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Updated: June 28, 2025
We passed some Turcos, happy-looking children but ill companions in a hostile country, and some Spahis with flowing burnous, who looked ridiculously out of place, and then, after a long search it was dark on the road and very cold we found the Division.
The battalions of Zouaves and of Zephyrs; the brigade of Chasseurs d'Afrique; the squadrons of Spahis; the regiments of Tirailleurs and Turcos; the batteries of Flying Artillery, were all massed there, reassembled from the various camps and stations of the southern provinces to do honor to the day to do honor in especial to one by whom the glory of the Tricolor had been saved unstained.
In nearly every attack the men from the desert had flung themselves upon the enemy, using only the butt or the bayonet. Man for man no white man drugged for years with meat and alcohol is a physical match for these Turcos, who eat dates and drink water," said Richard Harding Davis, who saw the end of the fighting at Meaux. "They are as lean as starved wolves. They move like panthers.
The French had no hesitation in using Turcos against the Germans, nor did the Americans refrain from using Negro regiments against the Spaniards. We made it a white man's war, however, and I think that we did wisely and well. So far did the Boers carry their murderous tactics against the natives, that British prisoners with dark complexions were in imminent danger.
It did not take us very long to realize that a great disaster had befallen our gallant Allies who held the northern face of the salient. The Turcos in broken French explained that the Germans had sent asphyxiating gas from their trenches, and that the gas had killed one quarter of their men.
"I have been here since the very first," he said; "since the day after our troops took this town, and God knows how many thousands of wounded men Germans, Englishmen, Frenchmen, Turcos, some Belgians have passed through my hands; but as yet I have to see a man who has been wounded by a saber or a lance. I saw one bayonet wound yesterday or the day before.
At the age of seventeen he was admitted to the French military school at Saint-Cyr, and two years later was in Algeria, as a second lieutenant in a regiment of Turcos.
His experiences in Africa were of the kind usual in savage warfare; but he became a favorite with his men, whom he cared for throughout his career with much of that fatherly interest which distinguished the Russian hero, General Skobeleff. When the war with Italy broke out, in 1859, Boulanger and his Turcos took part in it.
An officer of Turcos was protected at Sedan; a cuirassier of Reichsoffen would have died, pierced in the heart by a bullet, if this bullet after passing though his pocket-book had not stayed its flight on reaching a little picture of Our Lady of Lourdes!
Jack rested patiently on his horse, waiting for the road to be cleared, and beside him sat Georges, chatting paternally with the giant standard-bearer of the Turcos. The huge fellow laughed and showed his dazzling teeth under the crisp jet beard, for Georges was talking to him in his native tongue and it was many miles from Saint-Avold to Oran.
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