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Remembered Today:

French Morrocan Bataillon in Turkish Army?


bob lembke

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I have just finished reading Pomiankowski (Lieutenant Field Marshal in the A-H Army, in Turkey for years; great book, IMHO), and am entering my notes in a time-line, and have run into an interesting oddity. He was attending a review at Samara, and to one side stood a battalion of French Morrocan colonial troops, which had been captured on the Western Front and shipped to the Turks, as he said on account of the Sultan having pronounced a "Jihad" against the English. P. said that the officers did not take part in the review but had been put into Turkish POW battalions. I think that this was May 19, 1916. Interesting. I thought that this would be of interest to someone.

Bob Lembke

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Although French Moroccans were serving in France I find it difficult to visualise a situation where a battalion would be captured en masse complete with officers. Capture of whole units of battalion size typically occur when a chunk of territory is nipped off or a fortified position capitulates (as in Kut in WW1 and Singapore in WW2) and I can't think of such an occasion of the Western front post the start of 1915 where this could be said to have happened (doubtless someone will chip in now with tons of examples of this). I'm sure its possible that quite a few Moroccans could have been captured in individual actions and not necessarily all from the same unit. Assembling and parading them could make a good propaganda point. However there is another apparent anomaly- given the then conventions and treaty agreements on the treatment of POWs it would be an abuse of these to transfer the officers to POW camps under the control of another government (the transfer of German POWs from Australia to Malta in WW1 and from the UK to Canada in WW2 appears to have been done under the aegis of the fact that Malta was a Crown colony and the Canadian government being nominally subject to the British crown this rule was not being broken). In effect you weren't allowed to swap POWs once you'd taken them into your own POW system The rule would also apply to the ORs being shipped to Turkey unless they had defected. (I think there were exceptions for POWs taken at sea who could be landed at an allied port rather than keeping them on board for ages) Although the Germans were guilty of breaking some of the POW rules, especially towards the end of the war with regard to the use of labour in the front line, care was taken to conceal this, I'm sure that such a flagrant breach would not be welcome (unless of course the high command had taken the stance that the rules did not apply to non European troops!)

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Yes, I found the report odd on several grounds. But I also find Pomiankowski very intelligent and observant. As he was the A-H military envoy to Turkey, meeting with Enver Pascha, both Kaisers, Hindenburg and Ludendorff, etc. he was well informed. I think that the men were either picked up here and there or a unit was quite wobbly and was easily taken. Sometimes this happened; at Verdun a French brigade was captured intact in half an hour, with all three staffs in toto.

Yes, I think that everyone treated the colonial troops differently. Perhaps they signed something or agreed to something; I don't know if they would have been sent on such a trip without some grounds to think that they would fight. The Germans were playing the "Muslim card" several different ways. Pomiankowski refers to "Jihad" several times in the book, spelling it "Dschihad". "The more things change, the more they remain the same."

Bob Lembke

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The Germans had been playing the Moroccan card against the French for some time

even before the war in Europe, so it may not have been too difficult to recruit these men.

The other thing which comes to mind is that the French too were recruiting on the basis of my enemy's enemy is my friend

The Order of Battle for the EEF in Sept. 1918 gives

Regiment de Marche de la Legion d'Orient which included

1st & 2nd Bns. Armeniens

also 1 Coy. Syrians

and 1 Sqdn. dismounted Spahis (who were they?)

As you said Bob, all very interesting

Apart from the review, does the author mention if/when/where they served in the line?

I recall that the Armenians gave Allenby some headaches when they were part of his army of occupation

regards

Michael

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The Germans had been playing the Moroccan card against the French for some time

even before the war in Europe, so it may not have been too difficult to recruit these men.

The Moroccan troops in the French army were all volunteers recruited from those Arabs in Morocco who took the French side in 1912 and stayed loyal through various disturbances. Most of them had already seen action before they went to France. In France they acquired a ferocious reputation both in and out of the line. One of their specialties was unofficial trench raids to a] acquire things to sell and b] to acquire trophies - usually ears but one man was found to have a head in his pack. Finding that you'd got them opposite you in the line was regarded as very bad news indeed. A German report on some Moroccans taken (possibly alive but I suspect not for long) stated that a large number of ring fingers were found in their packs still with the rings on them along with collections of ears. I suspect that attempting to recruit them would not be easy. The Americans and Canadians seem to have got on well with them however (there is a memorial to the Moroccans somewhere at Vimy) and they fought alongside the Americans at Chateau-Thierry and on a number of other occasions. After the War they were used by France in the Rhineland and were instrumental in the suppression of the short lived Rhenish Republic. They also fought on the Greek front and were used to suppress a Greek faction in opposition to the Greek government. They had a reputation for not being gentle in their methods.

