When a sandstorm stalled a preliminary night operation on 18/19 November 1931, Captain de Bournazel, with his goumiers and 600 irregulars, used his initiative and seized Touroug oasis on the Oued Rheris west of the Tafilalt (see Map 23); a week later ‘the Red Man’ was named Native Affairs chief at nearby El Glifate. On 6 December, about 150 Ait Hammou raiders from the mountains around the Todra gorge wiped out Lieutenant Chappeldaine and 30 partisans in the Djebel Ougnat south-east of Touroug; eight days later Bournazel caught up with them and avenged his dead. On 10 January 1932 many clans, including some of the desert Ait Atta, were reported to be submitting at the new Native Affairs post at Zagora and to the troops of the newly promoted General Catroux, now GOC Marrakesh Region.14
On 14 January 1932, General Giraud sent mobile columns to converge on Rissani, the southern centre of the Tafilalt complex, where Belkassem Ngadi was rumoured to be holed up. From dawn until 11am on the 15th, Giraud shelled and bombed Rissani, then sent in attacks from the north, east and south-east while the western column formed a stop-line. The village was devastated, but Belkassem Ngadi had slipped away. (He reached El Mhamid oasis on the edge of the Djebel Bani, where he joined some 500 Ait Hammou and Ait Khabbash under a warchief named Muhammad u-Bani, and continued to play cat-and-mouse with Captain Spillmann.) Henry de Bournazel’s irregulars were set to guard Rissani against any return by the Ait Hammou or Ait Khabbash.15
The only white infantry committed were Captain Robitaille’s Motorized Company/1st Foreign, who took their vehicles into combat for the first time on 18 January about 35 miles further up the Ziz, at the oasis of Meski.16 The plan was for the mechanized infantry in their ten-man Panhard armoured carriers to advance first, with armoured cars in close support, and Berliet trucks bringing up the rear with portée 37mm guns to breach the walls over the heads of the légionnaires. When the first scout vehicle left the road some 1,000 yards from the objective it drew fire at once. Légionnaires disembarked to silence this, but when the company resumed the advance into the palm groves at 9.30am, the heavy Panhard 179s bogged down in deep, soft sand. After vain attempts to get them moving again it was decided that the infantry would have to put in an old-fashioned attack from about 400 yards, under what supporting fire the vehicles could deliver.
The légionnaires deployed into line, and advanced quickly across ground strewn and obstructed with fallen palm-trunks and cactus hedges, taking casualties from riflemen in the two towers of the large kasbah. They reached the base of the walls and jammed up against them, waiting what seemed interminable moments for gunfire support. When this arrived it was admirably accurate, blowing in the heavy timber and mud-brick gateway in billowing clouds of dust. Deafened and choking, the first squads kicked their way in through the splintered debris; more men fell to close-range fire, but the second platoon passed through them and began grenading their way through the alleyways and houses. After an hour of street-fighting, Meski was in French hands, but it cannot be said that the Motorized Company’s new equipment had added much to the Legion’s traditional capabilities.
That same day at Rissani, General Huré took the submission of the leaders of some 50,000 people, and this aman was confirmed on 26 January by Resident-General Lucien Saint in person. The great palmeries were now parched and yellowing from a five-year drought; the wealth of centuries was dwindling, and the submission of the Tafilalt after so many years seems to have been something of an anti-climax.17
THE DJEBEL SAHRO was the birthplace of the Ait Atta nation, from which their separate tribes had spread out since the seventeenth century over more than 20,000 square miles. However far they ranged they were ‘tethered to the Djebel Sahro by a long rope’, and their symbolic sanctuary and court of appeal was at Igharm Amazdar about 15 miles north-east of the village of Iknioun (see Map 23). In these new arm’s-length operations the French regular battalions and light armour would form the cordons within which the goumiers and partisans did most of the assault work (Major Pechkoff, now leading II/4th REI, would be so frustrated by the secondary role of his battalion that he would soon request a transfer to Syria).18 However, it seems theatrically fitting that in this final chapter of the 30-year story, the heirs to Négrier’s and Lyautey’s old mule companies should be the only European troops who would try to follow the Ait Atta into their last redoubt.
