Gendarmerie

“ The Municipal Police of the Reich with several special units, such as traffic squads, accident squads, information, cavalry, police dog squads, radio, and medical units; (b) the Gendarmerie with innumerable stations and posts, distributed all over the country, even in the smallest villages, which had rendered service without essential changes since Napoleon’s time—the motorized Gendarmerie supervised traffic ”

“ A legion of gendarmerie, composed of mounted and unmounted troops, provided with machine guns and with administrative and medical services will be organised in each territorial region, it will supply in the vilayets, sandjaks, cazas, etc., the detachments necessary for the organisation of a fixed protective service, mobile reserves being at its disposal at one or more points within the region. ”

“ The gendarmerie are recruited from the army, there being one legion in each army corps district. Their strength is roughly 22,000 men, equally divided between cavalry and infantry. In Paris there is a separate force known as the Garde républicaine, which carries out police duties very much the same as the gendarmerie in the Departments. They number about 3000, of whom 800 are mounted. The French prison system was in a very antiquated state in 1874, when a commission on prison discipline issued its report in favour of cellular confinements. ”

“ Trench invited me to dine with the [Pg 201] inspector of police for the district of Kilgawan. This young man, who discharges all the duties of a lieutenant of gendarmerie amongst us, has about thirty constables (Irish constabulary force) under his orders. This corps seems copied from the French gendarmerie. They are superb men, admirably disciplined, who render the greatest services. They are, however, abominated by the populace, although they are all Irish officers and men. ”

“ At last a sergeant of the gendarmes rode up to our side splashed and heated.
“Has he escaped?” cried one of the men beside me.
“Yes!” said he, with an oath, “the brigand has got away; though how he cut the cords on his wrists, or by what means he sprang from the charrette to the road, the devil must answer. Ha! there they are firing away after him. The only use of their powder is to show the fellow where they are.”
“I would not change places with our captain this evening,” cried one of the gendarmerie. “Returning to Paris without the red beard—”
“Ma foi, you're not wrong there. ”

“ The gendarmerie is the political police of the Czar. It forms a special military organisation quite distinct from the police proper. A detail of such gendarmes, proportionate to the importance of the place, is to be found in every railroad station of the country. On this occasion, however, the presence of the gendarmes seemed to have some special bearing upon the nature of the scene. They were all big strapping fellows. Their jingling spurs, red epaulets and icy silence belonged to the same category of things as the terrible political prisons of Kharkoff and St. Petersburg ”

“ To ensure by March 2005 a clear legal framework for the respective tasks of, and cooperation between, gendarmerie and police including as far as implementing legislation is concerned, and to develop and implement a clear recruitment plan by the middle of 2005 for both institutions with the aim of having made considerable progress in filling the 7 000 vacancies in the police and the 18 000 vacancies in the gendarmerie by the date of accession. ”

“ The Police itself is much split and is subordinated in the most important parts to the ministry of justice and not to the ministry of the Interior. The special troops, the motorized and mounted units, are relatively good, the Marechaussee, a sort of troop gendarmerie, is very good. ”

“ The prefect also reigns supreme over the brigades of foot and mounted gendarmerie scattered throughout his department. Of course, the gendarmes do not follow a man to the poll to see that he votes to order, but both the gendarmes and the rural constables understand that they are to act as gently toward the liquor-sellers who vote as they are bidden as they are to proceed rigorously against those who contend for the right of private judgment. ”

“ Gemini, the Twins, two stars in the southern hemisphere named Castor and Pollux; also the name of a sign of the zodiac.
Gendarmes (i. e. men-at-arms) , a military police in France organised since the Revolution, and charged with maintaining the public safety. The gendarmerie is considered a part of the regular army, and is divided into legions and companies; but the pay is better than that of an ordinary soldier. In the 14th and 15th centuries the name was applied to the heavy French cavalry, and later to the royal bodyguard of the Bourbons. ”

“ Beyond the "details" in the barracks it contains few of the rank and file, and its big square betrays little of the crowded animation of the towns nearer the fighting line, with their great parks of armoured cars, motor lorries, and ammunition waggons, their filter-carts, and their little clusters and eddies of men resting in billets. The Military Police on point-duty have a comparatively quiet time, although despatch-riders are, of course, for ever whizzing to and fro with messages from and to the Front. ”

“ Over the last two centuries the military police—or provost marshals as they were called during much of their history—evolved from a group of miscellaneous units and men organized on a temporary basis in time of national emergency to perform a limited range of law and order responsibilities into today's highly organized and trained combat support force. During the 1980s military police units carried out many of the wide-ranging duties they have assumed in the Army, such as fighting in Grenada ”

“ The assets that make the Military Police Corps so valuable in contemporary battlefield doctrine are actually quite similar to those possessed by the Marechaussee Corps in the Revolutionary War. While traveling a difficult road to organizational permanence and recognition as an organic element of the Army's fighting team, military police have along the way carefully adapted their mobility and communications capability to a myriad of new duties and responsibilities, leaving the corps ready to assume greater responsibilities and duties in the Army of the future. ”

“ We were not a little surprised on perceiving our gendarmes sitting in an antiquated motor, whose puffing and wheezing betokened its age. They stopped when they saw us, and after exchanging greetings, laughingly poked fun at their vehicle—far less imposing than their well-groomed horses, but the only thing that could cover between seventy and eighty miles a day! From them we learned that the mobilization was being carried out in perfection, and in all their tours to outlying villages and hamlets not a single delinquent had been found —not a single man was missing! ”

“ The parks of artillery are to be formed where they can be protected; they are never to be without guards, and troops should be sufficiently near to afford them support.
“If an attroupement or riotous assembly of the inhabitants against the military takes place, the troops are to be under arms, and the attroupement is to be fired upon. Any act of violence against the soldiery is to be immediately noticed, and the offenders are to be secured. The service must be respected. The General Officers are to take care that the discipline and good conduct of the troops merit the respect demanded. ”

