Senegalese Tirailleurs

Tirailleur from the Bambara people (Mali) (engraving, 1890)

The Senegalese Tirailleurs were formed in 1857 by Louis Faidherbe, governor general of French West Africa, because he lacked sufficient French troops to control the territory and meet other requirements of the first phase of colonisation. The formal decree for the formation of this force was signed on 21 July 1857 in Plombières-les-Bains by Napoleon III. Recruitment was later extended to other French colonies in Africa. During its early years the corps included some former slaves bought from West African slave-owners as well as prisoners of war. Subsequent recruitment was either by voluntary enlistment or on occasion by an arbitrary form of conscription.

Muslim area of the national cemetery in Amiens (Saint-Acheul) – in the foreground is the tomb of a soldier of the 45e régiment de tirailleurs sénégalais killed in the battle of the Somme

In the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War, the Senegalese tirailleurs continued to provide the bulk of French garrisons in West and Central Africa. Their overall numbers remained limited. However, in anticipation of the First World War, Colonel Charles Mangin described in his 1910 book La force noire his conception of a greatly expanded French colonial army, whilst Jean Jaurès, in his L'armée nouvelle, suggested that the French Army should look elsewhere to recruit its armies due to the falling birthrate in mainland France.

A company-sized detachment of tirailleurs sénégalais took part in the conquest of Madagascar (1895), although the bulk of the non-European troops employed in this campaign were Algerian and Hausa tirailleurs.[5] Regiments of tirailleurs malgaches were subsequently recruited in Madagascar, using the Senegalese units as a model.

In 1896, a small expedition consisting mainly of 200 tirailleurs sénégalais was assembled in Loango (French Congo) under Captain Jean-Baptiste Marchand. This "Marchand Mission" took two years to cross hundreds of miles of unexplored bush until they reached Fashoda on the Nile. Here they encountered British and Egyptian troops under Major-General Kitchener, who had just defeated the Mahadi's Dervish army near Khartoum. While the Fashoda Incident raised the possibility of war between France and Britain, tribute was paid to the courage and endurance of Marchand and his Senegalese tirailleurs by both sides.

By a decree dated July 7, 1900 the Tirailleurs sénégalais, the Tirailleurs indochinois, Tirailleurs malgaches and the "marsouins" were no longer under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of the Navy and Colonies, but were reclassified as Troupes coloniales, different from the mainland elements Metropolitan army and separate from the Armée d’Afrique of the Maghreb. The anchor badge of the Troupes coloniales was worn on the collar from 1914, and when the Adrian helmet was adopted in WW1, an insignia with the anchor behind a flaming grenade was worn by the Tirailleurs Sénégalais.

During the early 1900s, the tirailleurs sénégalais saw active service in the French Congo and Chad while continuing to provide garrisons for the French possessions in West and Central Africa. In 1908, two battalions of tirailleurs sénégalais landed at Casablanca to begin nearly twenty years of active service in Morocco by Senegalese units. On 14 July 1913, the 1e regiment de tirailleurs sénégalais paraded their standard at Longchamp, the first occasion upon which Senegalese troops had been seen in metropolitan France. New flags were presented to the 2e, 3e and 4e RTS at the same parade.[6]

The flag of the 43rd Battalion of Senegalese soldiers decorated with the fourragère, who fought in the recapture of Fort Douaumont in October 1916

Review of Tirailleurs by General Guillaumat. Photo taken at the village of Vatokhorion, in the municipality of Florina in Greece, on 7 March 1918.

There were 21 battalions of Tirailleurs Sénégalais (BTS) in the French Army in August 1914, all serving in either West Africa or on active service in Morocco.

With the outbreak of war 37 battalions of French, North African and Senegalese infantry were transferred from Morocco to France. Five Senegalese battalions were soon serving on the Western Front, while others formed part of the reduced French garrison in Morocco. The 5th BTS formed part of a French column which was wiped out near Khenifra, during the Battle of El Herri on 13 November 1914, with 646 dead. The 10th, 13th, 16th and 21st BTS subsequently saw heavy fighting in Morocco, reinforced by 9,000 additional Senegalese tirailleurs brought up from French West Africa.[7]

On the Western Front the Tirailleurs Sénégalais served with distinction at Ypres and Dixmude during the Battle of Flanders in late 1914, at the Battle of Verdun in the recapture of Fort de Douaumont in October 1916, during the battle of Chemin des Dames in April 1917 and at the Battle of Reims in 1918. Losses were particularly heavy in Flanders (estimated from 3,200 to 4,800)[8] and Chemin des Mains (7,000 out of 15,500 tirailleurs engaged).[8]