In November 1932, several clans, particularly in the south of the massif, had already come over to the French; others were in contact but still hedging their bets, but tribesmen who had no intention of surrendering without a fight were drifting into the Djebel Sahro from all over the south-east. The core clans were the Ilimshan and Ait Aisa u-Brahim of the Ait Atta, but these were joined by many families from a number of other tribes. Their leader was Assu u-Ba Slam, a respected warrior and chief of the Ilimshan who was a sworn enemy of El Glaoui and of those Ait Atta who had sided with him. He had a reputation as a tough but direct and truthful man, and in the winter of 1932/3 he rejected French attempts to negotiate.19 The French reckoned his followers to be about 7,000 souls of 800 families (of which 500 were incomers), with rather fewer than 1,000 rifles, but Assu’s son later claimed that he had had some 1,200 fighting men. Assu had taken some Lebels in battle with the Glaoua, and his brother Bassu was an experienced gun-runner who had smuggled rifles and ammunition from Marrakesh on mule-trains carrying sacks of henna and tea. (Only 174 of their warriors would later surrender repeaters, but that was an old trick; those who decided to surrender either hid their best rifles for recovery later, or sold them to those who were fighting on, handing in ancient single-shooters instead.)20
The French continued to create a ring of submitted clans around Assu’s heartland, and late in January 1933 the Native Affairs chief Captain Spillmann met with u-Marir, a chief of Ait Unir rebels among Assu’s following. U-Marir stressed that it was Assu’s hatred of El Glaoui that was the main obstacle, and suggested that the French delay their attack in the Djebel Sahro for six months while negotiating through intermediaries. By then the French preparations had their own momentum, and Spillmann told him this was impossible; unless Assu submitted he would be attacked in twelve days by superior forces, including many of his fellow tribesmen now in French service. At this, u-Marir declared that they would fight to the death, and that the French would face three enemies: cold, rocks and copper (bullets). In this he spoke the truth; Assu had chosen to make his stand among the naked crags of Bu Gafer – the ‘Wasteland’, east of the snow-clad 8,900-foot peak of Amalou n’Mansour.
THE FRENCH-LED FORCES of Generals Catroux from the west and Giraud from the east closed in across the plateaux in early February 1933. Catroux’s Marrakesh Group had some 4,400 Glaoua and tribal irregulars – at least 650 of them Ait Atta – and six Goums, backed by three battalions of Moroccan Skirmishers and I/ and III/4th Foreign Infantry, Captain Robitaille’s Motorized Company/1st Foreign, a Spahi regiment, plentiful artillery (including a composite Legion battery from 2nd and 4th REI), and five air squadrons. The irregulars and Goums were divided between Captain Spillmann’s strong harka advancing north-eastwards from Nekob, and Lieutenant-Colonel Chardon’s force coming south-eastwards from the direction of Boumalne Dades.
Giraud’s Frontier Group from the east was smaller; he had only about 1,300 partisans, 5 Goums (two of them led by Captain de Bournazel), 2 Spahi squadrons and a mounted Saharan Company; the Legion provided the mounted companies of 2nd and 3rd REI (Captains Fouré and Fauchaux), plus the mechanized VI/1st REC for track security. With supporting artillery and 4 air squadrons, this force was divided between Lieutenant-Colonel Tarrit’s column pushing south-west via Igharm Amazdar, and Lieutenant-Colonel Despas moving due westwards. The initial plan was for Catroux’s men to make the sweep while Giraud’s formed a stop-line. On 13 February, both commands began moving into the central heights of the Djebel Sahro, through a cold, arid and treeless landscape of stony plateaux and dramatic outcrops.21
The final approaches to Bu Gafer from the north were barred by sheer cliff
s, and its ultimate occupation would depend on the Spillman and Despas columns from the south-west and east respectively. Bournazel’s Goums and the mounted companies of 2nd and 3rd Foreign were with Despas; these Legion companies had not yet been motorized, and were picking their way up into the heights in the old way, with riding- and pack-mules. A water column was ambushed as early as the afternoon of 13 February, and the Legion escort took casualties during a firefight across a chaotic boulder-field; that night their cheerless camp in the rocks was relentlessly sniped, sending the mules mad. On the 15th, orders came down for Giraud’s units to take the initiative to try to draw off some of the defenders who were holding up Catroux’s advance from the west. In cold fog the Despas column pushed on into the trackless waste of wind-swept slopes and rocky gulches, coming under frequent fire from unseen tribesmen. Progress was painfully slow, and on 16 February both eastern and western commands were more or less stalled in the clouds at altitudes of around 6,000 feet. On the 17th, General Huré arrived to take personal command, and thereafter the troops had to spend two days labouring to build tracks so that supply-mules and artillery could come up.
