The Tirailleurs Sénégalais

By Kevin Seabrooke

The German capture of Fort Douaumont overlooking Verdun was a major blow to French morale in February of 1916. Situated on the River Meuse in the northeast near the German border, it had been the last stronghold to fall in 1870 during the Franco-Prussian War and was considered a sacred symbol of healing for the people of France.

It was a place carefully chosen by General Erich von Falkenhayn in an effort to keep the French army away from the coming conflict with the British in the west (the Battle of the Somme) while inflicting mass casualties from a mostly defensive position. In late 1915, Falkenhayn reportedly argued in a memo to Emperor William II that the French army could best be destroyed by capturing something that “for the retention of which the French would be compelled to throw in every man they have.”

That would include the dark-skinned Tirailleurs Sénégalais “riflemen” or “skirmishers” from Senegal—though over time they were likely to come from many parts of West Africa (French colonial areas that would later become the countries of Benin, Ivory Coast, Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Mauritania). Some 140,000 of them would take part in the war at the Western Front (30,000 were killed) and though they would earn praise for their bravery, their presence on the field of a European battle was a source of international controversy.

From February to December of 1916, the Tirailleurs were involved in countless assaults and counterattacks in the Great War’s longest conflict, a brutal war of attrition in a hellish landscape of constant bombardment—some 40 million artillery shells were fired during the battle for Verdun. Over the 10 months, the two armies would suffer a combined 700,000 casualties and some 300,000 killed. Gen. Erich Ludendorff, the de facto leader of the German military from 1916 onward, wrote in his memoirs that Verdun was “a gaping wound which was gnawing away at our forces.”

After several days of shelling, the Tirailleurs were part of the French infantry that eventually recaptured Fort Douaumont on October 24, taking 6,000 German prisoners. The French would retake the nearby Fort Vaux about a week later. Accounts from the time describe their ferocity in close-quarters combat, using their bayonets and even their coupe-coupes (traditional fighting knives) to push back the German defenders.

The recapture of Fort Douaumont boosted French morale and marked the beginning of a series of successful counter offensives that eventually pushed the Germans back to where they had started in February.

Masserigne Soumare, a Tirailleur who took part in the recapture of the fort, said he was proud to have done what the French had tried to do so many times before.

“We were told: ‘Don’t wash your uniforms. Cross the country as you are so that everyone who meets you will know that you made the attack on Fort Douaumont,’” Soumare told historian Joe Lunn, who published Memoirs of the Maelstrom: A Senegalese Oral History of the First World War in 1999. Lunn recorded interviews with more than 80 African veterans and witnesses to World War I in the early 1980s.

The Tirailleurs took a train to St. Raphael in southern France and “in every town we crossed, the French were clapping their hands and shouting: ‘Vive les tirailleurs sénégalais!’ … And afterwards, whenever we were walking in the country-everywhere we used to go—if we told people that we made the attack on Fort Douaumont, the French were looking at us with much admiration,” Soumare recalled.

Created by decree under Napoleon III in 1857, the Senegalese Tirailleurs Corps would fight in all of France’s colonial actions as well as the Franco-Austrian (1859) and Franco-German (1870/71) wars. After fighting in both world wars, they would again be involved in colonial actions for France until 1960, when 17 African countries, including 14 former French colonies, gained their independence.

General Charles Mangin, a French colonial officer, had begun advocating in 1909 for the recruitment of a large army from North and West Africa to be trained to fight in European wars. Mangin argued that this colonial force could make up the difference in available manpower for future conflicts.

By 1913, the unified, industrial state of Germany was growing in population, reaching about 68 million to France’s 40 million. Well aware of their demographic disadvantage, France lengthened its term of military service to three years in 1913 to try to grow its standing army.

France had known before it started that they could not win a war of attrition. But at the beginning France, who had greatly underestimated the number of German troops it would be facing, felt the conflict would not last long and so preferred to use “more reliable” troops. Still, the Tirailleurs were on all fronts in northern France in 1914, though not yet in great numbers.