“ Originally, and up to the time of the first French revolution, the most distinguished cavalry corps in the service of the Bourbon kings, to whom they formed a sort of body-guard. Under existing arrangements the gendarmes constitute a military police, and comprise both cavalry and infantry. The force consists principally of soldiers taken from the army, generally on account of intelligence and good conduct. The men receive much higher pay than the rest of the army, of which, however, the corps is a part, and they are liable in cases of emergency to be sent on active service. ”

“ The gendarmes on duty—a couple of them are always at hand in a French railway station—soon appeared, and, taking in the situation at the first glance, imposed silence peremptorily.
"Let some one, one person only, speak and explain." The brigadier, or sergeant, addressed himself to me, no doubt seeing that I had assumed a prominent place in the forefront, and seemed a person of importance. ”

“ On July 4, 1925, you are Sergeant Black in charge of an harassing patrol sent out from the 68th regiment of Infantry which is acting as outpost for the 12th Division. At a quarter to twelve at night, you have just fired two volleys from Boyd School House in the direction of Oak Ridge, and are proceeding toward C. Topper’s to do the same there, when, as you cross the railroad one hundred yards south of the “r” in Topper, you stumble upon a wagon wheel imbedded in the earth. ”

“ A staff-officer inspected every guard-mounting and every battalion-drill, and made a report as to how the same was conducted. A staff-officer rode through every regimental camp every morning, and [Pg 237] made a report of its condition as to cleanliness. If the explosion of a rifle was heard any where about the post, a staff-officer was on the spot in five minutes to learn the circumstances of the irregularity, to order the offender to the guard-house, and to make his report to the all-pervading brigade commander. ”

“ Nearly all the Company Officers and N.C.O.'s were attending, besides the C.O., Adjutant, Machine-Gun Officer, Regimental Sergeant-Major, Pioneer Sergeant, Signalling Sergeant, Police Sergeant—in fact, every one of note in the Regiment. There were also a number of men waiting to be told off for various crimes; and they were holding this office in a farmyard, on hard cobbled stones, when a shell of large calibre dropped amongst them, killing and wounding close on forty Officers and men. ”

“ No officer of any grade or any soldier was allowed to carry any article outside of his gun and his cartridge box, other than a single blanket and one oil cloth. Naught but something to warm the body and protect the skin would be tolerated, and once, every day on the march, inspection was a part of every officer’s duty for the enforcement of this requirement. Ordnance wagons, caissons and ambulances were subjected to the same close scrutiny and the immediate destruction of all contraband was the stern and irrevocable order of General Wheeler. ”

“ The lieutenant saw to that. And you’ve got to do the best you can for them, and you are to put them in a cell together. Orders from the lieutenant!”
“Well, I must search them,” repeated the warder helplessly. “I must search them, you know; prison rules, you know. I must search them for concealed weapons!”
“Nothing of the sort. They were searched, and we’ve got orders to see that you don’t bother them again.”
“Have you any knives, pistols, revolvers, or other weapons on you?” Stubbornly the warder had turned to us. The habit of years is not so easily discarded. ”

“ If an Officer, two non-commissioned Officers, and twenty-four Privates, form the Advanced Guard, the Officer should post himself about five hundred yards in front of the columns, with thirteen men, a serjeant and eight should be detached five hundred yards in advance of him, and three men five hundred yards in advance of the whole. The principle upon which an Advanced Guard, Rear Guard, or Side Patrol is sent out, is to give time to the column to make dispositions to attack or retreat, should an Enemy be discovered. ”

“ Except on particular occasions, there are no mounted officers on the ground, a peculiarity which gives a remarkably “National Guard” like appearance to the field. They are well dressed, but very independent in such movements as in carrying the sword, or changing flanks: after a few manœuvres, which partake more of the character of company than battalion exercise, the men order arms, and the captains, lieutenants, and ensigns all fall out for a few minutes, to smoke a leaf-full of tobacco, and chat with the commanding officer. ”

“ Troopers confined to barracks are employed in doing the hardest and dirtiest manual work. They take part in every drill and duty besides. Those sent to the Salle de Police are kept at night in the lock-up. Troopers sent to prison do no duty, but undergo special punishment drill for three hours in the morning and three hours at night. They are deprived of pay, of sugar, and of coffee.
Troopers in the cells are kept in confinement day and night. Only a blanket without bedding is allowed to the troopers in prison or in the cells. ”

“ A gang of warrant-officers, and eight seamen, are to be at each mortar, to give whatever assistance may be required.
A gang from the navy, with a careful warrant-officer, and a non-commissioned officer of the artillery, are to have the charge between decks on board each bomb and tender, to get up the fixed shells that are in the rack; and a careful person is to remain constantly at the powder-room door, which must be kept shut as much as possible. ”

“ Some are lighted, and occasional shadows flit across them, but none that are familiar. Suddenly he hears a sound that brings him back to himself—the tramp of marching feet, and the sudden clash of arms as they halt; a patrol from the provost-marshal's guard comes quickly around a corner from the soft dust of a side street, and the non-commissioned officers are sharply halting all neighboring men in uniform, and examining their passes. ”

“ On the 21st of August, 1919, you are Sergeant Stuart sent out in charge of a contact patrol from the 99th Infantry acting as outpost of the 32d Brigade. After hard work during which you are nearly captured at the cemetery near Henderson Meeting House, you arrive with your patrol, at ten minutes to nine in the evening, at 601 just west of Hunterstown. A regiment of the enemy’s infantry has been defeated by your troops during the day and it is your duty to find out what you can about the enemy’s whereabouts and intentions. ”