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+--- Thread: Camerone Day (/thread-12973.html)
- zenda2 - 04-30-2002
Today is April 30th, Camerone Day. An excellent excuse to open a special bottle and drink a few toasts.
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The greatest Legionnaire story would have to be the story of Camerone. To do the story and Mr. Lafflin justice, for your reading enjoyment here is the better part of Chapter 8 of Mr. Lafflin's book, entitled The Greatest Glory.
"Every legionnaire has "Camerone" engraved on his heart." Legion maxim.
The French Foreign Legion wrote its most glorious page of history in Mexico. The French became interested in Mexico in 1862 and sent their client-ruler, the Austrian Archduke Maximillian, to the country in 1863. French troops had been in action as early as May 1862, and the Legion was at first disappointed and then incensed that it was apparently not wanted in the new arena. In a move that might have been regarded as mutiny in another force, the junior officers of the Legion, with the tacit approval of their seniors, collectively addressed a petition direct to the Emperor of France asking that the Legion be allowed to go and fight in Mexico.
They were not to know that the French Government had very nearly decided to give the Legion to Maximillian as it had given the earlier one to Spain. The ruse of having the petition signed only by the juniors did not deceive the French generals; they sacked the Legion colonel, Butet, and punished all the senior officers in one way or another - but the Legion was sent to Mexico. Its colonel was now Jeanningros, an efficient veteran of thirty years' service, including the battle of Moulay-Ishmael, Algeria. Two of his three battalions landed at Vera Cruz on 31st March 1863 and the third was preparing to follow.
The French, with forty thousand of their own troops and about thirteen thousand native auxiliaries, held Mexico City and Vera Cruz and a dangerous corridor between the two. The Mexican leader, Juarez, had twenty thousand troops in the north and a subordinate, General Diaz, had twenty thousand in the south. The Legion, to its bitter disappointment, found itself on escort and convoy duty in the eastern section, low, swampy land rife with hideous diseases such as yellow fever and typhus. This was soldiering without any frills and, apart from the incessant threat of guerilla sniping, without real action.
At the end of April, four weeks after their arrival, the Legion was called on for a party to escort a bullion convoy to troops in the interior. The job fell to the Legion's 3rd Company, but all its officers were down with fever. Three other officers volunteered for duty - Captain Danjou the battalion adjutant, Lieutenant Vilain the pay officer and Second Lieutenant Maudet. They were a formidable trio. Danjou had been with the Legion for several years, serving with distinction in Algeria, Crimea and Italy. In the Crimea he had lost a hand and now wore a wooden one in its place. Vilain and Maudet were apparently French, though they had enlisted as other nationalities. [As Frenchmen were not allowed to join the Legion, instead they posed as Belgians or Swiss.] They had come up through the ranks, had fought with efficiency and courage and had been commissioned because of their conduct at Magenta. They had led a company of sixty-two sous-officers and legionnaires, Polish, Italian, German and Spanish.
Mexican Intelligence was good, but even poor spies would have soon heard news of a bullion convoy. The local Mexican military leader, Colonel Milan, assembled two thousand troops - calvary and infantry - to intercept and capture it. He anticipated no great difficulty, especially as his calvary were efficient and armed with Remington and Winchester repeating rifles.
Early on 30th April the 3rd Company started well ahead of the bullion train to check that the route was clear, and at 2:30 a.m. called at a Legion defensive post along the corridor. Here the company commander was appalled at the smallness of the escort and offered Danjou a platoon as reinforcement. Danjou refused and moved on, with himself in the centre together with the ration and ammunition mules and the company in two wings, about 200 yards apart. Behind was a small rearguard section. Danjou had no scouts out, though as the Legion had no horsemen infantry scouts would have seen very little.