On 19 February, General Giraud’s units – now given the assault role, despite the weaker numbers allocated for their intended mission – resumed their slow advance through a desolate landscape rich in natural defensive positions. Bournazel’s Goums took a hill and cleared some defended caves; that night, high winds that cut like flint prevented the troops from raising tents or lighting anything better than the tiniest protected fires. On the 20th, icy rain added to their misery – chilling them to the bone, causing mudslides under their scrambling boots, and sending supply-mules crashing down ravines to bounce sickeningly off the sharp rocks. (Descriptions of the conditions faced by the infantry at Bu Gafer irresistibly recall accounts of the Monte Cassino battles of the winter of 1943/4.) The first gun batteries were brought forward and opened fire, but under veils of rain and mist it was impossible to locate friend from foe and the consequently tentative shelling had little effect. On 21 February, Bournazel’s vanguard reached the foot of a dark granite tower nicknamed ‘the Chapel’. His first attempts to make progress up it were costly, causing a distinct wavering among his goumiers, and before they reached the top his Lieutenant Alessandri was one of the motionless brown bundles left scattered among the rocks.
Assu u-Ba Slam’s Berbers were now pulling backwards and upwards in a stubborn fighting retreat through the roots of the final heights of Bu Gafer. On 22 February, one of their rearguard parties was cut off and eventually wiped out, but the next day a counter-attack recaptured the lost ground so ferociously that the French would have retreated even further if the terrain had allowed. After stabilizing the line at some cost they were ordered to sit tight while artillery prepared the way. The Berbers, too, were suffering; they had many more mouths than rifles, and in this high desolation of stone there was hardly any grazing for about 25,000 sheep and goats that they had driven up with them. Even in the depth of winter access to water was vital, and the French advance had now driven them above nearly all the springs. Women sometimes climbed down to fetch water by night, and were killed by machine guns firing blindly into the darkness on fixed lines. (One source claims that when they were identified the Legion companies refused to fire on them.) On 25 February there was a truce while further negotiations were attempted, but firing broke out again the next day between a machine-gun platoon and Berber snipers, who shot the former’s Lieutenant Bureau clean through the forehead. On the 26th and 27th the artillery pounded the heights with little apparent success; rock splinters added murderously to the steel fragments, but the boulders were so close-set that it took an almost direct hit to cause casualties.22
THE FIRST INFANTRY ASSAULT on Bu Gafer proper took place on 28 February, led by Captain de Bournazel’s two Goums with the two Legion companies in the second wave, moving roughly north-westwards from positions on three occupied heights. Bournazel would advance from feature P2; behind him, Lieutenant Brenckle – the survivor of Bou Leggou – would follow up from P1 (‘the Chapel’) with his half of Fouré’s Mounted Company/2nd Foreign, plus Captain Fauchaux with half of his Mounted Company/3rd Foreign. From the less exposed P3, support fire would be provided by the rest of Fauchaux’s company and the machine-gun platoons of both. Only when Bournazel, Brenckle and Fauchaux had cleared three crests above them could Captain Fouré, with Lieutenant Garnier and the rest of Mounted/2nd Foreign, assault other heights on their right.
In the late winter dawn, Bournazel’s 200 goumiers and 300 partisans drank mint tea and chewed a few dates, huddled in their djellabahs against the bitter cold and rain. Despite the low clouds and turbulent wind, a flight of Potez 25 biplanes came pitching and lurching between the peaks to drop a few bombs, with questionable accuracy. The French artillery expended a lavish allocation of shells, but the only confirmed casualties were some French supply-mules hit by accident. After an hour the shelling was lifted higher up the mountain, and at about 7am the infantry were ordered forwards.
Bournazel’s first objective, P6, presented a steep tongue of rocky slope narrowing towards a defile through a cliff wall (christened ‘the Mountain’s Arse’ by the légionnaires). This funnel would have to be climbed by a series of natural steps; about halfway up there was an outcrop on the left that might provide some cover. Above the stairway of ledges the Berbers were awaiting them on a crest. When Bournazel’s two Goums had taken this, Fauchaux’s two half-companies of légionnaires were supposed to pass through and assault the next balcony of the cathedral of rock brooding down at them. The goumiers made their painful way up the slope, but as they reached the mouth of the defile the fire from hidden defenders became heavier. They took cover behind scattered rocks, shooting back on the rare occasions when they spotted a target, and the impetus of the attack drained away. Behind them, a bullet hit the haversack of grenades carried by a légionnaire and exploded it, wounding four men badly.
