This Colonial officer appears to have shared a fairly widespread view that Lyautey’s operations were too hesitant (one must imagine the mood created by the war news from France, where General Galliéni, military governor of Paris, had saved the capital with his typically pragmatic commandeering of Parisian taxis and buses to take 4,000 reinforcements out to the front line on the Marne). Laverdure had twice been refused permission to hit villages on the left bank, and since then his garrison had been halved; nevertheless, he now took matters into his own hands. Before dawn on 13 November he marched south with the great majority of his command: 43 officers and 1,187 rankers, comprising 6 companies of Algerian and Senegalese Skirmishers, 2 French artillery batteries, a few Spahis and Moroccan auxiliary horsemen. At daybreak Laverdure surprised Moha ou Hammou’s tented camp, shelled it, and sent his cavalry in to overrun it. Moha’s counter-attack was driven back by infantry volleys while the camp was ransacked; success seemed so complete that some of the tribesmen even started looting their neighbours’ tents alongside the goumiers, and two of Moha’s wives were among the hundreds of captives taken. However, when the column began to withdraw at about 8.30am it came under predictable pressure from tribesmen flowing forwards again to follow it closely, and Laverdure had to use his guns to cover the retreat. At about this point it became apparent that the track back to Khenifra was no longer open; one of Moha’s nephews, Moha ou Akka, had closed in behind the column with several thousand warriors of the Zaian and three other Berber tribes.
Laverdure’s name was about to become indelibly associated with the worst-ever massacre of French troops in Morocco. When he ordered a company of Senegalese to force their way through to Khenifra with the wounded, many others left the ranks and followed the mules and carts in panic. The rearguard was cut off at the Oued Choubka ford, both gun batteries were overrun, the square was broken up, and individual survivors were hunted down in the scrub. The 181 wounded, their escort and a mob of stragglers, only barely reached the gates of Khenifra under cover of volleys from the two companies left there and the Berbers followed them to the very walls. Laverdure and 32 other officers were killed, along with 580 rankers; 8 cannon, at least 4 machine guns and 630 rifles were lost, with all the column’s equipment and remaining ammunition.9
Khenifra was now defended only by Captain Pierre Croll with about three Skirmisher companies (one formed with the shaken and partly disarmed stragglers), and might even have fallen to a determined assault. As usual, however, the tribesmen concentrated on gathering up the booty from their unexpected triumph rather than exploiting it. The telegraph line was even left uncut, and Croll’s cabled appeals to Henrys at Fes and Lyautey at Rabat – the first they knew of Laverdure’s unauthorized sortie – brought relief after a couple of days. Colonel Garnier-Duplessis led his mobile group east from Sidi Lamine about 30 miles away, fighting his way through ambushes to arrive on 16 November. Two days later, Colonel Henrys reached Khenifra with a second mobile group, formed at Ito by Lieutenant-Colonel Joseph Dérigoin around VI/2nd RE. Dérigoin’s column had marched more than 50 miles south through completely empty country – in the aftermath of El Herri the tribes had prudently moved back up into the hills, since 7,000 troops were now concentrating at Khenifra. It was not until 19 November that the légionnaires found and buried the bodies, a task that took them two days. The corpses of Laverdure and half a dozen other officers had been taken from the field for display, but were later exchanged for the release of Moha ou Hammou’s wives.10
Laverdure’s ghost was roundly cursed by Lyautey in correspondence with the War Ministry; his impulsiveness had put the delicate shell of defence at risk by handing Moha ou Hammou enormously increased prestige and influence among the Middle Atlas tribes, only a few weeks after Muslim Turkey’s entry into the war beside the Central Powers had unsettled the cities. Moha’s contacts with two other powerful Middle Atlas leaders, Ali Amhaouch and Moha ou Said, would now be developed, and clans from all over the Marrakesh hinterland would send warriors to join him. Lyautey had to accept that his cherished policy of political persuasion as a preliminary to military penetration simply had not worked among the Zaians, and might take much longer than he had hoped among other highland Berbers.