In their colonial experiments all European nations had used the indigenous peoples as soldiers or police. But France had become the first nation to employ black African troops on European soil, something the Germans considered an outrage. In reaction to Mangin’s idea, the Berliner Post had declared in 1909 that “it would be an insult to fight with these barbarians on European soil.”

In the summer of 1915, the German Foreign Office would publish “Employment, Contrary to International Law, of Colored Troops in the European Theatre of War by England and France,” claiming African colonial soldiers were committing such atrocities as gouging out eyes and cutting off noses, ears and even the heads of captured or wounded Germans.

German propaganda characterized black soldiers as wild animals with uncontrolled sexual desires that were a threat to white women.

In his 2017 book on postcards of World War I, With a Weapon and a Grin, Stephan Likosky described how propaganda was used to target different audiences. To the French, “the African savage was now a disciplined soldier willing to serve his mother country” while, to make him less threatening, he was also depicted as “a naive and child-like figure—a grand enfant—amicable and ever ready to flash a broad smile.” At the same time, the French press often depicted the Tirailleurs as bloodthirsty cannibals to play upon German fears.

The Germans, it is worth noting, committed one of the first genocides of the 20th century in their African colony of “German South West Africa,” now Namibia. Rebelling against colonial rule, the Herero killed more than 100 German settlers in January 1904. The Nama also rebelled. In retaliation, German forces killed tens of thousands of the Herero and Nama by driving them into the desert to die of dehydration. Thousands more were placed in concentration camps, where the majority died of diseases, abuse, and exhaustion.

Critics in America and Britain also decried the use of Africans against Europeans as their service raised uncomfortable questions about citizenship, equality, and the very nature of empire. While fighting for France, Tirailleurs were denied the same rights and recognition afforded to their white counterparts.

Yet these men, often considered “inferior” by European standards, would prove their valor and humanity on the battlefield, shattering preconceived notions of African capabilities. But Mangin’s insistence that the men from West Africa were “born soldiers” proved as untrue as any of the pseudo-scientific and prejudicial beliefs so prevalent at the time.

But 1914 did not start off well for the Tirailleurs and while there were many reports of their ineffectiveness in defensive situations—running forward to escape artillery fire or charging cannons with bayonets—the fault lay with their commanders.

In general, a Tirailleur had little training, poor equipment and did not speak French. They were patronized and thought of as child-like so that they always had white officers. Some did win medals and they were honored by many at the time. But their specific actions or exploits remain unknown and more than a century later, details of Tirailleurs are scarce.

Climate also proved an obstacle for the Tirailleurs, many of whom had inadequate clothing and fought barefoot—they issued boots far too big for them because they were believed to have enormous feet as a result of walking barefoot their whole lives. As late as in 1917, Mangin proposed that the Tirailleurs fight barefoot because by wearing boots, “those agile apes are losing one of their best infantry qualities, namely their elasticity in marching.”

Frostbite and trench foot were common and in colder weather, they could hardly hold their rifles. After that first winter of the war, the Tirailleurs were sent to camps in the south of France from November to March, a practice known as “hivernage.”

These soldiers, many of whom had never set foot in Europe before, found themselves in a world of unimaginable horror. They endured the squalor and carnage of trench warfare, the relentless artillery bombardments, and the constant threat of disease. The psychological impact of this new, industrialized form of warfare cannot be overstated. Imagine the sensory overload: the constant noise, the smell of gas and decaying bodies, the sight of unimaginable injuries. Yet, despite these hardships, the Tirailleurs fought with remarkable resilience. They were known for their bravery in combat, their ability to adapt to different terrains, and their unwavering loyalty to their French officers, a complex dynamic often born of necessity and survival.

The Germans and the British were more impressed than the French, for what the Africans did not lack was courage and about a third of them would be killed.

Back at the front in 1915, the tirailleurs saw heavy losses. In April a battalion of them panicked in the face of a mustard gas attack near Ypres and killed their white commanders. The French officers were given orders to shoot any tirailleurs who turned back from the front lines.

Edmund Genet, an American serving in the French Foreign Legion, recalled in his memoir a scene from the Second Battle of Champagne in September, 1915, that the “Tirailleurs made two strong charges and both times had to fall back. They were ordered to make a third and, refusing to face again the murderous fire of the German machine-guns, turned in flight.”

