Mobilized during the Great War and wounded in the Dardanelles, Saint-Eloi Etilce was shot dead in 1919 in Nantes by an American military policeman. This long-overlooked racist crime reveals the colonial hierarchies and unchecked violence inflicted on Black soldiers of the French Empire.
A son of Guadeloupe at the front
On December 20, 1892, Saint-Eloi Etilce was born in Port-Louis, a coastal commune in northwestern Guadeloupe, then a French colony. Like thousands of Antilleans, he grew up in a society still shaped by the legacy of slavery—abolished only fifty years earlier—and the ambiguity of colonial citizenship. Neither fully French nor entirely foreign, the Empire’s children were both marked by their skin color and drawn into a republican project that tolerated them more than it embraced them.
When World War I broke out in 1914, the Antilles (Guadeloupe, Martinique, and French Guiana) were called upon to “shed blood for the Fatherland.” Following years of demands by their representatives in the National Assembly, compulsory military service was imposed in these “old colonies” overseas. Around 30,000 men from the French Empire would be mobilized in the conflict, including about 1,700 Guadeloupeans.
Saint-Eloi Etilce was among the 192 young Guadeloupeans enlisted during the first wave of mobilization. At 22, he left his native island for mainland France, a land he did not know, to fight in a war that was not truly his—but which he bore without hesitation. His path was that of a “Black poilu,” caught in the contradictions of colonial republicanism.
Sent to the Eastern Front, he fought in the Dardanelles, a bloody and often forgotten campaign of the Great War, where French and British troops battled the Ottoman Empire on the shores of present-day Turkey. This deadly theater deeply affected colonial troops. It was there, in mud and gunfire, that Saint-Eloi was wounded.
Repatriated to France, he was transferred to the depot for isolated soldiers in Saint-Nazaire, a logistical center for troops awaiting redeployment, demobilization, or reassignment. Abandoned in bureaucratic anonymity, he eventually worked as a laborer in Nantes—quietly, without complaint—hoping one day to return to Guadeloupe.
But that long-awaited return would never come. A few months after the official end of the war, on a fairground in Nantes, Saint-Eloi Etilce’s life was brutally cut short. A bullet to the stomach. Fired by a man who saw nothing in him but one Black silhouette too many.
Nantes, 1919: The unthinkable
On April 22, 1919, in Place Bretagne, Nantes, an ordinary yet poignant scene unfolds: Saint-Eloi Etilce, former soldier and quiet laborer, watches a carousel of wooden horses. It’s a spring fair. Children’s laughter, vendors shouting, the smell of sugar and sawdust fill the air. Spring is beginning to erase the horrors of war. France is healing.
But in this newly found peace, racism remains unrelenting.
Without warning, without a word, an American military policeman fires a bullet into Etilce’s stomach. He collapses. He dies. The officer later claimed he had “mistaken” the Guadeloupean for an African-American deserter. A justification as hollow as it is chilling—recalling the colonial and American habit of viewing all Black people as interchangeable and inherently suspect.
But who was this American soldier? And how could a decorated war hero be gunned down in a French city months after the Armistice?
In 1919, American troops were still stationed in large numbers across France under post-Versailles cooperation agreements. The presence of African-American soldiers, also war veterans, unsettled the white American military. In France, these Black troops encountered a society that, while not free of racism, was less rigidly segregated.
Saint-Eloi Etilce’s murder was no accident. It was a racist execution disguised as a military mistake. And the impunity of his killer only confirms this interpretation.
The American MP, Stephen J. Wharton, was never prosecuted. After a mock arrest, he was released. No trial. No serious investigation. Clemenceau’s France, keen to maintain its alliance with the United States, chose silence. A complicit silence. A strategic silence.
This tragedy was part of a broader pattern: violence by American soldiers against Black people—French, Antillean, or African-American—on French soil at the end of the war. Just weeks earlier, race riots had broken out in Saint-Nazaire. There, too, American military brutality shocked observers, and the French government’s inaction outraged them.