The Germans (and Turks) did indeed attempt to stir up trouble in Morocco but mainly by supporting the various rebel factions from which these troops were not drawn.

Unlike many French colonies, Morocco had a different legal status being a joint Spanish French protectorate. As such the Moroccan troops were officially auxiliaries but as a result of their war service they were declared to have equal status with French regular troops in the early 1920s.

They were used extensively in WW2 and again acquired a terrible reputation for ferocity combined with rape and pillage. In 1944 a formal complaint of war crimes was lodged in Geneva against them by the Waffen SS of all people (pots and kettles!) The reputation of Moroccan troops even today has remained troublesome and the UN has recently had to suspend a number of Moroccan units from peace keeping missions.

Given this profile I suspect they would be poor candidates for defection (you could probably identify the guy who tried it as having a sort of Van Goth look)

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Doug

That looks more plausible - a somewhat mixed bag. The French Muslims could have come from a variety of sources including Algeria, Senegal as well as Morocco.

The bit about the officers having been sent to Turkish pow camps would be sheer propagandas. It sounds much more impressive to say 'here is a battalion of men captured as a unit' than 'this is what we scraped up from the POW camps'.

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To answer an earlier question, Spahis were light cavalry recruited from Arabs and Berbers in French North Africa - mostly Algeria and Tunisia. (I believe some indigenous Frenchmen served too).

The word, Sipahi, somes, I imagine, from the same root as "Sepoy".

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The word, Sipahi, somes, I imagine, from the same root as "Sepoy".

Must be a very tangled root system as one word comes from Arabic and the other from Hindi

In general though your post reinforces the position that there were lots of sources from which 'French muslim' troops could have come.

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Must be a very tangled root system as one word comes from Arabic and the other from Hindi

Not sure. Hobson Jobson gives the root of "Sepoy", or "Seapoy" as Persian - spada (" a soldier"), via the word Sipahi, which itself came from Sipah, meaning an army or a soldiery.

Given that, I suspect the root may very well be the same. Presumably with so many different armies and ethnic groups colonising, invading and peopling the sub-Continent, there was every chance for a word to enter one language via one (or more) others.

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Thanks for that clarification Steven

So the Spahis were so to speak, legitimate members of the French forces.

I wonder how they recruited the Armenian battalions and the Syrians

regards

Michael

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I can add a little more - Cilicia in Turkey at one time had a sizable Armenian population, possibly even a majority which had for a long time been subject to discrimination by the Turkish authorities (for example paying double taxes). There was also a sizable population of ethnic Syrian Christians who also suffered persecution. With the Armenian massacres 1915 there was a sizable exodus of refugees from this area (as Cyprus was easily accessible by sea) which reinforced an already considerable ex pat Armenian community in America and France formed from previous waves of refugees. Christians in Syria itself were also persecuted and fled, again the sea route to Cyprus was relatively easy. Armenians in other parts of the Ottoman Empire were less fortunate in having no relatively easy route and place to which to flee. France had post war territorial ambitions on Lebanon, Syria and Cilcia (which are contiguous) and therefore saw a Legion containing large numbers from the region with a very definite motive for fighting the Turks attractive.

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Seeing all the interest in my report I went back to the original book and reread the passage, and I have a mea culpa. I read the book, propped in bed, which was over 400 pages, and periodically took notes on 4" by 6" cards, which I have by the 1000s. I read quickly and probably only looked something up in a dictionary every 5-10 pages. This POW business was interesting but not central to my research at all; I am mostly interested in Gallipoli, and the German effort there, as my father served there.

I just read the passage again, more carefully. I wanted to see exactly what Pomiankowski said. I see that in the process described above I mangled the meaning a bit, since I at first was only marginally interested in the account, and only took a few lines of notes. (If I wrote down everything that was interesting in this interesting book I would have 400 instead of 40 note-cards.) Pomiankowski was on an epic motor trip of inspection with, among others, Enver Pascha. They were in Samara, and then took a train to Bagdad. Enver Pascha went off to the front, and Pomiankowski and others went off to visit a POW camp near the Bahgdad rail station. Since the visitors were such "big fish", the POWs were drawn up as on review. The bulk of the prisoners were the POWs from Kut, 13,000 of them, 1/3 English, 2/3s Indians. Pomiankowski describes them in a bit of detail. (This was the "review", when I looked at my notes a week or two after reading the text, I assumed was a review of Turkish troops, not POWs.)

