Our Friends Beneath the Sands

by Martin Windrow

  The operation was set to start on 11 July 1926, and it was anticipated that the objectives would be achieved on the 14th. Given the extremely rugged terrain, this timetable might seem optimistic, but in the event both Dosse’s and Vernois’ divisions made remarkable progress from the north and south. Reyniés’ Legion-heavy main force from Tamjout in fact reached the Djebel Tizi Cherer on 12 July, two days ahead of schedule, so Colonel Gendre took a column north-west to surround the Djebel Rikbat. On 13 July, the Legion mounted company from Cauvin’s detachment, pushing in from the north-west towards 3rd Division’s right flank, earned a citation for its conduct at the Djebel Tachkount. On the same day, east of the mountains, Colonel Callais’ Skirmishers from the north met up with 1st Division troops from the south at their mutual objective of Meskedal, after the légionnaires of 3rd Foreign had taken the pass of Tizi ou Hanzi. The only element that seemed to be in trouble was Freydenberg’s detachment coming up from the south-west, and the most serious fighting was to take place astride and west of the Djebel Tafert section of the central range.26

  Freydenberg had been marching up the eastern side of the mountains, with the aim of crossing the chain north-westwards through the Tizi n’Ouidel pass to reach the Tafert forest and link up there with 3rd Division. The lead unit reached the foot of the pass on 13 July, but mistook defending Berbers for their own partisans and came under punishing fire. The following day I/1st Foreign took one height, but were violently counter-attacked with grenades and automatic weapons, and the dominant ground changed hands four times. On the 15th, the situation was improved by an attack near the western end of the pass by VI/1st Foreign from 3rd Division (which would bring the Théraube Battalion a second citation in army orders, and thus the right to flaunt the pale-blue-and-crimson lanyard of the Croix de Guerre TOE around the taverns of Saida). Even so, it was 16 July before the légionnaires of the I/1st managed to break through the Tizi n’Ouidel, and the tribes’ resistance was still so courageous that Freydenberg’s planned objectives west of the mountains had to be transferred to General Dosse.

  On 18 July, Dosse received an air-dropped signal from Dufieux to the effect that since Freydenberg had made less than 2 miles progress that day due to the terrain and the resistance, and since Dosse had advanced some 12 miles beyond his own objectives, his 3rd Division must take over the clearing of the long Miat Khandak ridge. At that point Dosse’s troops were spread over 25 miles and badly in need of resupply; some of them had not eaten for two days, and had been set to hunting Berber flocks in the Tafert forest. One cost of Reyniés’ rapid advance along terrifying goat-tracks had been to see no fewer than 82 of his pack-mules go rolling and crashing down into the ravines below, from which their loads of food, ammunition and disassembled mountain guns could seldom be recovered. Nevertheless, he assembled two battalions and a pack-battery, and he and General Dosse in person led them north-west along the narrow crest of Miat Khandak, while Freydenberg’s force slogged along the bottom of the canyons on their left, making for the Trik es Soltane path leading out of the hills towards Ahermoumou.

  The high column ran into fierce resistance from Beni Zeggout tribesmen who came at them from three sides, and in the vanguard II/4th Foreign had to fight for several hours before a charge cleared the ridge; the subsequent citation mentioned that the battalion’s cooks and muleteers had been sent forward to join the firing line. On 19 July the Freydenberg detachment cleared the last hill barring the Ahermoumou track, and above them Reyniés took the heights of the Djebel Sidi Ament; there he met up with Cauvin’s detachment, while to their north the Gendre column finally cleared the Djebel Rikbat.27 On 25 July, Sidi Raho made his submission to General Dufieux.

