
“*Days of Glory*”:http://www.apple.com/trailers/weinstein/daysofglory/trailer1/ – _The young North Africans had never stepped foot on French soil but because France was at war, Said, Abdelkader, Messaoud and Yassir enlisted in the French Army, along with 130,000 other “indigenous soldiers,”Â? to liberate the “fatherland”Â? from the Nazi enemy. These heroes that history forgot won battles in Italy, Provence and the Vosges before finding themselves alone to defend an Alsatian village against a German battalion._
Intéressant.
_Wot wot!_ to The Last Prussian.
About Younghusband
Sir Francis Edward Younghusband (1863-1942) was a British explorer, army officer, military-political officer, and foreign correspondent born in India who led expeditions into Manchuria, Kashgar, and
Tibet. He three times tried and failed to scale Mt. Everest and journeyed from China to India, crossing the Gobi desert and the Mustagh Pass (alt. c.19,000 ft/5,791 m) of the Karakoram mountain range in modern day Pakistan. Convinced of Russian designs on British interests in India, Younghusband proactively engaged in the nineteenth century spying and conflict over Central Asia between the British and the Russians known as the Great Game.
"Younghusband" is a Canadian who has spent a number of years bouncing back and forth between his home country and Japan. Fluent in Japanese and English with experience in numerous other languages from Spanish to Georgian, Younghusband has travelled throughout Asia. He graduated with an MA from the War Studies Department at the
Royal Military College of Canada, where he focussed on the Japanese oil industry and energy security issues. He has recently returned to Canada from Japan, and is working in the technology sector.
History didn’t forget them, the French did. The U..S. Army official history of WWII, in its chapters on the Italian campaign, notes both that the French were some of their (5th Army’s) best mountain troops, and that the units in those divisions were largely North African. Back in the 1980s, Charles Lavauzelle, a major military history publisher, put out a very large tome on “l’Armee d’Afrique” (the official name of the North African Army) which covered the conquest of North Africa, the pacification, and the campaigns fought by North African units, to include both colon and indigenous units. THe official WWII US Army history also has a volume entitled “Rearming the French” which again mentions the North Africans in Italy, but is largely taken up with just what the title implies. Larteguy included indigenous French military characters in both the Centurions and the Praetorians, and likewise included vignettes of ALN fighting the French in Algeria who had distinguished military service with the French in both WWII and Indochina. For a snapshot of what a Moroccan unit looked like in Indochina, Vietnam Magazine (available on http://www.thehistorynet.com) carried an article from some obscure retiree named Darragh a few yeara ago entitled: Courage and cowardice at Dong Khe. The description of the Moroccans is based upon information provided personally by COL Jacques Jaubert, then their lieutenant commanding.