He stated that "On the side stood a battalion of blacks (sic), Morrocans, 'welche' were taken prisoner in France ----". "welche" , like many German words, has a range of meanings; "which" is probably preeminent, but "who" is also a meaning. So the first read would be that the battalion was taken prisoner, but also it could translate as the prisoners themselves were taken prisoner, as individuals, not as a unit.

He just said that: "The captured officers did not take part in the review and had been incorporated into Turkish POW battalions." I am sure that he did not look into this, but had been told that. I think that most French officers for colonial units were "white" Frenchmen, and I don't know why they would even have been sent to Turkey, unless it was hoped that they might cooperate, and also be able to translate, although many Turkish officers spoke Arabic (there was a lot of Arabic in Ottoman Turkish, and the devout educated would study the Qura'an in Arabic), and some were Arabs. Perhaps some officers were North African but when sent to Turkey did not cooperate, or the Turks did not trust them and would rather use their own officers. Sending "white" officers to Turkey would have been a violation of the rules of war and something likely to come out and be an issue later; "non -white" Muslim troops volunteering (whether genuine or not) not likely to be an issue, and possibly even legal. The colonial troops may have volunteered in Africa, but the love-fest on the Western Front can have easily soured many of them. In other threads I have told the story of the North African soldier who my father got to know in a German military hospital, who had a foot wound in the French trenches, was not evacuated or treated, was abandoned by his own unit, developed gas gangrene, was thrown into no-man's-land to die, and who was rescued by the Germans and had multiple amputations until the German surgeons were able to arrest the gas gangrene with a radical amputation at the hip joint.

I don't think that a battalion of Morrocans would have transformed the war. But if it helped spread the idea of, to use a horrible phrase, a "holy war", as a functioning unit of converted POWs, it might have been very valuable and further German/Turkish designs in, for example, Persia. I am sure that it not an accident that they were kept in proximity with the 8000-odd Indian POWs from Kut.

The account does not say if the Morrocans were considered POWs, but I suspect that they were not, but were kept in the area as a lure to other Muslim POWs.

Sorry for the mis-information in my initial post.

Bob Lembke

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"Not sure. Hobson Jobson gives the root of "Sepoy", or "Seapoy" as Persian - spada (" a soldier"), via the word Sipahi, which itself came from Sipah, meaning an army or a soldiery.

Given that, I suspect the root may very well be the same. Presumably with so many different armies and ethnic groups colonising, invading and peopling the sub-Continent, there was every chance for a word to enter one language via one (or more) others. "

they were elite calvary knights who were granted timars (fiefs) throughout the lands of the ottoman empire, their alternative name was timarli siphai-enfiefed knight)

for more information,please have a look at the link below

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sipahi

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The Order of Battle for the EEF in Sept. 1918 gives

Regiment de Marche de la Legion d'Orient which included

1st & 2nd Bns. Armeniens (1)

also 1 Coy. Syrians

and 1 Sqdn. dismounted Spahis (who were they?)

As you said Bob, all very interesting

Apart from the review, does the author mention if/when/where they served in the line? (2)

I recall that the Armenians gave Allenby some headaches when they were part of his army of occupation (3)

regards

Michael

Michael;

(1) There were Armenian formations all over the place, some being division-sized. (I think that the Russian Army in the Caucases (sp?) had several Armenian divisions. Anyone know about this?) When the Turks, under the Treaty of Brest-Litvosk, were given back three provinces that had been taken by Russia in 1878 and they drove into them, they encountered an Armenian force of three infantry divisions, 64 artillery pieces, and a brigade of cavalry. One of the divisions stood and fought, and was demolished by a Turkish army corps of three divisions. When the Turks reached Baku, which was, I believe, several hundred miles east of Armenia, they found formations of Armenians and Christian Nestorians commanded by British officers raising hell with the local Muslim Azerbanians (at this time usually called "Tartars"). These forces were driven off by the Turks, the Brits having losses and pulling out, and then the Turks and the local "Tartars" fell upon Armenians living in Baku. (I read about an odd incident about 1923 where Armenian formations massacred "Tartars" and then, as everyone rose against them, they amazingly fled west and sought protection from the Turks in the area of Lake Van in Turkey.) This period and the events in the area were amazingly complex, featuring everyone happily murdering everyone else. One interesting thing that happened in 1918 was a pitched battle between German and Turkish forces in Georgia, unfortunately pitting a Turkish division against about a German company (trying to protect the Georgian railroad for German purposes), not surprising leading to the Germans being defeated and the Turks taking German POWs.

