[SIZE=3]
Revue d'Action Militaire: Ambush at Chefchaouen[/SIZE]
Article from
Le Spectateur militaire.
Revue d'Action Militaire is a monthly feature which publishes reports about a battle of military interest.
Shortly before dawn on August 21st, 1938, a convoy of military supplies set out from Tetouan, Morocco, bound for the military garrison of Chefchaouen, a distance by road of approximately sixty kilometers. The supply convoy was expected to arrive in Chefchaouen two hours later, and then return to Tetouan before nightfall.
The Berber rebels of the Rif mountains had fought hard in Abd el-Krim's campaign to create an independent Rif republic, but with el-Krim's capture on June 4th at the Battle of Meknes, and the devastation visited upon his over-eager army, the Berbers had suffered crippling losses. Many of the Berbers living in the Chefchaouen region had been killed or captured at Meknes, when General de Lattre's 14e Division Légère d'Infanterie and Touzet du Vigier'‘s Armored Cuirassier Regiment smashed through the rebel army. Before the beginning of the rebellion, an estimated ten thousand Berbers lived within forty kilometers of Chefchaouen, and a full four thousand of the men had followed Abd el-Krim to Meknes and Rabat. By August, only four hundred returned to the Rif.
Tribal leadership fell on the shoulders of the seventeen year old Khalid Wahrouch, known as "Khalid the Younger". Driven by his hatred for the French and Arabs, Khalid the Younger spent late July and early August marshalling the tribesmen remaining in the western Rif, and preparing to continue the campaign which had already resulted in the death of his father and three uncles. Khalid was aided by his mother Fatima, who, like most of the spirited Berber women, rose to defend her tribe in times of trouble. In August, Khalid finally felt his force was sufficient to begin attacking French patrols and convoys. On August 17th, Khalid's men ambushed a French patrol outside Chefchaouen, resulting in two killed and two wounded, as well as the retreat of the patrol.
Shortly after dawn on the 21st, a horseman arrived in his camp bearing news that a French convoy was leaving Tetouan and advancing down the road to Chefchaouen. Khalid immediately roused fifty old men and boys to join him, and left his mother to gather reinforcements. Eventually, around a hundred and fifty Berbers would participate in the action, including a dozen young women who followed Fatima. Although numbers are uncertain, less than a tenth of the combatants were men between the ages of eighteen and forty, evidence of the desperate manpower situation to which the Berbers had been reduced.
The convoy bound for Chefchaouen was intended to help support the garrison of the town, which was a key location for the control of the western Rif. Composed of nineteen trucks, six Citroen-Kregresse P-19 halftracks, nine Renault UE artillery tractors, and one Panhard 178 armoured car, the convoy escort fell under the command of Capitaine Antoni Wieviorka of the French Foreign Legion. Wieviorka commanded two platoons of Legion infantry, totalling eighty-two men, plus the crew of the Panhard armoured car.
Setting the Ambush
Khalid had already picked several spots which he believed suitable for ambush, and arrived in his chosen spot roughly one half-hour before the convoy arrived. The Berber position overlooked a one-lane stone bridge running north to south across a creek. At 0815 hours, the convoy came into sight from Khalid's hilltop position. By this point, his force of fifty had swelled somewhat to between seventy to eighty men, though most of the combatants were the men too old or too young to have joined Abd el-Krim earlier in the year.
[SIZE=1]
The terrain around Chefchaouen is rugged agricultural land.[/SIZE]
Khalid's position was well chosen. On the southeast side of the bridge, a low hill, covered in scrub, overlooked the closer bank. Khalid's plan, formulated in no small part by his older and more experienced advisors, was to lay in wait until half the convoy had crossed the bridge. The Berbers had a captured 50mm mortar with seven rounds, and Khalid hoped to use the mortar to collapse the bridge, thus cutting the convoy in half. However, Khalid's plan immediately went awry: the convoy was accompanied by a Dorand G.II helicopter as an aerial scout.
