The drive across the Middle Atlas was successful, and earned Poeymirau his general’s stars; on 6 June 1917 his and Doury’s columns – the latter including the 2nd (Mounted) Company/1st RE from Boudenib – linked up at a spot recorded as Assaka Nidji. On the 10th the mobile group from Debdou (Colonel Maurial) also arrived nearby at Missour, where an important post was established. A week later the Boudenib Composite Battalion (Major Weynaud) arrived at Ksabi about 28 miles further upriver. The next few months would be spent in improving tracks into roads, plaiting the string hung between Lyautey’s ‘pillars’ into a rope; by late 1917 motor lorries could travel from Meknes all the way to Bekrite, and in the east from Missour and Ksabi down to Rich, although the convoys’ passage naturally needed protection by pickets on summits to form a moving security corridor. Roads were no barrier to the tribes, but they allowed faster troop movements to areas of dissidence; in time they would also reverse the current of the lines of supply, so that provisions for units in the eastern ranges could come down from Meknes rather than across from far-off Algerian depots via Colomb Béchar – a long-standing drag on operations.38 From the motorable road across the Atlas, another would be dropped southwards down the Oued Ziz, and by the end of 1917 Doury’s troops would have established a new post at Midelt. However, the new access routes into the Middle Atlas were still vulnerable.
IN THE SPRING OF 1917, THE WESTERN PILLAR of Lyautey’s operations was being thickened at its mid-point, but not without resistance in the hills east and south-east of Sefrou – the tribal range of the Marmoucha, Northern Ait Segrushin and ‘Ait Atta in the Shadows’ (a far-flung tentacle of that land-hungry people). In late May and June 1917, Captain Cattin’s Mounted Company/2nd RE worked on tracks between Annoceur – the gateway into the hills from the main road south of Sefrou – and a new post at Tazouta (see Map 19). This is still bleak country today, with very rough stony trails along valley bottoms between hulking naked hills, and when ordered back to Annoceur on 18 June the mounted company saw Berber signal fires on the hilltops. The troops found that drystone walls had been built across the track, and had a brisk fight before reaching Annoceur, where they stayed until 3 July. The Groupe Mobile de Fes then concentrated at Tazouta, where the footsore VI/2nd RE also arrived that day from their labours at Itzer.
On 4 July, the mobile group marched south for Skoura, at first around sandy slopes thickly spotted with scrub and small trees, and then down on to a cream-coloured plain. The change of scenery is immediate, from terrain reminiscent of dry Californian hills into something that is definitely African, with low, thorny trees and patches of wiry scrub widely scattered across a gently rolling clay plain, bright in the sun. The vanguard of the column was Major Auger’s VI/2nd RE, with a Spahi squadron and a 65mm mountain battery.39 At first the villagers that they passed seemed unconcerned, but before long the column came under fire from brush-speckled ridges a few hundred yards to the right of their track; shells and machine-gun fire silenced this, the crests were picketed and the mobile group pushed ahead, with villagers and flocks now fleeing south ahead of them. After a few miles the Oued Sebou curved in closer from the east, and the track turned eastwards up wooded slopes; when it reached a plateau at about 3,500 feet, thick trees and cultivated patches marked the village of Skoura, at the foot of a pass leading further up into steep, scrub-covered hills. There the column bivouacked for a few days, and was joined by General Poeymirau with units from his Meknes Mobile Group.40
The purpose of the march was a reconnaissance in force and a demonstration, not yet an occupation, and Skoura was at the end of the practical track southwards. To the east the Tizi Adni pass, rising steeply 500 feet from Skoura up the northern shoulder of the hills, was the path into the true mountains beyond – the chaotic 6,500-foot Tichoukt massif – and Poeymirau did not have the logistic resources to thrust any further. At 4am on the morning of 8 July his force began to break camp in the darkness for the return march to Tazouta.
THE REARGUARD, UNDER MAJOR AUGER of the Legion, initially consisted of his VI/2nd RE with a squadron and a battery. The combined mobile group’s large baggage train delayed their departure, and it was 5am before the rearguard set off. First light had revealed tribesmen filtering down from the hills to the west and north, but the main column had withdrawn its pickets from the flanking high ground before the rearguard could catch up – always a danger when a long column ‘concertina’d’. Auger sent word up the line that he needed more men to replace them, and he was sent a company each of Senegalese and Moroccan Skirmishers. These secured his flanks during his withdrawal down the wooded slopes immediately west of Skoura, and the rearguard reached the open plain and turned north without interference.
