The French Foreign Legion

by Douglas Boyd

  Running desperately after them, he found them cowering in shell holes and trenches. On 19 June the colonel had again to intervene – after which the Greeks were sent out of the line ‘for training’. The subsequent court martial acquitted Marolf and the battalion was disbanded, its Greek legionnaires being despatched to the Turkish campaign, where those who continued the fight earned no recorded distinctions. More or less simultaneously, men from Alsace and Lorraine who had not declared a wish to serve on the western front were re-assigned to North Africa and other theatres. Losses in action, plus these departures, brought Legion strength in France from four battalions at the beginning of May down to two – with plummeting morale.

  The Greeks, perhaps because they were the first to mutiny, got away with it. The Russian volunteers were less lucky.[262] They included many second-generation Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe living in Paris, who had joined up to avoid incarceration as enemy aliens. Between seven and eleven were court-martialled for refusing to obey orders and shot.[263] After this, recruitment of foreign Jews declined precipitately. Whether there was an element of anti-Semitism is unknown: reliable sources put the number of executions in French army units in 1915 as high as 442, nearly as many as the 528 men who were shot after the great mutinies of 1917.[264]

  Some say that this purge of dissidents is the reason why Legion morale climbed back up from its 1915 low, but it is equally possible that the numbing effect of trench warfare simply sapped the energy to do anything except go on fighting with the expectation of dying – not for France or for anything. The Tommies’ song said it all: ‘We’re here because we’re, because we’re here, because we’re here …’

  Taken out of the line to re-group in July, the remnants of 3rd/1st and 4th/1st were amalgamated into 2nd/1st and 2nd/2nd RM attached on paper to the Moroccan Division. By now they were wearing the new horizon-blue uniform and distinctive ‘Adrian’ steel helmet, with little to distinguish them from other poilus.

  It was about this time that Alan Seeger wrote in a letter home,

  If it must be, let it come in the heat of action. Why flinch? It is by far the noblest form in which death can come. It is in a sense almost a privilege…

  To modern eyes, that reads so high-flown. But that was Alan Seeger. T. S. Eliot, a classmate of his at Harvard wrote when reviewing Seeger’s book Poems,

  As one who knew him can attest, (he) lived his whole life on this plane, with impeccable poetic dignity; everything about him was in keeping.

  Dignity? Yes, but there is also a deep despair in Alan Seeger’s best-known poem. Rendevzous with Death was written shortly before his own death:

  God knows ’twere better to be deep

  pillowed in silk and scented down,

  where love throbs out in blissful sleep,

  pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,

  where hushed awakenings are dear . . .

  … but I’ve a rendezvous with Death

  at midnight in some flaming town,

  when Spring trips north again this year,

  and I to my pledged word am true.

  I shall not fail that rendezvous.

  Seeger’s poem expresses the fatalism of many volunteers when the Legion was thrown into Marshal Joffre’s autumn offensive in Champagne, which began on 22 September with a softening-up bombardment that lasted three days and nights. In a trial run of new technology, it was intended that observers in spotter planes should direct the artillery. Squares of white cloth were issued, to be sewn onto the backs of the men’s capes. Large enough to see from the air, they were supposed to enable the aviators to ‘creep’ the barrage just ahead of their advance. The idea was beaten by the weather on 25 September, when a thick ground fog and heavy rain prevented the spotter planes taking off. Nor could the observers have seen men on the ground, had they done so.

  At 0915hrs, 2nd/2nd RM nevertheless jumped off to relieve the colonial marines who had taken a German battery on the heavily defended Butte de Souain. They then held it while following waves passed through the position. ‘Passed through the position’ is perhaps a euphemism. According to the regimental diary, men of 171st Infantry Regiment broke and started to run until rallied by the legionnaires. ‘Rallied’, may have meant, as on other occasions, that they took their chances with the Germans rather than be shot by the Legion, whose increasing professionalism is born out by their success that day – at least partly due to the lessons that had learned on Hills 140 and 119 in the Artois sector.

