From the moment when Major Pochelu’s companies left the open sands and passed under the eaves of the palmerie they had lost mutual visibility, and thus much of the advantage conferred by their superior training, organization and equipment. The native soldiers of the composite battalion were a collective of two separate teams, each drilled and rehearsed in coordinated actions at given words of command; they were also illiterate conscripts, from whom nothing was expected but blind obedience. This human machine, with a number of ‘moving parts’, relied for its effectiveness on the moment-by-moment direction of officers and NCOs to make those parts function in exact sequences. The palm plantation had no real overhead canopy, but in every other respect it presented the same difficulties as true jungle fighting. The terrain and thick vegetation broke the human machine’s cohesion and interrupted its internal connections (and its cohesion was in any case imperfect, since the Arab and African halves of the unit were divided by the age-old prejudices and resentments of the slave trade). If this cobbled-together machine came under real pressure and began to lose its junior leaders while its different parts could not see or hear one another clearly, then the sequence of its movements would quickly break down. The tribesmen had been at a real disadvantage out on the open sands; here in the tangled labyrinth between the trees, with visibility reduced to a few yards, their individual motivation – their very lack of reliance on any collective rehearsal for combat – gave them the tactical edge.
POCHELU RESUMED HIS ADVANCE, with the Legion company once more behind the centre in reserve. At perhaps 2.30pm the column came under very heavy attack, there was ‘violent fighting before the units could deploy’, and the machine began to malfunction. On the right, the Senegalese fell back; the Legion company moved forward again and charged to fill the gap in the fighting front, but tribesmen infiltrated between the platoons of Senegalese. A second Legion charge had to be made to try to clear the Senegalese left flank and restore some order; ‘unfortunately, other units, nailed to the ground by heavy fire, could not follow the Legion’s example’, and the Senegalese began to break up in disorder.
In such a crisis the troops should have been able to rely upon their superior firepower, but to a great extent the close-set palm trunks already negated any advantage, and anyway the Mounted Company was soon reduced to carbines and bayonets only. It had lost one of its two machine guns that morning, jammed solid during the fight for the ridge outside the oasis; now Lieutenant Jorel took the other Hotchkiss forward between the légionnaires’ right flank and the dissolving Senegalese companies, but soon after he took over from his wounded gunner that gun jammed too, and he carried it to the rear to try to clear it. The Legion in Morocco had by now received some issue of two new weapons: the M1915 Vivien-Bessière rifle-grenade, fired from a cup attached to the muzzle of the Lebel, and the M1915 CSRG light machine gun (the ‘Chauchat’). But Captain Timm’s men were already down to their last ten VBs, and with an 8-second delay fuze and 180-yard range these were difficult to drop on close targets in thick cover – they were designed for firing between shellholes and trenches in the open moonscape of the Western Front. The company’s two Chauchats also jammed, perhaps predictably – this ugly and awkward weapon, assembled by the Gladiator bicycle company, was notoriously unreliable.51
By now the tribesmen were also getting in close among the Tunisian Skirmishers on the left, who recoiled backwards. In the centre, the Legion company charged a third time, and at that moment the Senegalese ‘were led towards the rear’ (the official wording). The légionnaires of 2nd (Mounted) were exposed on both flanks, and the Ait Atta pushed forward to try to hook around them in the thick cover. At about 3pm a bullet broke Captain Timm’s left arm high at the shoulder. Lieutenant Jorel took command, but he too fell wounded, and the Berbers swarmed over him with knives. Sub-lieutenant Freycon had an easier death: surrounded by enemies, he held them back by windmilling his empty carbine until one of them shot him full in the forehead. Sergeant Leins and Pte Forseter tried to bring his body in, but then Leins himself was killed. Warrant Officer Regnier, Sergeant-Major Kabe, Sergeants Picard, Pommeroulie and Landers and QM-Corporal Eckhard were already down, as were five of the corporals. It fell to Warrant Officer Roqueplan, with the one remaining sergeant and three corporals, to command the company as they fought their way backwards towards the edge of the oasis. The report describes the légionnaires holding together in the middle of a nightmare confusion of Tunisians, Senegalese and tribesmen locked in hand-to-hand combat in thick cover. Lashed into the seat of a cacolet, Captain Timm continued to try to direct the retreat even after a second bullet smashed his face. Major Pochelu, the force commander, died after being shot through the wrist (this sounds rather puzzling, but again, it is the official wording).