During the winter of 1914/15, the newly promoted General Henrys organized the northern and western fronts in three military regions: from north to south, Fes – Taza, Meknes, and Khenifra – Kasbah Tadla. These would form simultaneous Groupes Mobiles for coordinated operations by neighbouring commands; those formed at Meknes would be a versatile link between the Taza and Middle Atlas fronts, on either side of the top left corner of the French ‘archway’. In the south, Garnier-Duplessis would support a defensive garrison at Khenifra, while from Ito and Kasbah Tadla his two mobile field forces would maintain – with variable success – a blockade on the highlands.11
UP IN THE TAZA CORRIDOR, the three battalions of 1st RE and the two mule companies spent 1915 in a repetitive rhythm of security duties punctuated by regular sorties with the mobile groups. The légionnaires marched and countermarched almost without respite, enduring the summer heat and dust of the Moulouya plains and the rain and cold of the autumn and winter hills. When periodically reassembled to join the mobile groups, they struck out from Fes, Taza, Msoun, Safsafte or Camp Bertaux to punish raids, resupply posts, reconnoitre routes and generally show the flag among the tribes. They bivouacked on scree slopes, tormented by nagging snipers; they panted up countless weary hillsides to picket the summits and ridges, only to climb down again at the risk of a sudden fusillade into their backs from above. They seldom ran into stubborn resistance, but suffered a trickling haemorrhage from hidden marksmen and small-scale ambushes. Any movement in the hills was a game of hide-and-seek, and every encounter began with a patter of shots from concealment. Somebody had to be the unlucky one – the first man over a crest, around the side of a rock or stepping clear of the trees – and as often as not the man groaning in a cacolet or rolled in a tent-cloth and slung over the back of a mule was a junior officer or NCO. The entries in the war diaries tap out a dull rhythm in a minor key: 22 May: Escort from Taza: S/Lt Fouquart (II/1st RE) seriously wounded.
27 June: Battalion operation near Kelaa des Sless: WO Chauvet (II/1st RE) and 3 men wounded, 1 corporal killed.
29 June: Mobile Group near Dar Caid Medboh: Lt Peyre (VI/1st RE) and 2 men killed.
15 August: Ambush near Bou Ladjeraf post: Capt Roquefort (VI/1st RE), Sgt Coggia and Pte Fremont killed.
26 November: Rearguard Fes Mobile Group near Sidi Abd el Kahman: WO Werner (Mtd Co/2nd RE), Ptes Durand and Baumert killed, Pte Raoul wounded.
10 December: Battalion operation, Djebel Bou Mihiris: Lt Ekdal (VI/1st RE) and one man killed, sergeant and 5 men wounded . . . 12
On 10 June 1915 Major Duriez of II/1st RE handed the battalion over to Captain de Larroquette and departed for France, and in August – September the unit was transferred from the Taza front down to Kasbah Tadla and then Oued Zem, to join III/ and VI/2nd RE facing the Middle Atlas. This was the first of several such transfers that would gradually shift virtually the entire weight of the Legion’s deployment from the Taza corridor to the Zaian front.13
IN ZAIAN TERRITORY, 1915 failed to bring any sign of the hoped-for dissolution of Moha ou Hammou’s confederacy. Lyautey’s long-term plan was to push roads eastwards across the southern Middle Atlas to divide the tribes and give his troops access to their home country, and Major Curie’s VI/2nd RE spent that summer with crowbar, dynamite, pick and shovel. They built a new post at Timahdite in the forested hills south of Azrou, escorted its supply convoys down from Ito, and drove a 20-mile stretch of road north-eastwards up the river gorges to Almis de Guigou. On 30 September General Lyautey reviewed them at Ito and presented decorations before trying out the new road to Almis by motorcar. After autumn operations south-east of Mrirt, Major Curie hoped to rotate his companies to give the men some prospect of a winter rest from constant watchfulness on the icy, sodden frontier: at an
y one time, three companies would be at Ito and the fourth in barracks at Meknes. Just as in the previous year, however, they would be disappointed in their hope that the tribes would stay quiet during the winter.14
On 11 November 1915, a strong force from Garnier-Duplessis’ command was escorting a convoy with provisions for the winter along the track westwards from Khenifra towards Sidi Lamine, and in the Sidi Ammar hills the right flank guard was provided by the légionnaires of Larroquette’s II/1st RE. At the Ait Affi pass (called by the troops ‘Pierced Rock’) several hundred Berbers hit the advance guard in very broken, wooded terrain; they were dispersed by a few shells and machine-gun clips, and their movement took them straight across the rifle sights of II/1st Foreign. The convoy kept moving under intermittent harassment from riders, but was rushed again on two occasions during that afternoon. The second attack was by some 750 warriors on foot followed by 300 horsemen; they fought to within 50 yards of the vanguard, and were only driven back by Legion bayonet charges by Captain Coste’s 6th Company. The total French loss of 3 killed and 22 wounded was hardly significant, but the fact that up to 1,200 warriors of four different tribes had taken part in the ambush was. Unprecedentedly, Moha ou Hammou’s league was still holding together after more than a year of fighting.15
