As a model of intelligent staff planning and meticulous execution, of surprise and audacity, with far-reaching results crowning the decision, the conquest of the Tafilelt stands out in the closing chapter of the French pacification of Morocco.
Due south 220 miles from the Meknes-Fez line, over the ranges of the Moyen Atlas and the Grand Atlas, and due east 390 miles from Agadir on the coast, lie the great oases or palmeraie of the Tafilelt. Close on its western flank are the arid heights of the Anti Atlas, and on its eastern the Sahara and the Algerian frontier. It is watered on the west by the River Ziz, and on the east by the Gheris. Fifty kilometers in length from north to south, and fifteen in width, the Tafilelt is a garden spot in the harsh South. Thousands of date palms bear prolifically, thanks to countless irrigation ditches that are fed by the two rivers. Its two-score villages are set among gardens rich with grain, fruit, and vegetables. This forest of trees and interlacing ditches add materially to the strength of its position. In the center of this network of semi-fortified villages is its key fortress of Risani.
For decades the Tafilelt had afforded an ideal base for swift raids on French convoys and on merchant caravans. The French line of communication from Sahara to the coast lay under its constant menace. Lured by its promise of warfare and loot, by its symbol of sanctuary, desperate men came to its borders. Under the leadership of chiefs who held power through sheer Mastery over its turbulent elements, the tribes of the Tafilelt waxed bolder with the years. The sultans of the present dynasty, when they wished to pay homage to the tombs of their fathers close to its borders, could do so only under the protection of a strong bodyguard and the payment of heavy tribute. It was clear that the permanent occupation of this area was the only solution as France forged ahead in her program of pacification.
The story of France’s military adventures in Southern Morocco, the last area to submit when the campaign of 1933 closed the book, teems with tragic disasters and hard-won victories. In 1918 a column under Colonel Doury, attacked by a large raiding party, lost the bulk of a Senegalese battalion in its flank guard. General Clavery, returning from a scientific exploration in the Sahara, was killed when his party was ambushed by overpowering numbers. Convoys were attacked yearly, and only prodigies of valor on the part of the mounted companies of the Foreign Legion saved them from annihilation when the native troops in the convoy broke under the merciless onslaughts of the fierce tribesmen. Yet a campaign on a proper scale would be a costly one in men and money. More vital projects were higher on the list of priority dictated by Marshal Lyautey. He had to bide their time before they could turn their guns on the Tafilelt.
With the Moyen Atlas pacified in 1923, the Riff campaign ended in 1926, and the dissident Berber tribes encircled in a tightening ring of posts and bayonets in the Grand Atlas, the time approached. At the close of the 1931 campaign in the Grand Atlas, with the snows definitely banning any further advance until the spring, the decision was made. General Hure, Commandant Superieure of the troops in Morocco, summoned his experts at the Etat Major in Rabat to prepare plans for an early drive against the Tafilelt. His troops were to be drawn from veterans of the Grand Atlas area.
Meanwhile the meteoric rise to power of one Belkacem in the Tafilelt acted as spur to its conquest. A woodworker in Oudjda in the north, later turning his undeniable talents to murder and other crimes, Belkacem fled to the Tafilelt. There he forged to the front, displacing rival aspirants by secret poisoning, assassination, and open murder. Behind the yellow walls of Risani, he gathered to his standards a bodyguard culled from the hawkeyed warriors of that little kingdom. From every village of the Tafilelt minor chieftians came to pay the tribute that he exacted. From raids on neighboring tribes and from his twoscore villages he assembled a harem. The stone sentry box in his medieval fortress courtyard was his palace of justice.
On the days when he held court his flag, square and green with crescents of yellow, red, and white, was spread before the palace of justice on the ground. Here he administered judgment, swift and ruthless. Finally, emboldened by his growing prestige, Belkacem took an audacious step. Before a milling mob of warriors and women he proclaimed himself as the true Sultan, denouncing the young Sultan as a false prophet and the puppet of France. The sheer boldness of this proclamation can be appreciated when it is remembered that the Sultan was a lineal descendant of Sidi Moulay Ali Cherif, whose dynasty began in the middle of the fifteenth century.
