Our Friends Beneath the Sands

by Martin Windrow

  In January – February 1907, Lieutenant Paul Rollet of 3rd (Mounted)/1st RE reconnoitred the route for a new west-east track about 150 miles in length between Berguent and Mécheria, digging exploratory wells as he went; his subsequent memorandum recommending methods and routines for units moving across the high plains soon became the basis for standing orders. On 20 June, Rollet and Lieutenant Rolland travelled this track again on motorbikes – a revolutionary means of wilderness travel at that time, and a trip not without its mishaps.43

  THE APPEAL OF SERVICE in the desert among these hand-picked volunteers may have been increased by the generally poor state of Legion morale in these years. All period sources agree that the overall quality of recruits had fallen noticeably since the 1890s. The element from Alsace-Lorraine, still about 22 per cent of the total in 1897, had sunk to 6 per cent, and the number of new German recruits halved to 800 a year between 1903 and 1905. In 1903, Germany began a venomous anti-French propaganda campaign to discourage enlistment; this presented the Legion as a living hell of brutal depravity, and the overall proportion of Germans in the Legion dropped from 34 per cent in 1904 to just over 16 per cent by 1914. (Nevertheless, it should always be borne in mind that those who did still enlist often claimed to find Legion life less brutal than the Frederickian treatment suffered by the Kaiser’s conscripts.)

  The shortage of Germans meant that a much higher proportion of Frenchmen had to be accepted – from 25 – 30 per cent before 1900 to about 45 per cent thereafter. The quality of some of these left much to be desired, and the minimal formalities of enlistment made it impossible to filter them at the barracks gate. The soldierly and ambitious were outnumbered by ‘the sweepings of the nation’, since much of the best human material was now attracted by the better pay and prospects and higher prestige of the new all-volunteer Colonial Troops. This allowed la Coloniale to refuse to re-engage its worst soldiers, who turned to the Legion – thugs, thieves and barrack-room lawyers old in sin. They were joined by civilian criminals who would formerly have been segregated in the Bataillons d’Afrique; General André’s reforms had raised the bar for crimes which condemned men to the Bats d’Af, and this put more dubious characters into both the Line and, eventually, the Legion.

  Before 1906 there was no mechanism by which the Legion could legally cancel a man’s contract for disciplinary reasons, and the hardest cases were vicious, stupid, predatory and controllable only by physical violence. Since bad drives out good, the best foreigners were simultaneously availing themselves of naturalization after their first hitch and leaving the Legion to join the Colonials or the Line, instead of staying on to climb the ranks as career NCOs (one such was Léon Silbermann, the Madagascar memoirist). The disciplinary problems in Oran Division led to record numbers of courts martial in 1905; a ratio of about 20 per cent of a unit undergoing some sort of routine punishment at any one time was a reassurance to colonels that their légionnaires were not turning soft, but the situation had now become worrying.

  Because the relatively lower ratio of officers and sergeants to men had been a problem in the big Legion rifle companies ten years before, reforms of 1894 and 1905 raised the numbers.44 Even so, by 1910 the need for junior leaders in Morocco had so reduced the cadre of some Legion battalions at the Algerian depots that each company had only one officer and two sergeants – chronically inadequate for proper supervision of up tp 300 men. Discipline was naturally less of a problem on active service, though the fairly frequent dispersal of battalions in separate companies put a premium on high-quality leadership. In these conditions the occasional resort to the savage field punishments that figured so prominently in German propaganda (the tombeau and the crapaudine, described in Chapter 5) becomes more understandable. It may be significant that in 1910 the separate regimental disciplinary platoons were amalgamated into a whole company (the 8th of II/2nd RE).45

  There was another side to the coin, however. The task of leading long-service mercenaries demanded of their officers more intelligence and flexibility than was the case in the Line – even the sullen Line of those years (see below). The mere power to punish was not enough, and officers who transferred in for only limited periods in order to get some active service into their dossiers were not accepted as ‘real légionnaires’ by the blank-faced ranks of old sweats. The best officers soon came to understand that ‘the Legion is different’, and that on the day of battle it paid dividends to have soldiers behind you who enjoyed brawling and were unafraid of punishment. While always absolutely maintaining the distance required for authority and automatic obedience, company officers in the field learned to pay close attention to the individual qualities and weaknesses of their men – they became, in other words, rather more modern than their contemporaries in France. With this familiarity came judgement: when to inflict instant punishment and when to make allowances, when to drive men hard and when to lead them like a stern but understanding father.

  It was a hard but not a cynical age; in the absence of any mass popular culture, men took their bearings from the attitudes of those immediately around them, and all but the very worst soldiers were susceptible to group sentiment. They identified with their company, and might boast that their captain was the bravest, the most tireless marcher, the hardest drinker, or even (so long as he was scrupulously even-handed) the most eagle-eyed disciplinarian in the battalion. In the field all ranks had to depend upon each other; an NCO who had been stupidly brutal at Sidi bel Abbès might suffer a fatal accident on the frontier, but an officer who had earned a reputation for decent fair-mindedness could be sure that if he fell wounded, his men would risk their lives to save him, or even to drag in his corpse.

