Our Friends Beneath the Sands

by Martin Windrow

  A LAST UNSUCCESSFUL ATTEMPT to take Bu Gafer by assault was made on 1 March, with heavy artillery and air support and Moroccan Skirmisher battalions brought forward to stiffen the irregulars. Captain Spillmann was distressed by the inevitably high casualties among the Berber families and livestock, which were far more vulnerable to shellfire than the thin chains of fighting men among the rocks, but at this stage Assu u-Ba Slam’s warriors shot on sight anyone attempting to parley, including a marabout. Thereafter the ‘turned’ Ait Atta advised General Huré simply to maintain a tight encirclement and wait for lack of water and ammunition to do his work for him. On 10 March the first 150 families made contact with Spillmann, who used his knowledge of particular tribal beliefs to insert a lever into this chink. On the 23rd and 24th there were further defections; and on 25 March, after 42 days of fighting, the Ilimshan led by the brothers Assu and Bassu u-Ba Slam laid down their arms in front of Generals Huré, Giraud and Catroux. These last to submit numbered 2,900 people, of whom some 500 were armed warriors. In all 4,700 people had surrendered, so up to 2,300 had died – including 500 – 700 fighting men – and 90 per cent of their flocks and herds had perished from thirst or bombardment. Among the dead were two of Assu u-Ba Slam’s children.

  It is worth considering that Assu’s costly defiance – which the Native Affairs officers had appealed to him to renounce both before and during the fighting – was proud but largely pointless. The terms granted by General Huré were hardly onerous: Assu had to submit formally to the Maghzan and in future pay the normal taxes, but his freedom from Glaoua rule was guaranteed; weapons were to be listed but could be kept; a complete amnesty was granted without the payment of fines, and Assu was confirmed as chief of the Ilimshan. The French also promised that there would be no levying of partisans among these hills for a year, but that summer Assu actually offered warriors to fight with the French against the very last pocket of resistance in the High Atlas. The offer was declined, but it was sincere; the last resisters included tribesmen of the Ait Atta’s ancestral enemies, the Ait Murghad.25

  THE SECOND PHASE of the 1933 offensive, the ‘Mount Baddou’ campaign in July – August, took place in an uncharted crumple of parched brown mountains about 80 miles across and 50 miles deep, in the eastern ranges of the High Atlas north of Tinerhir and south of Imilchil (see Map 23).

  After Djebel Sahro, General Huré assembled an army of some 35,000 combat and 10,000 service troops. The usual converging movements were planned, on a grand scale: General Goudot’s Meknes Group from the north with 7 battalions, including 2 of the Legion; Giraud’s Frontier Group from the east with 7, plus 4 Legion mounted and motorized companies; Catroux’s Marrakesh Group from the south with 6 battalions, including 3 Legion; and Colonel de Loustal’s Tadla Group from the north-west with 12, including 3 Legion. Of these 32 battalions the 2nd, 3rd and 4th REIs, with a total of 8 battalions plus the motorized equivalent of a ninth, would provide the only European infantry except for a single Colonial battalion sent – with some hesitation – from France.26

  The operations began on 7 July 1933, with simultaneous advances by the Meknes, Tadla and Frontier commands to converge on the headwaters of the Oued Dades, while the Marrakesh Group pushed north-eastwards from Boumalne Dades up the spectacular Dades gorge. For the first 20-odd miles this was broad and fertile, studded with red-brown kasbahs amid grainfields and orchards, but as it cut deeper into the mountains the cliffs closed in. Here it was the three Legion battalions who led the way, tasked with cutting a new motor road along the cliffs above the river. This took immense labour, choking with dust deep in claustrophobic canyons in temperatures above 110°F (43°C), and at some points men had to be lowered on ropes from the rim above to drill the first holes for charges. At least the légionnaires of 4th Foreign did not have to rely solely on explosives and hand-tools this time; General Huré, an Engineer by background, had procured dozens of ‘Spiros’ truck-powered pneumatic drills. As soon as a basic track had been made, these could be driven forward to improve it; Huré calculated that each did the work of 80 men, and that his légionnaires achieved a rate of 2 yards per man per day as the road crept forwards up the gorge.27