  THE SUMMER OF 1926 MARKED the final elimination of the Tache de Taza as a base for raiding on any scale; it was also the last campaign season when multiple battalions of the Legion saw serious combat in Morocco. While whole brigades would be assembled as late as 1933 to form cordons for operations mounted almost entirely by native troops, and while légionnaires would see a great deal of hard marching in the process, from now on the Legion’s only actual battles worthy of the name would revert to company-sized affairs reminiscent of the Sud-Oranais frontier at the turn of the century. The proportion of the Legion’s total strength committed to Morocco would actually rise after the Rif War, but the nature of the remaining tasks in the still unpacified Far South (and French political expediency) would dictate a steady growth in the part played by the partisans, goumiers and Moroccan Skirmishers, which would steadily eclipse that of the white units.28

  During 1926 – 9 the Legion would fight a number of company actions – notably, the defence of a post at El Bordj in the Djebel Ayachi south-west of Midelt, by Captain Moras’ 6th Company of Major de Tscharner’s II/3rd Foreign on 9 – 19 June 1929 – but most Legion infantry spent these years in hard labour on the road network.29 In addition, specialist pioneer companies were formed from 1925, and these operated both individually and in concert with French Génie units.30 Between July 1927 and March 1928 the main route across the High Atlas from Midelt down to Er Rachidia was improved by a project that became something of a monument to the Legion’s skills with crowbar, hammer, pick and explosive. At the pass of Foum Zabel, Warrant Officer Michez and 40 légionnaires of the composite 31st Sapper-Pioneer Battalion drove a squared-off tunnel 90 yards long, 26 feet wide and 10 feet high through the living rock of the great buttress above a bend in the Oued Ziz gorge. They signed their work – achieved without power tools – with the seven-flamed grenade and the splendidly Roman boast that ‘The mountain barred our route – the order was given to pass – the Legion executed it’. (Even on modern maps this is still identified as the ‘Tunnel du Légionnaire’.)31

  LÉGIONNAIRE COOPER OF VI/1st REI had missed the Tache de Taza campaign and the chance to swagger in the battalion’s new lanyard. In May 1926 he had lost his stripes and been thrown in the cells at Sidi bel Abbès, only narrowly avoiding a general court-martial. After six months in the Disciplinary Company he was posted to III/1st REI at Ain Sefra, and in early 1929 he ended up at Marrakesh in Major de Corta’s III/4th Foreign. Here he fell on his feet; he got on well with both his platoon commander, Lieutenant Vecchioni, and the interim commander of 9th Company, Lieutenant Djindjeradze. ‘Djinn’ was one of the Georgian noblemen who had ended up in the Legion after the Russian Civil War; he would explain that after he fled Russia the only other employment open to him was becoming a gigolo, and ‘only the profession of arms seemed to me to be worthy of a gentleman’.32 Djindjeradze, who would soon join two other Georgian princes in the 1st Foreign Cavalry, was a dandy and a womanizer who became a close friend of yet a fourth Legion prince, Aage of Denmark. However, when on duty he was a conscientious officer, and he was wounded twice. Cooper was made his orderly and spoke highly of his kindness, although the prince’s late-rising habits made life awkward for his tent-striker. It was he who bent the rules to get Cooper his two green stripes back, which later enabled the Englishman to end his final year in the Legion as a sergeant.33

  Cooper’s memoir gives a useful record of a Legion infantryman’s travels at the end of the 1920s; his unit was moved around a wide area of south-west Morocco, above and below the High Atlas, as a lid to clamp down on unrest that simmered but seldom came to the boil. During 1929, trouble in the Oued Sous country inland from Agadir, where alliances with client caids no longer seemed sufficiently effective, brought the Legion down into this far south-western region for the first time. The De Corta Battalion made an exhausting three-week foot march south across the High Atlas, climbing the green northern slopes into the woods that grew above the 6,000-foot contour. Panting in the thinner air, they eventually crossed the central watershed; here, many snowy peaks rose to between 9,000 and 12,000 feet, their misty shoulders hung with ghostly forests of centuries-old dead cedars. Wild boar and even cougars still haunted the heights, and the plentiful mouflons – Barbary sheep – offered tempting but agile targets to officers ambitious to i
mprove their men’s suppers of reconstituted dried vegetables and tinned meat.