  DURING THOSE YEARS, officers who transferred into the Legion, and indeed into l’Armée d’Afrique as a whole, were no strangers to poor discipline, and were at least encouraged to discover that the battle-readiness of their new units far exceeded that of the Line. During the Clemenceau administration (1906 – 1909), the morale and efficiency of the Metropolitan Army began to crumble under the simultaneous pressures of soldiers being employed as strike-breakers and serious political interference. Thoughtful officers knew that the politically shackled General Staff organization was quite unfit to confront that of an increasingly assertive Germany.46 Meanwhile, the whole officer corps suffered humiliations calculated to reduce their prestige, and ‘politically correct’ reforms that seriously hindered their exercise of command. Originally intended to improve life for the rankers, in practice some of these initiatives damaged day-to-day discipline badly, and even encouraged corruption among NCOs.

  Militant ‘syndicalists’ publicly encouraged the troops to defy their officers and support the workers’ struggle, and very large numbers of conscripts simply failed to report for military service, even though the obligation was reduced in 1905 to just two years. There was much singing of the ‘Internationale’ in canteens, and small-scale strikes and riots became common. Officers and career NCOs were denied the sanctions they needed to maintain discipline; they were pressured by local politicians to favour their constituents, and – if resistant – were pilloried in scurillous press campaigns. This rot culminated in major mutinies at Narbonne and Agde in June 1907, and by the following year these excesses would finally convince Prime Minister Clemenceau that, in a world containing Kaiser Wilhelm II, the country might pay a high price for breaking the morale and efficiency of its Army.47

  IF THE FRENCH ARMY WAS SICK in 1907, then the Moroccan government was dying. Amid a chorus of popular hatred for the foreigners and contempt for the impotent sultan, incidents of street violence against Europeans in the cities were escalating, and in the countryside banditry was spreading unchecked. In the north-east, El Rogi had actually declared himself sultan in Taza – just 75 miles from Fes – and was selling mineral-mining leases to European companies.48 In the south, a strong movement was gradually building to replace Abd el Aziz on the throne with his elder brother Moulay Abd el Hafid, Khalifa of Marrakesh – a groundswell
largely funded by Madani el Glaoui, the most powerful and far-sighted of the lords of the Atlas. The rise of Madani ‘the Literate’ may have been founded on a Krupp field gun, and he might still hurl his victims into medieval oubliettes, but his sophistication was now unique among the Moroccan warlords: this was a man who ordered Arabic transcripts of French parliamentary debates.

  In March 1907 it was Georges Clemenceau, Jules Ferry’s nemesis in 1885, who was obliged – by public outrage over the murder in Marrakesh of a medical missionary, Dr Mauchamp – to order French troops across the Algerian/Moroccan border. Not far across, however: they were simply to occupy and hold Oujda, the first town inside Morocco on the northern road from Algeria to Fes. As GOC Oran Division, the man who had to carry out the order was Lyautey, with a Zouave battalion, III/1st RE and a mounted company. The occupation was easily accomplished on 29 March, but his enforced passivity thereafter caused Lyautey frustration; rather than the first step in a coherent military plan, this seemed to be no more than an ill-conceived political chess-move.49 The French government apparently believed that simply holding Oujda hostage would force the Maghzan to meet its list of demands, but the naked occupation of a major Muslim town finally destroyed any authority Abd el Aziz still enjoyed. Moreover, by forbidding Lyautey to do anything except protect his own lines of supply, the government set his troops up as targets. When Lyautey occupied Oujda, the local caids came in spontaneously to negotiate with this evidently powerful new chief; but when he failed to patrol vigorously and take real control of the countryside their confidence returned – in their minds, any power-vacuum was an invitation.50 The French government’s apparent assumption that Oujda could be bargained for, like some discrete pawn in an eighteenth-century border dispute between European nation states, was a fundamental misreading of local attitudes.

  To the independent and competitive tribal chiefs, the seizure of Oujda was a projection of power that could have no other reason than a French determination to acquire new territory. The French caid wielding this power must be tested by cautious armed probes and sounded out by negotiation. If the French were truly formidable, then a local chief should conclude an alliance with them – and preferably before his neighbours did, and exploited such an alliance against him. But if this new warlord on the scene reacted passively, failing to assert his authority by punishing insolence, then his power must have reached the limit of its reach already. In such a case the Arab or Berber chief should ratchet up his harassment, proving to his neighbours that he was himself the bolder and stronger and that they would have to seek alliances with him instead. At core, this was the same equation as expressed to Lyautey by the Tho headman on the frontier of Upper Tonkin eleven years previously: ‘If you come, you must stay, and I will join you; if I cannot be sure you will stay, I dare not join you.’

  IT WAS IN CASABLANCA on the Atlantic coast, where a sizeable white population had installed itself to develop a fishing village into a major port, that European exploitation was probably more visible than anywhere else in Morocco. The weakness of the Maghzan governor was a temptation to European arrogance, and the foreigners and their building sites were greatly resented by both the townspeople and the tribesmen from the surrounding country.

