Our Friends Beneath the Sands

by Martin Windrow

  Knight also reported that the issue of rifles gave the hungry, unpaid conscripts the opportunity to feed themselves by robbery in and around the capital. The royal guard had Remingtons, and about half the conscripts rusty Sniders, with ten or fifteen rounds per man; since there were good stocks of ammunition in the arsenals, this miserly allocation – too small to allow any useful practice – suggests distrust on the part of their government. The rest of them carried flintlock muskets or even bows and arrows.15

  The mention of European officers raises once again a subject that obsessed some Frenchmen. The suspicion that Britain must be conspiring with the leaders of any native state that resisted them, and that any native army with some modern weapons must be led by white instructors, was exaggerated but not always wholly mistaken. The Hova regime had indeed employed a number of British officers, led from 11 November 1894 by a Colonel C. R. St Leger Shervington; however, all but one of these had left the island on 17 April 1895, in frustration at what they saw as the frivolous lethargy of the Hova ministers. In a letter to the United Service Magazine, Shervington claimed that for five months his team worked hard on reports and contingency plans for a government that ‘would not move even an ammunition box. Promises of compliance with our advice were numerous but never fulfilled . . . The most trivial circumstances were seized upon as excuses for delay.’ The ministers clung to their authority over all decisions but gave little time to their military responsibilities, constantly absenting themselves for days on end on private concerns. When the advisers first threatened to resign it provoked a brief spurt of activity, but this did not last long: ‘The most categorical promises were always forthcoming, but there everything ended.’16

  BY 5 JUNE THE ADVANCE GUARD – the 1st Legion and 3rd Algerian battalions of the Algeria Marching Regiment, 40th Light Infantry and Malagasy Skirmishers – had reached and reconnoitred the north bank of the Betsiboka bend close to its confluence with the Ikopa. This would be the end of the line for riverboats, and the Betsiboka had to be crossed and secured for eventual bridging. A Hova position guarded a deep, dangerous ford, and the advance guard had only a single lighter to ferry them across in batches, a couple of hundred at a time; even so, the next day the Hovas withdrew after a brief long-range firefight, and the soldiers slogged on towards the site of the planned depot at Marololo. They themselves were being supplied – quite inadequately, and only with difficulty – by just 300 pack-mules.17

  By late May the French were already learning the wisdom of the boast by Queen Ranovalona that she would rely upon her strongest generals, Hazo and Tazo – ‘the forest and the fever’. The 50-mile cart road being shovelled with such effort from Marovoay to the Betsiboka crossing was mainly the task of the 200th Line, 13th Naval, Hausas and Réunion Volunteers, and the heat, humidity and lethal mosquitoes were already thinning the ranks of the white regiments. Marching with full packs, Private Silbermann’s company took three days to cover 14 miles, and 40 of 65 men had to drop out along the way. The accompanying Chasseurs of the 40th Light were falling out in groups of 10 and 15 together, while others were visibly shuddering with fever as they stumbled on. He recorded that when the survivors reached Androtra village they found many already sick, and one légionnaire killed himself. One day’s march round the flank of a mountain covered less than 3 miles, and another légionnaire hanged himself from a tree; there would be a third successful and a fourth failed attempt on 2 June. Suicide in the Legion was associated with the utter monotony of wilderness outposts, not with active campaigning, and these references suggest that there was something specially hellish about the jungle march from Majunga.18

  Once beyond Ambato, Silbermann was among those told to take one of the big local canoes all the way back downstream to Androtra to bring food up through the rapids. The trickle of provisions coming up by boat and pack-mule had already reduced the advance guard to half rations, and what happened to arrive was a lottery. Silbermann wrote of killingly hard labour on a diet of nothing but salted rice, and of soldiers sleeping where they fell despite the mosquitoes – sodden, filthy, and too exhausted to put up tents or cook. Somebody told the Alsatian légionnaire alarming stories about the number of fever cases being buried at field hospitals further north, particularly French lignards of the 200th.19

