Tag Archives: Poilu

Win or die

Posted on by Leave a comment

How about this amazing early color photo (possibly an Autochrome Lumière) showing the combat-tattered banner of the French army’s 37e Régiment D’Infanterie (37e RI) shown resting on two stacks of bayonets atop Lebel 1886/15 rifles, likely late in the Great War. Note the famed “horizon blue” uniform of the Croix de Guerre-wearing Poilu, shown complete with an Adrian Adrian-style steel helmet. You can make out, under the Honneur et Patrie (“Honour and Fatherland”) motto, and battle honors for Zurich, Polotsk, and Alger.

Jean-Baptiste Tournassoud/ECPAD/Défense Réf. : AUL 56

With a lineage traced to 1587, the 37e RI picked up its number designation in 1790 while at Valogne under Col. Joachim Robin de Blair de Fressineaux (along with the honor of being named for Henri de La Tour d’Auvergne, Maréchal de Turenne).

It soon earned two battle honors in the Napoleonic Wars (“Zurich 1799” and “Polotsk 1812”) although it fought notably in no less than 24 large battles from Vauban to Ligny. Post-Napolean, the 37th fought in Algeria (earning “Alger 1830” battle honor), as well as during the 1859 Italian campaign, and at Sedan during the 1870 war with Prussia.

Starting the Great War at Nancy with the 11th Infantry Division, the 37th was repeatedly bled white over the next four years, earning four battle honors (Lorraine 1914, Flanders 1914, Verdun 1916, and Champagne 1918) while sending no less than 6,155 of its members to the scrolls of its honored dead– more than twice the regiment’s 2,722-man wartime authorization!

It ended the war on occupation duty in Frankfurt.

The 37th, in keeping with French interbellum doctrine, was redesignated a fortress infantry unit in the 1930s and staffed the Maginot Line at Rohrbach.

When the Germans came again in 1940, the 37th held the line until its until it was compromised then mounted a fighting retreat to Val-et-Chatillon, suffering over 1,000 casualties in the process. There, its survivors burned its cherished regimental colors on orders of Lt. Col. Combet on 25 June, rather than surrender them to “The Boche,” capping 150 years of solid service to the empire and republic.

Post WWII, the 37th would be reformed a few different times as “public works” (bataillon d’ouvrages) and reserve battalions, but never again as a line infantry regiment. 

The regimental motto was “Vaincre ou mourir” (Win or die)

Legion calling…

Posted on by Leave a comment

70 years ago today: 5 Septembre 1953 – Indochine Française. Radioman 1er bataillon du 3e Régiment Etranger d’Infanterie (1/3e REI).

Photo by Pierre Ferrari/ECPAD/Défense TONK 53-84 R3

Note the M1 Thompson submachine gun in the center of the photo and a MAS 36 on the ground to the left. Also, drink in the Mle. 47/49 bush caps– “Le Chapeau de Brousse“– and a “canne du poilus,” a staple of French soldiers going back to 1914. 

Formed 11 November 1915 to serve in the Great War from the shattered remnants of other Foreign Legion units, the 3e REI earned its kepis under the command of the famed Lt. Col. Paul-Frédéric Rollet, “the father of the Legion” at the siege of de Belly-en-Santerr, the Somme, Verdun, and in piercing the Hindenburg Line. Following inter-war service in Africa and combat against the Germans in 1940 and 1943-45, the regiment embarked for Indochina in 1946 and served through Dien Bien Phu, losing 3,837 Legionnaires in Southeast Asia. Notably, its Indochina-era march, “Anne-Marie du 3e REI” has its lyrics in German, a clear reference to the old “Devil’s Guard” days when much of the Legion were former Wermacht and even Waffen SS troopers.

Following combat in Algeria, the regiment moved to Madagascar in 1962 when that country became independent and then, in 1973, back to the jungles when it shifted garrison to Kourou in French Guiana where it still exists today as a battalion-sized light infantry force guarding France’s space center and operating the French Army jungle warfare school.

The more things change…

Gentleman Wormwood

Posted on by Leave a comment

Here we see a bespoke U.S. Army cavalry officer, leaning on his French-style soldier’s cane, somewhere in Europe during the Great War. He is sporting the latest in chemical warfare fashion to include a British Small Box Respirator, M1917 “Brodie” helmet, and a gun belt with an M1911 pistol in a Model 1912 Mounted (Cavalry) holster with the tie cord wrapped around the bottom. He completes the ensemble with 1908 Pattern breeches (Jodhpurs) and officer’s riding boots while a Model 1918 Mackinaw coat keeps him as warm as German artillery fire.

He seems strangely relevant today.

Making like the Civil War, 50 years after the fact

Posted on by Leave a comment

At first glance, with the kepis, droopy mustaches, buttoned-backed greatcoats, sword bayonets, and square tarred knapsacks with blanket bedrolls strapped tightly on top, I thought these troops were blue-coated Union volunteers mugging for Matthew Brady around the 1860s.

Turns out they are soldiers of the French Republic’s 124th Infantry Regiment de Laval posing in Pierrefonds, Oise Department, Northern France, in early 1915 with 8x50mmR Lebel Fusil Modèle 1886/M93 rifles. Notably, by mid-1915 the French Army uniform got a lot more modern to included the Adrian helmet and “horizon-blue” uniforms of a simpler cut.

