Our Friends Beneath the Sands

by Martin Windrow

  IN MOST ARMIES, the battalion is the level in the chain of command at which a unit acquires a distinct individual personality. With about 600 officers and men, it is large enough to have an independent existence, yet small enough for all its members to identify with it personally. While the whole Legion was now relearning its collective sense of superiority over other corps, the dispersal of its units contributed to a special self-consciousness, and since some battalion commanders had strong personalities their units were popularly known by their names – for instance, ‘Bataillon de Tscharner’ as often as ‘II/3rd REI’.45 Officers who had survived the trenches, or the thankless wartime years in Morocco, kept alive the old exclusive spirit of l’Armée d’Afrique; they were not careerist box-tickers, and their unconcealed disdain for rear-echelon bureaucrats might extend to certain generals. Such officers understood and responded to the special character of the Legion; they demanded a lot of their men, but on campaign they were seen to share most of their hardships and all their dangers, so they attracted loyalty. They were strict but not petty disciplinarians; while merciless to the defiant or the dangerously negligent they could be indulgent of trivial misdemeanours, and what these ‘grands caids’ regarded as trivial might scandalize officers of other corps.

  There was a culture of hard drinking among all ranks, and officers tended to make the most of their quite frequent and generous leaves in Morocco’s great cities. Their men appreciated colourful characters and boasted of their own commanders’ real or apocryphal exploits, which all added to the Legion’s swashbuckling reputation among corps with a more orthodox ethos. As long as both parties to the relationship instinctively respected the boundaries, off-duty officers might treat their men with a comradely paternalism quite foreign to most European armies (indeed, some anecdotes would remind film fans of James Warner Bellah’s scripts for John Ford’s US Cavalry Westerns of the late 1940s). When the veteran English légionnaire Adolphe Cooper was serving with III/4th REI – ‘Bataillon de Corta’ – in 1929, he was tricked into going up to Major de Corta in the bar of the Hôtel du Pasha in Marrakesh and asking him for a loan to buy a bottle. De Corta smiled, and paid for two bottles, to match Cooper’s two newly regained corporal’s stripes; the next day Cooper was summoned and, with equal goodwill, awarded eight days’ cells, but his green stripes were spared (this was apparently a routine initiation).46

  This is not to imply that regimental colonels were mere administrators; they often visited their dispersed units in the field, giving them a direct contact with the regimental depots on which they relied for logistic and personnel support. Lieutenant-Colonel Rollet, in particular, was tireless in his command of 3rd REI, constantly visiting his battalions, companies and posts to inspect, reward or reprimand. He fought a ceaseless war with the commissariat over his men’s provisions and equipment, and during a long leave in France in early 1923 he did not scruple to exploit his wartime fame to further the welfare of the Legion old comrades’ associations that he encouraged and sponsored. His high visibility did not make him universally popular, but on 9 September 1925 Colonel Rollet would be appointed to the command of the 1st Foreign Infantry and the Legion central depot at Sidi bel Abbès – an appointment with significant consequences.47

  AS THE WINTER OF 1922/23 gave way to spring, battalion commanders began assembling their dispersed companies from the dreary posts and work-camps where they had spent the past five months, and preparing them for service in the coming season’s mobile groups. The légionnaires were more combat-ready than they had been for years past, and it was time for Marshal Lyautey’s big push into the Middle Atlas.

  17.

  ‘The Most Indomitable Race in the World’

  1923 – 24

  The Middle Atlas . . . is a rich, populous country, and its wooded mountains and fertile valleys provide an admirable redoubt where the most indomitable race in the world shut themselves off in fierce isolation.

  Marquis de Segonzac, 19031

  THE STORMING OF THE MIDDLE ATLAS in the spring – summer of 1923 would not, in fact, be undertaken under Hubert Lyautey’s direct supervision. In March, when Captain Prince Aage of Denmark arrived with his new Legion commission and reported to Rabat for orders, he was told that the marshal was seriously ill in Fes. Laid low by recurring liver trouble while driving to a conference in Algeria, Lyautey had been rushed to his old Palais Menebhi in Fes, where doctors declared him too sick to be taken to Paris for the surgery he needed. Now 68 years old, he was a slightly heavier but still striking figure in his beautifully cut uniforms, his pale blue eyes mesmerizing under a squared cap of snow-white hair. But his relentless pace of work during nearly twenty-five years in Asia and Africa had not been without cost. For some weeks his life hung in the balance; eventually he was judged strong enough to travel to Paris for an operation, and in the meantime General Joseph Poeymirau directed the advance into the Middle Atlas.2