  ON 9 JUNE THE ADVANCE GUARD reached the foot of Mevatanana, a 300-foot massif overlooking Suberbieville; this had to be taken in order to safeguard the depot site at Marololo, and the Hovas were entrenched on the heights with gun batteries covering the only two possible approaches. The 40th Light and II/RMdA advanced, but as soon as a few melinite shells exploded near the batteries, all the defenders took to their heels.20 In the abandoned batteries the troops found three brand-new Hotchkiss guns, two small brass cannon, more than 200 Snider rifles, much ammunition and some dynamite. The advance guard marched into Suberbieville the same day; this was not a village but a barracks, only partly burned by the fleeing Hovas, and the légionnaires topped up their haversacks with such small necessities as candles, matches and some tinned food. They did not find any soap, however, so they had to continue washing their clothing with river-water and sand (they were marching in khaki and white fatigues, their aching backs braced by winding their long blue sashes tightly around the midriff from breastbone to groin).21

  This easy victory marked the end of Metzinger’s first phase of forced marches, and the advance guard halted until 18 June; this astonished the Hovas, one of whom told E. F. Knight that the white men were dying ‘like rotten sheep’ down on the pestilential lowlands. The advance guard had achieved the original timetable in terms of the map, but the logistic backup and the progress of the rest of the corps had fallen far short. The Marololo depot now had to be built up, and every available man had to work on a 9-foot wide cart road leading up from the Betsiboka crossing, where the sappers finally finished building a bridge on 14 June. The 200th Line were still far back at Marovoay (where their Colonel Gillon had just died), and many small detachments had been skimmed off along the line of communication, so the road via Marolo to Suberbieville and forward to Tsarasaotra would be the work of the Algeria regiment and 40th Light Infantry alone – working hungry, since the only meat to be had was from a few stray Hova oxen.

  For the Legion the worst nightmare began on 12 June, and it would continue for nearly three months (though the engineer shovels only reached them on 27 June, and for the first two weeks they had to make do with the light camping tools carried by every squad). Down beside the Betsiboka and Ikopa the men were often labouring waist-deep in the red swamps; on 15 June, Lieutenant-Colonel Lentonnet of the Algerian Skirmishers wrote in his diary that they could no longer count the fever victims, and that whoever had decided to send the Lefèbvre cart to Madagascar was a murderer.22 On 17 June General Duchesne arrived at Suberbieville, together with a field ambulance unit that would soon be swamped with tottering ghosts hollowed out by dysentery, and delirious victims of blackwater fever.

  Duchesne sent a reconnaissance in force to Tsarasaotra, where the 1,000-foot Beritzoka massif loomed over the route south. A large tented camp was visible on the heights of Beritzoka; its commander, General Rainianjalahy, is believed to have had 1,200 men in the front line and perhaps 3,800 more nearby. On 30 June, General Metzinger sent just four weak companies of the 40th Light and Lentonnet’s turcos up the slopes. The Hova artillery fell silent as soon as French mountain guns opened up from 2,500 yards, and when the clambering Algerians gave them a couple of Lebel volleys at 200 yards the whole force fled. They kept going for fully 40 miles to Andriba, abandoning artillery, rifles, ammunition, food, 450 tents and all the commander’s documents. French casualties for both actions on 29 – 30 June totalled an officer and a corporal killed, 2 officers and 14 rankers wounded. E. F. Knight was told by one Hova that they were terrified by the smokeless-powder ammunition of the Lebels – ‘invisible death . . . there was magic in it’.

  On 15 July a camp was installed on the stony summit of Beritzoka; the jungle was
behind them at last, and south from here the view was of red clay hills thinly skinned with turf, linked by steep, rocky ridges and saddles above deep river gorges. On the 18th, when Private Silbermann was sent back down to Tsarasaotra with a ration party, he arrived to find 5 funerals in progress; another 4 blanket-wrapped corpses were buried that evening, and a medical orderly told Silbermann that at least 10 more would be joining them over the next 48 hours. The Legion’s Lieutenant Gustav Langlois recorded, ‘All day our men make crosses [and] dig graves . . .’.23

  IN THE HOVA CAPITAL OF ANTANARIVO on 10 July the prime minister, Rainilaiarivony, had sent for the last British officer in the city. This sole exception to the departure of the European instructors was Colonel Galbraith Graves, late Royal Artillery, a former adviser who had resigned over an unsuccessful pay demand in 1890. Graves would later publish in the United Service Magazine an account of his service with the Hova army in July – September 1895, complete with transcripts of his correspondence with the prime minister. A subsequent acidly phrased letter to the magazine from the previous chief instructor, Colonel Shervington, does not present Graves in a good light, but it is hard not to sympathize with his frustration at the ‘hopeless, thankless task’ of trying to get what he calls an ‘army (sic)’ to fight.24