  The 2nd/2nd now advanced until disaster struck at 1030hrs as they were attacking the German second line near the ruins of Navarin Farm. Rounds from the French heavy batteries were falling short of the farm, right onto the legionnaires, clinging to the open ground for dear life. The artillery liaison officers desperately fired signal rockets to lengthen the range but, in the smoke and fog, these could not be seen at the batteries. As the surviving liaison officers fought their way back through the communications trenches through the second wave moving forward, men at the point were also taking incoming fire from the German batteries behind the line, some of these being gas shells.[265]

  Writing about his experiences at Navarin Farm three days later US legionnaire Edward Morlae recorded that, immediately the legionnaires had driven the Saxons out of the second line trench, they turned it around. ‘In what seemed half a minute we had formed a continuous parapet 12-14in in height. Between each pair of comrades there remained a partition wall of dust (sic) 10-15 in thick, the usefulness of which was demonstrated by a shell which fell into Blondino’s niche, blowing him to pieces without injuring either of his neighbours to right or left.[266] Morlae also described what it was like to be under a barrage. The terrifying noise, of course, but also,

  … out of the blackness fell a trickling rain of pieces of metal, lumps of earth, knapsacks, rifles, cartridges and lumps of human flesh.[267]

  Unable to write ever again, fellow-American Henry Weston Farnsworth of Groton and Harvard lay dead. Among the many other Legion casualties at Navarin Farm was a former British officer. John Ford Elkington won the Médaille Militaire and was the first British recipient of the Croix de Guerre. On 28 September, he lost a leg while attacking enemy trenches. Fifty years old, he had joined the Legion after being court-martialled and cashiered for cowardice after his battalion had been nearly wiped out at Mons. To persuade the mayor of nearby St Quentin to help the survivors, Elkington had signed a piece of paper saying that he would surrender to the Germans, should they reach the town. The mayor wanted to prevent fighting that would destroy his village, but Elkington’s signature caused him to be found unfit to hold the King’s commission. His legionary anonymity being broken by the publication of the French awards for bravery, King George V had the following notice published in the London Gazette:

  The King has been graciously pleased to approve the re-instatement of John Ford Elkington in the rank of lieutenant-colonel of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment with his previous seniority.

  Elkington was also awarded the DSO.[268]

  One of the 602 other casualties who paid the price for Navarin Farm was Cpl Cendrars, whose badly mutilated arm was amputated the following day, in compensation for which he too received the Médaille Militaire. The 30% attrition rate caused Lt Col Cot to break off the action and request the withdrawal of 2nd/2nd to the rear.

  On 20 and 21 August, RMLE won a notable victory at Cumières, capturing 680 prisoners and fifteen guns at the cost of fifty-three dead and 271 wounded or missing in action. These were considered negligible losses for achieving a unit’s objectives. By the end of 1915 the Legion in France had no spare fat. On 11 November the 3,316 remaining men were re-grouped to become the single Régiment de Marche de la Légion Etrangère, commanded by Lt Col Cot. By then, the surviving volunteer poets and pimps, grocers and graduates had been forged by the fire of battle into an elite fighting machine.

  RMLE was one of only five regiments to be awarded the Médaille Militaire in the war and was the second
most decorated regiment in the French armies, surpassed only by the Régiment d’Infanterie Coloniale du Maroc.[269] Today’s legionnaires of 3 RE who sport the double shoulder lanyard combining the colours of the Legion of Honour and the Croix de Guerre 1914-18 have to thank their predecessors of RMLE who earned the honour with their spilled blood, torn bodies and shattered minds.

  Chapter 24: Rendezvous with death

  France 1916 - 1918

  The strategic purpose of the First Battle of the Somme was to draw German forces away from the hard-pressed French line at Verdun. It began with an unrelenting bombardment along a 60km front from 24 June to 1 July 1916, when 60,000 British and 40,000 French troops went over the top in the first wave, having been assured yet again that the German fortifications and wire had been destroyed.

