Octave Meynier

Octave Meynier was a French military officer, born on 22 February 1874 at Saint-Yrieix-la-Perche in France and died on 31 May 1961 at Algiers. 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. He was the son of Marine officer and French Overseas Minister François Meynier, and father to author and geographer André Meynier.

Early life and career

Son of the Lieutenant-Colonel François Meynier, the NCO Octave Meynier, on leaving the military academy of Saint-Cyr in 1895, was assigned to French Sudan.

French Sudan

Four years later, in 1899, he was Lt.-Col. Klobb's adjutant in Klobb's mission to reach the Voulet-Chanoine Mission, and replace the expedition's commanders, Paul Voulet and Julien Chanoine, accused of serious misdemanours. Voulet refused to cede the command and on 14 July killed Klobb and wounded Meynier. Only a few days later a mutiny among the troop brought to Voulet and Chanoine's death, and Meynier became mith Paul Joalland commander of the expedition, completing its main goal, the union of French West Africann 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 projected to modernize Africa through the construction of roads.

World War I

He assumed during the battle of Verdun the command of the 1st Algerian tirailleurs Regiment, and was wounded on 5 April 1918 by a shell that took away his left arm.

Algeria

After the war he returned to Africa as head of the military staff of the governor-general of Algeria, Maurice Viollette; from 1926 to 1934 he kept the position of Director of the Territories (Saharan Algeria), and was given the opportunity to realize the web of routes covering the Sahara he had first thought of in 1914.

African auto rallies

In 1930 he organized the Mediterranean–Niger car rally, using the roads he had just built.

He left the army in 1935, with the rank of Brigadier General.

Meynier, who saw in rallying "an immediate way to put in contact the Mediterranean and African peoples, and make easier the relations among them", organized in 1950 the first Trans-African car rally, the Mediterranean–Cape Town.

References

• Much of this article was translated from French Wikipedia's fr:Octave Meynier.