Genet described the officers of his unit trying to turn the fleeing men around and his commandant, “wrath written all over his face,” kicking one of the men to stop him.

Soon after, charging ahead toward those same machine guns, Genet saw “dead Tirailleurs were lying everywhere, killed in those two first charges, ghastly and bloody.”

The years 1914-15 were bloodiest years for France and by September of 1915, losses had been so great that French leadership had doubts about continuing the war. Remembering Mangin’s promise of 500,000 colonial soldiers, they turned back to Africa where French recruiting tactics turned coercive—provoking local riots in what is now Burkina Faso and Mali. After the losses at Verdun, France was desperate for more men and recruiters became duplicitous in 1917-18, promising citizenship and benefits that never materialised.

During the Great War, France would deploy more than half a million colonial troops. About 450,000 of those were indigenous Africans, including the Tirailleurs Sénégalais, as well as Algerians, Tunisians, Moroccans, Malagasies, and Somalis. Some 110,000 settlers of European descent also served. The colonial troops helped, but it would ultimately take British, Italian and, finally, American troops to end the conflict.

The entry of American combat troops into the war offers another example of the many instances of tenacity displayed by the Tirailleurs. Fighting house to house in the village of Château-Thierry on the Marne River in May 1918, they slowed the Nazi offensive enough to allow the U.S. 3rd Infantry Division to intervene and keep the German 7th Army from establishing a bridgehead across the river.

Tirailleur Sergeant Mamadou Dia would receive the Croix de Guerre for exceptional bravery and leadership during the intense house-to-house combat at Château-Thierry.

By 1917, the Tirailleurs had become part of the French war machine and their commanders praised them as shock troops who didn’t take prisoners, using bayonets and coupe-coupes as Nettoyeurs de tranchées or “trench cleaners”— a constant source of German complaint and propaganda.

And yet as late as 1918, an officer at a training camp for West African troops wrote that the Tirailleurs were “cannon fodder, who should, in order to save whites’ lives, be made use of much more intensively.”

Even the French Prime Minister and Minister of War Georges Clemenceau said, in a February speech to the French Senate that same year that, “We are going to offer civilisation to the Blacks. They will have to pay for that […] I would prefer that ten Blacks are killed rather than one Frenchman!”

General Robert Nivelle was not alone in his belief that France should “spare not the black blood so that white blood be saved.” Tirailleurs were the soldiers most often sent to the front for suicidal attacks and counter attacks. At Chemin Des Dames, April 16, 1917, they fought bravely, but French battle plans had fallen into German hands and 45 percent of the Africans were slaughtered.

In 1917, Lieutenant Galandou Diouf wrote in his newspaper, the Indépendant Sénégalais, that after duties were fulfilled, rights would also have to be granted: “We want the same equality in society as we had in the trenches when facing death.”

After the November 1918 Armistice, the Tirailleurs were part of the occupation force stationed in the German Rhineland, but were not deployed until the spring of 1919 to avoid the worst of the winter weather.

Many Germans were vehemently opposed to the presence of these “inherently inferior” men on their national soil, taking it as an affront to national pride and a deliberate attempt by France at racial humiliation. From this arose the Schwarze Schmach or “Black Shame” campaign, lasting from 1920 until the end of the occupation in 1930, that falsely accused the Tirailleurs of a multitude of crimes, especially the rape of white women, all over Germany. The virulent campaign would create a negative image of the Tirailleurs and fuel racial tensions that would later be exploited by right wing nationalists and eventually become Nazi propaganda.

However, the contribution of the Tirailleurs goes beyond their military achievements. Their presence in Europe challenged racial stereotypes and exposed the contradictions of colonialism.

When the second World War broke out with Germany’s 1940 invasion of France, the French army had about 2.9 million men, including an estimated 179,000 Tirailleurs who had been mobilised. Some 40,000 of them would fight in Europe or “metropolitan France.”

During the Battle of France there were a number of instances of Germans murdering Tirailleurs as well as British soldiers. The massacre at Chassely is perhaps the most well known.

