"Tirailleur", which translates as “skirmisher”, was a designation given by the French Army to indigenous infantry recruited into the French Colonial Forces from the various colonies and overseas possessions of the French Empire during the 19th and 20th centuries. Despite the name, Senegalese Tirailleurs weren’t necessarily from Senegal; the name was given to all West and Central sub-Saharan African regiments and was comprised of many ethnic groups from the modern-day nations of Benin, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Guinea, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Togo and Senegal. Senegal had been France’s first colony south of the Sahara. On the eve of World War II five regiments of Senegalese Tirailleurs were stationed in France. This deployment of tirailleurs outside their regions of recruitment and traditional peacetime service arose because the heavy casualties of World War I had reduced the numbers of metropolitan Frenchmen in the military service age group of twenty to twenty-five by more than half. During the war, Germany held 120,000 non-white soldiers from the French colonies. These men were not sent to Germany; instead they were used as labor for German Army projects inside France’s Occupied Zone. Dijon, Côte-d'Or, Burgundy, France. June 1940.
Source: https://bag-of-dirt.tumblr.com/post/64093965318/portrait-of-a-young-senegalese-tirailleur-taken-as
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AuteurPaul Jansen; Hobby fotograaf uit Nieuw-Vennep. Archieven
April 2021
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