  Their immediate goal was Msemrir, where forward supply dumps were established. Meanwhile the Meknes Group were clearing the upper Assif Melloul valley south-east of Imilchil, and the Tadla and Frontier Groups were moving south down the valley of the Oued Imdrass towards Ait Hani (in these mountains even the valley floors may be at 6,000 – 7,000 feet, and many of the peaks rear up to 10,000). Despite stiff resistance to the northern columns by Ait Haddidou tribesmen, the Marrakesh, Tadla and Frontier groups met on 23 July, cutting the area of operations in two. From Ait Hani the Tadla Group turned west to mop up the smaller remaining pocket in the Djebel Koucer, but the main objective lay to the east. Catroux’s Marrakesh Group turned eastwards along the Tittaouine gorge (where they met their first opposition) and into the parched valley of the Assif Amtrouss, while Frontier Group pushed on further south.28

  THE LAST BERBER REFUGE, which the French called Mount Baddou, was about 40 miles north-east of Tinerhir, somewhere in the mountain chains running north-eastwards between Tamtetoucht and Assoul. The London Daily Mail correspondent George Ward Price, who accompanied the operations in August, identifies the massif simply as ‘the Kerdous’, and implies elsewhere that it was nearly 10,000 feet high; clearly it was the highest tooth in the blade between the upper Amtrouss and Kerdouss valleys, but its exact location is obscure.29 In the end the last tribesmen fighting for it would be the minority of warriors among some 2,000 – 3,000 Berbers led by an Ait Murghad chief named u-Skunti. Like the Ilimshan in February, the Ait Murghad drove their beasts up into the highest glens and fought from gulleys and caves; this was high summer, and the struggle for Baddou would be won by thirst.

  There was no general engagement; a massive noose was woven with Roman patience, and was then tightened according to the ‘Tadla method’. Irregulars were sent clambering up to take the first rifle-fire that would reveal the defenders’ hiding-places (sometimes having to use their turbans as climbing-ropes); they were followed by goumiers, who held the enemy in play until they too were followed, ridge after weary ridge, by the regular infantry, who consolidated each occupied height before the next bound. This may not have exposed many légionnaires to the danger of wounds, but it was as exhausting as any operation in Legion history. Driving up the Tittaouine gorge, Ward Price noted that the vehicles made actual bow-waves in the dust as they passed the panting infantry:Some of the companies of the Legion that I passed on the march in the valleys of the Grand Atlas looked like processions of souls in purgatory. Under a sun that was registering 105 degrees Fahrenheit in the shade, they were ploughing along through sand six inches deep, their feet sinking into it at every step. Passing motor-lorries and mule-convoys kept them smothered in a permanent cloud of fine dust, of a kind that inflames the eyes, parches the throat, shrivels the tongue and cracks the lips. It was impossible for the men in the column to see more than two or three yards ahead. With haggard faces they plodded on, the streaming sweat clogging the dust on their cheeks into a mask of mud, an eighty-pound pack on their backs . . . and sometimes a haversack full of bombs as well.30

  After the link-up on 23 July there was a pause of about ten days to bring up supplies and position the troops for the next phase; General Huré’s forward HQ came up to Ait Hani, where Ward Price arrived on 6 August after a six-hour drive from Boumalne Dades up the Legion’s new road. (He found a field brothel already installed at Ait Hani, and was unimpressed by the standards of latrine discipline and water hygiene in the camp.)31 The chain of mountains leading north-eastwards to Baddou was now being flanked on its north side by the Marrakesh and Meknes groups moving up the Amtrouss valley; meanwhile the Frontier Group had hooked left, north-eastwards up the Kerdouss valley to encircle the objective from the south.

  (At this point Giraud’s command also switched its line of supply: until now the Frontier Group
had been provisioned from Algeria via Boudenib, but henceforward it would draw on the same rear bases as the Marrakesh force. This still meant that every bullet and biscuit had to come about 300 miles, and for the first 100 from Marrakesh to Ouarzazate the trucks had to negotiate the Tizi n’Tichka pass with its 1,800 hairpin bends, many above dizzying unfenced drops. To keep just one Mobile Group fed and supplied in the Atlas required 43 metric tons for each single day’s operations, and the supply trucks groaning up the mountain roads in summer had to travel at 100-yard intervals to avoid the drivers being blinded by the dust thrown up by the vehicle ahead.)32