Posted just north of Lyon in the village of Chasselay, part of the 25e Régiment de Tirailleurs Sénégalais held out for a day and a night against the Germans. They surrendered on June 20 when they ran out of ammunition.

Accounts from the time describe the some 50 Tirailleurs being separated from their white officers and told to assemble in front of two tanks. The Senegalese were then told to run as the tanks’ machine guns mowed them down. The tanks were then driven over the dead and wounded. There were reports of some French officers being shot for trying to intervene. The local people ignored the German order not to bury the bodies.

The remaining African soldiers who surrendered during the Battle of France were interned in Frontstalags prison camps in France to keep them from “defiling” German purity. They were guarded by Nazis and then Vichy French officers.

Tirailleurs would fight with the Free French Forces in North Africa and Italy before taking part in Operation Dragoon, the invasion of southern France in August 1944.

The Tirailleurs would have another moment of national and even international fame as part of the 3,700 men from the men from the 1st Free French Division under Gen. Marie-Pierre Koenig held out against a German-Italian force of 32,000 under General Rommel, “The Desert Fox,” at Bir Hakeim in Libya during the Battle of Gazala (May 26-June 11, 1942).

The Free French didn’t prevent Rommel from taking the port city of Tobruk, but they did disrupt his plans and allow the British to regroup in defense of Egypt. It was a moment of redemption for France after its swift defeat and capitulation to the Nazis in 1940.

Among praise from many Allied leaders, the Free French in exile, Charles de Gaulle, said in a telegram to Koenig, “Know and tell your troops that all of France is watching you and that you are its pride.”

Before the liberation of Paris on August 25, 1944, General De Gaulle had been in talks with American and British military leaders to allow Free French forces to enter the city first.

Allied High Command granted the request, but only if the division that marched in had no black soldiers. In January 1944 Major General Walter Bedell Smith, Eisenhower’s Chief of Staff, wrote a memo stamped “confidential” that said “It is more desirable that the division mentioned above consist of white personnel.” Smith went on to note that the Second Armoured Division, which had at the time only 25 percent “native personnel” was the only French division “operationally available that could be made one hundred percent white.”

In the end, the French substituted all the available white soldiers from other units and eventually included some from parts of North Africa, the Middle East, and Spain. In France it became known as the blanchiment or “whitening.”

The process of discharging and repatriating the Tirailleurs became complicated by the refusal of France to pay wage arrears due to the released prisoners of war. There were protests and reports of soldiers refusing to board ships bound for Africa being shot by French soldiers. When one ship finally arrived in Senegal on November 21, 1944, the 1,300 tirailleurs were transferred to French army barracks in the town of Thiaroye near Dakar.

A deadly clash between the French army and Tirailleurs on December 1, 1944, remains controversial. France claims 35 protesters were killed, while other sources put the number at 300.

Thirty-four of the so-called mutineers, who were accused of being instigators, were tried and given sentences ranging from one to ten years in prison. In 1947, when French President Vincent Auriol visited Senegal, the men were pardoned, but not exonerated. The promise that in recognition of their service they would become equal citizens of France was never honored.

A 1988 film about the massacre, Camp de Thiaroye, was banned in France and censored in Senegal. In 2000, France began opening up its military archives, shedding more light on the events. Until 2010, Tirailleurs received lower pensions than their French counterparts and their ambiguous citizenship status limited access to other benefits.

In 2017 French President Francois Hollande, saying they were owed “a debt of blood,” granted citizenship to 28 Africans who fought for France in World War II and other conflicts.

The men, aged 78-90, received their certificates of citizenship at the Elysee Palace in Paris.

France passed a law in 2023 that meant that Senegalese veterans who fought for France no longer had to live in France for six months out of the year in order to receive their benefits.

The French film Tirailleurs (English title: Father and Soldier) premiered at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival. Starring well-known actor Omar Sy, the film follows the story of a Senegalese man and his son fighting for France in World War I.

That the film was released to the public in France and Senegal in January 2023 is evidence of progress and perhaps a sign that the exceedingly slow wheels of justice may still be turning.

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