  When Rainilaiarivony re-employed the Englishman and ordered him to the north-west front to advise General Rainianjalahy, Graves agreed on condition that the government undertook to release to him the men and equipment he asked for. The prime minister took all of five days to consider this, but agreed on the evening of 15 July. At another meeting on the 18th Graves also demanded freedom to appoint his own staff; the prime minister said he would consider the names submitted, but every Malagasy officer Graves requested was denied him, for political reasons. Rainilaiarivony had no clear idea of the troops or weapons already in the field, so Graves declared that he would take 5,000 men plus the artillery that was sitting uselessly in Antananarivo. The prime minister dismissed this out of hand – if the guns left the capital there would be a rising among the people. Graves finally argued him into releasing four 12-pounder Hotchkiss guns and three Gardner machine guns and, unable to wait any longer, he left Antananarivo on 23 July – without his requested staff, but with a promise that the 5,000 Hova troops would be sent after him. (Hardly any of them were; in this and other failures it is tempting to suspect the hand of the prime minister’s secretary Rasanjy, who is known to have been in secret communication with the French.)25

  On 30 July and 4 August, Graves sent back reports of his preparations at Malatsy on the northern edge of the Andriba plateau. He had dammed a stream to make the approaches more difficult, ordered entrenchments and battery positions dug, and had emplaced ‘two revolver cannon with 30 rounds only, four Hotchkiss 12-pdrs with 278 rounds, one 3-pdr Hotchkiss with 700 rounds’, and his three machine guns. He had at most 3,000 men to hold these positions, with just three artillery officers, and since all the so-called gunners were illiterate and innumerate none of them could use the tangent sights of the artillery pieces. He appealed to the prime minister to send reinforcements, particularly including artillery officer cadets. Given the lack of competent crews, the shortage of ammunition was almost irrelevant.26

  On 7 August, Graves asked for gear to be sent up for moving the guns he had with him, citing plans that he had drawn up and got approved five years previously. The prime minister’s replies to this and all his other letters acknowledged his reports but ignored his requests for ammunition, artillery officers and even for sandbags. Some reinforcements had now straggled in; Graves had about 4,300 men to hold twelve positions over a front of more than 5 miles. However, he still lacked rifles for a quarter of them, and complained that most of the others did not even know how to load their weapons, let alone how to fire them effectively. He now had 9 field and 2 revolver guns, but only an average of 31 rounds for each, and 8 machine guns with an ungenerous 4,500 rounds. Captured porters had told him that in one French camp 70 white men had been buried in eleven days; Graves had sent out raiding parties to shoot up the road-camps at dawn, but had heard nothing. These raids were never carried out, and on 18 August he wrote that his orders to the outposts to move forward and bring the French advance guard under fire had also been ignored.27

  AS THE CART ROAD INCHED FORWARDS up the steep slopes to the Andriba plateau, trailing its fringes of forlorn crosses, a continuous link was established over the 155 track-miles from Majunga as far as the Beritzoka heights, giving General Duchesne direct communication with his base camp. Some of the rest of the infantry now finally caught up with the advance guard, and ‘Daddy’ Voyron’s 2nd Brigade passed through Metzinger’s 1st, reclaiming its Malagasy battalion of the Colonial Regiment on the way. On 16 August it fought its first skirmish with Hovas at the Malatsy positions guarding the gateway to the Andriba plateau. For what happened next we have the luxury of both Duchesne’s report and Graves’ account of 22 August.

  ON 19 AUGUST THE FRENCH RECONNOITRED the steep approaches, and the next morning they advanced in three columns. Graves sent urgent orders to his gun emplacements to open fire on the little white lines and blocks flowing up and down the bare red-grey slopes, and eventually two artillery officers obeyed. French guns then sent some 50 shells into the Malatsy defences in reply; only two melinite rounds burst inside a parapet, and not a single Frenchman was within 2,000 yards of Graves’ strong emplacements, but all the infantry round his No.7 Redoubt simply decamped, and the others, seeing this, began to follow them. By 8pm only one position was still manned, and Graves had no option but to fall back about 10 miles to Tafofo: ‘I shall do my best, but if your soldiers will not stand, even behind 18 feet of solid earth, then I am afraid my task will be a difficult one.’ From 24 August onwards Graves, near despair, began to use the word ‘cowardice’ openly, and while he doggedly continued to try to place obstacles in Duchesne’s path his letters became little more than rants:If anything can be done to make this army fight, the first thing is a whole[sale] sweep of the officers . . . How can you expect me to compete against one of the first powers of Europe with an army officered by men who can neither read nor understand marks?28