  Not only had the long preparation forewarned the Germans exactly where to expect the attack, its halting was their signal to emerge from two- and three-level dugouts with reinforced concrete roofs, in time to slaughter the attackers. With British losses standing at 57,450 on the first day, the impetus had been lost at the outset. Before the long drawn-out nightmare ended, it had claimed 704,000 Allied dead against 237,159 German casualties.[270] To the east at the same time, the French lost about 400,000 in the fighting around Verdun, as against German casualties of 350,000 in round figures, so the diversion had been more costly than the main ‘show’.

  On 1 July RMLE was in reserve and moved up to what had been the sleepy little Picardy village of Assevilliers[271] after it had been taken by colonial infantry troops. After digging in, they waited three days for orders. Across the line, only 2km away from Assevilliers lay the heavily fortified village of Belloy-en-Santerre, honeycombed with German defences above and below ground, where Seeger had his rendezvous.

  He and his fellow volunteers filed up to their jumping-off points about a kilometre from the German forward positions at dawn on 5 July. A Legion bugler sounded Le Boudin and the Charge. The heavily laden legionnaires had no chance of charging anywhere, but heaved themselves over the parapets and walked in open order across the sloping ground leading up to the shall-battered village in an unnerving calm broken only by an occasional shout and a few distant explosions.

  The defenders watched them coming, waiting in disciplined silence until the first men were a mere 300 metres distant before opening up with machine guns. Two minutes later, hardly a man was still standing in 11th Company on the right flank. Those still able to move were rallied by a Swiss, Capt Tscharner, under whose command they seized the open sewer just south of the village, in which odiferous but life-saving cover they watched the second wave going down under the horizontal hail of machine gun fire. Among the casualties spun round and knocked to the ground was the Harvard poet who had joined up ‘for the glory’.

  Foreseeing his death when Spring comes back with rustling shade, Alan Seeger had got the season wrong but been right about the location being on some scarred slope of battered hill. He lay gut-shot and writhing in agony in a shell-hole within sight of the sewer, alternately screaming for water and crying for his mother until he died. The terse, sanitised citation beside his Médaille Militaire in the Legion museum at Aubagne reads,

  This young legionnaire, an enthusiastic, energetic and passionate lover of France was a volunteer enlisted at the beginning of hostilities who gave proof of admirable courage and spirit and fell gloriously before Belloy-en-Santerre on 11 July 1916.

  At Bel-Abbès, 24 July 1924, Colonel Boulet-Desbareau, Commandant 4th Foreign Regiment.[272]

  Seeger’s comrades had to leave him where he lay. Climbing out of the sewage ditch, they found themselves in a two-hour house-to-house killing match to drive the Germans out of Belloy with grenades and bayonets. Nightfall found them trying desperately to re-fortify the ruined village in certain expectation of German counter-attacks. In one day RMLE had lost twenty-five officers and 844 men, representing one third of its strength. When it was relieved next morning, the legionnaires took to the rear with them 750 prisoners – a tally that would have been higher, had not many Germans feared surrendering to the Legion after all the horror stories spread about it in Germany before the war.

  In their next engagement on the night of 7 July another 400 men were badly wounded or killed. During one week on the Somme, half the régiment de marche had accompanied Seeger to his rendezvous.

  In December 1916 Gen Robert George Nivelle replaced Joffre as C-in-C. In May he had succeeded Gen Philippe Pétain as commander of 2nd Army at Verdun, where his use of creeping artillery barrages in two highly successful counter-attacks enabled the French to retake nearly all the ground gained by the Germans over the previous six months. He was promoted for the second time in seven months – over the heads of many senior generals – because his well-argued philosophy of frontal attacks in coordination with massive artillery bombardments impressed the politicians, including Britain’s Prime Minister David Lloyd George. His subordinates, however, were waiting for him to fall flat on his face – which he did metaphorically with the Aisne offensive, in company with 120,000 French casualties.

  As so often with replacement generals who have been impatiently waiting their turn, Nivelle was convinced that he knew what to do. The key to unlocking the stalemate on the western front, he said, was to stop Joffre’s ‘nibbling away’ at the enemy line, and make one colossal attack. As would Navarre’s plan in 1954, this sounded good to his friends in high political places.

