The Last Beau Gesfe

Nigeria's civil war is over, but tribal conflicts continue to plague other African countries, including Kenya, Ethiopia and the Sudan. In Chad, Nigeria's neighbor to the east, an insurrection begun by fierce, nomadic Moslem herdsmen has intensified ancient animosities. It has also led to the reappearance of an old symbol of Africa's colonial past: the white kepis of the French Foreign Legion.

Fighting for the first time since 1961, when France withdrew from Algeria, units of the legion's crack 1st Infantry and 2nd Parachute regiments have been in Chad since last April. The huge, landlocked former French colony is one of the world's poorest countries, with 3,500,000 people and a yearly per-capita income of $40. For more than five years, northern Arabs have been ravaging cotton fields and raiding government offices in the south in an effort to topple the corrupt but pro-French regime in Fort-Lamy. Paris is so disturbed by the rebel threat that, as part of its recent Mirage-jet deal, it won Libya's promise not to support the Arab struggle in Chad.

The byzantine politics is not important to France's famed, 139-year-old Foreign Legion. Since Algeria, the colonial force has shrunk from 15,000 to 7,500 men, and it is not even as foreign as it used to be: though more than 25% of the legion are still German, an estimated 20% are French, while Italians, Spaniards, Yugoslavs and others form a polyglot minority. After nine long years of dull garrison duty in Corsica, New Caledonia and France, all that matters to the 1,000 legionnaires in Chad is that they are at war once again. TIME Correspondent James Wilde spent five days in the field with them. His report:

It was a hot dry-season afternoon. Adjudant-Chef Robert Garros, 34, stopped his Jeep and looked back. A long funnel of dust stretched out behind his platoon's four battered, dun-colored weapons carriers. His 35 legionnaires were tired and filthy, their faces caked with white dust. After a moment, Garros, a muscular barrel of a man with 14 long years of tough service in the legion, raised his arm to signal the advance. With the Jeep in the lead, the four weapons carriers rumbled ahead side by side and raced over deep elephant tracks into a village of conical straw huts.

Like every other village they had raided that day, the place had been hastily abandoned. Only later, as the platoon moved on across the veldt, was there any firing at all. Toward sundown, Garros spotted a gazelle. "Get her, adjudant! Get her!" he shouted. The huge, tattooed second-in-command stood up in the truck behind and dropped the graceful animal with a single shot at 400 meters.

Luxury Kills. In an effort called Operation Coccinclle (Ladybird), five companies of legionnaires are sweeping a 4,000-sq.-mi. area near the Sudanese border, looking for rebel bands heading south in search of water. At day's end, Garros set up an ambush around one of the major water routes. The setting sun, red with dust, soon grazed the horizon like a biblical omen in the sky. A few seconds later it was night; there is no twilight in Africa, and darkness comes as unexpectedly as death.

The only surprise that evening was supper--freshly killed gazelle, plus a vintage Bordeaux and chilled Mercier 1962 brut. The wines had been air-dropped by helicopter. Garros was rather embarrassed. "To be effective," he says, a legionnaire "must be cold, hungry and miserable. Luxury kills faster than bullets."

Garros' sector, just south of the Sahara, is occupied by descendants of the same Moslem fanatics who killed General Charles George ("Chinese") Gordon in Khartoum 85 years ago. A Sudan-based outfit called the Chad National Liberation Front (FROLINAT) claims credit for the current insurrection. French-educated Franc,ois Tombalbaye, the only President this ten-year-old country has ever had, dismisses the insurgency as mere banditry. In fact, it has racial and religious overtones. Moslem emirates in the north ruled Chad before the French conquest, and the black, predominantly Christian Sara tribesmen in the south were their servants. The Arab herdsmen, who never adapted to French rule, are trying to overthrow their former slaves, who managed to adapt very well.

In resurrecting the legion, Paris apparently acted out of fear that if a pan-Islamic force gained sway in Chad, there would be trouble in other former French colonies on Chad's border--Niger, the Central African Republic and Cameroun. Backed mainly by the Saras, who account for just 17% of the population, Tombalbaye's one-party dictatorship was near collapse when he asked for French troops under a defense pact with Paris. The French garrison at Fort-Lamy was increased to 2,000 infantry, marines and air force men, but the legionnaires have handled most of the fighting. Since April, they claim to have lost three men while slaying some 1,500 rebels.

Magic Amulets. Many of the rebels are hawk-nosed Toubou bandits from the mountains of Tibesti, where, legend has it, the wind is born. Others are wild-haired southern and eastern Islamic warriors bent on holy war, who carry amulets to ward off bullets. Though some of them wear only loincloths, there are usually a few in each band who wear immaculate white robes and ride Arab stallions. One man in ten has a gun; the rest fight with spears or bows and arrows --for which Garros has considerable respect. "They killed a lion the other day with a poisoned arrow," he said, "and it took only ten seconds to die."

It is doubtful that the Chad campaign will revive the old legion cry: "Vive la mort, vive la guerre, vive la Legion Etrangere." Many legionnaires consider the campaign a temporary reprieve for a fading outfit. "The Viets tried to kill us, and so did the Algerians and the French high command," said one veteran. "But in the end, red tape will get us. This may be our last beau geste." Said Garros: "We're damned glad to be here."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.