Hardly had this news filtered to the outside world before Belkacem summoned his chiefs to Risani and, before his so-called palace of justice, assumed the role of a prophet. The French, he thundered, would make an attack in the following month of February, and launch it on a specific Friday. His screen of fighting men would fall back to a certain point on the borders of his oasis kingdom, and there he would strike in full force and crush the infidels.
At the nearest French garrison, Erfoud, Captain de Bournazel, a Spahi officer who had already won a glamorous reputation in Morocco, was in command. The growing certainty of an expedition against the Tafilelt had spurred him to secure that post. As skilled in native affairs as in his own trade of a colonial soldier, De Bournazel had a native agent of the Bureau of Native Affairs in the motley crowd that heard Belkacem’s confident prophecy.
From Erfoud to Bou-Denib, military headquarters of the Algero-Moroccan Department, De Bournazel relayed his intelligence to General Giraud. That smiling, blue-eyed, six-foot-three dynamo, promptly threw the gears of his fine machine into high. The plan envisaged an attack in force on the Tafilelt several days prior to the Friday of Belkacem’s prophecy. It envisaged three stages: concentration, operation, exploitation. Ten days were allotted to the concentration of four columns that would converge on the rebel palmeraie and then launch their combined attack. Their movements, converging from separate bases, and directed on the four cardinal points of the compass, had to be directed with consummate skill. Meticulous preparations and carefully coordinated march schedules were necessary for a simultaneous progress that would bring the columns to the borders of the Tafilelt at a designated day and hour.
To execute this plan four separate bases with supplies had to be organized. Landing fields for each of the escadrilles involved had to be prepared. Cistern camions had to be organized to ensure each column its water supply. It was vital to success that the approach be conducted with a maximum of secrecy. The columns were ordered to avoid roads, to make wide detours around any cretes or high points where possible enemy sentinels might detect the advance. Speed was a fundamental requisite. Hard marches, with n maximum employment of night’s cover, were maintained on an average of 50-60 kilometers daily, and the going was rough in the blistering African sun.
The famous Foreign Legion, Senegalese, Algerian, and Moroccan Tirailleurs, Algerian and Moroccan Spahis, the semiregular Goums and bodies of partisan natives composed those four columns. Marching to the northern edge of the Tafilelt was Column A, under command of Commandant Schmidt, made up of 1,200 partisans, 2 Goums, 2 Groupe- Francs, and a tank company. On the eastern flank, approaching by the valley of the Amerbouh, was column B, divided into two groupments. Captain de Bournazel commanded the first with his own Goum of seasoned veterans and 800 partisans. The second groupment numbered a battalion, a Groupe-Franc, and a Mokhanzi or mounted troop of gendarmes. On the south, moving up from Colomb-Bechar, was column H under Colonel Trinquet. Two battalions, a motorized squadron of the Legion cavalry, and one Goum made up this column. On the west was the strongest column D, for that flank was the most likely one through which Belkacem’s garrison would attempt escape in case of defeat. Beyond it lay the still unpacified ranges of the Anti Atlas and the valley of the Draa. The first groupment of this column, commanded by Colonel Lahure, had the 8th Spahis, the 27th Armored Car Squadron, and a motorized mounted company of the Legion. The second, under Colonel Denis, comprised 4 battalions, 2 squadrons 3 Goums, and 2 Groupe-Francs. The total force approximated 7,000 men.
Since some of the units named were irregular or partisan in character, and their titles not descriptive outside of Morocco, a short summary of each is desirable at point. The Goum, a native troop closely approaching the Spahis in training and value, averages 120 men, two-thirds mounted, one-third dismounted. The Goumier enlists for two years with reenlistments of one year. Each Goum is equipped with two light machine guns for defensive strength when the screen of lightly armed partisans drops back before the enemy, and the Goumier is armed with carbine, saber, and the coupe-coupe, a heavy, sharp-edged blade resembling the machete. French cavalry subalterns command. The partisans, recruited from the immediate vicinity from tribes that have made submission, are mounted in the main. They are armed with a Lebel rifle or carbine and a knife for close quarters. They are literally hired by the day, and their employment is for a limited time. Their chief value is as scouts and as screens to develop the enemy’s position. Their defensive value is negligible. The Groupe-Franc is a small, independent body of mixed elements, valuable for liaison and scouting. The Mokhanzi is the gendarmerie of a city or village. The only purely French units in the operation were those of the armored car squadrons and tanks. They, with the Legion, were the only white troops involved. A wise French policy dictates that the great bulk of its forces engaged in colonial warfare shall be drawn from native units, Algerians, Moroccans, and Senegalese. Thereby a true economy of force is ensured, and in addition the casualty lists that reach France, being almost wholly those of native troops and the aliens of the Legion, provoke little criticism in the press and in Parliament.