Although a crude and unreliable machine, the Dorand was to prove itself in Morocco, primarily as a spotting unit. Among their most useful roles was in convoy escort missions. Flying a zig-zag course ahead of the convoy, Dorands often spotted ambushers moving into position. On other occasions, poor Berber fire-discipline led to futile attempts to shoot down the helicopter using single-shot rifles. Although several helicopters were nevertheless lost in this fashion, the shooting usually alerted convoys to an impending ambush in time to react.
Despite Khalid's attempts to maintain concealment, the younger Berbers all took the opportunity to try to gain the prestige of shooting down the Dorand, even though they did not know what sort of machine it was. The Dorand pilot, Sous-Lieutenant Philippe Laurin, did not immediately take note of the dozen young riflemen shooting at him, and only radioed a warning right as the armoured car crossed the stone bridge. Wieviorka quickly called for the column to halt as the helicopter dropped a red smoke grenade on the Berber position.
The Berbers, seeing that the French convoy had not finished crossing the bridge as planned, decided to open fire with their mortar. The inexperienced Berbers wasted four of their seven rounds trying to find the range to the bridge, as it seemed only one of them had ever fired a mortar before. By a near miracle, they hit the bridge with their fifth round, but the light 50mm round failed to make much of an impression on the stone bridge. The round did, however, damage one of the leading trucks, starting it on fire and wounding the driver.
As the Berber mortar crew cheered their apparent success, their operations were cut violently short. The Panhard armoured car at the front of the column, under Caporal Chef George Van Mechelen, had spotted the mortar crew and sent three 47mm high-explosive rounds into their rocky position. The second shell killed two of the Berbers manning the mortar, and caused the sympathetic detonation of the remaining mortar rounds.
Retaliation
The loss of the mortar had relatively limited effects on the fighting spirit of the Rif Berbers, who opened up with their rifles. Wieviorka's men, disembarking from their trucks and half-tracks, quickly returned fire with their Berthiers. The armoured car, one halftrack and two trucks had been caught on the far side of the bridge. Two sections of Legion infantry, under Sergeant Accola and Sous-Lieutenant Chauderon, dismounted on the southeast side of the bridge and began firing back at the attacking Berbers. By this point, the Berber reinforcements had swelled Khalid's numbers to nearly a hundred men, most of whom focused on the small band of Legionnaires. The Panhard armoured car fired several rounds at the general vicinity of the Berber riflemen, and supported the Legionnaires with machine-gun fire. The Berbers, wisely wary of the armoured car's firepower after the loss of their mortar, remained hidden as much as possible in the rocks and scrub bush.
Sous-Lieutenant Laurin, flying overhead in his helicopter, continued to attract small-arms fire. However, the ALAT officer had used his radio to good effect, calling for heavier artillery and air support. During the months of July and August, five French fighter and light bomber squadrons, flying from Tangier and Rabat, logged an average of two hundred and ten sorties per day. Although the air and ground forces initially had some difficulty working together, procedures were being streamlined and cooperation improved immensely as a result of earlier failures. On this morning, Laurin's call for air support was quickly answered by a flight of four MS.406 fighters and three Loire-Nieuport LN.401 dive bombers flying out of Tangier. Thirty minutes after the start of the ambush, Laurin dropped two smoke bombs on the Berber hill, and five minutes later, the first dive bomber 'went over', dropping a 225kg bomb on the hilltop. The other two dive-bombers followed. While the dive bombers returned to Tangier, the fighters took their time strafing the hilltop. Although it caused relatively few casualties, the bombing and strafing proved devastating to the Berbers' will to fight.