  On the night of 5/6 August, half of Marrakesh Group attacked the Djebel Hamdoun, a south-west extension of the Baddou massif; the next day the Berber reaction killed 4 officers and 38 rankers and wounded another 135. On the evening of the 6th a clever ambush wiped out a convoy following the leading battalions up the Amtrouss gorge, at the cost of 100 mule-loads of ammunition; Ward Price saw with his own eyes the grossly mutilated body of a French warrant officer wounded and captured in this incident (he would later see the corpse of a Senegalese Skirmisher with the ashes of a fire in his opened belly). On the south of the mountains, the Frontier Group in the Kerdouss valley had a five-day fight from 6 to 11 August to force the Berbers back from the main water sources and up into the dry crags. The tribesmen fought hard, from caves protected by drystone walls, and it was not until guns could be brought up to deliver direct fire that the infantry made real progress in clearing them with rifle and grenade. (During the fighting in the Kerdouss the bodies of two Europeans in Berber dress were found.)33

  Ward Price went up to the Meknes Group front in the Amtrouss valley, joining Lieutenant-Colonel Richert’s 2nd Foreign Infantry at Djebel Hamdoun. He describes the stink from the corpses of unburied animals and carelessly buried men along the track, the maddening swarms of flies and the stones too hot to touch. The regiment and a section of mountain guns were camped behind wire and chest-high rock murettes on a stony plateau facing Baddou from the west, and after six weeks in the field the troops were dirty and ragged. Officers could at least rinse themselves – and some still sported their well-cut tunics rather than ‘going native’ with gandourah and cheich – but water was too short for the rankers to be able to wash or shave. (Indeed, camp-followers would sometimes crawl up to the firing-line and sell mugs of it at 5 francs, which was then two days’ pay for a légionnaire with three years’ service.) Ward Price interviewed – in private – two British légionnaires and one American corporal; all said they were content with Legion life, which for a man who could look out for himself was hard but just. Private Hunter, a former Royal Navy petty officer, told the journalist that he had worse memories of working as a lumberjack in Canada.34

  In the second week of August, Ward Price witnessed a typical advance along a saddle by II/2nd REI, led – as always – by local guides, since compasses were useless among these magnetic rocks. A skirmish line of partisans preceded the Legion companies, which moved in file covered by others on a parallel ridge. During a pause, machine guns and Brandt mortars, mule-packed forwards, raked the next slope where movement had been seen. Between unit headquarters the communications were by wireless sets with a range of about 3 miles; closer liaison was by signal lamps powered by hand-cranked magnetos, as well as by field telephone where cable-laying was practicable, and the partisans were given coloured identity panels to protect them from mistaken attack by the French aircraft circling overhead.

  Once the battalion had occupied a new crest, against only a little long-range sniping, they set about fortifying it with rock walls and wire. The Berbers were tireless infiltrators, and however great the imbalance in firepower, an attack could never be discounted; shortly before Ward Price joined them, the battalion had stopped a dawn rush that came within 30 yards. The II/2nd Foreign were now facing the northern slopes of Baddou from only about 700 yards’ range but across a ravine at least 1,000 feet deep. The tribesmen opposite were wary of moving around on the lower slopes, but they and their flocks wandered carelessly along the skyline; they understood that artillery from either flank could not fire freely for fear of dropping shells on the other brigade in the valley beyond.35

  After two weeks of complete encirclement, bombardment by artillery and aircraft and growing thirst, u-Skunti was finally persuaded to surrender, largely by the example of a respected woman member of the council named Lalla Tazibout. She brought her own small group of families down under cover of night, and agreed with Native Affairs officers to go back up Baddou and try to convince u-Skunti to give up before their flocks all died of thirst. On 23 August the French sent word by partisans that the Berbers could come out without fear, and the next day the troops watched as their thirst-maddened flocks tumbled down the slopes towards the springs below. The families who trekked out with their laden camels, donkeys and cows were given food and water and set on the trails to rear areas, where they would be deloused, vaccinated, and given tools and seed-corn. Ward Price saw a little girl wearing a dead légionnaire’s identity disc among the beads around her neck – ‘Seraphin, Guilbert, 1st Foreign Infantry’; it was taken from her in exchange for a handful of coins. After a final foiled attempt to break out, u-Skunti and his last 100 or so diehards surrendered on 26 August 1933.36