In 1915 seven battalions of Tirailleurs Sénégalais were amongst the 24 infantry battalions the French sent to the Dardanelles as the Corps expéditionnaire d'Orient.[9] Total French casualties in this campaign reached 27,000 but the Senegalese and regular Colonial Infantry were noted for the high morale that they maintained in spite of losses that reached two out of three in some units. [10] The Senegalese tirailleurs particularly distinguished themselves in the attack during the initial French landings on the southern shore of the Dardanelles.[11] After the withdrawal from the Dardanelles and the redeployment to the Macedonian front, further Senegalese battalions were deployed in this theatre of war.[12][13]

Tirailleurs at a hivernage camp at Fréjus in March 1916

Tirailleurs in the German colony of Kamerun, which was occupied during the Kamerun campaign

French military policy towards the use of African troops in Europe changed in 1915. The French high command realized that the war would last far longer than they had originally imagined. They therefore authorized a major recruitment drive in West Africa.[14] As a result, a further 93 Senegalese battalions were raised between 1915 and 1918, of which 42 saw service in France itself. The usual practice was to bring together battalions of white Colonial Infantry (les marsouins) and African Tirailleurs into regiments mixtes coloniaux.[15] (Four such regiments were formed from the seven tirailleurs and five battalions of Infanterie Coloniale deployed at Gallipoli.[9])The harsh conditions of trench warfare were a particular source of suffering to the un-acclimatized African soldiers and, after 1914/15, the practice of hivernage was adopted: withdrawing them to the south of France for training and re-equipping each winter.[16] In spite of their heavy losses in almost every major battle of the Western Front, the discipline and morale of the "Colonial Corps" remained high throughout the war. [17]

Fréjus in southeastern France became the main centre for hivernage (wintering) for the Senegalese Tirailleurs.[18] The town also contained segregated hospitals with images of African village life painted on the walls.[19]

In November 1915, a large anti-French uprising broke out among the tribes in the regions of present-day Mali and Burkina Faso. The reasons for the discontent came from the forced military recruitment of soldiers. These regions were subject to significant recruitment of colonial troops to serve on the front lines of the First World War.[20] The last resistance was suppressed only in September 1916. During the suppression of the uprising, over 100 villages were destroyed by French colonial troops.[21]

At the 90th anniversary commemorations of the battle of Verdun, then-president Jacques Chirac made a speech evoking the 72,000 colonial combatants killed during the war, mentioning the 'Moroccan infantry, the tirailleurs from Senegal, Indochina (Annam and Cochinchina), and the marsouins of the troupes de marine.'

Senegalese Tirailleurs amongst the Honour Guard being inspected by Paul Tirard and Jean Degoutte 8 April 1920

The armistice of November 1918 had provision for the allied Occupation of the Rhineland and France played a major part in this. Between 25,000 and 40,000 colonial soldiers were part of this force. German attempts were made to discredit the use of non-European soldiers by the French during this occupation, as had earlier been the case during World War I. Although no hard evidence was produced, many campaigners claimed that the colonial soldiers – and the Senegalese in particular – were responsible for a substantial number of rapes and sexual assaults. Children resulting from these unions were stigmatised as "Rhineland Bastards" and subsequently suffered under the Nazi race laws.

A 1930 replica of the Great Mosque of Djenné (Mali), built in the French town of Fréjus for the use of colonial soldiers

During the War the much reduced French garrison in Morocco had consisted largely of battalions of Tirailleurs Sénégalais, who were not affected by the divided loyalties of locally recruited troops and who could be more readily spared from service on the Western Front than French troops. On 13 April 1925 the Rif War spilled over into French Morocco when eight thousand Berber fighters attacked a line of French outposts recently established in disputed territory north of the Ouerghala River. The majority of these posts were held by Senegalese and North African tirailleurs. By 27 April 1925 39 out of 66 posts had fallen and their garrisons massacred, or had been abandoned. Faced with what had become a major war the French increased their forces in Morocco to approximately 100,000 men. West African tirailleurs continued to play a major part in subsequent operations in both the Spanish Protectorate (until 1926) and Southern Morocco (until 1934). In one of many engagements, the 2nd Battalion of the 1st Regiment of Tirailleurs Sénégalais won 91 citations for bravery during fighting around Ain-Gatar on 22 June 1926.