On a contour map (if such a thing existed) this stretch of plateau might seem to offer no danger of surprise; but the morning of 8 July 1917 was foggy, and thick dust kicked up from the dirt track by the convoy ahead also hung in the still air. The clay plain on either side of the track is deeply fissured here and there with natural drainage gulleys whose depth varies from knee-to head-height and more, resembling dug trenches. On the left (west) the ground is more or less bare for a margin of a few hundred yards, running back to a dark, broken line of low thorny trees and scrub along the foot of speckled ridges; as always, distance and height are difficult to judge. On the right, the eastern hills are miles off beside the Oued Sebou, but the plain rolls up to the track in low hummocks and dips, thickly scattered with stunted thuya trees, holly-oaks and patches of dry bushes to within 100 yards. When cloaked in mist, such terrain offered superb cover for the Berber riflemen who were converging on the rearguard.
The Skirmishers picketing the high ground were surrounded and attacked first, and needed artillery and machine-gun fire to help them disengage. The only way to make progress was by leapfrogging bounds, and by about 7.30 – 8am the rearguard was separated into three parties each of two infantry companies. The furthest ahead were the Moroccan and Senegalese companies, which had reached a low hillock with two machine-gun platoons and a section of mountain guns. Some way behind, but making good progress towards this fire position, were two companies of VI/2nd RE; but 300 yards behind them the last two companies of légionnaires were surrounded and under heavy pressure. They were taking close-range fire from all sides, and had to resort to the bayonet to stop rushes that loomed up out of the mist. The artillery some 600 yards ahead had no clear target and dared not fire blind, and the machine guns kept jamming in the dust.
The rearguard had been fighting for hours before they finally received some support; infantry were sent back from the main column miles ahead, and off to one side Captain Cattin’s Mounted Company/2nd RE, who were withdrawing across country on a parallel route, managed to fight free of their own attackers. Hearing the gunfire off to his flank, Cattin sent most of his company on in a further northwards bound while he himself led his machine-gun section across country to the aid of the VI/2nd Foreign. He managed to set up his two guns at very close range and swept the Berbers away from one flank of the embattled battalion, and at last the rearguard broke free from its tormentors; they eventually reached Tazouta after ten hours of fighting and marching. The five Legion companies had suffered 77 casualties: 43 killed, 33 wounded and one missing. As always, the higher figure for dead than for wounded speaks of fallen men being cut up by the tribesmen before their comrades could reach them.41
Seven days later Major Auger’s mauled VI/2nd RE were 70 miles away back at Ain Leuh camp, and they remained in that sector for the rest of 1917. They were joined on 26 September by Major Desjours’ VI/1st RE transferred down from the Taza front, where only 1st (Mounted) Company/1st RE now kept the Legion’s red-and-green fanion flying.42
IN AUGUST 1917, UP IN MELILLA, a functionary and journalist named Mohammed bin Abd el Krim el Khattabi, the eldest son of a respected Ait Waryaghar faqih or teacher of the same name, was arrested by the Spanish authorities.
Abd el Krim the elder had been dealing with the Germans, and when
his house was burned down during a Spanish raid he had taken to the hills with a few followers. However, these did not yet include his two unusually promising sons. The younger (whose name is usually given as Mhamed) was studying in Madrid to become a mining engineer, while the elder, Mohammed – then about 36 years old – straddled both the Spanish and the Rifian worlds in Melilla. Educated in a Spanish school there before attending the Karaouine medersa in Fes, in 1914 he had been appointed the senior cadi or Islamic judge of the Melilla region. Simultaneously, he worked both as a secretary in the Spanish native affairs bureau under Colonel Gabriel Morales, and also as editor of the Arabic supplement of the newspaper El Telegrama del Rif. His office duties gave him an inside view of the corruption surrounding Spanish exploitation of the Rif’s mineral resources, and he became an outspoken critic both of Spanish expansion around Melilla and of the French Protectorate. In August 1917 his protests apparently became unacceptable, and he served about 18 months in Restrogordo prison. A rope was smuggled in, and the broken left leg he suffered during a failed escape attempt would leave him with a limp for the rest of his life.43
BETWEEN THE SUMMER OF 1917 AND THE SUMMER OF 1918, patient pressure on the Zaians brought unspectacular but useful results. While the chiefs Moha ou Said and old Moha ou Hammou would remain defiant, one by one the latter’s sons and nephews opened tentative contacts with the Native Affairs post at Khenifra, and the third important leader, Sidi Ali Amhaouch, died of natural causes. Attrition worked both ways, however: no major engagements took place, but the constant round of escorts, columns, and the occasional establishment of new posts in the hills led to frequent clashes in Colonel Théveney’s Tadla-Zaian Territory.
