"It was just 70 years ago." At 89, N'Dongo Dieng hadn't forgotten a thing about his enlistment as a tirailleur in France's colonial army: "It was the 1954 wintering season," the rainy period running from June to October in Senegal. "I was a typist at the prefecture of Kaolack, my home region. There was a party for July 14 [the French national holiday] and a song rang out." As he recounted the anecdote, the old man came to life in his house in Mbao, a town close to Dakar, and intoned a few words of the "Marche Lorraine" military song. "At the sound of this music, my father became enthusiastic and said to me, 'Why don't you become a soldier?' A few weeks later, I reported to the barracks and put on the uniform."
Dieng's family has a long military tradition. Four of his sons have served in the Senegalese army or gendarmerie. His grandfather fought on French soil during the First World War as a tirailleur. "He never came back," murmured Dieng. His father took part in the Provence landings in August 1944.
According to the Elysée Palace, Dieng was scheduled to go to Toulon, in southeast France, to commemorate this event on August 15, in the presence of French President Emmanuel Macron and Senegal's Minister of the Armed Forces Birame Diop. Accompanied by the Association for the Memory and History of Senegalese Tirailleurs (AMHTS), chaired by Frenchwoman Aïssata Seck, a local elected official in greater Paris, Dieng was set to fly to France with Yoro Diao, Ousmane Sagna and Ousmane Badji. They will be reunited with Oumar Diémé, who carried the Olympic flame on the outskirts of Paris on July 26. The five men were born in the 1930s and all fought under the colors of the French flag.
Dieng operated in Algeria between 1956 and 1958. "My regiment had sent a lot of soldiers to Indochina. But that war was over and another was beginning. A few of us were sent to [the region of Algiers]." Dieng admitted: "Yes, it was strange. We were fighting against African Muslims like ourselves. But we were soldiers. That's the way it is."
The other tirailleurs that Dieng will stand alongside for the commemorations in Toulon also took part in the two great colonial wars of Indochina and Algeria. Anthony Guyon, historian and author of Tirailleurs Sénégalais: De l'Indigène au Soldat, De 1857 à Nos Jours ("Senegalese Tirailleurs: From Native to Soldier, From 1857 to The Present Day"), emphasized: "We sometimes forget, but the tirailleurs were born out of colonial conquest and for colonial conquest. And during decolonization, they are still mobilized in the face of revolts by colonized peoples." The French historian pointed out: "Tens of thousands of tirailleurs were sent to Indochina, compared with a few thousand to Algeria. The French general staff feared an effect of solidarity between Muslims."
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