Just before 7 a.m. the 3rd Company passed through the deserted hamlet of Camaron, or Camerone as the French call it. It consisted of no more than a farmhouse and outbuildings enclosed in a courtyard and some derelict huts near by. A mile out of Camerone Danjou halted for breakfast and posted some sentries while water was boiled for coffee. It was the time of day legionnaires liked best.
Then came the alarm - enemy calvary. Colonel Milan was approaching with eight hundred horsemen. Danjou's bugler sounded the call to arms and the legionnaires formed a square. They had only one natural advantage in that open country; scattered profusely were clumps of tropical vegetation and waist-high grass; something of a barrier for horsemen. Steady volleys from their Minie single-shot rifles kept the Mexicans back. Colonel Milan, not risking a charge, maneuvered his men to surround the Legion company. Danjou ordered a steady withdrawal to the only cover available - the farm house at Camerone. But the loss of his ration and ammunition mules which had galloped off in fright was a serious blow.
Now in smaller groups the Mexican calvary circled the Legion company as it moved, hung tightly and harassed the men with sniping fire. Danjou warily moved his men through the thickest of the country to give the Mexicans no chance to charge. Twice he halted and fired a volley, which emptied some saddles.
But the horsemen had managed to cut off sixteen legionnaires, and when he reached the farmhouse Danjou had only forty-six men, a few of them wounded. Even worse, he found that some Mexicans had reached the place before him and now held the upper floor and a barn in a corner of the courtyard.
In was an impossible position, but Danjou was a veteran legionnaire and accustomed to impossible situations. He ordered barricades across the openings and even managed to set up a perimeter defence against the walls and sheds, though much of the courtyard was exposed to fire from the Mexicans on the top floor and Danjou could do nothing to get at these men. The calvary dismounted and tried several rushes, but the legionnaires beat them off. By 9 a.m. the sun was hot and Colonel Milan sent in an officer with a demand for surrender. Danjou refused, then went to each legionnaire and asked him to promise to fight until the end. His own end came at 11 a.m. when he was hit by a musket-ball fired by a sniper, probably from the barn.
Lieutenant Vilain took command and the defence was as steady as ever, but his thoughts when he saw the arrival of the Mexican infantry - 1,200 men - can only be imagined. The firepower directed at the farmhouse was very heavy. The day became hotter and hotter and the legionnaires had no fluid other than in their water bottles and wine flasks.
Vilain's command was valiant until he too fell - a bullet hit him about 2 p.m. Second Lieutenant Maudet, himself handling a rifle, now rallied the survivors. Waves of attackers tried to swamp the defence, but the disciplined Legion fire stopped every one of them. From time to time a legionnaire would cross the bullet-swept courtyard to help a wounded comrade. The Mexicans set fire to straw near the courtyard walls and the afternoon became a stifling agony for Maudet's men. By 5 p.m. he counted twelve men who could stand on their feet, though some could only do so by leaning against the wall. He rejected several invitations to surrender - his replies, it is said, were in best barrack room French - but then a massive Mexican rush pulled him and his small band out of the farmhouse and into the only shelter left - a few outhouses. By 6 p.m. he had five men alive - Corporals Maine and Berg, Legionnaires Constantin, Leonard and Wensel. Collectively they had only a handful of ammunition. The approach on night could not help; it meant inevitable defeat. There are two versions of what happened next; it hardly matters which is the correct one, for both are incredible.
According to one account, Maudet ordered his men to fire their last rounds deliberately. Then, bayonets fixed, the group pulled aside a barricade and charged across the courtyard at the front ranks of 1,700 Mexicans. By the other account Maudet fell badly wounded and two of his men were killed as the tiny band withdrew from room to room until they could go no farther. Then, dazed, shocked and deafened they stood shoulder to shoulder against a wall, their bayonets held at guard. Certainly, Maudet was badly wounded and two men died. Corporals Maine and Berg and Legionnaire Wensel, a Pole, survived.
The Mexicans could hardly force themselves to kill these three men, but were about to go through the formality when a colonel, Chambas, sabre in hand, forced his way through and held back his men.