  To its misfortune, the Moroccan Division including RMLE was a flange on Nivelle’s key, which started to turn in the German lock on 16 April with 800,000 men walking across No Man’s Land on an 80km front stretching from near Soissons in the west to east of Reims. Everything had been pre-planned: the exact tonnage of ammunition in each calibre calculated, as was the number of meals, the timing of the barrage and the rhythm of the advance.

  The objective allocated to RMLE next day was a crucial strongpoint defended by interlocking machine-gun nests, on a spur called Le Golfe near Holy Name Hill. Below it a flat killing ground, over which they had to advance, wheel left and encircle of the village of Aubérive, cutting the Germans there off from re-supply. However, so complex was the network of trenches, tunnels and dug-outs that the Germans named it das Labyrinth. Impregnable to a frontal attack, it was to be taken by 1st Battalion under Maj de Sampigny attacking northwards and 3rd Battalion under Maj Deville bearing east to overwhelm the Golfe spur, with 2nd Battalion under Maj Wadell held in reserve.

  Unless the machine guns on Le Golfe were knocked out first by artillery, it was a suicide mission, but in order not to forewarn the Germans, there was to be no heavy barrage. Instead, trench mortars and 37mm cannons were to be used tactically with local commanders able to call down fire from 75s and 105s situated further back, as and when necessary. Liaison was to be by signal flares and runners. Two things in favour of the attackers were the issue to the Division of less give-away khaki uniforms and the weather, which looked set on fair the previous evening.

  Just after 0100hrs the 1st Battalion started moving up along the communications trenches to the front line, followed by 3rd battalion. The weather broke, with the chalky mud in the flooded trenches smearing white streaks on their khaki trousers. Ordered over the top in strong wind and pouring rain at 0445hrs on 17 April – the peculiar timing meant that the German artillery only began its barrage, prepared for a start on the hour, ten or fifteen minutes into the action – 1st Battalion slid and slipped through the icy mud in the darkness, followed by the men of 3rd Battalion. Gaps in the French wire had been made in the night by wiring parties, but passages through the German entanglements still had to be cut by sappers with wire-cutters – all this in driving wind and rain and under fire from machine guns and German artillery.

  About 0700hrs, Lt Col Duriez, the rather overweight colonel of RMLE, was mortally wounded and passed command to Maj Deville. The defenders’ heavy fire swept the flat ground below them, by which time the advance had splintered into small grou
ps of men belly-crawling through the mud, clinging to what little cover they could find under the harsh light of magnesium flares while they reconnoitred ways between the enemy strong-points. Reaching Birch Wood, 3rd Battalion cleared it with bayonet and grenade at point-blank range, often recognising friend from enemy by voice alone in a downpour of sleet turning to snow.

  Unable to hold the first line, the Germans withdrew to the second with the legionnaires in close pursuit to avoid the barrage bound to hit the lost trench. The nearer to Aubérive they got, in the Byzance, Dardanelles and Prinz Eitel trenches, the more desperate the resistance of the Germans opposing them with machine guns, stick grenades and flame-throwers – used for the first time against British troops at Hooge on 30 July 1915. By dusk, sixteen hours after jumping off, they had taken the south side of the salient in close-quarter fighting, during which each man used up ten or more grenades.

  By dawn on 19 April the Aubérive strongpoint had been so pummelled by the French artillery that the Germans had withdrawn, leaving clothing, ammunition and even a canteen of hot coffee, eagerly swallowed by men who had had no clean drinking water for three days and nights. One of the company commanders, Capt Fernand Victor-Marie Maire, himself the son of a former legionnaire, decided that in such a situation one extra risk made no difference to one’s personal chances of survival, but might make all the difference between swift success and slow attrition. Instead of waiting for the softening-up barrage to cease, he led his men across the open ground between their position and the German trenches before the ‘friendly’ shells had ceased falling, with the result that they were in the German first line before the defenders had emerged from their deep dug-outs.