In January 1916, while marching from Khenifra to Mrirt after a major resupply operation, both southern mobile groups came under attack, and Major Curie’s VI/2nd RE – in Colonel Pierre Thouvenel’s Groupe Mobile d’Ito – had the briskest fight. They had been marching in the vanguard when, in the usual way, they had been peeled off to picket hills on the right flank while the column passed, and there they were attacked by growing numbers of warriors. The first began to approach, sniping as they came, at 9.20am; more and more appeared, pressing attacks to close range, and it was evening before the battalion could ‘unhook itself’ and resume the march to Mrirt. The war diary records 16 Legion casualties among the brigade’s total of 81: Lieutenant Bruyant and 9 NCOs and légionnaires killed, Sub-lieutenant Bruyère and 3 rankers wounded, and a sergeant-major and a private listed missing in action.16 These modest losses were a good deal more damaging than the bare figures suggest, since they typically included a disproportionate number of hard-to-replace platoon leaders – on that occasion, 3 out of the 16 casualties.
Each battalion needed about 20 officers and 40 senior NCOs; the demand for battalion and company officers to replace those lost on the Western Front was insatiable, the Legion’s pre-war generation of sergeants was bleeding to death, and units in Morocco would always be the last in the queue for replacements. In France, 1915 had been terribly costly for the Legion. In May and June the marching regiment of 1st Foreign had suffered some 2,600 casualties (65 per cent) in two assaults in Artois, and in September they and their sister regiment from 2nd Foreign lost nearly 1,000 more in Champagne; as already mentioned, in November all the survivors had to be consolidated into a single three-battalion regiment. At the same time, between March and September 1915 another marching battalion had been virtually destroyed in the Dardanelles.
The memoir of an American deserter (published posthumously under the byline ‘M.M.’ in 1924, thanks to the charity of D. H. Lawrence) describes morale at Sidi bel Abbès in 1915 as very low. The overall picture he paints of life in the single mainly German battalion of 1st RE is plausible enough, although the judgement of this thoroughly unmilitary witness does not invite respect. (His indignant whining about every aspect of life in the ranks that he, a ‘gentleman’, was forced to endure during his three months at the depot is unattractive. Indeed, his book is probably unique among Legion literature in including the peevish complaint ‘my moustache worried me . . .’).17
Throughout 1916 the Zaian front continued to see repeated attacks not just on convoys but on brigade-size mobile groups, and an action that August usefully exemplifies the value of the Moroccan goumiers if well led. On 2 August an intelligence officer named Francois de La Rocque was commanding auxiliaries with Garnier-Duplessis’ mobile group on its way westwards to Sidi Lamine when a Legion picketing company found itself surrounded on a summit above the Pierced Rock pass. By the time the convoy had passed below them the company were cut off and low on ammunition, and La Rocque was sent to unhook the légionnaires with two Goums. He led half of 1st Foot Goum to within 100 yards of the tribesmen before opening fire; this allowed the légionnaires to break out, and the two companies then covered one another as they fell back by stages for some 600 yards towards 4th Mounted Goum, whom La Rocque had placed on a hilltop as rearguard. The withdrawal was successful, but Captain de La Rocque was hit four times (he survived evacuation, and while convalescent forged a medical release in order to get to the Western Front). The need for special leadership skills in such commands is, however, underlined by the fate of La Rocque’s successor in command at Sidi Lamine at the end of 1916. Captain Tailharde, apparently lacking La Rocque’s touch, had his throat cut in his tent by his own men and his head removed for display around the Zaian villages.18