In Port-Louis, the news arrived late. But its people never forgot. In the town’s records, Saint-Eloi Etilce is listed among the dead of the Great War, alongside those fallen at Verdun or the Marne. For them, he didn’t die at a fair, but in a longer, more insidious war: the West’s war on its own Black children—even decorated, even patriotic.
This crime didn’t make headlines in Paris. It was pushed to the margins, like its perpetrator. More than 90 years would pass before a formal brief suggested that a commemorative plaque be installed.
But that would require acknowledging the unthinkable: that on French soil, a Black war hero, wounded in battle, was gunned down like a dog by a white foreign soldier—because he was Black.
The weight of color, the silence of the state
While the murder of Saint-Eloi Etilce chills the blood for its brutality, it is the political response—or lack thereof—that stuns even more. For to this injustice is added silence. State silence. Complicit silence.
As early as 1918, French authorities anticipated tensions. To “manage” the presence of numerous African-American troops in France, the high command issued a document now known as the “Linard Circular.” This August 1918 memo to French military commanders is scarcely veiled in its racism.
It plainly states that African-Americans, though U.S. citizens, were considered inferior by white Americans. French officers were advised to avoid too much familiarity or leniency with Black troops to avoid offending American opinion. The memo warns that Americans feared Black soldiers might develop “dangerous pretensions” through contact with the French.
Thus, in republican France, American racism was validated in the name of diplomacy. The memo formalized the idea that Black men—even allies—should stay in their place: subordinate, silent, docile. This mindset enabled an American MP to kill a Black Caribbean soldier without provoking any state reaction.
Antillean deputies Achille René-Boisneuf (Guadeloupe) and Joseph Lagrosillière (Martinique), alerted by the press and eyewitnesses, immediately tried to question the government. Their requests were repeatedly denied.
Only on July 25, 1919—three months later and after the signing of the Treaty of Versailles—was Boisneuf finally allowed to speak. By then, the tragedy was buried under diplomatic protocol and reconstruction priorities. Clemenceau’s government, anxious to please the U.S., sacrificed justice on the altar of the Atlantic alliance.
In parliament, Boisneuf’s words were clear. He denounced a racist crime—a Black poilu gunned down on French soil, the unbearable silence that followed. But the chamber was distracted, unresponsive. The topic was uncomfortable. The Black man speaking, too. The Republic did not want to hear.
The murderer’s name was known: Stephen J. Wharton, U.S. military police. He was never judged or punished. No real arrest. No thorough inquiry, despite local outrage and repeated demands from overseas deputies.
No trial.
No compensation for the family.
No official recognition.
The message was clear: a Black life, even that of a war veteran, was not worth jeopardizing a white ally’s goodwill. That is what chills the most: this silent hierarchy of human lives, sanctioned by a state claiming to be republican.
Saint-Eloi Etilce’s name could have faded into oblivion. Just another footnote, another postwar mishap buried and forgotten. But in Port-Louis, they never forgot. His name stands on the war memorial—because they knew. They knew one of their own had shed blood for France, and that in return, France looked away.
A suppressed memory, an unfinished struggle
Saint-Eloi Etilce died twice. First, on April 22, 1919, from an American bullet fired at point-blank range in Nantes. The second death came more slowly, more insidiously: his erasure from official accounts, republican memory, and history books.
Early on, the circumstances of his death became muddled, contradictory, seemingly deliberately obscured. In Port-Louis, his name was inscribed on the war memorial alongside those who fell at the front. The inscription reads simply: “Died for France.”
But in metropolitan archives, there is no clear record of a racist crime. Sometimes it’s referred to as an “incident,” a “misunderstanding” with an American soldier—never as a murder. For decades, the documentation was sparse, disorganized, even deliberately vague. Dates were wrong. Confusions arose with other soldiers. Some even believed the event happened in Saint-Nazaire, not Nantes. Oblivion took the shape of misinformation.
