Octave Meynier
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Octave Meynier | |
|---|---|
.jpg) | |
| Born | 22 February 1874 |
| Died | 31 May 1961 (aged 87) |
| Occupation | Military officer |
Octave Meynier (22 February 1874 – 31 May 1961) was a French military officer. He is remembered as one of two officers who took control of the Voulet–Chanoine Mission, which mutinied and rampaged through West Africa in 1899. He fought in the First World War and later launched a number of cross-Saharan motorised expeditions.
Octave Meynier's father was the Marine officer François Meynier. Octave's brother Albert was the father of geographer André Meynier.
French Sudan
Meynier graduated from the military academy of Saint-Cyr in 1895, and was immediately assigned to the French Sudan.
Four years later, in 1899, he was Lt-Col. Jean-François Klobb's adjutant in Klobb's mission to reach the Voulet–Chanoine Mission and replace the expedition's commanders, Paul Voulet and Julien Chanoine. Voulet refused to cede command to Klobb, and on 14 July, he killed Klobb and wounded Meynier. Only a few days later, a mutiny among the troops resulted in Voulet's and Chanoine's deaths, and Meynier joined Paul Joalland in command of the expedition. Under Meynier and Joalland, the expedition completed its main goal: the union of French West African possessions. Meynier was later to write of the Voulet affair in A la recherche de Voulet.[1]
In 1913, Meynier was made military commander of the territory of the oasis of Ouargla, and, in 1914, proposed[to whom?] to modernize Africa through the construction of roads.[citation needed]
World War I
During the Battle of Verdun, he assumed command of the 1st Regiment of Algerian Tirailleurs and was wounded on 5 April 1918 by a shell that took away his left arm.