As the Berbers wavered, Sous-Lieutenant Chauderon called for his two dozen Legionnaires to advance. Chauderon led the right-hand section while Sergeant Accola led the left-hand section. Capitaine Wieviorka had simultaneously sent the third section of Chauderon's platoon, which had been on the northwest side of the bridge when the ambush was sprung, to cross the ravine on foot. This was accomplished with some difficulty due to deeper and fast-moving water in the ravine, but this twelve-man section, under Sergent Kristof, reunited on the left flank of Chauderon's line just in time to participate in the attack.
The Legionnaires fired rifle grenades and then scrambled up the slope with fixed bayonets, covered by gunfire from the Panhard armoured car. At this moment, Khalid the Younger's mother Fatima, his most trusted advisor, was hit by a bullet and critically wounded. The youthful Khalid was enraged, and rather than retreat as he had been advised, shouted for the Berbers to counterattack. He was almost immediately hit and wounded, while a dozen of the most youthful and hotheaded Berber fighters attempted to charge. Although the Berbers had an advantage of a higher position, they were outmatched by the older, larger, and more numerous Legionnaires; Legionnaire 2e Classe Claude Jaccotet distinguished himself by killing four Berber tribesmen with three shots from his rifle, finishing with the bayonet. Despite this success, two Legionnaires were wounded and one killed.
The Berbers fled in disarray, with the wounded Khalid the Younger being carried off the field. Fatima, badly wounded, was captured by the Legionnaires and died before she could receive medical aid. A dozen other Berbers were captured as Capitaine Wieviorka moved to support Lieutenant Chauderon's advance.
An hour after the start of the ambush, Wieviorka had his men inspect the damaged truck which blocked the bridge, and used one of the UE tracked carriers to tow it clear. Although the bridge was lightly-damaged by the mortar hit, it remained standing and allowed the convoy to cross without further incident.
Analysis
Sixteen Berbers, including four women fighting alongside the men, were taken prisoner. One of them, Khalid the Younger's half-sister Souad Wahrouch, related most of the Berber side of the action to interrogators, and was present at Fatima's death. (After the war, she married an Algerian lieutenant and is now a noted singer in Oran.) Another fifteen Berbers were killed in the course of the ambush, and intelligence reports recently made available indicate that up to ten more Berbers were wounded and carried off the field by their comrades. Conversely, one French soldier was killed and six wounded, and one truck was written off.
Following the unsuccessful ambush, Khalid the Younger tried to lead further ambushes against French and Moroccan troops. However, with his mother's death he lacked wise advice, and quickly isolated himself from neighboring Berber tries. His death in early 1939 came not at the hands of the French, but rather by another Berber chieftain who he'd offended during discussions of a planned marriage alliance.
Capitaine Wieviorka attributed victory in defeating the ambush to the rapid reaction of air support, which he felt was decisive in breaking the Berber will to fight. This would not have been possible without the presence of Sous-Lieutenant Laurin's Dorand helicopter, which spotted the Berber position, called for air support, and correctly marked the hill with smoke bombs, allowing the dive-bomber pilots to precisely target the Berber position. This made up for the helicopter's earlier failure to spot the ambush, despite the Berber riflemen giving away their position by shooting at it.
Additionally, the inability of the Berbers to deal with the Panhard armoured car proved highly detrimental to their ability to overwhelm the isolated front section of the convoy. Although the Berber mortar could have disabled the vehicle, it does not appear the Berbers made any attempt to adjust their plans to account for the armoured car. The Panhard's combination of a 47mm gun and armour impervious to small-arms fire made it a significant counterbalance to the more numerous Berber riflemen.
Finally, the lack of Berber experience, particularly in the critical element of leadership in changing circumstances, was a clear disadvantage. Although fighting spirit was always high in rebel bands, the Berbers never were able to retain competent and capable leadership personnel who knew how to adjust to mistakes, new tactics, and the new equipment fielded by the French Army.
WesWorld »
The SIM »
News and Stories »
Quoted
Originally posted by Desertfox
Saturday, June 15th 2024, 4:11am
Go to the top of the page