Only in the early 21st century did local historians, researchers, and memory activists begin piecing the facts together. In 2008, historian Dominique Chathuant reconstructed the affair from local sources, period newspapers, and parliamentary records. He demonstrated that Saint-Eloi Etilce was not a collateral casualty of war, but a powerful symbol of colonial racism’s endurance—right on French soil.
In Nantes, a summary note was submitted to the mayor proposing a commemorative plaque at Place Bretagne, where Etilce was killed. In Port-Louis, calls grew for official rehabilitation and a full account of his death. These efforts, long ignored, eventually caught the attention of some elected officials and journalists. But formal recognition remains elusive.
Neither the French Republic nor the U.S. Army has issued apologies or acknowledged moral or political responsibility. Saint-Eloi Etilce’s story is absent from schoolbooks, from national November 11 commemorations, from official ceremonies.
Yet it embodies everything the Republic prefers not to see: a Black soldier, not killed by the enemy but by an ally, in the name of a global racial hierarchy. His story proves that even after war, skin color could mean death for a French citizen—just for being seen.
Sources
- Dominique Chathuant, Nantes, 1919: Was the Killing of Soldier Etilce Racist?, Rue89, August 8, 2008.
- Linard Circular (August 1918), held at the French military archives.
- Presse-Océan, Nantes: An American MP Shoots a Guadeloupean in the Street, November 29, 2014.
- Journal Officiel, National Assembly, July 25, 1919, intervention by Deputy Achille René-Boisneuf.
- CIRESC – Myriam Cottias, cited by France Culture (2020).
Summary
- A Son of Guadeloupe at the Front
- Nantes, 1919: The Unthinkable
- The Weight of Color, the Silence of the State
- A Suppressed Memory, an Unfinished Struggle
- Sources
Footnotes
- Port-Louis (Guadeloupe): A coastal town located in the northwest of Grande-Terre in the Guadeloupe archipelago. Historically marked by the plantation economy, it served as a major departure point for many Antillean conscripts during World War I.
- The Dardanelles: A strategic strait between the Aegean Sea and the Sea of Marmara, and the site of a major World War I campaign (February 1915 – January 1916). British, French, and allied forces attempted to capture Istanbul, the Ottoman capital, by force. The operation ended in bloody failure, with heavy losses, especially among colonial troops. Antillean and African soldiers were heavily deployed, poorly equipped, and exposed to cold, dysentery, and unprepared trench warfare.
- Depot for Isolated Soldiers of Saint-Nazaire: A military facility established at the end of World War I to receive colonial soldiers awaiting repatriation or new assignments. These depots, often far from command centers, served as informal zones of segregation, where Black soldiers were frequently victims of violence, administrative neglect, and racial discrimination.
- Linard Circular (August 1918): A confidential memo written by Commander Henri Linard, addressed to French officers overseeing African-American troops stationed in France during World War I. It explicitly advised against camaraderie or egalitarian treatment toward Black American soldiers, in order to avoid “offending” their white counterparts.
- Achille René-Boisneuf: Lawyer and Guadeloupean politician (1873–1927), he became in 1914 the first Black deputy of Guadeloupe under the French Third Republic. A fierce defender of colonial citizens’ rights, he gained recognition for his speeches in the National Assembly denouncing racial discrimination.
- Joseph Lagrosillière: Lawyer and politician from Martinique (1872–1950), a major figure in Antillean socialism. Elected deputy of Martinique in 1910, he was known for his powerful writings and anticolonial activism. One of the first parliamentarians to demand full equality between colonial and metropolitan citizens.
- Treaty of Versailles (1919): The foundational treaty signed on June 28, 1919, officially ending World War I. France, under Clemenceau, was keen to secure continued American diplomatic and military support, which partly explains the political silence surrounding the Saint-Eloi Etilce affair that occurred just before the treaty’s signing.