"Surely, you have to surrender now," he said to the legionnaires.
Corporal Maine, glancing at his two comrades to check he was the senior survivor, said, "We will surrender if you leave us our arms and permit us to tend our wounded."
Chambas saluted him with his sabre. "To a man like you I would grant anything."
That's how the Legion's history relates the incident and it rings true, as does Colonel Milan's comment when told that only three legionnaires were on their feet. "These are not men but demons."
The Mexicans dragged twenty-three wounded legionnaires from the ruins and sixteen of them recovered. Maudet, being an officer, was given a slim chance to survive. Put on a mule's back, he was taken to a hospital about fifty miles away and was carefully tended by the Spanish lady who conducted the hospital, but he had been too badly mauled and he died, as did a sargent who was also taken to the hospital.
The Mexicans had killed 3 officers and 23 legionnaires; they had lost 300 of their own troops killed and possibly as many as 500 wounded. And they did not capture the bullion. Danjou's forethought in having it follow at a safe distance paid off; hearing the firing the convoy halted until joined by Colonel Jeanningros and a relief force.
Jeanningros reached Camerone next day and took in the scene with astonishment. He was even more astounded when his men discovered a single living legionnaire under the dead; this man had eight wounds and the Mexicans had left him for dead. He was able to give a coherent account of the action and is believed to have survived.
From a prison cell, Corporal Berg smuggled a note out to his colonel. It ended with the words, "The 3rd Company is no more, but I must tell you it contained nothing but good soldiers." Berg was commissioned on his return for captivity - the Camerone prisoners were exchanged on a one-for-one basis - and continued an already extraordinary career. He had been an officer in the French Regular Army and had fought in Algeria and Syria but was cashiered and joined the Legion as a private. Returning to Algeria after Mexican service he was killed in a duel with a fellow subaltern. Corporal Maine was also commissioned and became a captain. The other survivors were all honoured: Wensel, Schaffner, Fritz, Pinzinger and Brunswick were made Chevaliers of the Legion of Honour. Magnin, Palmaert, Kunassec, Schreiblick, Rebares and Groski received the Military Medal.
Even more important for Legion tradition, Captain Danjou's wooden hand was found in the ruins of Camerone and taken away to become the Legion's most prized possession - a sacred relic. Camerone Day became the Legion's ritual occasion, and it is celebrated with all the pomp and ceremony that the Legion can give it. Danjou's hand is paraded before the 1st Regiment at the base depot and the account of the battle is read to every Legion unit each Camerone Day. The ashes of the Camerone dead are preserved in a reliquary carved as the Mexican eagle and are held in rotation in the chapel of each Legion regiment. The Mexican eagle became the badge of the 1st Regiment.
Throughout their occupation of Mexico all French troops were ordered to halt when passing the farmhouse at Camerone and to present arms. The Mexicans were not so anxious to preserve the epic of Camerone and went to some trouble to reroute a railway line through the courtyard where so many of their men were killed. But they did leave part of the original wall, and in 1892 they permitted the French to erect a memorial with Latin and French inscriptions: "Here there were less than sixty opposed to a whole army. Its mass crushed them. Life abandoned these French soldiers before courage. The 30th of April 1863." Later a bigger monument was erected, and in 1963 the French Army flew a large Legion contingent to Camerone for a centenary commemoration service.
For many years Camerone Day has been observed at Camerone, attended by French residents in Mexico and by Mexican officers. Since 1904 it has been ceremonially observed in every Legion post, under fire if necessary.
- Thomas - 04-30-2002
At first, I thought you were talking about a day dedicated to shell fish...
[This message has been edited by foodie (edited 04-30-2002).]
- Innkeeper - 04-30-2002
Hope the French and Mexicans don't mind, but we celebrated it with German wine and Swiss cheese. [img]http://www.wines.com/ubb2/tongue.gif[/img]