At last the légionnaires saw the sun through the trees behind them. The pursuit slackened and finally ceased, as the tribesmen stopped to finish off the abandoned wounded and gather up the rich harvest of rifles and ammunition. The 2nd (Mounted) Company had lost 47 men killed, and just 7 wounded were recovered; another 2 unwounded men would soon die ‘of exhaustion’. Roqueplan led them back out to the slight ridge where they had fought early that morning and organized them to defend it, but at about 5pm a sandstorm blew up. For once the légionnaires did not curse it; it provided the cover they needed to stumble away over the open desert. The sand around the southern Tafilalt is orange under a strange skin of dead black grit; normally hooves and boots would leave clear tracks, but we may presume that the wind wiped them clear that evening, and the légionnaires were not pursued. At about 9pm the exhausted survivors staggered into the Native Affairs post at Tighmart.
Lieutenant-Colonel Doury would report the total French loss that day as 238 killed and just 68 recovered wounded – the worst casualties since El Herri in November 1914 – at the hands of an enemy which he claimed to have ‘almost annihilated’. How he reached the latter conclusion is unclear, and Lyautey was unimpressed; his response to Doury’s report lashed the colonel for grave mistakes before, during and after his impulsive action in ‘this most peripheral of zones’. The disaster at Gaouz encouraged tribesmen to rise right across the south-east; it took six months to quell the unrest, which embarrassingly obliged the resident-general to request reinforcements from Algeria.52 Tahami el Glaoui also had to lead the greatest harka ever mounted – some 10,000 men – against the Ait Atta in the Dades valley, inflicting defeats in January and February 1919.
The shattered 2nd (Mounted) Company/1st RE swapped places with the 1st (Mounted) from the Taza corridor, which saw combat alongside the Boudenib Composite Battalion at Dar el Beida and other villages in the Tafilalt in autumn 1918. The posts at El Maadid and Tighmart were given up in favour of a more defensible one at Erfoud, built and occupied by the Composite Battalion, but this, too, was abandoned after a few months; the definitive occupation of the Tafilalt would have to wait many years. After Gaouz, Lyautey added this front to the already considerable responsibilities of General Poeymirau; at Meski on 15 January 1919, in the course of defeating the victor of Gaouz (Sidi Mhand n’Ifrutant), the general was seriously wounded in the chest by the accidental explosion of an artillery shell, but his task was completed by Colonel Antoine Huré.53
THE ARMISTICE OF NOVEMBER 1918 found Lyautey with a great deal of unfinished business in the Middle Atlas and with irritations in the south-eastern desert, but still able to boast a large measure of success over the four years of his wartime stewardship. He had held on to all the territory he had captured in 1914, and had established an important new line of communication across the Middle Atlas. Moreover, behind the thin ‘lobster shell’ of his Groupes Mobiles, the civil development of his Protectorate had advanced remarkably during the war years.54
During the First World War, the Legion lost 348 officers and men killed in Morocco – not even half of the 721 who died with the single Legion battalion in the Dardanelles and the Balkans, and a single-figure percentage of those killed or listed missing on the Wes
tern Front.55 Disregarded at the time and now almost entirely forgotten, Lyautey’s investment of these lives on France’s behalf was undeniably cost-effective. It is hard to imagine how he could have preserved French Morocco without his ‘dearest troops’, whose relative importance there was demonstrably greater during these years than at any other period.
16.
Flawed Blades
1919 – 22
This system of splitting up into spheres of influence a country which, while nominally one, forms as a matter of fact different political and administrative entities, is not one that can be recommended. More especially is this the case where [it] introduces frontiers that only to a very small extent are based upon natural or physical features – frontiers that pass through unexplored and unknown districts.