(2) I am not aware of the "Morrocan" battalion ever being in combat; it looks like it was being used to try to "turn" some of the Indian POWs at Baghdad.

(3) Do you have specifics? (Would it be politic to go there?) The Armenians started their revolt in 1894, and arguably it is still simmering, with their current occupation of part of Azerbaijan, arguably linked to their efforts to take chunks of that country in 1918. (Baku and its oil were a magnet to almost everyone at that time, including the Brits and the Germans.)

Bob Lembke

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Michael;

(3) Do you have specifics? (Would it be politic to go there?) The Armenians started their revolt in 1894, and arguably it is still simmering, with their current occupation of part of Azerbaijan, arguably linked to their efforts to take chunks of that country in 1918. (Baku and its oil were a magnet to almost everyone at that time, including the Brits and the Germans.)

I think we need to avoid confusing Armenian with just people who live (or lived) in Armenia. The Ottoman empire had Armenians living in many places whist some were living in the Russian Empire as well. As I said in my earlier post a sizable number once lived in the Turkish 'province' of Cilicia and spilt over the border with Syria - nowhere near Armenia , Baku, or Azerbaijan itself and nothing to do with any current problems there. These people did not revolt but were subject to systematic persecution (seemingly on both religious and racial grounds). Many (if not most) of the Armenians with Allenby's forces came from Cilicia. I'm unaware of any problems with them (which is not to say that there weren't any) although I would suspect as people who had been driven from their home land and were part of a military force driving back toward it they may have been unsympathetic or worse to Ottoman civilians as well as military.

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I personally find this period and topic ("the Armenian question") fascinating but a toxic topic to get into. Some Pals will remember that, about a year ago, we had a thread on this, over 100 posts, and it got quite ugly, and finally the powers that be took the whole thread down.

I would like to state that throughout almost all of its history the Turkish Empire, IMHO one of the most successful empires (what "success" in terms of an empire is of course could be hotly debated), succeeded to large extent on a very successful attitude and behavior toward major minorities. Their members were given the choice of either "joining the team", and being able to rise to the highest ranks, or remain in their culture and religion and having a special status with different rights and obligations. When Mehmet the Conqueror took Istanbul, his Grand Vizer was nicknamed "the Greek", and 34 of his 38 successors were born Christian. Some of them were slaves, but may have owned 1000 slaves, and ruled an empire of 60 nations. (Turkish slavery was, IMHO, legally much more benign than Christian slavery; it was more like indentured servitude, and I believe it had a seven year term and the slave's children were born free. I may be wrong here.)

The major minorities, the Genoan Italian Catholics, the Jews (mostly taken in by the Turks after the Spanish Christians had started using them as street lanterns in 1492), The Orthodox Greeks, and, yes, the Christian Armenians, did have higher taxes (more than "double"), but they were protected from being drafted into the Turkish Army, somewhere most of us would not want to be in 1500 or in 2008. They had their own rulers/leaders; religeous and to some extent secular; their own courts, under their own law (If an Armenian killed an Armenian, he would be tried in an Armenian court, under Armenian law, run by Armenian judges; but if he killed a Turk he would be in a Turkish court.). They could practice their own religions, as People of the Book, under the protection of the Qura'an. With these special privileges, although there were, for example, poor Armenian peasants, the average member of a recognized minority was much wealthier than the mass of Anatolians, who were generally peasants, while the minorities almost monopolized the skilled crafts, and were heavily represented in trade.

A lot of this was breaking down in the mid-19th Century, ironically when there were steps to make the minorities "equal". Not all of the recognized minorities wanted to be "equal", for example, the Bosnians carried a guerrilla war for 15 years to maintain their special but "unequal" status. Unfortunately, well into the 20th Century, "equality" turned out to be the continuation of minority handicaps, while the old privileges were taken away. I for one would not want to be a member of a minority in Turkey, but also probably nowhere else.

Bob Lembke

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Martin B

Many thanks for that pointer

regards

..........................................

quotes from myself and from Bob:

I recall that the Armenians gave Allenby some headaches when they were part of his army of occupation (3)

3) Do you have specifics?

Bob,

this letter illustrates the problem - see Allenby's point No. 2

Allenby to Wilson

"4 February 1919

SECRET

Your 74849

1. My reasons for not wishing any increase in the strength of the French detachment are as follows -

[a] Military

I already have sufficient troops.

