’. However, Lyautey’s staff work was sweetened by a moment for which he had longed for nearly twenty years: for the first time, he at last heard shots fired in anger. Following the pursuit of bandits fleeing from a blazing fort he heard bullets whistle past his head; it was not much, but it was better than nothing.59

  When the columns were dispersed again Galliéni managed to hang on to some extra troops, and led 2,000 men through unexplored jungle south-west of Bac Kan, between the Cau and Gam rivers.60 On 11 May, Lyautey described the operation to his brother from the thankful ease of a convoy drifting down the Clear river from Tuyen Quang to Viet Tri, while a squad of almost naked légionnaires bathed their bruised and cut feet over the sides of the sampan. The column had had to wade along streams and cut trails through almost impenetrable bush, finding abandoned and overgrown villages in fertile valleys whose names the guides could not even remember. The monsoon was on its way and heavy rain fell most nights; they started before dawn, making only about 2 miles an hour before having to halt for the hottest part of the day. There were no birds to be heard in this ‘accumulation of warm, damp rottenness’, but myriads of insects, and the jungle floor crawled with ‘every horrible creature in creation – centipedes, leeches, ants – one is simply devoured’.

  During these weeks Lyautey learned valuable lessons in field command. In terrible country, with only three days’ hard-tack and ‘tinned monkey’ left and with the so-called guides avoiding his eyes, Galliéni would give his evening patrols and ambush parties their instructions, then take a ‘brain bath’, settling down for an hour to read the latest book by the Italian sensation, Gabriele d’Annunzio: ‘They understand their orders – it will be a couple of hours before they are in position. Never send messengers when [detached troops] are on the move – they probably wouldn’t find them, and anyway it would only cause confusion.’ Galliéni would later reminisce to Lyautey about this march: ‘Do you recall the ascendancy we had over our men at the end of the last expedition, the links that were forged between them and ourselves, without any speeches . . . merely by the impression we made on them by sharing their dangers, leading them with confidence, and sparing them the thousand-and-one small regulations that are so distasteful to the French soldier?’

  On 6 May they found a pre-planted food cache at Dai Thi on the Gam river, and the next day they reached Chiem Hoa post, held by Lieutenant Pierson and his half-company of légionnaires; then they force-marched downstream for Tuyen Quang, arriving only hours before the monsoon finally turned the valley into an impassable swamp. Lyautey explored the little cemetery where Major Dominé’s légionnaires had left their bones ten years before, and traced the Chinese trenches still faintly visible among the huts that now clustered around the old fort.61

  FOR THE REST OF 1895 Lyautey was stuck in Hanoi, serving once again as acting chief-of-staff to General Duchemin, and still moaning in letters home about the civil administration. (One of Galliéni’s shortcuts, to get roofs over the large food stockpile needed at That Khe during the rains, had involved licensing, and then taxing, Chinese gambling-dens. This provoked a senior civil servant to exclaim ‘I would prefer to see a million francs’ worth of stores lost than to think that they had been saved by irregular methods!’.)62 Lyautey’s staff work was praised by the commander-in-chief, who solicited an invitation to one of his dinner parties. The major’s house in Hanoi, lovingly decorated with the fruits of antique-buying forays, had a reputation as the height of colonial chic, and he provided his guests not only with fine food and wines but with music and opium (he did not himself indulge, but felt that the scent of the smoke enhanced the ambience). He enjoyed his position as a liaison between Duchemin, the governor-general and Galliéni, and when the latter came back to Hanoi he stayed in Lyautey’s house, where he could speak freely.63 After three years wrestling with official inertia in Tonkin the colonel felt that he needed some time at home. After a final campaign in the southern Yen The in October – December, Galliéni booked his passage home for 10 January 1896. Lyautey wrote to his sister:You will not expect me, I am sure, to write much about my grief on separating from the chief to whom I owe everything since I came here. He disclosed horizons of which I had never suspected the existence, associated me with stirring work, and gave me once more an object in life. I really cannot imagine what Tonkin will be like without him . . . But what is quite clear from my last interviews with my dear colonel is that I am certain to be with him again, either through his return here . . . or else through his sending for me to join him elsewhere. 64

  In fact, the three months after Galliéni sailed for France would bring Lyautey more useful command experience and personal excitement than he had ever known, and would cement his growing respect for the Legion.