  IT ENDED, AS ALWAYS, with the targuiba, the formal ceremony of submission. The dirty, unshaven légionnaires brushed and polished their kit as best they could and put on their blue sashes. Detachments from all the units present paraded in a big three-sided square, with one face open towards the assembled Berbers. To the blare of trumpets General Huré rode up, followed by a glittering escort, and reviewed his troops. Then he faced the armed tribesmen of military age, who came forward between the walls of sunburned soldiers, watched by their families crouching outside. The warriors were summoned in groups to throw down their rifles in a heap: Lebels, cavalry carbines, Winchesters, old Martini-Henrys, a few flintlocks. Then the general addressed them, his words interpreted by a Kabylie officer of Algerian troops. He spoke, he said, for the Maghzan and their lord the Sultan, against whom they had rebelled. In his generosity, their sovereign pardoned them, but now they must make their submission. The tribesmen lay face down in the dust, their hands linked behind their necks, and remained lying in complete silence for one minute. At the word, they stood again. The new pact between sovereign and subjects was then sealed by the ritual sacrifice of a bullock and six sheep in the middle of the square of soldiers. Finally the tribesmen were ushered back by moghaznis, and the troops marched past their commander-in-chief, followed by a controlled stampede of mounted partisans.

  Ward Price had a chance to question some of the Berbers through interpreters, and he was struck by their completely fatalistic attitude to defeat. Their rebellion had been the will of God, and so had its failure. They showed complete disregard for the sufferings of their families, for their dead, and for the seriously wounded whom they had not bothered to carry down – there had been ‘quite a lot, but no doubt they were all dead by now’. Their only pressing concern was when they would get their rifles back.37

  THIS FINAL CAMPAIGN of August 1933 was the last time that infantry battalions of the Legion in Morocco were assembled for seasonal operations, and it marked the beginning of several years of inevitable decline. For nearly 30 years – two whole generations of service – the companies and battalions had converged each spring from their scattered garrisons to join the mobile groups formed to push the frontiers of French control further into tribal territory. Now this classic cycle of military seasons had become irrelevant, and since the units remained dispersed and were used almost entirely for hard labour, they quickly lost their edge. A report of 7 March 1934 stated that their performance already left much to be desired, because when a battalion was reunited it took too long to re-accustom the companies to manoeuvring as a formed unit.38

  However, Generals Catroux and Giraud did assemble mobile groups for one final time in the winter of 1933/4, and ab
out a thousand légionnaires would have a voice in this last hurrah. Hardly any shots would be fired during this tidying-up exercise, and the légionnaires would undertake a great deal of backbreaking work on desert tracks and mountain ramps. Nevertheless, it was – for the last time – officially a combat operation rather than merely a ‘police tour’, and officers and men were happy to take what they could get.

  THE LAST UNPENETRATED region of French Morocco was the Anti-Atlas range in the far south-west, between the Sous plain and the lower Oued Draa. The shallow westwards curve of that hidden watercourse marked Morocco’s southern frontiers, with Algeria and then with the Spanish Sahara or Rio del Oro (see Map 24). The sparse tribes of this remote and biblically poor desert country were quite unthreatening, but a few thousand Berber incomers from far to the east had taken refuge in this last unoccupied corner. They included perhaps 350 tents of the Ait Hammou all the way from the Boudenib territory, 600 families of the stubborn Ait Khabbash from the Tafilalt, and the elusive Sheikh Belkassem Ngadi himself. In French eyes, the pacification of Morocco would not be complete until the last of these warriors had formally requested the aman.

  General Huré’s plan would be the ultimate test of the ‘Frontier method’ based on speed across country, and it depended upon motorized units. In the west, mounted and truck-borne troops of General Catroux’s Marrakesh Group would strike south from a start-line around Tiznit and up into the Anti-Atlas, and would then turn north-east to form an encirclement. From further east, beyond a linking element commanded by Colonel Rochas, Giraud’s Frontier Group would launch two columns. His right-hand force under Colonel Marratuech would peel off elements south-westwards through the mountains to link up with Rochas and with Catroux’s north-eastwards hook, completing a broad ‘bag’ the Anti-Atlas; it would then thrust on due south towards Icht below the Djebel Bani, to meet up with the left-hand element of Giraud’s command. This was Colonel Trinquet’s mechanized force, which would form a mobile stop-line to cut across the southern retreat of any dissidents fleeing from the other forces and making for the Spanish Saharan border on the Oued Draa.