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. The road which leads to France, the objective they have set themselves, is long. But it is not so long as from the Chad to Tripoli. Yet they are fiG:hting not only to liberate France : they fight to build a France free of all domination, and likewise free of all tutelage. The whole world must realise this. Jacques LORRAINE 6 THE FIRST RAID ON MURZUK

Jean Colonna d'Ornano

At once a cavalier, a condottiere and a Bayard — there you have Colonna d'Ornano, hero of the first raid on Murzuk. Six foot three, with the shoulders of an athlete, thin-nosed, tight-lipped, a black eye• glass screwed in his right eye. When the Minister for War offered him the Tibesti command in 1937, he accepted only on condition that he should choose his own camel-corps. All of these, without exception, were in the vanguard of General de Gaulle's forces on the very morrow of Petain's capitulation. Of d'Ornano's men, after two years of fighting, half have fallen in furious assaults ; the rest still give battle, even with a bullet through the cheek or a missing limb. All are Compagnons de la Liberation. D'Ornano was the first to fall. Scarcely had he rallied the Chad regiment of Sene• galese sharp-shooters to the cause of Free France, in August 1940, when he wanted to get after the Italians whose activities he had watched for years, and whose patrols he had tracked on the borders of the Tibesti and the Fezzan. He came to an agreement with some good British friends who had also long kept watch on the frontiers of Tripolitania — Major Clayton and Captain Creighton-Stuart. • Together they planned so wildly improbable an operation that it only just fell short of causing the fall of Murzuk. This was nothing less than an all-out, top-speed raid over that hell of open space stretching across the Eastern Sahara. 7

T.ieiitenant-Colonel Jean Colonna d'Ornano To strike across 320 miles of enemy territory, as the crow flies, with a handful of men, when the tracks were dotted with enemy garrisons and scoured by enemy patrols, outwitting some. Swooping on others, making them fear a major attack, sowing confusion and terror, spreading dread among the Italians by very daring, dumbfounding the natives with admiration, such ,MASa.lf DU TISESTI a plan indeed bore the mark of Jean Colonna d'Ornano. On December 29th, the two British officers left Cairo and, without betraying their presence, made a journey of 950 miles to the place fixed as rendezvous, a small village, Kayugi, in East Tibesti. Colonna d'Ornano met them on January 4th, 1941. He was accompanied by Captain Massu, commanding the 6th Company of the Regiment de Tirailleurs seni- galais du Tchad, Lieutenant Egenspiler, and Sergeants Bloquet and Bourret. With them they had only five native scouts and some irregulars. Captain Massu was a St. Cyrien of the best type. The desert held no L E^NED secrets for him. With his friend Captain Dio of the camel-corps, he amused himself by performing training trips of incredible length. Each would arrive exhausted -"'r-' SOU DAN after these trips, but would claim to be less so than "*1f* ANGLO-tG- the other, and to prove it would immediately plan a stiffer test. A I knew Lieutenant Egenspiler in the Chad, a big, shylooking youngster who was a keen reader of the 7 ' Journal de I'Universite des Annales and an accomplish• ed performer on the Hawaiian guitar. It was to be his fate to astonish his elders. The small party lost no time in greetings but went into action. Avoiding the traditional path, they skirted the Tibesti range, hugging the frontier. The car tyres suffered on the knife-edged stones, and it was necessary to make constant hasty repairs in a temperature of 160 degrees Fahrenheit. Then came sand, sand over which no vehicle had ever passed, white sand so fine that the cars bogged after a few turns of the wheels. Everything had to be unloaded hastily, and while look-

8 Between Chad and Faya the wilderness is intersected by muddy streams infested with alligators, mosquitoes and flies outs took up positions on the nearby dunes, all had two or three stories high, set in each of the four angles. to get hold of tail-boards, bumpers or any part which An avenue of palm-trees led to the main gate. came to hand, heaving, pulling, swearing and cursing By this time the Italians had seen the little column. The entrance to the fort closed. It was exactly mid• The native guides, accustomed to the leisurely day, and vultures and carrion birds circled overhead. progress of camel caravans, were often at fault, Machine-gun fire from the fort concentrated on the confusing their slight and infrequent landmarks : here the skeleton of a camel, white as chalk, there a ridge leading car, from the turret of which Captain Creigh• imperceptible to European eyes. At the end of these ton-Stuart replied briskly. exhausting days, night came down abruptly. Cold Following the pre-arranged plan, d'Ornano and his tinned food had to be eaten for fear that a fire might small force raided the airfield, firing the planes and betray the expedition. stores and taking thirty Italian prisoners. The fire from Italian automatic arms became more and more There was no moonlight. Under a sky brilliant with violent. In a moment of calm the tethered camels stars, after a few hours' rest on the bare earth, the could be heard moaning with terror. The garrison of convoy would start again. the fort was too panic-stricken to attempt a sortie, Having passed the 26th parallel, the party pushed but it soon became evident that the desired end would on almost to Gluidua, so that the enemy's surprise not be achieved. Thirty-three foot walls are not to should be even greater. Who in Murzuk would expect be scaled by lorries. The engagement had to be broken a threat to materialise from the north ? off. Moreover, Captain Massu had been wounded, two On January 11th, on a track leading to Sebha, some bullets lodging in his foot. He himself got these out ten miles from their objective, with the first some days later, with the aid of a pen-knife. He trees of the palm-grove in sight, the vehicles refused point-blank to be evacuated, and with Captain were halted and assembled. It was arranged that the Creighton-Stuart fell back towards the airfield. French detachment should attack the fort of Murzuk In a few minutes the men were regrouped, and at with support from Captain Creighton-Stuart's patrol, 2 p.m. the Sebha track, at the ten-mile mark, saw the which was armed with one 37 mm gun, two mortars audacious raiders pass again. It was then reaUsed that and two machine-guns. Meanwhile, Major Clayton's Colonna d'Ornano had been killed. A machine-gun patrol and a French party, with Colonel d'Ornano, burst had caught him full in the head while he was would swoop on the airfield lying about a mile from lying on the petrol cans and ammunition cases in his the fort. lorry, blazing at the enemy with an automatic rifle. The British opened some tins of bully beef. Colonel In a sandy grave surmounted by a wooden cross, d'Ornano, invited by Major Clayton to share the meal, at the side of a New Zealand sergeant and three native replied with a smile, "I don't usually lose any time sharp-shooters, draped in his Arab burnous blazoned eating when I'm going into a fight. But," he added, with the ancre coloniale, Colonel Colonna d'Ornano, the ramming his black eye-glass into place, "I make up fearless, sleeps for ever. for it afterwards." At the graveside. Major Clayton read the Prayer They set out. Hidden until then behind a sand for the Dead and the troops presented arms. Then the dune, the fort at last loomed up, square and impressive. sad, but proud, detachment continued towards the The walls were each some 120 yards long with a tower. Tibesti with its prisoners. 9 10