Senegalese Tirailleurs serving in France, 1940

1942, Brazzaville, French Equatorial Africa. A tirailleur who has been awarded the Cross of Liberation by General Charles de Gaulle

On the eve of the Second World War, five regiments of Tirailleurs Sénégalais were stationed in France in addition to a brigade based in Algeria. The 2e division coloniale sénégalaise was permanently deployed in the south of France due to the potential threat from Italy. It was also reasoned the climate was more suitable for African soldiers.[22] This deployment of Tirailleurs, outside of their regions of recruitment and traditional peacetime service, arose because of the heavy casualties of the First World War. This had affected the number of metropolitan Frenchmen in the military service age group of twenty to twenty-five by more than half.[23] Up to 200,000 tirailleurs were active during the war, which constituted about nine percent of the French forces.[24]

During the Battle of France, the Senegalese and other African tirailleur units served with distinction at Gien, Bourges, and Buzancais. German troops, indoctrinated with Nazi racial doctrines, expressed outrage at having fought against "inferior" opponents.[25] Along with other war crimes of the Wehrmacht, German forces massacred captured tirailleurs on multiple occasions during the 1940 campaign. The first incident occurred on 24 May 1940, when fifty wounded soldiers of the 24e Régiment de Tirailleurs Sénégalais were executed by Wehrmacht troops after having held up the German advance for two days at Aubigny.[26] More massacres followed the German crossing of the Somme from 5 June onward. On June 5, at Hangest-sur-Somme, a number of tirailleurs were executed after surrendering. One French officer recounted: “The enemy then appears, furious, beside himself, ready to finish us off all together. An extremely engaged intervention by a German officer prevents the troops from executing the European officers, but there was no indigenous man alive anymore after a few moments.”[27]

Between 7 and 10 June the 16e and 24e Régiments de Tirailleurs Sénégalais, part of the 4e Division d'Infanterie Coloniale, fought a series of battles along the Somme at Angivilliers, Lieuvilliers, and Erquinvillers. A large portion of the division became encircled during the course of the action. On the night of 9 June near Erquinvillers the Germans repeated the practice of separating white and black prisoners: “The Europeans . . . had to sit in front of a ravine under the barrels of machine guns while about fifty surviving Tirailleurs were led to a nearby place and shot with a machine gun. We, the officers, were able to confirm this later when we were led onto trucks that drove us toward captivity.”[27] On 9 June, the 24e Régiment de Tirailleurs Sénégalais launched a successful counterattack at Erquinvilliers, breaking the German encirclement and allowing part of the 4e Division to escape.[28] On taking each of the towns, German troops executed captured black soldiers, killing between 150 and 500.[27] On 11 June, roughly 74 Senegalese tirailleurs and white officers of the 4e Division d'Infanterie Coloniale were executed near Cressonsacq in the Bois d’Eraine massacre.[28]

One of the best-recorded incidents, photographed by the German perpetrators, was the Chasselay massacre which took place on 19 June 1940 near Lyon. Soldiers of the 25e Régiment de Tirailleurs Sénégalais surrendered to the German troops in this area after exhausting their ammunition. Following the surrender, some fifty tirailleurs were separated from their white officers and ordered to stand in an open field, where they were machinegunned by German tanks.[29] The tanks then drove back and forth over the bodies of the dead tirailleurs to ensure there would be no survivors.[30] On the same day, a further 14 tirailleurs were executed at Sillé-le-Guillaume.[30]

German troops were also responsible for non-lethal abuses of Senegalese tirailleurs. In many cases, German soldiers tortured captured black soldiers, and often refused to bury the bodies of colonial troops. It was common for captured tirailleurs to be denied food, water and medicine by their German captors.[31]

The Senegalese Tirailleurs saw extensive service in West Africa, Italy, and Corsica. During 1944, they assisted in the liberation of southern France. The 9th DIC (Colonial Infantry Division) included the 4th, 6th, and 13th Regiments of Senegalese Tirailleurs, and fought from Toulon to the Swiss border between August and November 1944.

After the Liberation of France, the Tirailleurs concluded their service in Europe. They were replaced by newly recruited French volunteers,[32] on the order of Charles de Gaulle. This process became known as blanchiment.[24] Faced with U.S. restrictions on the size of the French forces, de Gaulle chose to incorporate the various partisan groups within the structure of the official army.[33] The complicated process of discharge and repatriation of the Tirailleurs, coupled with the refusal of France to pay wage arrears due to released prisoners of war, led to several incidents of violence. The most notable of these was the Thiaroye massacre, in 1944, during which the French killed between 35 and 300 (sources vary) Tirailleurs.[24] Though the Tirailleurs Sénégalais had been promised that in recognition of their service they would become equal citizens of France, this pledge was not kept following the end of hostilities.[24]

Le Place du Tirailleur Sénégalais with the Monument Demba et Dupont in front of the Dakar train station in 2012.