Walter Harris, 19271
AMID THE WRECKAGE AND EXHAUSTION of 1919, the Foreign Legion needed rebuilding for an uncertain new world in which the task of identifying and balancing French military needs and resources would take some years. While Europe was awash with potential recruits, few of them were the sort of men who had typically been the source of pre-war légionnaires. The solid world of accepted identities and hierarchies that had bred the ‘old moustaches’ had died in No Man’s Land; post-war Europe was a vast psychiatric out-patient ward, and the recruits of 1919 – 22 were far more heterogeneous and uncertain material than pre-war intakes. Their average age dropped markedly, to 64 per cent under the age of 25; the wider social base lifted the educational level, but with it expectations and political awareness – the newspaper-devouring légionnaire was a new phenomenon. It was hardly surprising that very few Frenchmen now enlisted, and the high proportion of Germans reversed the pre-war position with equally unbalanced results. In 1912, the Legion enlisted 23 per cent Frenchmen and 16 per cent Germans; in 1920, the figures were 3 per cent and 55 per cent .2
Given the recent hatreds of the World War this naturally led to mutual suspicions and, at the highest level, to anxiety over the Legion’s reliability, and a consequent decision to place an artificial limit on the proportion of German NCOs aggravated resentments. Morale and efficiency were low, and the desertion rate in 1919 – 22 – usually to Spanish Morocco – was shockingly high. This sometimes involved whole squads, who made carefully planned escapes taking their weapons with them, and at least one group, led by a former German Army NCO, used them against fellow légionnaires.3 Since the Legion was unique in being spared the annual convulsion of inducting new conscripts en masse, it had the potential to regain its reputation as a crack corps, but rebuilding a reliable collective morale would take several years; after all, even the immediate outward symbol – the képi – had been a casualty of the trenches.4
Most of the experienced sergeants who had been the guardians of continuity had gone, and out of sheer necessity too many men were given a gold stripe too quickly and indiscriminately. In 1920, it was possible to get one within a year of enlistment, but in 1921 the 1st Foreign alone still recorded a shortfall of 130 sergeants – more than 30 per cent. From that year, French Line NCOs could transfer into the Legion for twelve-month tours, but handling légionnaires required skills that Metropolitan units had not taught. Hastily promoted men lacked the natural authority that only experience brings; they compensated for their want of confidence either by becoming inflexible martinets or by seeking popularity through laxity. The new type of recruit was also less likely to give automatic respect to the small minority of old soldiers as mentors. An enlistment bounty was now offered, pay rates had improved, and with coin in their pockets (and permission to visit approved civilian brothels) the new légionnaires spent less time in the canteens listening to the old soaks’ war stories – which they could often top, anyway.5
The officer corps responsible for reshaping the post-war Legion was equally unlike the generation that had gone into the trenches. Some pre-war veterans did return from the Western Front or prison camps, alongside commissioned rankers and a very few retained foreign volunteers, but they found the home they remembered sadly changed, and some of these survivors now regarded their German rankers as little better than prisoners-of-war.6 The majority of the many subalterns required came either straight from St Cyr or from the Line as birds of passage, since – in order to break down the traditional walls between the home and colonial armies – after 1918 the Army introduced a system of rotating two-year postings to théâtres d’opérations extérieur (TOE) to give young officers experience of foreign service. Accustomed only to French conscripts, they found their new soldiers impenetrable, and a three-month induction course at Sidi bel Abbès gave little useful guidance.7