On the night of January 10-11, 1932, all columns had gained their assigned positions on the borders of the sleeping Tafilelt. While the temperature at noon averaged 100, ranging as high as 124 degrees in summer, that night was one of intense cold in its elevation of 2,400 feet. Snowstorms are not unknown in that region bordering on the Sahara, and a battalion of the Legion was almost wiped out in a roaring blizzard several years ago. Another column, in an epic fight, suffered severe losses when it met the enemy on a plateau in a whirling snowstorm. In the oft-quoted dictum of Lyautey, “Morocco is a cold country where the sun is very hot!”
The magic of the Moroccan dawn had barely mounted the skies before the five escadrilles attached to the invading collumns were soaring overhead, unloosing their light bombs on predetermined points, and concentrating on the stronghold of Risani. Through the wooded terrain horse, foot, and motorized units swept forward to the drive of bugles. The tanks of the northern column opened up parallel routes through the heavy growth that faced it, and the accompanying troops kept up with difficulty. At short range the tanks opened up a devastating fire with their short 75’s on the stout fortress in which Belkacem was trapped. The surprise was complete.
Meanwhile, urging his command to full speed, Captain de Bournazel was rushing from the eastern edge to be in at the death. At the head of his veteran Goum he raced at full gallop as the tanks ceased firing. Through the breached gates of Risani he stormed, his crimson cloak of the Spahis swirling about his shoulders, a never-failing standard for his gray-cloaked troopers. Those of Belkacem’s followers who had not been put out of action by bombs and shells rallied to his defense. In hand-to- hand combat, with no quarter asked or given, with carbines blazing, sabers and coupe-coupes flashing, De Bournazel’s men took heavy toll and then spread fanwise through the labyrinths of the medieval fortress. A trooper snatched up the green flag at full gallop. The harem and the treasury fell into their hands.
Rallying from the panic that had swept through their ranks at the whirlwind attack, 200 of Belkacem’s bodyguard, mounted, and with their leader in their midst, escaped in mad flight through a breach in the stout walls before the other columns could close thewnet. A French infantry officer, Lieutenant Rillebut, hearing the thunder of hoofs, placed himself and eight men in the path of the fleeing column. In a daring bayonet charge they appreciably checked the flight and Rillebut killed a brother of Belkacem in hand- to-hand combat.
A flying column was hastily organized for pursuit. At the end of an 80-kilometer chase it fell on his encampment. Its five squadrons of cavalry, motorized mounted company of the Legion, and an armored car squadron put the demoralized enemy to rout. So complete was its work that Belkacem alone, shielded to the end by his men, escaped. Later he was reported as a refugee in the Spanish colony of Rio del Oro on the coast. Discredited as a prophet, his claims to the sultanate utterly smashed, his oasis kingdom in the hands of the French, Belkacem ceased to be a factor in southern Morocco.
When the writer paid a visit to the Tafilelt in July, 1932, Captain de Bournazel was in command. Hailed throughout the Army of North Africa as the “Conqueror of the Tafilelt,” wounded five times in African warfare, cited eight times in Army orders for gallantry, and still in his early thirties, he seemed destined for high rank in the Army of France. Added to these distinctions were an undeniable genius as an administrator and master of native psychology. Under his brief tenure the Tafilelt was blooming like a garden, and peace and order prevailed through its borders. No officer or man in Morocco could match the exploits that he had dared, the legends that had grown around his glamorous figure. But that is another story that should be told, the story of De Bournazel. Eight months after I left him at the shell-scarred gates of Risani he was killed at the head of his Goumiers on the high slopes of the Anti Atlas.