Foreign News: Revolt & Revenge

"That looks like one of them," said the grim-faced French colon. From the six Moroccan tribesmen bound together with a single rope, he picked out a shaven-headed Berber, captured by the French Foreign Legion in the plundered shambles that had been the prosperous town of Oued Zem (pop. 4,600). A helmeted Legionnaire slapped the suspect on the head and led him out to be shot. Thus, last week began France's bloody revenge for one of the bloodiest massacres of Europeans in modern colonial history.

La Date Fatidique and the days following the fateful date that brought thousands of Moslem terrorists out of the hills (TIME, Aug. 29), claimed the lives of 92 Frenchmen and at least 1,000 Moroccans. But that was only a beginning; last week the Berber tribes were still on the rampage in the foothills of the Atlas Mountains that straddle central Morocco. Shouting horsemen, brandishing antique guns, swept into Khouribga, where the French own phosphate mines, joined up with the Arab miners and hacked 203 people to death. Near by, Moroccan iron workers in the town of Ait Amar dragged their bosses into the streets and tortured them horribly. One French engineer was tied down and forced to watch while his wife was raped repeatedly, and his six-month-old child was slowly carved to death. The killers burned every house and destroyed every living thing they could find in Ait Amar. When a detachment of the French Foreign Legion arrived on the scene, all that was left alive was one cat.

French Attack. The French army met primitive savagery with mechanized ruthlessness. French regulars, supported by tanks, planes and field guns, rolled into the Atlas ranges. In the villages of central Morocco, French Legionnaires tore down houses and even tents. One French detachment was held up .by snipers firing from a house. The troops demolished the house with .75-mm. shells, then rolled over its ruins in a heavy tank. Feeble cries came from under the ruins, so the French backed up the tank and crunched it back and forth until no more cries came.

Another Legion task force mopped up around Oued Zem. Under Colonel Fran-gois Boreill (who led the fine French battalion in Korea), 4,000 or more Legionnaires, supported by two tank companies, drew a tight steel net around the Smala tribal area. After two days of bitter fighting in the barren, rocky uplands, Boreill closed the net. Soon afterwards, he spotted a band of Berbers approaching his command post, waving white flags.

Berber Submission. The horsemen brought news that the Smala tribe wanted to surrender. For the formal submission ceremony, Colonel Boreill chose a huge wheat field near a place called Tired Men's Well. Next day, the French tanks were drawn up in a huge U. Long lines of Berher tribesmen filed in between them. Their women and children came with them, many carrying flags. The most important of the Berber Caids (local chiefs) arrived in a Chevrolet.

The Berbers piled their guns on the ground in front of the French. "You command us," they wailed. "We are miserable wretches." By the time General André Franchi arrived to accept their submission. 10,000 tribesmen and 5,000 Arab townsfolk were waiting to submit.