Lieutenant Colonel Paul Rollet, returning to Morocco garlanded with the glory he had earned in the trenches, noted in his diary: ‘Conclusions not optimistic . . . post-war crisis in value of things, in value of men, above all in the moral sense – the tool is not sharp – needs recutting and retempering – the Africa Army in general and the Legion specifically.’8 He drew up a detailed memorandum, calling for stricter selection of NCOs based on fitness for combat leadership, improvements in administration to restore a decent consistency to the treatment of enlistees, and a searching reform of the ponderous machinery of the Sidi bel Abbès depot, which in time should be moved to Morocco to tighten its relationship with the combat battalions. This memorandum was passed up the chain of command to the War Ministry, where – although approved by Lyautey, who in 1921 attained the ultimate dignity of a Marshal of France – it died of neglect in a filing cabinet. The Rue Dominique accepted the defensive objections of the depot, then commanded by one Major Riet, an officer of whom it would be noted that ‘he left neither a trace nor a memory of himself’ at the 1st Foreign before he was posted to the backwater of Tonkin.9
THE POST-WAR REORGANIZATION removed the distinction between permanent administrative régiments organiques and task-organized expeditionary régiments/bataillons de marche, so the old two-regiment structure was now inadequate. The Legion would consist of four numbered régiments étrangers d’infanterie (REIs) of three battalions each, though extra battalions of the 1st and 2nd Foreign would be formed to serve in the more far-flung garrisons.10
The 1st REI would remain at Sidi bel Abbès providing central reception, training and administrative services for the whole corps, though it would also put battalions into the field. Apart from its physical distance from the active front in Morocco, this centralization would have other malign consequences: some more or less idle and nest-feathering officers and senior NCOs would tend to accrete around these comfortable billets, where they settled into the life of the town, married too young, ticked the boxes for their pensions and future civilian employment, and skimmed off the human and material cream before it reached the front-line units.
The headquarters of 2nd REI moved from Saida in Algeria to Meknes in Morocco. In October 1919, Lieutenant-Colonel Rollet brought his wartime RMLE back from occupation duty in the Rhineland to new headquarters at Fes, where from January 1921 it became the new 3rd REI. In November 1920, the 4th REI was created from the battalions already in western Morocco, with headquarters at Marrakesh. By 1923 the Legion’s strength would be just under 13,500 men, and the establishment of the 2nd, 3rd and 4th Foreign Infantry in Morocco would be three battalions plus one mounted company each.11
The new designation ‘Foreign Infantry Regiment’ was made necessary by the long-resisted decision to form a Legion cavalry unit. In 1921, the potential recruiting pool offered by thousands of former White Russian cavalrymen – evacuated from the Crimea following their defeat in the civil war against the Bolsheviks – proved irresistible, and in March that year the 1er Régiment Étranger de Cavalerie (1st REC) was created at Sousse in Tunisia with a cadre of officers and NCOs transferred from Metropolitan and Africa Army cavalry regiments. The squadrons were formed progressively, and their lack of an armature of veteran légionnaires increased the delay in bringing them up to operational readinesss. Russians, always a small minority pre-1914,
represented about 12 per cent of the Legion in 1921, and by 1925 they would provide the remarkable proportion of 82 per cent of 1st Foreign Cavalry – a striking violation of the Legion’s long established melting-pot policy.12
IN SPRING 1920, LYAUTEY paid Tahami el Glaoui to mount harkas, at his own discretion, into the valleys of the Oued Dades and Todra. Some tribes of the Ait Atta people allied themselves with the Glaoua in order to retain their local dominance, while others remained implacable. Among the leaders of the latter was a caid of dynamic personality named Assu u-Ba Slam, of the Ilimshan clan. Another name that the French would come to know well was Belkassem Ngadi, a resourceful Ait Hammou chief who fought the Glaoua in 1920 before dropping out of sight for several years.13
Freed of concern for the Far South, Lyautey was reinforced to nearly 92,000 men in 1920, and his command ‘surged’ to almost 95,000 the following year (though Paris would reduce it again to 86,000 in 1922, and had almost halved that figure by 1925).14 When Lyautey was interviewed for L‘Illustration in 1921 he said that he had 82,000 field troops in 63 battalions, 29 squadrons, 24 batteries and 10 air squadrons. But of the infantry, only 57 battalions were in forward areas, and since about 20 of these were tied down in static garrisons he had only 37 units free for operations. With his usual eye to the public narrative, he claimed that ‘since 1914 the whole Moroccan plain has been occupied . . . All the tribes have submitted, except the three most important: the Djibala of Ouezzane, the Beni Ouarain, and the Zaians . . .’.15
Our Friends Beneath the Sands Page 64