EVENTS IN THE SPANISH ZONE during 1915 – 16 naturally effected dissidence in the French territory north of Taza. The Spanish commissioner-general from August 1913 was General Marina y Vega, formerly commander in Melilla. The headstrong but well-connected Colonel Silvestre, whom Marina’s predecessor General Afrau had had to send back to Spain when he proved unable to obey orders, had now been promoted brigadier-general, and returned to Ceuta in a subordinate command. In the hinterland of Ceuta the dominant figure was still Silvestre’s old enemy Ahmad er Raisuli. General Marina was encouraged by Madrid to negotiate with Raisuli to buy off his active hostility, but in May 1915 an attempt to do this was foiled by a ‘war faction’ of Spanish officers, probably including Silvestre. That turbulent soldier was recalled to Spain yet again, and in September 1915 Marina’s successor, General Francisco Gomez Jordana, agreed a subsidy and other concessions for Raisuli, in return for which the Spanish hoped that he would suppress tribal resistance to their expansion. In this they were disappointed, and the ever-treacherous Raisuli continued to play off the tribes, the Maghzan, Spain, France and Germany against one another. Since he also accepted German gold, the French and British were convinced that he was working for the Germans, but – since he never delivered his promised help against the French – Germany believed him to be a British agent. They were all mistaken: Raisuli plotted, robbed and killed in his own interests alone, and his war parties continued to ambush convoys and fight Spanish troops in the hills west and south of Ceuta. (Leading a charge at a village called Biut in 1916, an unpopular, priggish but insanely brave young Spanish captain of Regulares named Francisco Franco y Bahamonde took several bullets in the stomach. His surprising survival preserved him for a more pivotal role in his country’s history twenty years later.)19
Since Spain remained neutral during the Great War, while belligerent France had a legal status as the protecting power throughout Morocco under the Treaty of Fes, the authorities in the Spanish presidios were in a false position. Both Spanish officials and the Rif tribes around Melilla were actively courted by German agents seeking a base for propaganda, gun-running, bribery and subversion in French territory, and by 1917 U-boats were refuelling at Tangier and landing agents, cash and rifles over the beaches of Alhucemas Bay. The pre-war commercial dominance of German firms such as Gebrüder Mannesmann made this operation relatively easy, and the Spanish responses were inconsistent; some officials were pro-German, and though others did make some effort to stop arms coming in, German gold spoke loudly. One important recipient was Abd el Malek Meheddin, a grandson of Abd el Kader (the renowned Amir of Mascara, whom the French had exiled from Algeria to Syria in the 1840s). This former officer of l’Armée d’Afrique and Maghzan police chief in the Tangier zone had become a German agent, and in August 1914 he went underground to work against the French. They demanded his extradition as a deserter, but his German funding was generous enough to protect him.20 By the winter of 1916/17 he had crossed the border to set up
rebel camps on French Moroccan territory, but his activities were knocked back in late January 1917 and again that April, when his bases were destroyed by the Fes and Taza mobile groups including the Legion mounted companies.21
THE TAZA CORRIDOR required repeated operations into the highlands north and south throughout 1916 by the Fes and Taza mobile groups, and a particularly intense rhythm of work was demanded of the Legion mule companies. Like modern paratroopers, they were condemned to it by their very versatility and high reputation; unlike paratroopers, however, between combat operations all légionnaires exchanged rifles for sledge-hammers and were employed simply as pioneer units.
The two foot battalions still on this front were also heavily committed, and these elite ‘heavy infantry’ were in effect being used like alpine troops. They climbed thousands of feet a day for weeks on end, wearing out their boots, clothing and stamina, living under canvas on rudimentary field rations, often short of water in the long hot season and at other times chilled to the bone. Given the alternation of field operations with hard labour, cumulative exhaustion was inevitable, and replacements were in short supply. By May 1916, the I/1st RE (Major Giudicelli) were reduced to three companies, operating from posts and with a mobile group in the Msoun – Guercif sector. In July 1916, Lyautey ordered that the narrow-gauge railway from Algeria to Taza be extended westwards towards Fez, and Major Desjours’ VI/1st RE drew the short straw of building a roadbed through the Touahar pass. The following winter the 1st Foreign’s mounted company were set to work to create an airfield at Taza, since Lyautey had finally got two escadrilles back from France. (In 1917 his air arm, commanded by Major Cheutin, would be expanded to six squadrons; their main value was still as eyes in the sky, to some extent making up for the shortage of regular cavalry on the ground.)22
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