By June 1918, casualties, accidents and malaria had reduced Iler RE to just 377 all ranks, who spent the rest of the war on the Oued Zem – Kasbah Tadla – Khenifra axis. Major Desjours’ VI/1st RE established a new post at El Hammam between Mrirt and Bekrite; like the other battalions it increasingly saw its companies dispersed as parts of ad hoc task groups as the strain on manpower became extreme. In January 1918, Major Auger led a composite battalion assembled from two companies and a machine-gun platoon each from his VI/2nd RE and Desjours’ VI/1st, padded out with a Moroccan Skirmisher company, for General Poeymirau’s operations around Khenifra. In deep snow that lasted until April 1918 the VI/2nd were then spread between Azrou and Timahdite to guard that northern stretch of the trans-Atlas route, before marching with spring and summer columns around Ain Leugh and El Hammam.44 Incited by rumours of the Allied defeats in France at the time of Ludendorff’s spring 1918 Kaiserschlacht offensive, the Northern Ait Segrushin, Marmoucha, Ait Youssi and Beni Alaham tribes were all restless, threatening the forts at El Hammam, Itzer, Midelt and Ksabi and the routes between them. In mid-June it took Poeymirau’s whole mobile group three days to re-open the Tarzeft pass south of Timahdite after an ambush.45
Up in the Taza Corridor, on 16 August 1918 the 1st (Mounted) Company/1st RE received urgent new marching orders for the south, where a week beforehand Lieutenant-Colonel Doury’s Boudenib Mobile Group had effectively been destroyed as a functioning command.46
WHILE LAUTEY’S ATTENTION remained fixed on his relatively fragile new link across the Middle Atlas, Doury had irritated the resident-general by showing too much interest in the Tafilalt. In December 1917, he planted a Native Affairs officer at Tighmart, south-west of the major oasis of Rissani (see Map 23). Taken together with an aggressive expansion into the Dades valley by Tahami el Glaoui’s war parties, even this minimal presence provoked the Ait Khabbash who ranged the desert west, north and south of the Tafilalt.47 When Lyautey had to send Doury reinforcements as insurance, his letter of 18 February 1918 was caustic: ‘It is we who have deliberately provoked this difficulty, whereas it would have been so simple to maintain the status quo.’ He warned Doury against the ‘seduction of these southern mirages’, which might seem to promise much but delivered nothing.48
On 30 July 1918, while fighting with a force led into the Dades valley by Tahami el Glaoui to chastise the Ait Atta, the elder brother Madani’s favourite son and chosen heir was killed while leading a horseback charge. Whether or not it is actually possible to die of grief, it is certain that when the news was brought to him, the 60-year-old Madani el Glaoui took to his bed in his palace at Marrakesh, and died on 14 August. With Lyautey’s ratification, he was succeeded in all his possessions and powers by his brother Tahami, who ruthlessly replaced many nephews with his own sons, thus reducing some 300 close relatives to dependent poverty. (Madani had said of Tahami that he was ‘a dagger that one might use, but which one must afterwards discard’, so the question of which brother ruined the other’s line had been simply a matter of timing.)49
The Ait Atta unrest also led to the killing of the Tighmart post’s interpreter, and Lieutenant-Colonel Doury, who was circling the Tafilalt hungrily, seems to have been happy to overreact. A harka was reported in the oasis of Gaouz at the southern tip of the Tafilalt, and on 8 August 1918 Doury led two battalions, a mounted company, a battery and additional auxiliaries east across the desert from Tighmart to Tinrheras. There he camped overnight in preparation for an aggressive thrust eastwards across the palmerie of Gaouz to the banks of the Ziz.