  Cooper writes that his officers were good to men who were on the verge of collapse, taking their packs or even putting them up in their saddles. Once they were south of the crests the slopes grew more arid and treeless; thirst became a problem, and any man who could not contribute from his waterbottle to the evening cookpot was still handed his rations raw. Such marches through almost unexplored country were planned by the Intelligence branch, who gave unit officers maps and suggested itineraries. There were no roads; the march was made by the compass, taking tactical precautions. Three sergeants or corporals took point 100 yards ahead of the leading company, spread about 30 yards apart across the route; the men followed in single file, rifle in hand, and paused at every crest or blind turn until the scouting NCOs blew a whistle.34

  The battalion HQ was installed at Biougra, south-east of Agadir, and 9th Company were assigned to relieve a Skirmisher garrison at the post of Dar Lahoussine about 20 miles up into the foothills of the Anti-Atlas range (see Map 24). Cooper’s company worked to adapt this existing kasbah to French standards, and garrisoned it for about six months. The local Berber tribes were certainly restless, or a Legion battalion would not have been sent this far south, but – as elsewhere in his first memoir – Cooper may overstate the amount of combat he saw. One anecdote does have the ring of truth, however, since it involves two officers whom he liked and thanked by name in print. An NCO posted to Dar Lahoussine turned out to be a notoriously cruel and devious Corsican sergeant who had made many enemies during his previous service with the 1st REI regimental police, an instruction company and the Disciplinary Company. Cooper claims that this NCO was shot in the back of the head during a patrol following a night alarm, and that all three company officers – Captain Cazeau and Lieutenants Djindjeradze and Vecchioni – quietly wrote it off simply as a death in action.

  In the autumn of 1929, the whole De Corta Battalion were shipped from Agadir to Casablanca, and then rushed by rail and on foot to Oued Zem, Sidi Lamine and Khenifra in response to unrest among the Zaians. The episode seems to have been brief, but from Sidi Lamine III/4th Foreign were ordered to make a wide sweep through this edge of the Atlas – a tour de police – to show the flag and damp down any excitement. This was an exhausting and unwelcome mission; they marched via Kasbah Tadla to Beni Mellal, Ouaouizahrt (where Cooper was unknowingly following in the footsteps of his admired Captain Pechkoff), and finally to Azilal. There they laboured for a month to build an airfield, their sleep disturbed by Major de Corta’s passion for the battalion jazz band he had formed.35

  THE LEGION UNITS that retained their offensive role longest would be the squadrons of the Foreign Cavalry and the mounted companies of Foreign Infantry, the mobility of which allowed them to make a continuing contribution in the south, in the Legion’s traditional role of providing a reliable reserve and spine for native troops and the ever skittish irregulars. The Legion cavalrymen from Tunisia were rotated through these southern postings; the 1st REC had a depot squadron at the Sousse headquarters and four sabre squadrons, and at any time at least one of these was in the Levant (see Appendix 2) and one in southern Morocco.36

  The troopers faced the same loneliness and boredom as the infantry, but with the added difficulty of keeping horses in condition in a semi-desert environment. French horses had to be kept well away from native horses – and the waterpoints they used – if they were to avoid potentially fatal contagions. They were thirstier than mules, and more prone to a range of diseases; their digestions were also more delicate, and ‘sand colic’ caused by swallowing grit in dirty forage was a particular scourge. Historically (including in the First World War), French cavalry used their horses more harshly than was tolerated in the British Army. In the desert the Legion troopers had to be schooled to take the utmost care of their mounts – dismounting at every halt, inspecting their hooves regularly, keeping their manes and tails well groomed so that they could flick away the tormenting flies, and above all off-saddling whenever possible and checking for back sores. When in pursuit, their mounts could keep up a 15mph canter for a limited period, but most of the time they trotted at half that speed or walked at the same pace as a man; usually the troopers dismounted and led them for about a quarter of any march. If needed, they could keep going on one watering every 36 hours, but not on much less; they could cover up to 20 miles in a night march, but the endurance of their accompanying pack-horses was a limitation over longer distances.