The 24e Regiment de Marche de Tirailleurs Sénégalais, comprising two battalions, served in the Indochina War between 1946 and 1954. Several independent battalions of Tirailleurs Sénégalais fought in the same theatre of war.[34] The Tirailleurs Sénégalais comprised up to 16 percent of the French forces during the Indochina War.[24] The Tirailleurs also served in the suppression of the 1947 uprising in Madagascar against French colonial rule .[24] In 1949 there were still nine regiments of Tirailleurs Sénégalais in the French Army, serving in West Africa, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Indochina.

During the Algerian War the Tirailleurs Sénégalais saw extensive active service from 1954 to 1962, mainly as part of the quadrillage – a grid of occupation detachments intended to protect farms and roads in rural areas. About 12 separate Senegalese units (either three-battalion regiments or single battalions) served in French North Africa between 1954 and 1967, when the last French troops were withdrawn. During 1958–59 the Tirailleur units were in part dissolved, as African personnel transferred to newly formed national armies when the French colonies of West and Central Africa became independent. Substantial numbers of former tirailleurs continued to serve in the French Army but as individual volunteers in integrated Colonial (later Marine) Infantry or Artillery units. The Tirailleurs Sénégalais lost their distinctive historic identity during this process. As an example, the 1er RTS, raised in 1857, became the 61st Marine Infantry Regiment in December 1958. [35]

The last Senegalese unit in the French Army was disbanded in 1964.[24]

The last Senegalese Tirailleur to have served in World War I, Abdoulaye Ndiaye, died at the age of 104 in November 1998. He had been wounded in the Dardanelles.[36]

• Crocé, Eliane; et al. (1986). Les Troupes de Marine 1622 - 1984 (in French) (1st ed.). Limoges: Charles Lavauzelle. ISBN 2-7025-0142-7.
• Chartrand, René (2018). French Naval & Colonial Troops 1872–1914. Men-at-Arms 517. Illustrated by Mark Stacey. London: Osprey. ISBN 978-1-47-282619-0.
• Myron Echenberg, "Tragedy at Thiaroye: The Senegalese Soldiers' Uprising of 1944 ", in Peter Gutkind, Robin Cohen and Jean Copans (eds), African Labor History, Beverly Hills, 1978, p. 109-128
• Myron Echenberg, Colonial Conscripts: The Tirailleurs Senegalais in French West Africa, 1857–1960. Heinemann (1990), ISBN 0-435-08052-0
• Jouineau, André (2009). Officiers et soldats de l'armée française Tome 2 : 1915-1918 [Officers and Soldiers of the French Army Volume II: 1915-18]. Officers and Soldiers #12. Translated by McKay, Alan. Paris: Histoire & Collections. ISBN 978-2-35250-105-3.
• Christian Koller:»Von Wilden aller Rassen niedergemetzelt«. Die Diskussion um die Verwendung von Kolonialtruppen in Europa zwischen Rassismus, Kolonial- und Militärpolitik (1914–1930) (= Beiträge zur Kolonial- und Überseegeschichte, Bd. 82). Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-515-07765-0.
• Nancy Ellen Lawler. Soldiers of Misfortune: Ivoirien Tirailleurs of World War II. Ohio Univ Press (1992) ISBN 0-8214-1012-1
• Lepetit, Vincent; Tournyol du Clos, Alain; Rinieri, Ilario; Cardot, Jean Charles Léonide Philippe; Druène, Bernard, eds. (1933). Les armées françaises dans la Grande guerre. Tome VIII. La campagne d'Orient (Dardanelles et Salonique) Deuxième Volume. (août 1916 jusqu'en avril 1918) [8,2]. OCLC 491775909. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
• Sumner, Ian (1995). The French Army 1914-18. Men-at-Arms. London: Osprey. ISBN 978-1-85-532516-6.
• "81e bataillon de Tirailleurs Sénégalais: J.M.O. 3 juillet 1916-8 mai 1919 – 26 N 872/13" (JPG). Mémoire des hommes: [war diaries] Journaux des Unites (1914–1918) (in French). Ministere De la Defense. image 26 of 39. Retrieved 9 September 2022.

• Eveline Berruezo and Patrice Robin : Le Tata – paysages de pierres. Documentary film, 60', 1992. Espace Mémoire, France.
• Rafael Gutierrez and Dario Arce : Le Tata sénégalais de Chasselay : mémoires du 25° RTS" Documentary film, 52', 2007. Productions Chromatiques- TLM, France.