Story

The role and history of African skirmishers

Algeria, 1956, Al-Frah post (Algiers region).

Tirailleur Thiam Omar, originally from Thiès, (7th company of the 2/13th regiment of Senegalese riflemen) photographs the photographer of the army service.

© ECPAD

Text by: Tirthankar Chanda Follow

6 mins

The history of African skirmishers during the two world wars remains poorly known.

For a long time, the role they played in the ranks of French troops was almost forgotten in France.

Moreover, the memory of the skirmishers was not sufficiently highlighted, even on the African continent: for some, they were heroes, for others, they were traitors in the service of the colonial power.

However, soldiers from Africa participated in crucial battles, suffering many losses on European soil. 

Advertising

Read more

It was while singing “

” that they landed on August 15, 1944 on the beaches of Provence.

These soldiers, estimated at between 100,000 and 120,000, whom the military hierarchy called " 

 ", were from the colonies.

Their history dates back to the early days of the establishment of the French Empire in Africa.

As early as 1830, France began recruiting soldiers from its colonies.

The decree formally creating “ 

 ” dates from July 21, 1857. It was signed by Napoleon III.

These soldiers, who came from all over black Africa, were often " 

 ", appointed by the village chiefs who thus got rid of intruders of all kinds.

Their numbers continued to increase: they rose from 1,000 in 1867 to 15,000 men in 1913.

The creation of a corps of so-called “ 

” skirmishers initially responded to manpower needs for the colonial wars.

The French colonial Empire would perhaps not have existed without these black troops who took part in all the operations of conquest of territories carried out by the Republic throughout the 19th century in Africa and Madagascar.

They gradually replaced the basic European soldiers who resisted the tropical climatic conditions badly.

"The Dark Force"

Initially imagined as auxiliary forces for the colonization enterprise, these African soldiers quickly found themselves in the theaters of operations in Europe.

Algerian troops from the Kabyle Zwava tribe notably distinguished themselves in Bazeilles during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870.

The growing dependence of the metropolis on the battalions of Africa did not, however, lead the French government to include Africa in the call for mobilization on the eve of the war in 1914. This is explained by the controversy surrounding the issue at the time.

Proponents of the participation of colonial troops in wars in Europe, such as Colonel Charles Mangin, author of the best-selling book

(1910), believed that Africa was a formidable reservoir of soldiers for the metropolis.

Others went even further and justified the recruitment of black soldiers into European wars by arguing that Africa owed France a blood debt.

" 

 , ”affirmed the Minister of the Colonies at the time, Adolphe Massimy.

African skirmishers pose with British soldiers during World War I in Soissons, France, 1914. The Print Collector/Print Collector/Getty Images

However, this camp favorable to the colonial soldiers had in front of it military specialists who were frankly skeptical as to the effectiveness of the employment of these troops on the European fronts.

But these reserves were swept away by the enormous needs in men of the total war that was the First World War.

From 1916, a real hunt for recruits was set up to fill the empty ranks.

The management of the colonial territories put pressure on the village chiefs, organizing veritable raids.

Riots broke out here and there.

Clemenceau's France changed tactics and sent the Senegalese Blaise Diagne in 1917 to persuade the youth of black Africa to enlist massively to save " 

".

Many Africans died on the battlefields of the First World War.

Historians speak of 72,000 combatants from the former French Empire who died between 1914 and 1918. Of the 8 million soldiers mobilized for this conflict, the mobilization of French colonial troops would have involved 180,000 people.

The Second World War

Conscription became compulsory in the colonies from 1919. The French government called on Africa for help as soon as a new war with Germany was imminent.

The numbers of the African contingents (Algerians, Moroccans, Tunisians, Malagasy and African skirmishers combined) who fought alongside the French during the Second World War amounted to nearly 300,000 men in 1939-1945.

During the decisive Battle of France, in May and June 1940, 10,000 black soldiers were killed and 7,500 out of 11,000 died in POW camps.

Many of these African prisoners, officers and simple soldiers, were summarily executed by the Germans, who considered them subhuman.

Despite the harsh weather,

But from the fall of 1944, when France was gradually liberated, the colonial skirmishers were demobilized from the 1st Army, the name that the “B” army of General de Lattre de Tassigny had taken in the meantime.

In his war memoirs, General de Gaulle invokes the need for this " 

 " on the grounds that the skirmishers, exhausted by several years of fighting, suffered a morale crisis and were unable to resist the cold. in the Vosges.

Many skirmishers resented this unilateral decision.

On November 30, 1944, more than a thousand of these soldiers, demobilized and regrouped in the Thiaroye camp near Dakar, revolted to demand payment of their arrears of pay and their demobilization bonuses.

The mutiny was violently repressed, causing 35 deaths and many injuries among the former skirmishers.

The events of the Thiaroye camp have long represented for Africans the very example of colonial injustice and the ingratitude of the metropolis towards the native soldiers who had nevertheless given the best of themselves for its liberation.

Crystallization

The disappointment of these soldiers deepened a little more when the French Parliament adopted in 1959 the so-called "crystallization" decree blocking the amount of pensions, retirements and allowances paid by the French State to veterans and civil servants from the colonies. .

It will be necessary to wait for the release of the film

(2006) by Rachid Bouchareb, which returns with accuracy and rigor to the sacrifices of the former skirmishers, for the French legislators to decide in 2007 to decrystallize pensions.

These have also been upgraded so that African veterans of the French army finally receive the same amount as French soldiers engaged in the war.

Except that in the meantime, the majority of skirmishers are already dead.

Our selection on the subject:

• To read : 

→ Memory on the move (webdoc)

→ The skirmishers from A to Z

→ History of the skirmishers: chronology

→ The skirmishers and France: a century and a half of common history

Newsletter

Receive all the international news directly in your mailbox

I subscribe

Follow all the international news by downloading the RFI application

• MORE AFRICA

• History knowledge

On the same subject

International reporting

The 70th anniversary of the Allied landings in Provence

Commemoration of August 15, 1944

Landing in Provence: August 15, 1944, an unexpected success

France

France: tribute to African skirmishers who died for the Republic during the two world wars