France Letters from the Legion of Honour Museum

[Mark Brewer]

Hi, This might be considered rude or off topic, but I'm having difficulty getting some replies to my letters to the Legion of Honour Museum translated. These are from 2000, can anyone help?

[Mark Brewer]

Next one.

[Mark Brewer]

Last one.

[Chris Boonzaier]

Basically the names you gave, two were confirmed.

Then they said they are renovating and cannot find any of the other info you needed at the moment and gave you some links, names of associations and names of books that may be of help.

All the best

Chris

[Guest Rick Research]

The middle one says that the "dossiers" of all LoH recipeints from 1802 to 1930 are online at

www.Culture.fr

click on Bases de donn?es

click on Instruments recherches archives

click on L?onore

and apparently you can search by name.

What information are you seeking from the French that you need/don't have?

I have both Logan and Rhodes in the 1935 British edition of "Who's Who?" so can scan their entries for you if wanted?

Logan was one of the most loathesomely monstrous specimens of colonial "humanity" who ever lived, so I have more on him. (In a contest, I don't believe Ed could possibly out-write my opinion of Bob Logan. Yeah. THAT horrific.)

[Ulsterman]

Am I reading that correctly that the St. Helena medals' archives were burnt in 1871, but department archives are being collected to rework a list of recipients?

[Guest Rick Research]

No. The central archive was destroyed in 1871 and ONLY the Departmental sub-archives survive which WOULD permit of any reconstruction--

by implication: not that they are re-doing the St Helena Rolls, but that anyone researching would have to search through all the Departmental sub-rolls, if you do not know where the recipient applied from in 1857.

[Ulsterman]

No. The central archive was destroyed in 1871 and ONLY the Departmental sub-archives survive which WOULD permit of any reconstruction--

by implication: not that they are re-doing the St Helena Rolls, but that anyone researching would have to search through all the Departmental sub-rolls, if you do not know where the recipient applied from in 1857.

...and that would leave out all extra-French veterans.

too bad-sigh-

[g_deploige]

For the medal of Saint-H?l?ne see

http://www.stehelene.org/

Good research

Guy

[Mark Brewer]

Guys thankyou for your assistance. I apologise if I have been unkind to members of the Museum of the Legion of Honour, I actually greatly respect the Order and all that it represents.

It is my intent to write a book on New Zealand and French relations through awards of the Legion of Honour. I started with a list of approximately 28 predominantly military personnel and now have a list of over 100 New Zealand recipients (or those with strong New Zealand ties). My queries to the Museum of the Legion of Honour are mainly to confirm that they were a recipient and the date of the award.

I tried the website that they suggested, but it doesn't appear to list foreign recipients. Any suggestions of other online resources?

Mark

Edited January 20, 2008 by Mark Brewer

[Guest Rick Research]

From the 1935 British edition of "Who's Who?"

[Guest Rick Research]

You'd never know from his 1935 "Who's Who?" entry that Bob Logan was the Julius Streicher of the South Pacific:

[Guest Rick Research]

One month into his 4 1/2 years of tyrannical despotism, even the home folks knew that Bob was a stark, raving lunatic

page ? book link to follow below

[Guest Rick Research]

University of Hawaii Press, 1995. ISBN 0-8248-1668-4

Bob Logan's "accomplishments" as the Gauleiter of ex-German Samoa, in more or less chronological order:

the theft of all German currency in the colony (a large chunk of which adhered to his fingers),

"no bid" illegal expropriation "auctions" for his pals in Burns Philp (the "Haliburton" of the time),

the deportation of German civilian (there were no military) males contrary to 1907 Geneva Convention rules,

banning of all education and medical treatment for Samoans,

deliberate ruination of German civilian property with the intentional purpose of cheating any future reparation claims (none were ever honoured, as it turned out),

the resulting and intended collapse of the local native economy,

famine resulting from the agricultural collapse and his blockade of trade with neutral American Samoa,

his pornographic obsession with Chinese males led to his personal dissolution of all Chinese-Samoan marriages and the forced deportation of these Allied nationals--jailing recalcitrant wives and leaving children parentless,

enslavement--literally--of Melanesian contract workers from German New Guinea (by the time the League of Nations II got around to "investigating"--in 1952-- there were only 18 SLAVES still alive),

and his crowning "achievement"

the deliberate "infected blanket treatment" of the 18th century, modernized--

letting in a steamer of 1918 influenza pandemic passengers, as a result of which (having banned all medical treatment for natives) 1/5 of the population of western Samoa died

For all of which a Grateful Empire bestowed upon him the Companion of the Bath and (inexplicably) the French gave him a Legion of Honour.