  The rank and file were mainly Russians and Germans but most of the senior NCOs were French. The official strength of each 4-troop squadron was 4 officers and 160 rankers, but in practice this was often as low as 100 men. Even in this wilderness, REC officers (who included about 10 Russians and the three Georgian princes) maintained a traditional cavalry ‘tone’, and photos show that their troopers also prided themselves on a certain style – at this date a few of them, too, were still former Tsarist officers who had chosen to serve in the ranks. While issued with a bolt-action 8mm carbine the trooper still carried a sabre at his saddle, and each troop had pack-horses carrying an FM24 light machine gun and its separate 7.5mm ammunition.

  IN 1927, THE SULTAN MOULAY YOUSSEF died, and the French secured the agreement of their powerful client Pasha of Marrakesh, Tahami el Glaoui, to the succession of the sultan’s manipulable 16-year-old son, Mohammed ben Youssef. By 1928, El Glaoui was unchallenged in the High Atlas, but Glaoua depradations south of the mountains – particularly those of Madani el Glaoui’s notoriously cruel son-in-law Hammou, who tyrannized over the family’s southern fiefs from the old castle at Telouet – stirred continual unrest. The Glaoua, like the sultans of old, attempted to enforce their authority by occasional punitive expeditions rather than by the costlier and un-Moroccan method of creating a systematic network of reliable long-term garrisons. Since their methods were as violent and self-seeking as those of any other raiders, their bitterly resented interventions simply kept the cauldron seething.37

  By now, the collective structure of the very widespread Ait Atta Berber people (never more than a sort of loose shared pride in their ancestral past, honoured in annual gatherings to elect a paramount chief of purely symbolic powers) was on the brink of dissolution. While some of their tribes had reached an accommodation with the Glaoua, others, including the irrepressible Ait Khabbash, continued to resist violently and successfully. The Ait Khabbash were heavily involved in a tribal war that devastated the Draa valley in the south-west in 1926 – 7; this led to the French installing a Native Affairs post at Ouarzazate, but for years thereafter its Captain Spillmann had to proceed patiently by the old Lyautey method of clan-by-clan seduction. Further east, the richly fertile country beyond the Dades valley would be partly depopulated as a result of the age-old competition between raiding clans and rival protection-racketeers, which rumbled on into the early 1930s, right across to the still-unoccupied Tafilalt. That unlanced boil, a centre for wide-ranging activity by the Ait Khabbash among others, was also now the base of the Ait Hammou bandit chief Belkassem Ngadi. He attempted to manipulate his contacts with the Ait Khabbash – whose great numbers and black burnouses had earned them the nickname of izan, ‘the flies’ – but in practice they usually exploited him.38

  The days of attacks on the French by whole harkas were long gone, and apart from occasional small raiding parties the Ait Khabbash no longer troubled the country east of the Tafilalt, where the Legion cavalry squadrons and mule-companies circulated from posts at and around Midelt, Er Rachidia, Boudenib and Colomb Béchar to maintain a general level of peace. However, this was still periodically disturbed by traditional small-scale outbreaks. One major panic right across on the Zousfana ruined tourism for several years after the GOC Ain Sefra Territory, General Clavery, was killed in an ambush on 8 December 1928. His party of a dozen men in three cars were travelling the track between Colomb Béchar and Taghit, driving at long intervals to avoid one another’s dust, when they were atta
cked in succession. Two captains, a sergeant and two légionnaires died with Clavery; their killers were a small mixed Dawi Mani and Ait Khabbash djich from the Tafilalt.39

  IN 1929, THE FIRST LEGION UNITS took an uncertain step into a future age of warfare when two new motorized cavalry squadrons were raised in the south-east; now that most convoys were motorized, the horsed escorts could no longer keep up with them. In February that year, Captain Dugas formed the VI/1st REC at Colomb Béchar; his légionnaires were drawn from the two squadrons then at the Sousse depot, and most of the junior officers and NCOs from Line light cavalry armoured car units in France. That summer, Captain Tavernot’s new horsed V/1st REC were also ordered to return from Ksabi to Boudenib for motorization, but both units would be slow to receive the equipment for their new role.