 
; 1 Paris, May 1871: Rue Peyronnet, Neuilly. (Fuller captions, and picture credits, will be found on pages xxix – xxxvi.)

  2 The dock warehouses of La Villette

  3 Tonkin: the citadel at Bac Ninh, March 1884

  4 Tonkin: French Navy gunboat on the Clear river, December 1884

  5 Tonkin: defences of rebel fort at Hue Thué, February 1891

  6 Tonkin: Tonkinese Skirmishers and légionnaires near Cho Trang, 1892

  7 Sud-Oranais: camel convoy on Oued Zousfana border, c.1900 – 03

  8 Two ragged Legion scouts in the open desert

  9 Camels loaded with military water kegs

  10 Figuig: the Taghla pass, looking north

  11 Figuig, 1903: sergeant and légionnaires of 2nd Foreign Regiment

  12 View south and west from the walls of Taghit fort

  13 The Great Western Sand-Sea – view eastwards from Taghit fort

  14 Père Charles de Foucauld with Captain de Sousbielle, commanding at Taghit, c.1902

  15 Légionnaire of a Mounted Company with his heavily loaded ‘brêle’

  16 Lieutenant Christian Selchauhansen, mortally wounded at El Moungar

  17 El Moungar: mass grave of the légionnaires killed on 2 September 1903, with later monument on the mound beyond.

  18 The fortified rail station at Ben Zireg in the Sud-Oranais

  19 Colour party and departing detachment of the 1st Foreign at Sidi bel Abbès station, c.1911

  20 Casualty evacuation by mule cacolet, mule litter and camel litter

  21 Legion Mounted Company camp at Safsafte, c.1913

  22 Légionnaire of ‘la Montée’ sharing a waterbottle with his mule

  23 Legion Mounted Company post under construction.

  24 North face of the gara at Boudenib, looking south from across the Oued Guir in 2007

  25 Southern side of blockhouse on the Boudenib gara, 2 September 1908

  26 French post at Guercif, on the Moulouya river in eastern Morocco

  27 Légionnaires at work on the fort established at Taourirt in 1910

  28 The Chaouia, 1908: French marching ‘square’ crossing the plains

  29 Legion firing line at Settat on the Chaouia, 15 January 1908

  30 Moroccan Arab tribal horsemen

  31 Postcard celebrating VI/1st RE’s return from the Chaouia to Sidi bel Abbès, August 1908

  32 Postcard publicizing the courage of Sergeant Panther, 1913

  33 Légionnaire in full marching order, c.1913

  34, 35 A Cuban and an Austrian légionnaire, c.1913

  36 Legion barrack room at Sidi bel Abbès, c.1913

  37 Legion platoon halted on the high plains, c.1913

  38 Legion lieutenant colonel with Algerian captain of Spahis

  39 General Baumgarten’s staff take lunch in the field, c.1913

  40 Taza, 14 July 1914: the colour-party of 1st RE

  41 Taza, June 1914: Major Met, I/1st RE, being lifted from an ambulance.

  FRENCH CONTROL WAS STILL TENUOUS in the northern part of the 3rd Territory, a V-shaped wedge of hills and mountains about 70 miles on a side and 60 miles across, between the valleys of the upper Clear and Gam rivers north of Tuyen Quang. Penetration had been by boat, and outposts – many of them held by native auxiliaries – had been planted up the valleys, on the Clear river as far north as Ha Giang about 15 miles short of the Chinese frontier, and on the Gam up to Bao Lac (see Map 7). The Galliéni method had not been applied here; the placing of outposts was governed purely by river access rather than to create any systematic network of control, and there were no armed villages, protected markets or roads. Galliéni’s work to the east had driven large numbers of bandits into this triangle, and Galliéni’s old comrade Colonel Vallière, now commanding the 3rd Territory, was eager to start applying the formula to these badlands.