His successsor (who introduced New Zealand secret police who ruled via death squads into the late 1920s, most notably a 1929 massacre of passive resistance leaders) referred to Bob, charitably, as "mad." And ironically enough, having depopulated Western Samoa through attempted genocide... Bob's successor Colonel Tate had to RE-IMPORT Chinese for coolie labour.

I can't think of ONE MAN who had so profoundly and directly an evil effect on a helpless civilian population in the 20th century. You'd have to go back to the first generation of Conquistadores for a more brutal exploiter in his own privately made hell on Earth.

Some things DON'T turn up in nice neat period references, eh?

[Mark Brewer]

Thanks for the post on Heaton-Rhodes and Logan. I certainly believe New Zealand's actions in Western Samoa were deplorable. I believe that the Prime Minister presented a formal apology to the people of Western Samoa during a visit a couple of years ago. Mark.

[Ulsterman]

I had no idea. I am appalled.

Post-mortum you would think the UK govt. would at least strip him of his 'honors".

[Mark Brewer]

HI, please find attached the biographical paragraphs I have written up for the two Legion of Honour recipients discussed above. I have been less direct about Logan's conduct in Western Samoa than Rick, but agree with Rick's belief that Logan was a mad bugger.

Colonel Robert Logan was a key figure in the wartime administration of Western Samoa and was subsequently decorated by the French Government. He remained the Military Administrator and British representative to Samoa from the initial invasion through until the end of the War and was awarded the Croix de Chevalier of the Légion d’honneur in December 1919 ‘in recognition of valuable services in Samoa during the first year of the military occupation of that territory’.A member of the New Zealand Staff Corps, Logan had immigrated to New Zealand from Scotland in 1881 and became a farmer and Mounted Rifles volunteer before rising to Command the Auckland Military District just prior to the War. In Samoa he tried to win local sentiment but struggled with complex economic and indigenous issues, and significantly mishandled the arrival of the influenza pandemic in November 1918 resulting in the death over of 7,500 people. Logan left Samoa in January 1919 and was condemned for negligence in his handling of the Samoan influenza outbreak by a New Zealand commission of inquiry. He was subsequently posted to the retired list in December 1919 and returned to Great Britain where he died in 1935.

London Gazette, 15 December 1919, p.15578; W. McDonald, Honours and Awards to the New Zealand Expeditionary Force in the Great War 1914–1918, Napier: Helen McDonald, 2001, p.183.

D. Munro, ‘Logan, Robert 1863 – 1935’, Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, 7 July 2005, http://www.dnzb.govt.nz/ (5 Jan 06).

Edited October 8, 2011 by Mark Brewer

[Mark Brewer]

Colonel the Honorable Sir Robert Heaton Rhodes served as New Zealand’s Special Red Cross Commissioner in France and England during the War. A New Zealand born but Oxford educated barrister and solicitor, Rhodes had given up law and commenced farming after the dead of his father in 1884. A member of the Canterbury Yeomanry Cavalry he served as a Captain and Commander of F Squadron 8^th Contingent New Zealand Mounted Rifles in South Africa in 1902, and later commanded the Canterbury Mounted Rifles Brigade. Rhodes had been a Member of Parliament since 1899 and was appointed Postmaster General and Minister of Health in Massey’s cabinet in 1912, but was forced to resign to facilitate the formation of a wartime coalition government in 1915. A long-time member of the St John’s Ambulance Association, he was asked to visit Egypt to investigate complaints about the treatment of New Zealand soldiers wounded on Gallipoli. Rhodes then travelled to London as New Zealand’s Special Commissioner of the New Zealand Branch of the British Red Cross Society, and was tireless in his supervision of their work in hospitals in France and England. In recognition of his wartime service Rhodes was appointed a Chevalier of the Légion d’honneur by the French President in March 1920. He was also appointed Minister of Defence in 1920, and was later councillor of honour of the New Zealand Red Cross Society and the First New Zealander to be appointed Bailiff Grand Cross of the Order of St John.

G.W. Rice, Heaton Rhodes of Otahuna: The illustrated biography, Christchurch: Canterbury University Press, 2001.

London Gazette, 8 March 1920, p.2868.

Edited October 8, 2011 by Mark Brewer