Captain de Bournazel took the lead, encouraging his Branès forwards (he was not wearing his red burnous that day, just a drab smock like the rest). Amid the constant snap of near-misses and shriek of ricochets, they had almost reached the first step of the staircase of ledges when, at about 7.20am, Henry de Bournazel was hit, through the right side and stomach. He buckled, then straightened and tottered onwards; his Lieutenant Binet, Sergeant Periousse and a few goumiers accompanied him, but when they saw him hit a second time many others stopped or even began drifting to the rear. Two men grabbed the captain by the heels and dragged him painfully under the cover of the rocky balcony, as an excited clamour from above warned that the Berbers might try to rush down and cut up the casualties.
Behind the goumiers the first squads of Lieutenant Brenckle’s légionnaires now clambered up into ‘the Mountain’s Arse’. His half of Mounted/2nd Foreign were understrength that day; he had with him only Lieutenant Jeanpierre, 10 NCOs and 70 men.23 By about 7.40am they were so far forward that all artillery support had to cease. The Berbers were flitting among the rocks in bands of 20 or 30, firing, throwing grenades and rolling boulders down among the attackers, dropping several men each time before darting back under cover. All the rest of the goumiers on Brenckle’s left now turned and fled, leaving Binet, Periousse and only a handful of loyal Branès with the helpless Bournazel at the high point of his advance. Then Lieutenant Brenckle himself fell, mortally wounded, and within moments Sergeant Chief Peters, Sergeant Augsten and Privates Lacoste and Schneidereit were also killed. Seeing the légionnaires of 2nd Foreign stalled, Captain Fauchaux of the 3rd strode across the slope from his place on the right to get a grip on them; halfway across he too fell, and died within minutes.
Lieutenant Jeanpierre ordered bayonets fixed and tried to get up to Binet’s and Periouse’s trapped handful of goumiers; Sergeant Jibovec and Privates Franchi, Alzua, Richard and Schmidt died in the attempt, and only the lieutenant and Privates Polak and Coghetto made it. They held out below the rim of the ledge for about 15 min
utes before – since they could not advance, and were in imminent danger of being surrounded and overrun – Jeanpierre ordered them to fall back to better cover behind an outcrop about 150 yards downhill. By now the légionnaires had taken heavy casualties, and the survivors had neither the firepower nor the positions to cover the withdrawal safely and effectively. Polak was killed from behind as he slid and stumbled down the scree, and Lieutenant Binet was knocked somersaulting down the slope by the impact of three bullets, but goumiers dragged Bournazel part way down before abandoning him.
Private Vurusic went forward and managed to lift the captain on to his shoulders and, with the help of two other légionnaires, carried him far enough to pause under cover. They improvised a stretcher with rifles and greatcoats and forced four hesitating moghaznis to carry it; on their way to the rear they were joined by a shame-faced goumier carrying the standard of Bournazel’s company, topped with the red-dyed tail of the horse that had been killed under him years before. Later that afternoon Vurusic and Private Abassia went back up the hillside and brought in Captain Fauchaux’s body. At about 4pm, Lieutenant Jeanpierre, in command of the combined légionnaires since Fauchaux’s death, was ordered to fall back another 600 yards and establish a defensive night position. The four platoons from Mounted/2nd and 3rd Foreign had lost 2 officers, 5 NCOs and 15 légionnaires killed, plus 3 NCOs and 22 men wounded – roughly a quarter of the day’s total French casualties of 179 all ranks.
In a freezing, flapping medical tent at the foot of Bu Gafer, Henry de Bournazel’s friend Dr Jean Vial did his best for him. He piled ‘the Red Man’ with coats, dressed his broken right arm and injected morphine, but the belly shot had caused fatal internal damage. As pale as paper, Bournazel groaned through chattering teeth, ‘Leave me alone – I’ll only be here for an hour’. Later, when the morphine had taken effect, he plucked at the bloody rags of his uniform and (ever the cavalry dandy) muttered with a faint smile, ‘It’s disgusting to die as dirty as this, Doc.’ He did not survive the night.24
Our Friends Beneath the Sands Page 82