  In January 1896 he was given extra troops from the now quieter 2nd Territory, and was also given Major Lyautey as his chief-of-staff for the operation. (That month Lyautey received a delightful telegram from his brother giving him early notice that his appointment to the Legion of Honour was soon to be gazetted.) On 7 January he was on his way upriver to catch up with Vallière at Bac Kem for a drive west towards Ha Giang. However, when he reached Tuyen Quang on the 9th, he learned that a concentration of some 1,200 bandits south-east of Ha Giang had dispersed in God knew how many directions, and at least 400 of them, led by an old Black Flag named Hong Cau, were raiding and burning their way south down the upper Clear river. Vallière, with 3,000 men – the great bulk of the available troops – was out of touch somewhere in the wilderness west of Bac Kem, and knew nothing of this. Whichever route the brigands followed, rich and peaceful valleys lay virtually undefended before them, and the only staff officer on the spot to take decisions was Major Lyautey.

  For the next three weeks, while struggling up and dashing down river, he orchestrated the concentration and movements of the tiny forces of Legion and Tonkinese Skirmishers that he was able to scrape up from scattered posts. He ordered 100 légionnaires up from Viet Tri, mixed them with Skirmishers in the usual one-third/two-thirds ‘shandy’, and began moving 60 men here, 90 men there – scrabbling to get a few dozen rifles into position to guard vulnerable trails, while sending others into the forest to hunt for signs of the enemy’s location and direction. He had to move his makeshift chess pieces around very approximate maps, in response to constantly changing intelligence, and hampered by slow and unreliable communications. He sent off orders with no way of knowing if they had arrived or been acted upon before some new rumour threatened to change the situation entirely. General Duchemin sent him messages of confidence, but not the troops he needed. Telegraph lines were being cut, auxiliary outposts wiped out and river convoys massacred; sometimes signal lamps worked, sometimes they were blinded by the weather, and he ran out of the carrier pigeons that were his only means of contact with Colonel Vallière, somewhere out there in the mountains to the north.

  The night of 13 January 1896 was a low point: Lyautey was at Bac Muc when the bloodstained légionnaires of Captain Béranger’s half-company struggled in, led by Lieutenant Pauvrehomme with a smashed shoulder. They were carrying their dead captain and 10 wounded, after being forced to leave another 11 dead on the site of the ambush that had nearly done for them all; the senior officer of Tonkinese Skirmishers (tactfully identified only as ‘Major B’) had lost his pith helmet and was delirious with sunstroke. Lyautey could do little for the wounded except give them opium pills for the pain – 4 had probably fatal belly and back wounds. Leaving a lieutenant with 150 men to hold Bac Muc, Lyautey had to race back to Tuyen Quang, where only 50 guarded his headquarters; his feeding of handfuls of men up and down river and across country often left dangerous gaps which had to be filled by some new ingenuity.

  Hanoi then ordered him back to Bac Muc to supervise personally the withdrawal of the garrison (which he knew was madness); but when he got there in pouring rain on 20 January he found that the Greek Lieutenant Prokos had arrived with his 35 légionnaires and Lieutenant Talpomba’s 65 Skirmishers, so now he had 250 rifles. The next day he managed to rendezvous with 150 men led east from the Red river by Major Bailly; it had taken Lyautey eight frantic days to gather under his hand a manoeuvre force of just 400 men, but under the circumstances they looked to him like an army. On 22 January he was able to send detachments to guard the vital passages of the Clear river north and south of Vinh Thuy; he thought he would now be able to await the arrival of Colonel Vallière’s main force, but new reports of booty-laden bandits moving north towards Chiem Hoa across on the Gam river shook the kaleidoscope once again. Lyautey had to organize detachments under Major Bailly and his own old classmate Captain Girardot and send them into the forest between the two rivers, while he went up to Vinh Thuy to organize telegraph lines.

  On 28 January he finally had solid word from Vallière: the colonel had smashed the strongest Chinese band north-east of Ha Giang in three days’ fighting, and Lyautey need no l
onger fear what might come downriver from his north. Indeed, he could now join Vallière for the mopping-up phase of the campaign, as the bandits were squeezed between Bailly and Girardot from the south and Vallière from the north. With a light heart, he laid aside the responsibility of senior command and headed up river for Ha Giang with a twelve-man escort; it had all been an education, but what he yearned for was more front-line experience.65