  The 36-year-old Prince Aage (pronounced ‘Oo-weh’) was posted to I/2nd REI at Meknes, and since he was the senior captain he was appointed adjutant-major by the battalion commander Major Buschenschutz.3 As troops gathered for the campaign the battalion marched down to Timahdite, and Aage, riding at the tail of the column with Buschenchutz, had his first experience of the traditional chore of sweating the booze out of légionnaires who had spent their last centime on wine before hitting the road: Accustomed to commanding the comparatively docile [Danish] guardsmen, I was amazed at the sight . . . later I learned that this was a practice almost customary in the Legion . . . What a march that was! The sun beat down mercilessly on the alcohol-soaked légionnaires, and before we had travelled a half-dozen kilometres men began to drop out . . . The major and I urged the stragglers on, dismounting after a while to throw a couple of almost insensible soldiers across our saddles like so many sacks of meal . . . The day’s march sobered the troops. There was no more wine to be had, and the next morning we pushed towards the hills . . . The country through which we marched was exceedingly beautiful. The fields were a riot of multi-coloured wild flowers . . . ahead towered the mountains, their slopes grown thick with cedars, the heights crag-crowned, with occasional patches of snow reflecting the sun’s rays in patterns of deep blue and white . . . 4

  On several stages of the march via Azrou and Timahdite to Arhbalou Larbi, where supplies were being stockpiled for the campaign, Aage also had his first experiences of Morocco’s instantly changeable highland weather; south of Timahdite, on 2 April:During the preceding night it had begun to snow. Morning saw a blizzard in progress . . . We had advanced scarcely a kilometre when each step forward became an acute torture. In the passes, the snow had drifted to a depth of 18 inches or more. A cold wind howled down the narrow gorges, blinding men and horses with stinging particles of ice. The Spahis dismounted and led their horses; our transport mules, heavily laden, began to flounder and fall by the roadside; we called in our flank guards for fear of losing them entirely . . .

  Late in the afternoon we arrived at Selghert to find the post fallen to wrack and ruin. Except for the four stone walls, in varying states of disrepair, and a leaky shed, there was no shelter available. The storm continuing unabated, we had no choice but to remain where we were . . . The major ordered a kitchen set up in the shed; we tethered the mules between the barbed wire entanglements and the walls, and the men attempted to pitch their shelter-tents in the churned-up mud and snow of the quadrangle . . . almost as quickly as one tent could be raised, another blew down. Of firewood there was practically none, except for a few wet sticks [for] the makeshift kitchen, where the very floor was a series of pools. . . . The shed was filled with dense blue smoke . . . The men lined up and entered the shed in turn, only to rush out again, gasping for breath, to eat cold stew in the full sweep of the storm. . . . That night the temperature dropped to 6 degrees below zero Centigrade.

  By the following evening the snowdrifts were 6 feet deep, several mules had died, and the légionnaires were dumb and stupid with misery.5

 
; IN THE FIRST WEEK OF MAY 1923 preliminary operations were under way. General Poeymirau’s aim was to converge upon and defeat the tribes of the Tichoukt massif and a wide swathe of the Middle Atlas to the east of it. Subduing this slant of mountains and high valleys all the way across to the road and posts that followed the upper Moulouya would reduce the northern loop of the dissident ‘figure-of-eight’ to the Taza Pocket proper, cut off from the southern loop in the wild country where the Middle Atlas climbs into the High Atlas. Poeymirau brought to his task 20 infantry battalions (including 6 from the Legion), 12 squadrons, 15 batteries and 6 air squadrons – some 20,000 regulars, supported by numerous goumiers.