Political

Should more French troops arrive while the Peace Conference is sitting it will convey to the inhabitants, who are openly suspicious of French intentions, the impression that the future of Syria has already been decided on and that the French intend to retain permanently that part of Syria included in O.E.T. (Occupied Enemy Territory) West and Silicia. Anti-French feeling among Arabs, which had already been excited by French propaganda, would thus be stimulated and would prejudice a peaceful settlement of territorial questions in Syria.

2. Armenian troops are unsuitable owing to the long existing feud between them and the Mahommedan population who fear reprisals for past deeds. The conduct of these troops and of the Algerians - compared to that of the Indian troops, which has been irreproachable - has lowered prestige and it is better that they should be replaced by French troops.

3. I do not recognise Monsieur Picot as having any right to give an opinion as to the number of troops necessary in my theatre of operations.

P.S. to C.I.G.S.

Copy to Prime Minister"

from 'Allenby in Palestine - the middle east correspondence of Field Marshal Viscount Allenby' selected and edited by Matthew Hughes, pub. Army Records Society 2004

regards

Michael

Edited by michaeldr
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Michael;

Many thanks for the information. I have inserted it in one of my time-lines. It should not be beaten to death on the forum, but the implications and consequences of all of this elbowing by the various Allies dividing up and parcelling out several Middle Eastern states, like Syria, still actively form events and pose problems for the West in this area. One recalls the dismay of T. E. Lawrence, when confronted by an Arab leader on how "things" were being parceled out, and the conflicting promises being made to different parties. Didn't he tell the leader, when asked which of the conflicting promises to believe, Lawrence was forced to tell him to believe whatever promise had been made last? Don't remember the specifics; I guess from "The Seven Pillars of Wisdom".

Pomiankowski said that, in the Trans-Caucuses, 7 million of the 11 million people were Muslim. The other four million were mostly Christian groups, Georgians, Armenians, Nestorians (really a religeous sect, not an ethnic group, I believe), ethnic Orthodox Russians, not sure if there were Christian Arabs in the Area, or Assyrians; then there may have been some Jews. The Muslim groups were "Tatars" (Azerbajainis), Kurds, and other ethnic groups. From my readings just about any of these groups, if they formed a large enough group, or had an often temporary military advantage, were quite delighted to murder almost any of the others, although alliances along religeous lines often formed. Little is usually said about the Kurds, who seemed to suffer significantly initially from the Armenian revolutionaries, and later fell on the columns of Armenians being expelled from the areas bordering Russia towards Syria and exacted their revenge. All in all, a very miserable example of the baser instincts of the wretched human race.

Certainly, trying to occupy areas traditionally largely Arab with Armenian troops was a bad idea, unless conflict was your cup of tea.

When the Turkish Empire was strong I guess that they were able to keep this ethnic soup below the boiling level. One controversial aspect of this mess was the role of Christian missionaries in north-eastern Turkey, who were exempt from Turkish law under concessions forced out of the "Sick Man of Europe" (Turkey) by the West. Some sources state that some of the missionaries actually imported weapons and distributed them to Christian minorities. I do know from my reading of US domestic politics of the period that the missionaries in Turkey enjoyed strong public and political support in the US, and supposedly thus the pro-missionary elements had a complete veto on the appointment of the American Ambassador to Turkey, and, for example, this is yet another ground to look carefully at the writings of US Ambassador Morgenthau, which are nevertheless quite an interesting read.

What a mess!

Bob Lembke

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Michael;

It should not be beaten to death on the forum, but the implications and consequences of all of this elbowing by the various Allies dividing up and parcelling out several Middle Eastern states, like Syria, still actively form events and pose problems for the West in this area.

On this subject, I can recommend 'A Peace to End All Peace', by David Fromkin, which postulates exactly this in a fairly convincing manner.

cheers Martin B

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Martin;

Thanks for that. The title itself is great. (My wife is a librarian, and she collects ans savours great book titles. I will reccommend it.)

Bob Lembke

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Mates,

This French Regt was placed in the new 5th ALH Bde around July 1918 with the new 14th and 15th ALHR's. (ex Camel Corps)

A fought in the last battles to Damascus with the ALH.

Strangly the ALH make very little coment on the native French troops with them in the LH Bde.

The French Regt had four Sqn's instead of the ALH three.

Cheers

S.B

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Just bought a 478 page book on the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, the basis for a lot of stuff in this thread, and the book, by an Oxford don, had about three words about the Turks, the Trans-Caucases, etc.

Bob Lembke

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