On that note, here is Sgt. Joseph Dore, 7th New York State Militia. Carrying full Government-Issued kit in 1862, via the Library of Congress, for comparison.

The Cannes de Poilus

Posted on by 2 comments

French Poilu 1918 by Stcyr74 Via Deviant Art

French Poilu 1918 by Stcyr74 Via Deviant Art

In showing a photo montage of the Great War era infantryman’s typical loadout last week, it was interesting to note the non-standard equipment each often carried. While the Doughboy could be expected to have a domino set and the Tommy a trench mace, the French soldier’s kit was shown with a walking cane.

Yup, the canne de marche or cannes de poilus was very popular with the average French soldier of the period. Going back to the time of the little Emperor, senior sergeants in the Grand Armee often carried their own thick canes for correcting disciplinary problems and there was evidence this practice continued through the 1870s.

By the time of the Great War, the elite “blue devils” of the French Chasseurs Alpins and les troupes alpine were issued long-handled walking sticks for use in skiing and mountaineering.

Nos diables bleus en reconnaissance

Nos diables bleus en reconnaissance

Carte Postale DESSIN JULLIAN - CHASSEUR ALPIN

Carte Postale DESSIN JULLIAN – CHASSEUR ALPIN

Carte Postale DESSIN JULLIAN - CHASSEUR ALPIN

Carte Postale DESSIN JULLIAN – CHASSEUR ALPIN

French blue devils Chasseurs alpins marching order uniforms by Hector Large

French blue devils Chasseurs alpins uniforms by Hector Large

Then came the average soldier, or poilus (bearded ones), who often carried their own non-standard walking sticks to help during marches–especially along muddy roads of the era– or to kill rats in bivouac. As imagery from the time shows, these sticks were widespread and varied from soldier to soldier. Functional trench art if you will.

World War I Poilu French Infantry Soldiers groupe de poilus le 24 eme en 1916 Poilus-et-leurs-cannes-en-1916 cannes de poilus gasmask school Transport-de-pains-enfilés-sur-un-bâton edmond lajoux cannes de poilus 1915 poilus poilu cane

French soldiers and officers outside of Fort Vaux, Verdun, December 1916– with canes

Some examples of walking sticks have even been found made from legacy infantry sabers.

There is some evidence that the practice outlived the trenches of the Great War.

This image from 1919 portrays a soldier on occupation duty in Germany, his kit carried by a local German boy.

Alsatian Schoolboy carrying the haversack of a hairy bâton-de-poilu-par-Hansi-1919Here is a set of French soldiers in 1939 with their own very well-made walking sticks:
cannes de poilus 1939

WWII Free French icon Gen. Philippe de Hauteclocque (aka Leclerc) was often seen with a cane, though he may have used it honestly– as he broke his leg in two places in a fall from his horse in 1936– although in this 1947 image, he seems to get along just fine without it.

Général Leclerc de Hauteclocque was often seen with a cane though

Further, tributes such as postage stamps and monuments across France all show Leclerc with his ever-present canne, though rarely showing him actually using it, giving even more credence to the fact that it was his own marshal baton throwback to the time when he commanded  First World War veteran poilus as a young sous-lieutenant with the 5e Régiment de Cuirassiers on occupation duty in the Ruhr.

POSTE-1953-5

French General Leclerc, canne in hand, with a group of captured Waffen-SS Frenchmen of the Waffen-Grenadier-Brigade der SS “Charlemagne”, May 1945. The unit, made up largely of anti-Bolshevik French collaborationists, many of whom were already serving in various other German units, was all but annihilated in Berlin in April 1945. A dozen survivors, captured by the Soviets in the ruins of the German capital, were handed over to the Free French. “How could you wear someone else’s uniform?” the general was reported to have asked. One of them replied by asking why Leclerc wore an American one. The prisoners were executed the next day without trial.

He wasn’t the only one.

With “le canne” in hand, Maj. Gen. Claude Philippe Armand Chaillet inspects the citadel of Belfort on 25 November 1944 after the 1ère Armée française retook the city from the Germans. Born in 1893, he was in the last pre-1914 St.Cyr class and had risen to the rank of colonel in the professional army by 1938, when he retired to a desk in the Ministry of War after 25 years of service. He joined De Gaulle in 1941, led a West African Division, then the artillery of the Corps Expéditionnaire Français in Italy before his promotion to the staff of the 1st French Army late in the war, and rejoined the reserve list in 1946.

The cane even appeared in Indochina in the 1950s

2e BEP Plaine des Jarres, Laos 1953 opération Muguet

And in Algeria, after that, possibly its last hurrah.

Le Canne! “7 novembre 1956 – Fort National (Larbaa Nath Irathen) (Algérie) Une section de la 7e compagnie du 2/13e régiment de tirailleurs sénégalais (RTS) est rassemblée avant le départ en patrouille. Réf. : ALG 56-320 R9 © Raymond Varoqui/ECPAD/Défense”

The French Musée de l’Armée has the circa 1940 canes of both General Weygand and Giraud on display.

Giraud’s

Weygand’s canne

For more information and the source of many of these images, please refer to the excellent (French) site Centre de Recherche sur la Canne et le Bâton.