  As part of General Théveny’s Meknes Mobile Group, Colonel Callais of 6th Moroccan Skirmishers led his own regiment with I/2nd REI and a Bat d’Af from Arhbalou Larbi eastwards through the Tizi Tarzeft pass, towards a tribal stronghold among the cliffs of Bou Arfa north of Enjil (see Map 19).6 On 12 May, however, Captain Prince Aage was recalled from I/2nd REI to join General Poeymirau’s staff. Aage described ‘Poey’ as short, square, extraordinarily elegant, friendly, twinkling and altogether an ornament of café society, but as a workaholic when he was in the field. Irrepressibly cheerful, he put a strain on his staff by his insistence on going forward under fire to see for himself, and on sitting down for a proper lunch well within range of stray bullets. (There is something distinctly Napoleonic about all this, and one cannot but wonder whether Aage’s summons to Poeymirau’s staff had anything to do with his royal blood.)7 A few days later Aage took up his new duties at Enjil, very conscious that his colleagues had years of Moroccan experience (one of them was Captain Jean de Lattre, Poeymirau’s operations officer).8 Over the following three months Aage would see combat from close range on a number of occasions, since battlefield communication between a general and his units when on campaign was still maintained by mounted staff officers.

  In this ‘admirable redoubt of the most indomitable race in the world’, the engagements through which Aage would carry Poeymirau’s orders would be consistently costly. Nevertheless, it was noticed that the Legion’s morale was now recovering from the slump of the immediate post-war years, and desertion rates had fallen sharply. An outward encouragement to ésprit de corps was the first return of the képi in place of the awkward pith helmet and squalid sidecap; those who received them were quick to make themselves folklorique cotton campaign covers, as pale as possible, to set themselves apart from other troops. Such apparently trivial details can be surprisingly important to unit morale; since the men now felt that they ‘looked like real légionnaires’, they tried to live up to the image.9

  ON 20 MAY 1923, the Meknes Group advanced before sunrise towards tribesmen who were holding the head and flanks of the valley of Bou Arfa. The right-hand of two columns, under Colonel du Guiny, was checked soon after 5am by heavy fire from the wooded heights on its right. His troops tried to dig themselves scrapes under constant nagging fire; in the afternoon torrential rain fell, the heat of the ground turned this to thick mist, and the Ait Segrushin warriors infiltrated forwards while the French brought up reinforcements. Prince Aage watched a horse-drawn battery of 75mm guns galloping past ‘at a dead run, gun carriages swinging perilously round sharp curves, gunners clinging to their perches for dear life, while the drivers, swearing cheerfully, urged their teams to a still madder pace’. The crashing, jingling battery disappeared into the mist, and after a few moments he heard the guns begin to cough, at first slowly, then faster as they established the range and began to fire for effect.

  As firing became general again on all sides, Aage was sent forward to find out why a Skirmisher battalion’s frontal attack had stalled. Reporting to Poeymirau that most of its officers were down, he was sent to find and take forward on its right the first reserve battalion he met. This proved to be his own I/2nd REI; still blinded by the mist, he positioned Major Buschenschutz close to the sound of firing and then rode forward cautiously to regain contact with the Skirmishers. A breeze shifted the murk slightly, and he found himself in the middle of the hard-pressed battalion just as a group of tribesmen surged up among rocks hardly 20 yards away and shot down a subaltern and several turcos before his eyes. Unarmed, Aage dived from the saddle into cover, and was wondering how he could take control of the situation when Buschenschutz led the Legion battalion past him on the right with ‘grim, silent purpose’. They closed with the Berbers, the Skirmishers took heart and advanced with them, and the attack rolled on. In late afternoon the tribesmen fell back, but the day had cost Colonel du Guiny 125 casualties.10

  THÉVENY’S MEKNES GROUP spent the next fortnight consolidating, while 600 men blasted and dug a road through the Recifa pass so that trucks could bring supplies forward to their junction with the Fes Group at Boulemane. As always in Morocco, the camps instantly attracted a swarming retail suburb whose ramshackle streets of tents and shanties sprang up as if by magic:Arab merchants who sold to the troops vile cigarettes and dates of slightly superior quality; native women who were no better than they should have been; café keepers who sold native wines in the shade of skin tents; spies, whom we could not identify; mendicants who lived on our leavings; and thieves who knifed one another in squabbles over their meagre takings. It was all very colourful . . . 11

