Victory in the Fezzan

VICTORY IN THE FEZZAN CAPTAIN PAUL MOYNET ler BATAILLON DE MARCHE Preface by Jacques Lorraine FIGHTING FRANCE PUBLICATIONS^ Eve of departure. The sun sets in a sliy of splendour over Lake Chad No. 54 4, CARLTON GARDENS, LONDON i PROCLAMATION BY GENERAL DE GAULLE TO THE MUSLIM PREFACE POPULATION OF THE PEZZAN The final campaign in the Fezzan won the world's admiration. To travel 1,600 miles across one of the January 17th, 1943 most forbidding deserts in the world, without supply "Generous and gallant people of the Fezzan, I send you the columns, after scaling the heights of the Tibesti range greetings of France whose arms have just brought about your liberation and will ensure your protection from now on. In the which rise to 10,000 feet in the wilderness, would Pezzan, as everywhere else, France is and remains the sincere and have been a great achievement in peacetime, even as proved friend of the Muslin peoples. Thanks to the defeat of our a test 0 fendurance. But to storm, on the way, enemy common enemy, the Fezzan will know again under French forts long strengthened and equiped with mobile authority, peace and order, God willing". armoured forces, was a feat of arms beyond the wildest C DE GAULLE imagining. Fighting French troops achieved this in thirty-nine days. Under a "tristful, splendid sun", through furnace heat, they crossed in turn deserts of rock (the ham- mada), then of stones— those which the Aarabs call the serir — and the erg, wide wastes of buring sand. It is a realm of silence absolute, silence undisturbed. Not a bird, not an insect, not a mosquito, not a single living thing. Inside the thanks the temperature reaches 160 degrees Fahrenheit. The camel-corps, scourged with heat, their naked feet on the necks of their evil- smelling, sweaty camels, can feel their beards eating into their lean faces. They follow the columfn, empty of thought, worn out with weariness. No halt for food : another start would be impossible. When the sun tilts over the horizon, the guides Conquest of the who have beeen well forward return to the head of \ ^ 943 ^iwsMri;35x5 fezzan and entrance the file. Then, abruptly ,night encircles the column, bringing a halt. The camels assemble, and wait kneel• ing to be unloaded and grouped in a ring, their burdens "General Leclerc! under your skilful and daring command the beside them. When means are at hand, a fire is lit troops and air forces of the Chad were able to prepare methodically and carry out boldly one of the most difficult offensives of the in the middle. Each tribesman digs himself a shallow present war. trench, piling the loose sand or stones to windward. "To-morroio, you may be sure, the forces of France, inspired In this grave for a night, he lies down to sleep, a blanket by the example and fired by the spirit of the troops you command, his covering. will gather for the great victories." The sky is bright with familiar stars. Jackals, C. DE GAULLE attracted by the smell, come from nowhere to yelp round the encampment. Above the still-warm earth, the cold creates whirlwinds of icy air. Men's teeth "I acknowledge receipt of yuor Order of the Day which helps chatter. Before dawn water-bottles are replenished to restore, to all the troops under my command and to myself, sparingly from the water-skins, each man getting our national pride. We do not forget that it is thanks to you that we never capitulated." less than a pint a day. Twenty times as much is LECLERC 3 really needed to make up for the day's evaporation by the sun. Then the struggle wth Nature begins anew. In this desert there are some green islets — at Murzuk, Kufra and, to the south, in the Tibesti range. Crossing the mountains, the vegetation becomes progressively more European as one climbs. The northern slopes, the finest and most fertile, were those which Laval ceded to Italy. "A few acres of sand", they called them, just as earlier in history Canada was described as "a few acres of snow". Eighty thousand natives live round the oases or in the desert. In the fertile stretches, settled tribes have adopted Arab ways. Among the nomadic peoples there are the Toubbous and the predominating Tuaregs. These latter are the "blue men". Clothed from child• hood in cotton fabrics dyed with indigo, their skin has taken on the colour. To guard their eyes from the sun's glare, their lashes grow very long and curly, and the veiled Tuaregs smear them with kohl to make them more protective. The life of these "blue men" is a mystery. Nobody knows where they find the nuggets of gold which they bring from time to time to the distant markets of Timbuctoo or Gabes and sell for small fortunes. The Tuaregs never spare a glance for the women to whose eyes the money has brought a