  THE SITUATION FROM GENERAL DUCHESNE’S PERSPECTIVE was equally worrying. He had reached the halfway point and had his foothold in the edge of the highlands; but he could not gamble on the hope that the Hovas would never stand to fight as he penetrated into their own homeland, with an enfeebled force at the end of dysfunctional lines of supply. Getting the iron carts forward was a miserable task that took its toll of mules and men alike; many carts had run away on gradients, taking their load and their mule over the edge of drops. Others were simply dumped when the troops took the draft-mules for pack work (for which they were neither trained nor harnessed). Duchesne had urgently requested 1,000 Abyssinian pack-mules; only 430 could be found, so 800 more Algerian mules were sent out in June. There were yet more delays on the trail while the new Abyssinian pack-mules were sent forward and exchanged for the original Algerian animals, and the latter were put back between the shafts of the carts (for which the Abyssinians were not trained) – so any given échelon of the supply train now needed not simply enough mules, but the right sort of mules. The combat troops were harsh in their criticism of the ‘Kabylie’ muleteers, but these poor devils suffered just as badly as the French, and were more or less left to fend for themselves.29

  Duchesne would report that it was on 4 August that he made up his mind to form a Light Column, of the fittest men carrying their supplies on pack-mules only, to make a dash across the plateaux for Antananarivo. However, this attempt could not be made for another month or more, while 250 tons of supplies and expected reinforcements were brought up to the Andriba plateau. By then he would be six weeks behind schedule, and the first violent mountain storms might usher in the rainy season any time from mid-October. In the meantime the road-building had to continue until 6 September, at a continuing cost in lives. Lieutenant Langlois wrote that by the end of Augus
t the four Legion companies had dwindled from 200 to 70 – 75 men each; the battalion then received 150 reinforcements from Majunga, so that 450 légionnaires answered the rollcall on 1 September, but that was still only just over half their starting strength. The two Algerian battalions of the RMdA had lost only some 25 per cent compared with the Legion’s 60-plus per cent; but by this time disease had reduced the 40th Light from 800 to 350 men, and not one of the survivors was strong enough to be picked for the flying column. The 13th Naval had 1,500 of its original 2,400 marsouins left, so could contribute the best part of two battalions. Unsurprisingly, the two black battalions of the Colonial Regiment were in better shape, since the majority of the RC’s 600 casualties had been among the white settlers of the Réunion battalion.30

  The Light Column faced a forced march of 120 miles, at first through steep hills cut by rocky defiles and marshy valleys full of cactus and trees. Duchesne hoped they could average 9 miles per day, but depending upon the resistance it might take as long as twenty days to reach Antananarivo. On 9 September the men were paraded and a final selection was made of 4,240 of the fittest. Even so, Lieutenant Langlois wrote that the sight of his légionnaires almost made him weep – pale, downcast, in rags of uniforms and gaping boots, with feverish eyes glowing in the shadow of the sun helmets that seemed too large for their skulls. The I/RMdA provided 19 officers and 330 légionnaires, the two battalions of Algerians 35 officers and 1,086 turcos; with cavalry scouts, engineers and two batteries of mule-guns, this regiment would form General Metzinger’s 1,800-strong advance guard for the Light Column. For the sake of speed they would take only 255 pack-mules carrying rations for about five or six days; this meant that the légionnaires would still have to march under the crushing weight of their full packs. (One of the fresher Legion officers, who had come up with the reinforcements, was the battalion adjutant-major, Captain Paul Brundsaux – he of the forked beard, who had already survived tours in Tonkin and Dahomey.)31 The advance guard was to march on 14 September, followed the next day by Voyron’s force mainly composed of a scraped-together Composite Regiment of about 1,300 other infantry judged fit to march. Finally, on 17 September, what Duchesne was pleased to call his ‘reserve’, under Colonel de Lorme of the Colonial Regiment, would bring up the rear with the bulk of the mule-train and another 830 mixed infantry.32