  On 7 June, when temperatures reached 120°F (49°C) by 7am, the combined forces of the Southern Group (Fes and Meknes) were ordered north. Their objective was the village of El Mers, the central market and shrine for the Northern Ait Segrushin, which sat in a bowl at the southern foot of the Bou Khamouj heights. Part of Poeymirau’s division would first have to take the chaotic tangle of the Tichoukt massif from the north, while the rest advanced on El Mers from the west and south across the rolling country where the tribe grew its grain. While Prince Aage was enjoying a refreshing bathe in a stream that wandered through orchards, to the north General Théveny’s units struggled up steep gulches into the three-dimensional labyrinth between Skoura and El Mers, where the Berbers had successfully defied the French since 1917. The rudimentary tracks across the Tichoukt massif hairpin and switchback along ledges, and the very steep ridges, covered in holly-oak and clumps of scrub, interlock closely in sequences of folded knifeblades divided by narrow, plunging ravines.

  The légionnaires had no packs, carrying all they could in two haversacks on their hips and a horseshoe bedroll; this was awkward for attaching camping tools and cooking gear, but it was more than enough of a burden for a twelve-hour day spent struggling up and down 45-degree slopes over unstable earth and scree. The columns picked their way along ledges in single file; each mule needed an extra man with a rope to prevent its 200lb load slipping on the steepest gradients, while the muleteer had to inch along the outside edge of the goat-track between his beast’s head and the almost sheer drop. The opposition was stubborn, and it is hardly surprising that it took Théveny’s force nearly two weeks to approach El Mers from the north; how infantry managed to make any methodical progress through this appalling terrain almost defies the imagination.12 For instance, on 9 June Major Barrière’s I/3rd REI managed to secure a thickly wooded height on a flank, but had to hold it from 9am until nightfall against furious attacks that came to hand-to-hand range; that day’s fighting alone cost Théveny’s three battalions 230 casualties.

  On the same day the southern force were pushing across the plain below the edge of the djebel. (General Poeymirau insisted that his staff sit down to take breakfast, its service slightly disrupted by a bullet that dropped the mule carrying up the mess equipment.) A Skirmisher battalion were sent to investigate a silent, wooded hill rising above the left flank, and about twenty minutes after they disappeared into the trees, firing crashed out. They had been ambushed from three sides, many officers had fallen, and shaken turcos were seen retreating out of the woodland; Prince Aage later heard that the unit had lost 70 killed and 228 wounded – half its strength. The I/2nd REI were sent up the hill in their turn and cleared it, though not without loss. As usual, the te
mperature plunged after sunset; in their freezing bivouacs the troops got little sleep, disturbed by incessant close-range sniping and by the replying machine guns until a couple of hours before dawn. After taking an intermediate ridge on 12 June, the mobile group again halted for several days to bring up supplies and prepare systematically for the next advance. Sniping was almost continual, and by night Berber women haunted the edges of the camps howling graphic threats at the Moroccan Skirmishers. Some tribesmen managed to slit sentries’ throats and crept in to steal rifles, and the soldiers were ordered literally to ‘sleep on their arms’ in the tents – each man wrapped his rifle and buried it in a groove scraped beneath his blankets (a precaution that became habitual).13

  EL MERS WAS TAKEN by converging attacks from north, west and south on 24 June 1923, and a battalion of the 2nd Foreign led the advance from the south towards the glowering wall of Bou Khamouj. Prince Aage was with this unit when it came under heavy fire while trying to clear Ait Segrushin warriors off high ground to the left; he describes a machine-gun crew being shot down one by one, and volunteers having to crawl out to drag the gun to a less exposed position. Artillery drove the Berbers back from their stone breastworks to a second line nearer the village, and this too was shelled before the infantry advanced again in the heat of the afternoon. About 200 yards short of El Mers village, they were held up by an outlying kasbah centred in an arrowhead of trenches and banks, which Aage estimated was held by as many as 1,000 Berbers (with, he claims, ‘several machine guns’).14 At about 3pm all three battalions of 2nd Foreign prepared to assault this position; Aage’s job was to liaise between the front line and the reserves and ammunition train, but he watched from the position of a unit delivering supporting fire. Apparently three assaults on the trenches and redoubt by the lead battalion were repulsed with significant casualties, before classic fire-and-movement by the companies and platoons of another got the légionnaires into the trenches, and the kasbah was finally ‘bombed out’ by a platoon with haversacks of grenades.15