sparkle. Are they descendants of the Garamantes, of whom Herodotus left such fabulous descriptions? No one can tell. After the Arab conquest the Fezzan slipped into the unknown for Europeans. The earliest information about it in modern times was collected by a French Consul in the 18th century. Explored for the first time by Horneman under the aegis of the Royal Geographical Society, the Fezzan became the special field of Henry Duveyrier, the great French explorer. His book, "Exploration in the Sahara and the Tuareg lands of the North", published in 1864, was for many years the main source of information about the Fezzan. When war broke out in 1914 the Italiens occupied the Fezzan, but their hold was not strong enough to resist the revolt of the Senussi and their troops were 4 forced to withdraw to the coastal fringe. In 1915, the Italian garrisons at Murzuk, Ghadames and Ghat were massacred or put to flight. French troops on the Tunisian border gave them shelter. It took Italy more than ten years to conquer Libya and, in particular, the Fezzan. The Fascists, unable to master these proud tribes, grown indomitable in the face of Italian bravado, decided to starve out the nomad warriors who harassed them in the desert by eliminating the civilian population from whom the warriors obtained supplies. This was a black page of colonial history. Women, children and old men were rounded up into concentration camps where the black- shirt "heroes" left them to die of hunger and thirst under a fiery sun. More than 65,000 natives of the Fezzan fled to French Chad or the Egyptian Sudan. Never has a colonial Power handled people over whom it exercised treaty rights with so little pity, so little humanity, or even so little common sense. Never has a people been plundered, massacred and extermi• nated as were the people of Tripolitania by the Italians. Damning reports and telltale photographs piled up in the League of Nations offices without any Member State troubling itself about such horrors. The fervour with which the people of the Fezzan awaited liberation can be understood, and they have given not only the aid which could be rightly expected, but also a most friendly welcome. When Graziani attacked Kufra from the north in 1931, the oasis was defended at most by a handful of Arab troops. After extensive preparations and the establishment of numerous supply bases, the Italians launched their attack with 7,000 camels, thousands of camel-drivers, a great deal of artillery, 20 planes, 300 lorries and a Bren-gun section. Such was the "heroic" battle which Graziani did not scruple to vaunt in the following terms : "We are entitled to claim the taking by main force of the oasis of Kufra, the greatest operation ever accomplished in the Sahara. This achievement places us indisputably in the forefront of desert armies. It was the fruit of methodical orga• nisation, and this miracle of organisation has stunned our French and British neighbours. 5 "No country can boast of having successfully con• ducted a Sahara campaign like that which we have concluded with such light forces in the mighty desert of the Fezzan. The French cannot claim to compare with us. We can affirm with pride, and without fear of contradiction, a complete superiority which has astounded our most bitter critics across the Alps and across the sea." Graziani concluded thus : "Kufra is a stage in the great symbolic march towards the fulfilment of the mighty and certain destiny of Italy. Kufra is the symbol of a creative breed of men rising and looking to the future." What is the reply to such bragging ? Master Fox in a lion's skin, of which, with one stroke of their claws, French troops despoiled Master ... Graziani ! Captain Moynet tells the story of more than two years' operations. The first raid on Murzuk, at the beginning of 1941, was followed immediately by a second, on Kufra. A third expedition led to the fall of this stronghold, which was entered by victorious French troops on March 1st, 1941. The beginning of 1942 was marked by a series of wildly daring raids. The end of the same year saw the start of the expedition which was to "liquidate" the whole of the Fezzan. On January 25th, 1943, French officers and troops made their triumphant entry into Tripoli. Captain Moynet's account lays no claim to literary honours. The exploits he relates are sufficiently eloquent in themselves, and the men of whom he writes are far beyond eulogy. Cut off from their families and without money, some of them wounded, others ill, borro^ving a revolver here and a machine-gun there, they fought in the Fezzan, not to conquer fresh territory but because it was the only way they could get the enemy by the throat.

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