DOURY MARCHED at 5.15am on 9 August, and at 6.30am his scouts came under fire from a low rocky crest; a Legion platoon cleared it, and machine-gun fire into the tamarisks fringing the southern edge of the palm groves put the tribesmen to flight. At 10.30am the column halted to cook la soupe before pursuing.
The enemy they faced were of unknown strength; Doury’s report would later number them at 1,500, but under the circumstances he cannot be considered reliable. It is known that there were at least 400 Ait Atta at Gaouz, led by a preacher who called himself Sidi Mhand n’Ifrutant. Another marabout named El Haouari is also mentioned, so the total number of tribesmen present may have been at least in the high hundreds (Captain Guennoun’s comments on Berber tactics, quoted above pp.441, are relevant here). Whatever the number, Doury decided to divide his column into two forces; he would lead the southern, pushing straight ahead eastwards towards the ksar of Gaouz and the river, with Major Weynaud’s Boudenib Composite Battalion (by now even more mixte than before, and with only one Legion company) and two mountain guns.50 Meanwhile, Major Pochelu would cross the plantations in parallel but further north, with his composite battalion formed from two companies of the Tunisian 8th ‘Algerian’ Skirmishers and two from the 15th Senegalese, plus Captain Timm’s 2nd (Mounted) Company/1st RE and the other two guns.
Doury and Weynaud moved off at about noon and entered the palm plantations, and by about 2pm they were heavily engaged from their left, where the Berbers were infiltrating. They had to close the baggage train and Lieutenant Montrucoli’s Legion rearguard right up behind the firing line, and the 65mm guns were in action at close range. Doury sent couriers north to tell Pochelu to leave this encumbered terrain as soon as possible and to camp when he reached the Ziz. At about 2.30pm Doury ordered his force to close to their right (south) in order to start moving again; after an hour they reached the riverbank, took a Berber camp, crossed the Ziz and cleared the far side of the palmerie. Montrucoli’s Legion company had been held as the rear reserve for most of the day and suffered only four casualties. The column camped at about 5pm; there was no sign of Major Pochelu’s camp upriver, and no couriers had returned from him. Any distant sounds of combat would have been hard to distinguish from those of Doury’s own action, and by the time that ended, all was quiet to the north.
MAJOR POCHELU HAD ENTERED the palmerie of Gaouz from the west, with Captain Timm’s mule company in reserve behind the composite Skirmisher battalion. Pochelu had sent his two guns back to rejoin Doury’s column, since he judged them useless in this kind of terrain. The ground between the trees of date-palm plantations is thickly cultivated with knee-deep crops and tall shrubs packed into every possible square yard. The plots are continuous in all directions, divided only by meandering irrig
ation ditches invisible until you stumble into them, and occasionally by mud-brick walls half hidden in the overshadowing greenery. The closely set trunks of date palms do not rise naked to a high, feathery cap like coconut palms, but throw out dense diagonal fronds and orange fruiting-branches from ground level upwards; except where old branches are pruned to allow rudimentary access tracks, they mesh together into dense barriers, confused and thickened by the bushes between. Occasionally a lane of visibility across a miniature field of lucerne opens up for a few yards, but the extent of the oasis ahead is unguessable unless it is packed against the foot of a cliff that shows above the treetops, and at Gaouz there is no such feature.
Soon after Pochelu’s soldiers began to force their way into this stiflingly hot tangle-foot maze they came under fire from close range, and men began to fall without ever seeing their killers. The overlapping screens of vegetation were confusing, and the Mounted Company’s report stated that significant casualties were suffered from riflemen concealed in ditches and behind walls before the Skirmisher battalion ‘took up combat formation’, which suggests that they were still pushing their way through the undergrowth in parallel platoon columns. Sergeant Picard was left with the Legion mule-holders under cover of a ditch, and Timm led the rest of his company forward on foot into a gap that had opened up between the two halves of the Skirmisher battalion, which was now deployed with its Senegalese companies on the right and the Tunisians on the left. In such obstructed ground they could not shake out into a single firing line, but had to advance in squad files side by side. At about 2pm the enemy ceased fire and broke contact, and Pochelu let his panting men have a few moments’ rest. They were in considerable danger; this had nothing to do with individual courage, and perhaps needs a brief explanation.
Our Friends Beneath the Sands Page 63