  On 30 July 1907, a dispute over the building of a railway track led to the mob murder of nine white workmen. The French consul on the spot contained the situation, but another official in Tangier sent home inflammatory reports and despatched the warship Galilée to Casablanca. Arriving on 1 August, the captain was informed that the situation was tense but retrievable, and that the civilians who had taken refuge in the European consulates were in no immediate danger. Then yet another diplomat arrived, and authorized a small landing party to relieve the French consulate. On 4 August, the bluejackets fought their way through Moroccan resistance, and once inside the consulate they signalled to the ship for gunfire support. The subsequent shelling of the Arab town sparked riots and looting; tribesmen poured in, many Jews and some Europeans were butchered, and the consulates were now besieged in earnest. Clemenceau ordered General Drude to sail from Algeria with about 3,000 men, who included the légionnaires of Major Provost’s VI/1st RE. On 7 August, they began landing under the guns of a large French squadron and, after occupying the town with indiscriminate violence, established defensive lines on the outskirts.51

  On 16 August, the ulama of Marrakesh proclaimed Abd el Aziz deposed and Moulay Hafid as the new sultan, and the latter promptly summoned all his people to join a jihad against the French. France declared its continued support for Abd el Aziz as the legitimate sovereign, although French troops were forbidden to fight for him against his brother. Understandably, such fine distinctions of foreign policy were lost on Moroccans, who saw the Casablanca landing simply as an invasion. The Christian occupation of an enclave in the heavily populated west, potentially within reach of the imperial cities of Fes and Meknes, provoked spontaneous resistance to the Landing Corps, and Moulay Hafid’s anti-French rhetoric gave him (for a while) the status of an Islamic champion rather than simply one party to a dynastic struggle. France’s pose as the defender of the Maghzan against rebellion was irrelevant; it was the French that Moroccans wanted to fight, while neither Abd el Aziz nor Moulay Hafid had the resources to pursue their civil war with any vigour.

  General Drude’s remit was, nevertheless, only to protect the European population, and by the end of August some 10,000 tribesmen were roaming and looting the rich Chaouia plain inland from Casablanca without interference. 52 On 3 September, Drude sent a weak mixed column, including a couple of Legion companies, towards a large tribal camp at Tahaddert about 6 miles inland, and during swirling attacks (the tribes of the region were essentially horsemen) Major Provost was killed. The following day reinforcements landed, including two battalions of 2nd RE. On 12 September, Sultan Abd el Aziz fled from Fes, where he feared for his life, to his coastal palace at Rabat; on the same day, General Drude led a larger force to Tahaddert, but his bungled tactics allowed the harka to escape. Thereafter, Paris ordered him to stick close to his perimeter.53 On 26 September, 3,000 warriors sent north by Moulay Hafid to join the resistance arrived at Settat, some 40 miles south of Casablanca, but made no further threatening moves. In the meantime Drude’s Landing Corps (and a token Spanish regiment, which remained inactive) sat down in a crescent of camps about 400 yards outside the town, protected by two forts on a ridge 1,000 yards out.54

  Having created this situation, none of the parties gave any sign of having an immediate plan of action: Abd el Aziz stayed in Rabat and pawned his crown jewels to raise a war-chest, Moulay Hafid stayed in Marrakesh and importuned Madani el Glaoui for funds and men, and General Drude stayed in Casablanca. The only antagonists who were active were the warriors from the hills surrounding the Chaouia. This plain was some 70 miles long, from the Sehoul cork-forest in the north-east to the river Oum er Rebia in the south-west, and 50 miles wide, rising about 1,500 feet into hilly pleateau country to the south-east. Well watered, its black soil was in effect a single gigantic cornfield of 3,500 square miles, thickly sown with farms and villages. With the plain now a no man’s land, its cattle fat and its silos full of grain, the quarrelling tribes comprehensively pillaged this rich prize.

  For nearly thirty years following the landing at Casablanca, several battalions of the Legion would be continuously on active service in Morocco, which became the corps’ main theatre of operations and the context in which most of the world pictured it.

  12.

  Two Kinds of War

  1908

  There can be no doubt that the panic in Casablanca transmitted something of its fears to France, where today a casualty list of sixty is regarded by many people as a quite adequate reason for a change of general.

  Reginald Rankin, London Times correspondent, 1908

  Your dark soul deceives you into racing to your own ruin . . . The courageous and noble Muslim warriors approach you, armed for your destruction. If you are in force, come out f
rom behind your walls for battle; you will judge which is the nobler, the owl or the hawk.

  Moulay Ahmad Lahsin el Saba, 1908.1

  FROM THE WINTER OF 1907 until the spring of 1914, the Legion units committed to Morocco would serve on two completely separate fronts. French forces advancing from the Atlantic coast in the west and from Algeria in the east would remain divided by the mountain heart of the country, and even after they joined hands in the narrow northern ‘Taza corridor’ in 1914 their zones of operations would for many years resemble a sort of archway shape, surrounding a slowly diminishing central area of highland resistance. More or less simultaneous phases of the fighting on either side of the Atlas differed in character; while operations were naturally interconnected at the highest staff levels, the parts played in them by Legion units are more easily understood if described in the context of local conditions rather than in strictly chronological order.